Have Gown, Need Groom

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Epilogue

Chapter One

“Okay, who ordered the male stripper?” Hannah Hartwell glared at her two younger sisters, Mimi and Alison, as the six-foot hunk Zorro ripped off his cape and flung it toward the leather side chair. Instead of meeting its mark, the black scrap of fabric snagged the bouquet of condom balloons dangling from the ceiling of her apartment and waved at her like a bat’s wings. The surprise bachelorette party had definitely been a…surprise.

The music accompanying Zorro’s striptease grew louder and the roomful of females cheered. Hannah groaned. Enthralled in the show, her sisters ignored her question. Either that or they didn’t want to ’fess up.

Mimi tucked a wad of dollar bills into the waistband of Zorro’s black tights while gyrating her hips to the beat of the Spanish guitar. Hannah squeezed her eyes shut. If her fiancé, Seth Broadhurst, found out about this evening, he would be mortified. A calm, practical psychiatrist, he avoided attention and wasn’t a jokester like some of the other doctors at the hospital where they both worked. And she desperately wanted to maintain her hard-earned reputation with the ER staff.

Exhaustion pulled at her. She had to get some sleep. Her wedding was only a few hours away, her future teetering on the brink, just like Zorro’s underwear dangling from the edge of her light fixture. Hannah waved her hands and lowered the volume of the music to a soft hum. “This was great, girls. I appreciate all the gifts, but the party’s over.”

A few moans accompanied her statement, but her friends conceded, offered congratulations on her upcoming nuptials, then hugged her goodnight.

Mimi sighed dramatically as the guests left. “Geez, sis, I wish you’d loosen up. Can’t you go with the flow just once in your life?”

Maybe I could if you’d act responsibly just once in your life. “I can go with the flow,” Hannah protested.

Mimi merely laughed, making Hannah feel incredibly boring, while her youngest sister, Alison, escorted the stripper to the door. When Alison returned, she sank onto the sofa beside Hannah.

Mimi’s shark’s-tooth earrings clinked as she gyrated her hips to the music again. “Wow, he had the biggest—”

“Mimi!” Hannah covered her ears with her hands, cutting off her sister before she could launch into a graphic description. So, the man had great muscles and sexy pecs and the biggest—

“Eyes. I was going to say the biggest bluest eyes, but he was well—”

“—proportioned,” Alison interjected.

“—endowed,” Mimi finished with a mischievous laugh.

Hannah leapt from the champagne-sticky sofa, gathering up the empty wine and champagne bottles. Punch cups, wineglasses and leftover hors d’oeuvres covered her clawfoot table, scraps of wrapping paper littered her Queen Anne chair and cake crumbs clung to the plush velvet of her Victorian sofa.

“You can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy the guy’s moves, Hannah?” A note of pure horror darkened Mimi’s husky voice as she poured herself more champagne.

“He was pretty buff.” Alison’s cheeks flushed to a rosy glow, but her gleaming brown eyes reflected the devil brewing in her thoughts. “Getting married doesn’t mean you’re dead. Lighten up.” Alison snatched the stripper’s thong from the chandelier. “Want to keep this as a memento of your last night as a free woman?”

“You could handcuff Seth to the bed on your honeymoon,” Mimi suggested wickedly as she played with the present she’d given her sister.

“You’re both hopeless.” Hannah pointed a manicured nail as she spoke. “You will drool after anything in pants, Mimi. And you, Alison Hartwell, are still in college. You’re way too young to be thinking such naughty thoughts.”

Mimi shook her long auburn hair free from its jade clasp, running her fingers through the unruly mass of curls. “Are you worried boring old Seth won’t be able to get you excited like that guy did tonight?”

“You know sex is a very important part of marriage,” Alison added.

“And if Seth isn’t satisfying you—”

“I never said Seth didn’t satisfy me!” Hannah howled, wondering if she should admit to her sexless life with her fiancé.

No, her relationship with Seth was perfect. She did not want excitement.

Before she could elaborate, the doorbell rang. “Please, pleeease don’t let that be Seth.” Hannah yanked the condom balloons from the ceiling then struggled to put them in the closet. “Hurry, help me hide all this stuff!”

Alison slid the handcuffs under the sofa cushion while Mimi sauntered to the door and opened it. A tired-looking trucker dressed in grubby coveralls towered over Mimi’s petite five-two. His name tag read Mountain Trucking. Hannah sighed in relief.

“I have a special delivery here from Rose Hartwell,” he said in a mountain drawl. “Would have been here sooner, but my truck broke down.”

An almost reverent silence descended upon the room, obliterating the party atmosphere. At seventy, Grandmother Rose was the matriarch of the Hartwell clan. For years after the girls’ mother had deserted them, Grammy had jumped in to help fill the parental shoes. The girls loved her dearly.

“One of you Miss Hartwell?” The trucker’s gaze landed on the remainder of the decadent cake shaped like a man’s body part, and his gray eyebrows shot upward.

“Yes.” Hannah and her sisters nodded in unison. Alison signed the delivery slip, stepping aside as the man pushed a big box inside. He left with a chuckle.

“I bet it’s the hope chest Mom told me about,” Mimi said. “The grandmother of the Hartwell family traditionally passes on a hope chest to each of her granddaughters before she marries.”

Hannah bristled at the reminder of their mother. She’d finally broken down and invited her mom to the wedding, hoping for a reconciliation, but she had declined, only cementing the wall between them with another foot of concrete—and the realization that her mother hadn’t wanted her. Forcing herself to forget the familiar hurt, she studied the package. Her grandmother tended to be eccentric. What would she have put in the chest? Nothing alive, she hoped…

“Hurry, open it,” Alison said.

Hannah took a deep breath and tore the wrapping, then opened the box, gasping in delight. A beautiful gold embossed chest sat inside. “It’s exquisite.”

“The chests are supposed to be replicas of the one our great-great-great grandmother brought over from England,” Mimi explained.

Hannah ran her finger along the ornate decorative carving. “This chest will look perfect at the foot of my bed.”

“I can’t wait to see what Grammy enclosed,” Alison shrieked.

Her hands trembling with excitement, Hannah slowly opened the chest and lifted a sheet of pale yellow stationery.

My dearest, loving, Hannah,

You are a very special granddaughter because you were the first miracle in the Hartwell family. You represented love and hope.

But you are the one who remembers the problems; the one old enough to realize that when your mother walked away she wasn’t coming back. And with your own little heart bleeding, you were the one to square your shoulders, console your heartbroken father and nurture your little sisters. And you never complained. You showed us strength when we thought we had none left.

You are studious and smart, dependable and responsible, but cautious to a fault. Don’t forget how to dream, my dear Hannah. Learn to take chances, laugh and have fun. I wish for you happiness, true love and a man who will give you all the joy a partner can.

Love you always,

Grammy Rose