Heart's Desire

Audra hid her smirk by bending down and passing her palms over the skirt to smooth out a few wrinkles. “I see a great deal in my business. Weddings are like funerals. People usually reveal part of themselves at both events, and it isn’t always the best side that I see, even though people think of weddings as being a happy time. It’s a very stressful time. All big decisions are.”

“But it’s not my wedding,” Maddie said. “So, I’m off the hook.”

“I’m thinking that you wish it were your wedding,” Audra offered, leveling her brown eyes on Maddie.

“Not hardly,” Maddie retorted.

Audra waved away her objection. “I’ve always found it just as interesting to watch the bridesmaids and maid of honor as to watch the bride. There are so many little dramas going on around us every day. Dozens of innuendos and intrigues, mistakes and missed fortunes. Lives being slowly knit together and others, sometimes sadly and methodically, being torn apart. Most people are oblivious to these little underpinnings of life. But they are what form the structure of our lives and create our finales for us. Me? I pride myself on observations.”

“Well, there’s nothing to observe here. I have no fiancé. No boyfriend. And to be honest, I have a lot of world to conquer before I get tied down with marriage.”

Audra smiled. “Is that right?”

“Absolutely.” Maddie looked at herself again. “Still. It’s a very pretty dress, isn’t it?”

“It was made for you. Just you.”

“I think it would look marvelous on Sarah.”

Audra chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully and walked around Maddie, studying the dress from all angles. “I have another theory. It’s taken me over twenty years in the bridal business to come to the conclusion that there really is one perfect wedding dress for every woman, and when the dress finds her, sometimes it’s an omen of changes to come.”

“I bet you believe in soul mates, too.”

“I wouldn’t be in the wedding business if I didn’t.”

Maddie stared at Audra as if she was nuts. This wasn’t the kind of conversation she needed to have, today of all days. She came here to help Sarah pick a dress, and now she was standing here, looking frankly fantabulous—better than she ever knew she could look—and this woman was telling her this dress had “found” her and was mystically going to change her life. Maybe Audra had been hitting the champagne a bit early. Or maybe she was just trying to make an extra sale.

“Well, let’s see what Sarah thinks of the gown, shall we?”

Audra took the change of subject as her cue to open the dressing room door. “We should, indeed.”

Maddie walked into the main showroom and up to the front window where there was a step-up round riser. She lifted her skirt and heard the swishing of all the underskirts and the peau de soie next to the horsehair net. She stood still and looked at herself in the two cheval mirrors. The gleam of the light from the crystal chandelier overhead pirouetted off the crystals in the dress.

Mrs. Beabots clasped her hands together and brought them to her smiling lips. “You are a vision for my eyes, my dear!”

Sarah was dumbstruck and could barely speak. “It’s you, Maddie. The dress is like the angels made it for you.”

“I can’t deny I feel like Cinderella,” Maddie said, admiring herself once again, still not believing her own reflection. Maddie turned back to Sarah. “But I thought it was perfect for you.”

Mrs. Beabots and Sarah stared at Maddie and allowed her to revel in the moment.

“Let me see the back,” Sarah said.

“Oh, I just love the little bow and nosegay,” Maddie said, turning toward the front window.

Maddie stared. Then she blinked. Twice.

At first, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. She peered into the darkening day.

There, underneath the black, wrought-iron Victorian street lamp, the evening fog drifting along the sidewalk, stood Nate. He looked directly at her, and when their eyes locked, he smiled.

Her heart thrummed in her chest and she could feel a pounding of hot blood at her temples. She felt dizzy for a moment, but steadied herself by using the mind-over-matter techniques Sarah’s uncle George had once taught her.

In the eleven years since Nate had abandoned her, Maddie had not had a single boyfriend. She had dated a few men here and there, but all her energy had gone into her business. She had convinced herself that she was strong and willful, that she owned her own power. She firmly denied and crushed any idea that she might fear being rejected again by a man, especially Nate, and moved on. She purposefully fanned and fueled the fires of her anger against Nate to mask even the tiniest possibility that she still had any feelings for him. Maddie didn’t dare think about Nate and love in the same thought. Such musings could lead to her ruin. For eleven years, Maddie had told her friends over and over that Nate Barzonni was the devil to her.

Maddie continued to stare at the vision outside the window.

If it was at all possible, Nate was more handsome than ever, with a man’s face and a man’s physique under a double-breasted black wool coat. His dark hair was worn shorter than she remembered, but still parted on the right side. He wore a grey, black-and-white-plaid scarf around his neck, and suddenly she realized it was a scarf she’d bought for him their last Christmas together, in his senior year of high school. His hands were shoved into the pockets of the coat, and he did not raise one to wave to her.

He only stared.

She was spellbound.

There was no way Nate was actually standing outside Bride’s Corner. No way.

Until today, she hadn’t thought about Nate in months. Okay, weeks. After more than a decade, she could now go a full two, sometimes even three, weeks, and never actually think about him, wonder about him, curse him, rail against him and the cruel, heartless fates that had brought them together in the first place. Maddie closed her eyes and opened them again.

Nate was gone.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_fb835f02-4328-507a-a2e2-b980ccf9596c)

“DID YOU SEE him?” Maddie asked Sarah and Mrs. Beabots, raising a shaking arm and pointing out the window.

“See whom, dear?” Mrs. Beabots asked.

“Nate. He was there.”

Sarah jumped up from the settee and rushed to the window. “Nate Barzonni was here? In Indian Lake? Right now?” She turned to Maddie.

Maddie felt the color drain from her face. “I swear I saw him,” she repeated as her eyes flitted from Sarah’s concerned expression to Mrs. Beabot’s clear, blue compassion-filled eyes. She wanted desperately for her friends to believe her, but even more important, she wished to high heaven that they’d seen Nate as well. Clearly, they hadn’t, or they would be confirming her statement. Instead, their gazes were filled with surprise and censure. She wasn’t sure if they just didn’t believe her, or if they disapproved of Nate, as well. Hopefully, they would still side with her against the slimy jerk who had abandoned her with no explanation. Maddie couldn’t help wondering if they, and her other friends, would think if Nate came back and finally gave his side of the story, whatever that side might be.

Clearly, he was a jerk. A creep to the nth degree. A scum that no one could or should ever trust. What kind of guy tells a girl he’ll love her till the end of time and then disappears? Vanishes without a single goodbye? For eleven years?

Now that Maddie thought about it, if Nate was truly back, she would have to face the humiliation all over again. She would have to go through the entire abandonment, the dumping, the heartache all over again because everyone would want to talk about it. Again.

Why couldn’t he just stay away?

God, but she felt violently ill.

Maddie placed her shaking hand on her flushed but icy cheek. She felt beads of sweat trickle from her temples. “I don’t feel so good,” she said, her voice warbling.

Sarah rushed to her side and grabbed her arm. “And you don’t look good. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Maddie sat next to Mrs. Beabots on the settee, barely noticing that she was trembling from head to foot. Suddenly, Sarah’s words sunk in.

“That was it! I saw a ghost. That’s what it was.” She was off the hook. He wasn’t back at all. She was just seeing things. She wouldn’t have to go through the humiliation and embarrassment in front of the whole town again at all.

Mrs. Beabots harrumphed and pulled her hands together, then pressed them into her lap. “Fine day for ghosts. It’s Valentine’s Day not Halloween. You’d think they’d know the difference.”