A Bride In Waiting

He sighed and turned to her with a rueful grin. “A fast one. A small, red sports car that enables our local police force to write their quota of speeding tickets every month.”

A car that matched the handwriting on the note from Analise.

“I’ve never knowingly exceeded the speed limit in my life,” Sara mused. “Where does she get the money to pay all those tickets if she can’t find a job?”

“Her parents have big bucks. Her father, Ralph Brewster, is a doctor and her mother’s family founded this town.”

That information didn’t do anything to soothe Sara’s nerves. “I’m not sure I can do this, pretend to be someone so different.”

Lucas’s dark eyes scrutinized her face. He shook his head and for one moment Sara feared he was going to agree with her. In that moment she realized how desperately she wanted to do this, to find out more about Analise, the woman who looked so much like her.

To prove to herself that she could do this.

“Different?” he said. “I can’t get over how much you two look alike. It’s uncanny. If I didn’t know better... well, trust me, you won’t have any problems. All you have to do is listen to the wedding coordinator. She’ll tell you everything in a voice you couldn’t miss if you were in the next county. Let’s hurry. We’re late.”

They got out of the car and started across the lot toward the church. If the situation wasn’t bad enough, that church made it worse. It loomed ahead, big, old, solid and intimidating. The stained-glass windows seemed to watch her approach, daring such an inconsequential person as her to enter. She didn’t belong in any place so grand. The church knew it and all the people inside would notice immediately.

“Wait a minute.” Lucas’s words stopped her. She whirled back toward him, irrational fear flooding her for just a moment. Surely a kidnapper wouldn’t kidnap in a church parking lot. “We have to do something about your hair.”

He reached around her for the braid she’d redone and tucked it into the collar of her dress.

“Your skin’s cold,” he said softly, his fingers lingering deliciously on the bare flesh of her neck.

She laughed nervously. “It’s at least ninety degrees. I can’t be cold.” Though judging from the relative warmth of his touch, she knew she must be.

He jerked his hand away as though she had suddenly burned him. “Your skin’s clammy,” he said, his tone brisk and businesslike. “A typical reaction to stress. You’re really nervous about this, aren’t you?”

“I’m okay. Let’s get this over with.” She walked defiantly toward the church.

“Hey!”

She stopped again, one foot on the front step.

“I don’t know your name or anything about you.”

“Sara Martin. I’m a librarian. I’m from Deauxville, Missouri.”

He smiled, and Sara’s fears somehow vanished in that flash of white teeth against tanned skin, of his dark eyes lighting from within. “Hi, Sara Martin. I’m Lucas Daniels, and I’m a doctor from Briar Creek who’s greatly in your debt.”

He took her hand and they went into the church, into the hushed atmosphere of a huge auditorium with burgundy carpet that sank beneath Sara’s feet. Pews upholstered in velvet fabric of the same color sat in quiet, orderly rows. The place even smelled like burgundy velvet...rich and dignified and established.

The intimidating hush was shattered in the next second by a chaotic crowd of people bustling and shouting.

“Thank goodness you’re here! We were getting worried.”

“Analise, can’t you ever be on time?”

“Analise, my dress hasn’t come in yet!”

“Will everyone please settle down so we can get started here.”

Sara took an instinctive step backward and felt Lucas’s strong hands on her shoulders, supporting her and urging her forward.

“It’s all right,” he murmured, his voice deep and reassuring in her ear.

“The bride and her attendants stay at the back. I need the groom and his attendants here,” a slim, elegant woman standing to one side up front directed, and Lucas left Sara.

Three laughing, confident young women converged on her instead, and Sara shrank inside.

“Cool hair,” a brown-eyed blonde said. “Makes you look sophisticated. Kind of like a real wife.”

“Cool dress, too,” a short brunette added. “Wish I could carry off that look. On me, it’d just be dowdy.”

What was it with these people and her dress?

“Quiet, everyone,” the authoritative woman ordered. Obviously she was the coordinator Lucas had mentioned. “The minister, the groom and his attendants will enter from the front and stand looking to the back, waiting for the bride.”

As the men, including Lucas, moved solemnly into their places, the whole thing took on a dreamlike quality.

“Marilyn sings the solo, then as soon as the organist begins to play, Judy starts down the aisle. When she’s halfway, Kathy starts, then Linda. Okay, pretend the solo’s just finished. Nancy, begin the music.” Strains of organ music floated through the auditorium. “Judy, start down the aisle. As soon as you get to the front, turn and face the back, all attention focusing on the bride. Stop giggling, Judy, and, for goodness’ sake, don’t be chewing gum during the actual wedding.”

One by one, the three women moved down the aisle, leaving Sara alone with everyone staring at her.

Lucas had been wrong. She’d been wrong. She couldn’t do this, couldn’t pull off something so daring as masquerading as another woman. The most daring thing she’d ever done before was...well, the only daring thing she’d ever done was sell everything after her mother’s death and come to Briar Creek, Texas. And right now she regretted that, big time.

She half turned to run from the church, get in her car and go back to Deauxville, forget all about finding her real mother or this unlikely possibility of a twin sister.

But a tall, portly man moved up beside her and, smiling down at her, took her arm, and she was mesmerized by the total acceptance and love in his eyes. The organist broke into the strains of the wedding march.

“Okay, bride, you’re on. This is your show. Take it slow and graceful. Do not run down the aisle.”

The tall man winked. “My baby girl went straight from crawling to running. What makes that woman think you’re going to change now?”

Analise’s father.

The love that emanated from him was for his daughter, not for her.

But it was so hard not to luxuriate in the paternal adoration, something she’d never experienced before.

In a daze she walked down the aisle beside Analise’s devoted father, moving toward Lucas, Analise’s beaming groom. It was hard to fight the urge to become lost in the pretense, to believe she really was Analise Brewster, beloved daughter and fiancée, the person who belonged in this church, in this community, in this wedding.

“Who gives this woman in marriage?”

“Her mother and I.”

The older man placed her hand in Lucas’s. He gave her a conspiratorial smile, and she could no longer resist becoming hopelessly lost in the wedding fantasy.

“The minister reads the vows. You each answer ‘I do’ and exchange rings.”