The Bride Plan

“Let’s at least be honest here, Chessie. We both started it, the first time we saw each other. And it’s not going to go away unless we finish it.”

She turned to answer him, saying what, she didn’t know. But the doorway was empty.

She dropped onto the bed, her chest rising and falling rapidly, as if she’d just run a marathon in some alternate universe, where she was a sex-starved nymph in transparent flowing draperies and he was the flesh-and-bone mating invention of some mad scientist out to re-populate the world with six-pack abs.

A vacation. That’s what she needed. A long vacation far, far away from here. Long enough so that the addition would be done and he’d be gone by the time she got back. Because she could never face him again after this, and she was sure he wouldn’t have the same problem. No, he’d just be there every day for the next three weeks or so; no shirt, big smile, crinkly creases around his eyes, and oozing sex from every pore. Just there, waiting for her to give him the signal.

Chessie sat up all at once. Signal? What was the signal? She didn’t know any signals. She didn’t even know who she was anymore, because she certainly wasn’t the woman who had almost … almost—Good Lord!

“I’m not going to think about this anymore,” she told herself as she stood in front of the mirror over the bathroom sink, reapplying her lipstick. “Everyone is entitled to one aberration in a lifetime. He was mine, but I was saved by the bell, and now I’m over it. It’s out of my system. He’s out of my system. He was never in my system. I don’t even like him. He’s arrogant, and assuming, and clearly just out for what he can get, and I—

“Good Lord. Now I’m trying to set myself up as either a victim or a Goody Two-shoes who didn’t know what I was doing even as I was doing it. The man is sex on a stick. He can’t help it. The only question is, do I take what he’s offering, or do I do the sensible thing and walk away?”

Her reflection had no answer for her. Neither did her formerly rational brain nor her once-bruised and now wary heart.

But her body? Oh, her body had cast its vote before she’d even finished the question.

“Where’ya goin’, Jace? Is something on fire somewhere?”

Jace had already picked up his lunch bucket and was heading toward the alley and his pickup when Carl asked his question. He turned back to look at the man, his mind racing to come up with a reason he was walking off the job. Okay, running off the job.

“I need to go downtown, check on some permits. I think we’re going to enlarge Ms. Burton’s existing bathroom, make it a Jack-and-Jill open to the workroom, which is going to change the entryway from the bedroom to the workroom, and I’m going to have to amend the plumbing permit to do that.” As lies went, this was a pretty good one, and he decided he would do just that. He’d tell Marylou about it when he saw her. She’d approve it. She’d pretty much tossed the job at him and told him to do anything he wanted with it.

But she’d never told him much about Chessie Burton. Jace wished she had. Maybe then he wouldn’t act like a complete ass every time he saw her.

“Okay, sounds good. But there’s a problem. I just got a call from Bob. He says that flatbed with the siding we were expecting today broke down on the turnpike. They’re sending a new cab, but it will probably be six o’clock before it gets here. I called the wife, but she can’t pick up Aiden, so I can’t stay, and George—”

“It’s okay, Carl. I’ll be back in plenty of time, and I’ll wait for the delivery. No problem. Gotta go.”

Jace escaped the scene of the crime—okay, now that was being a little dramatic—and then drove to the nearby park and carried his lunch pail down to the stream and the waiting ducks.

A slice of bologna for him, a few hunks of bread for the ducks. A pickle for him, a slice of bologna for the ducks. His entire second sandwich, his small bag of potato chips and the container of green grapes for the ducks. The slice of bologna he had eaten, lying in his stomach like a chunk of cement.

What the hell had he done? What the hell had he been thinking?

Had he been thinking?

Hell, no. His hormones had been doing the thinking.

Never a good idea. Never.

Damn, she’d tasted good. Tasted good, felt good, looked good.

He hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind since that first morning. Three days. Three days he’d waited, wondering when he’d see her again. And nothing.

Then suddenly there she was, all smiles and iced tea and flushed cheeks and that way she had of sort of tipping her chin down and looking up at him through those incredible long black lashes. Those huge blue eyes. Those see-into-her-soul blue eyes. Trying not to look, unable to look away. And that was both of them. She knew he couldn’t stop looking at her, devouring her with his own eyes.

God, she was funny. Odd funny, silly funny, nervous funny.

Every moment they were in each other’s company, you could cut the tension with the proverbial knife.

He’d honestly thought the kiss would do it. Cut the growing tension. Satisfy his curiosity. And hers.

Next time he had a bright idea he should go soak his head in something wet and cold until the feeling passed.

At least she’d come to her senses, even regained her sense of humor with that darling crack. And she’d turned down his arrogant suggestion that they meet again later, finish what they’d started. Nice to know he was attracted to a woman with a brain. Not nice to know he’d already decided he hated her blind date and hoped he got food poisoning at lunch and would have to call and cancel.

He wadded up the sandwich wrappings and shoved them back in his lunchbox before heading back up the hill toward the pickup, a couple of the ducks, hoping for dessert, he guessed, following him.

Tossing the lunchbox onto the front seat, Jace turned and leaned back against the driver’s side door, trying to remember the last time he’d been so consumed by a woman, and finally decided the answer to that was never. Not even with Marci.

He wondered if Marci had known that, sensed it, acted as she had because of it. Because he hadn’t been a good husband. He’d had his job during the day, college courses at night and then his fledgling business that took all of his energy and concentration … and devotion. He’d been 110 percent devoted to building his business. His marriage had been a casualty of his ambition.

So that was it; he wasn’t marriage material. And he wasn’t in a hurry to take another swing that would probably end up as strike two. Even being around Second Chance Bridal made him sort of knot up inside. How did Chessie stand it, having been left at the altar as she’d said she’d been? You’d think she would stay as far away from anything to do with weddings as possible.

Funny girl. Odd girl.

He couldn’t get her out of his head. That, and the last thing he’d said to her. That asinine near challenge: It’s not going to go away unless we finish it.

What a stupid macho thing to say.

“Who the hell does saying something like that make me?” he muttered to the world at large.

There was a strange, fairly strangled quack coming from ground level. Jace looked down to see that one of the larger ducks—a female, naturally—had just christened his right work boot with a suggested answer.

“I was thinking of it more as a rhetorical question,” he said, smiling in spite of himself. “But thanks anyway ….”

Chapter Three

“So tell me again how this happened, Chess,” Marylou said as she dropped into a chair in the reception area of Second Chance Bridal just as Chessie entered from the hallway leading to the dressing rooms. “I thought you’d made it clear to Will that you weren’t going on any more blind dates he set up for you.”

“And hello to you, too. I didn’t hear you come in.” Chessie slipped the rhinestone tiara back into the glass case and locked it for the night. Katie Harwell had been right, the tiara had been too much, but selling her the cathedral-length train had sweetened the bottom line of the sale, so that was all right. “It wasn’t Will this time. It was Elizabeth. I felt sort of stuck, you know?” She looked across the room at her friend and business partner and frowned. “Tell me you didn’t get more collagen injected into your lips.”

“All right,” Marylou said, holding the cool aluminum of the soda can she’d just taken from the mini-fridge against her mouth. “I did not get more collagen injected into my lips.”

Chessie opened the armoire that hid the minifridge and pulled out a diet cola for herself. “Liar, liar, French-cut pants on fire.”

“Only as a matter of degree. You were being specific. You said collagen. I didn’t have collagen injected into my lips. I had some of my very own fanny fat injected into the area just around my lips. So, not a liar. And the swelling will go down in a couple of days. Ted’s in Vegas with some golfing buddies, and I’ll be all happily pouty but not too swollen by the time he gets back.”

Chessie subsided into the facing chair, sighing. “Marylou, you’re a beautiful woman—”

“I’m a passably attractive fifty-five-year-old woman married to a forty-eight-year-old man who thinks I’m fifty-two. There, how’s that for BFF-to-BFF honesty.”

“Pretty good,” Chessie said, nodding. “Except you’re fifty-six. And,” she said as Marylou tried to make a face—the fanny fat and some sort of injections to her forehead pretty much defeating that effort—”Ted loves you.”

“Yes, third time’s the charm. He knows I’m fifty-six. He still calls me his child bride. I think we’re going to renew our vows next year, in Tahiti. Or maybe Rome. We haven’t decided. I never get tired of wearing wedding gowns. I’m thinking a lace sheath. Ecru, maybe with a colored sash. Now tell me again about this date. Is he someone local?”

Chessie realized she hadn’t asked. In fact, all she knew about Toby Nieth was that he wasn’t the country singer, Toby Keith, and she’d have to remember that or else she’d probably screw up at some point and ask him how his last tour went. “Elizabeth tells me he’s a doctor.”