The Bowen Bride

by Nicole Burnham

  “Why don’t you have a seat over at the table, Mandy. I’ll bring out some of the design books. And a drink, if you like.”

  “That’d be awesome, thanks.”

  After perusing two books of photos, Mandy glanced up at Katie with a frown. “These are all really pretty. But, um, I guess I should ask—how does the pricing work? I mean, is it less expensive to get short sleeves or a strapless gown? Or a style that doesn’t use so much fabric? I’m kind of on a budget.” A tight budget, Katie could almost hear Mandy thinking.

  “You don’t have to worry about pricing.” Katie tried not to look uncomfortable, but how do you explain to a teenager that her father, who pretty obviously didn’t want her to get married, was willing to pay for the dress anyway?

  “But—”

  “It’s been taken care of already.” Though, come to think of it, Jared hadn’t given her a budget. She’d have to call him to see what he had in mind.

  Mandy’s mouth dropped open. “Are you serious? Kevin paid for the dress? He came in here already?”

  “Yes, I’m serious, but—” As tears of joy welled up in Mandy’s eyes, Katie found it tough to continue. “But no, it wasn’t Kevin. It was your father. He stopped by earlier today and said he wanted to pay for whatever dress you choose.”

  “No way,” Mandy whispered. “Are you sure it was my dad? Jared Porter? Tall, thirty-five years old, good-looking in a dad kind of way?” She hesitated, then covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, geez. Today’s his birthday. He’s thirty-six. I’m such an idiot!”

  Katie laughed aloud. “You’re not an idiot, and, yes, I’m positive it was your father.” The man was definitely good-looking, and she wouldn’t classify it as good-looking in a dad kind of way. “So don’t worry about—”

  “I’m not worried about anything.”

  Mandy stared at the book for another minute, though it was obvious her focus wasn’t on the page. Then she glanced at her phone, closed the second book and stood, scooping up her backpack from the counter and looping it over her shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry. I totally forgot I’m supposed to be…um, tutoring a couple of sophomores in Geometry this afternoon. I’m gonna be late if I don’t hustle. But I definitely want a dress. I just need a couple days to think about styles and stuff. I guess I wasn’t expecting so many to choose from.”

  ‘‘That’s perfectly fine. Whenever you’re ready.”

  Katie took a step behind the counter. She’d tried to stay to the far side of the shop while Mandy looked at the books, just to keep the teen from feeling pressured, but apparently she hadn’t been far enough.

  And she’d obviously said too much. She couldn’t remember—had Jared said not to tell Mandy he wanted to pay for her gown? She should have asked him, though this morning she’d doubted the teen would even come in.

  Mandy mumbled her thanks, took one of Katie’s business cards and shoved it into the back pocket of her faded jeans, then backed out the door as quickly as possible. Katie stacked the design books, but instead of putting them away, she strode to the large windows. Where would Mandy go, since Kevin hadn’t waited around?

  A minute later, Kevin’s Pontiac pulled up to the far curb and Mandy, cell phone in hand, climbed in. She’d gone from confused to agitated, slamming the door as Kevin drove away.

  In that moment Katie realized she’d probably set up Jared Porter for an awful evening at home.

  Things weren’t lining up the way they should.

  Jared crouched lower, craning his neck so he could get a better view of the hinge. He prided himself on getting each and every cabinet door perfectly aligned, every piece of trim straight, every seam invisible. But today the pieces just didn’t want to work.

  His brain, normally fixed on the task at hand—in this case, the Klein family’s new kitchen cabinets—wandered back to Mandy.

  And, if he were honest with himself, to Katie Schmidt. Most definitely to Katie Schmidt.

  It galled him, because if he were a decent father—and Mandy’s actions the past two weeks had started to make him question that—he’d be solely focused on his daughter and her well-being, not letting his brain get clogged by a blonde who looked as if she belonged in television commercials offering thirsty men a cold one.

  “You nearly done getting those doors on?”

  Jared glanced over his shoulder at Stewart, who wore a pristine black polo shirt bearing the Porter Construction logo and a pair of crisp khakis. His cool, unruffled look no doubt meant he’d spent most of his day driving from job site to job site in his air-conditioned Ford F-150 while Jared worked in the Klein family’s hot, sawdust-filled kitchen.

  “Yep. Just need to tighten the hinges so everything’s lined up and doing what it’s supposed to do.” He wished it was as simple to get Mandy back in line, doing what she was supposed to do. Like focusing on her grades so she’d make honor roll again or taking the practice quizzes she’d brought home to prep for her second run at the SAT.

  “I need you to make a pit stop on your way home. Janelle Jorgensen says one of the baseboards in her new addition is cracked, and I’d like you to take a look.”

  ‘‘The guys’ll be there tomorrow to install the carpeting?”

  “Yep, which is why I’d like you to take a look at it tonight.” Stewart leaned against the kitchen island, his gaze sweeping past Jared to study the kitchen’s brand-new cherry cabinetry. “Though this is really looking good. The Kleins will be thrilled when they see it finished, especially once the granite countertops are installed and all the appliances put in place. The fluted edges were a nice touch.”

  “Thanks.” Stewart had a big heart and meant well, but to Jared the constant compliments felt belittling, coming from his college-educated, happily married-with-two-kids-and-a-dog, pillar-of-the-community younger brother.

  “Since you’re checking on the baseboard, do you want me to pick up Mandy from volleyball?”

  Jared twisted the screwdriver with more force than necessary. “They didn’t have practice this afternoon, so Kevin was going to take her to the store after school. She said she needed new socks or something.”

  Shoot. Could he be more obtuse? Volleyball practice canceled midweek in the fall? And socks?

  “Jared? Something wrong?”

  “Nope.” He gave the screwdriver another twist. “Just need to focus on getting this straight.”

  Could Mandy be out dress shopping so soon? Or worse, were she and Kevin searching around for a reception site? He sucked in a deep breath, then let it out, trying not to take out his anger on the cabinetry. Things were worse with Mandy than he thought. She’d never lied to him before, not since she was four and denied picking all the tomatoes behind their house—while the tomatoes were still green—and trying to feed them to Mrs. Eberhardt’s cat.

  “Okay. I’ll leave you to it. But if you or Mandy need anything—”

  “Thanks, Stewart. We’re good.”

  Stewart shrugged and walked out, leaving Jared alone in the kitchen. As he finished leveling the final cabinet door, his heart slammed inside his chest.

  Why did Mandy feel compelled to lie? And why was she dead set on getting married all of a sudden? That was the part he couldn’t figure out. She’d never been so stubborn before. They’d always had a high level of trust in their relationship, so even when they disagreed, they took the time to hear each other out. Stubbornness had been her mother’s defining trait.

  He swore under his breath as he used a broad broom to sweep the sawdust into a pile by the back door. Mandy always believed he’d made a mistake in not marrying her mother, and that had they married that summer they graduated high school—when Cornelia learned she was pregnant—every little thing in Mandy’s life would have been perfect. She wouldn’t have had to spend her afternoons shuttling between daycare providers or neighbors’ homes, she would have had a mom to volunteer with her Girl Scout troop, she would’ve had someone to consult about the right type of eyeliner to buy or the best
style of pants to wear to be the most popular girl in school.

  In other words, she’d envisioned a fantasy mom.

  But Jared had known, even when he was eighteen and raising hell, that a marriage to Cornelia wouldn’t have lasted. Corey quickly decided that she didn’t want a baby, didn’t want to be in Bowen, and certainly didn’t want a long-term relationship with him. The second Mandy was born, Corey had handed the baby over to Jared, moved to Chicago, and never looked back.

  Perhaps Mandy thought, in a warped, teenage-logic kind of way, that if she and Kevin got married her whole life would be wonderful. That no one could tell her what to do anymore, that she’d have unconditional love. That Kevin would fill some need for an idyllic family life that Jared apparently hadn’t been able to fill.

  He cursed again as he leaned the broom against the back door and put away the dustpan.

  Well, at least Mandy wasn’t pregnant. When she and Kevin announced their plans, she’d stated quickly and emphatically that it wasn’t because she was pregnant, and that she had no intention of getting pregnant or starting a family until after college. She’d insisted she and Kevin both still planned to go to college in Lincoln next year.

  Surely she wouldn’t lie to him about that, either about college or being pregnant. But her attitude toward him the past few weeks bothered him. It had been just the two of them for her entire life, and they’d never had a disagreement like this one.

  He wanted her to pursue her dreams, but in the right order. College. The astronomy degree she was always talking about. Then a career and marriage, if that’s what she wanted. Then, in time, pregnancy and kids.

  And he certainly didn’t want to envision his daughter having teenaged sex anywhere in that lineup. It was the way he’d been raised, and though he never regretted having Mandy in his life, he’d learned the consequences of going against that advice.

  When he had recovered from his shock and told Mandy—later, after Kevin went home—that as much as he liked Kevin, and as much as he knew they loved each other, he didn’t want her getting married yet, she’d exploded. She’d flashed the newspaper article, then accused him of being cold, of not understanding. After all, how could he, when he hadn’t had a serious girlfriend since Corey?

  And he’d made the grand mistake of telling her that she should be grateful he hadn’t dated anyone seriously since Corey, and that his primary relationship was with her.

  Mandy yelled at him to get a life, threatened to elope if he wouldn’t support her, then started crying before she stormed out.

  Jared leaned back on his heels to check out the cabinet doors, then strode across the kitchen and checked them again, cocking his head so he’d get a different perspective. Everything lined up, everything as it should be.

  In a half hour he’d be at the Janelle Jorgensen’s house, checking out the baseboard. When he left, everything would be fine there, too. It was what he did. He made things fit. He always took that little bit of extra time to make sure clients were happy, and they trusted him.

  Couldn’t Mandy trust him the way Porter Construction’s clients did? Hadn’t she learned in her seventeen years that he would always support her and encourage her and do whatever little bit extra it took to make her happy?

  All he could hope for was the dress, and that maybe knowing he’d bought it would wake her up to who and what was important in life. That tradition mattered. That there was a right way and a wrong way to do things, and he wanted her to go about things the right way, as she always had.

  He flipped the locks on his toolbox. After ensuring the Klein family’s new home was secure, he walked to his truck, which he’d left parked to one side of the still-unpaved front drive.

  If he could get the baseboard repaired or replaced in time, maybe he’d swing by The Bowen Bride again. Though Katie Schmidt said they could work out the money if and when Mandy decided on a dress, he hadn’t thought to ask the shop owner to call and let him know if Mandy stopped in.

  Would he suddenly get a bill in the mail? How long did these things take, anyway? He knew clients always needed a timeline for getting their trim work done so they could plan accordingly. It was probably no different for Katie creating a wedding gown. Depending on the efficiency with which Katie attended to paperwork, he might get his first bill about the time the dress was finished.

  Mandy and Kevin could be halfway to Las Vegas with her brand-new gown in the trunk of Kevin’s car before he even had a clue.

  As he slid his toolbox to the rear of the truck bed, he heard the distinctive roll of automobile tires on packed dirt. Though he didn’t recognize the little blue Volkswagen coming up the drive, there was no mistaking the driver.

  “Hi, Katie.” He tried to hide his surprise as she shut the car door and walked toward him. “Is there a problem?”

  “No, no problem. I was driving by on an errand and saw your truck.” She hooked her thumbs in the back pockets of her jeans and rocked back on her heels, suddenly hesitant. “I thought you might want to know that Mandy stopped in today after school.”

  Jared’s throat knotted. Partially from Katie’s words, and partially, he was sure, from the way her white blouse opened at the neck, just enough to show off a tasteful expanse of sun-freckled skin.

  “She didn’t place an order,” Katie continued. “Just looked through my design books. But when I saw your truck here, well, I thought you might want to know.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” He took a few steps toward her, then rested one hip against the wheel well of his truck. “I’m glad you stopped. I was thinking of coming back by the shop tonight.”

  She didn’t say anything, but merely waited for him to continue. There was something tangible skittering in the air between them. Something sending him into the kind of tongue-tied sweat he hadn’t experienced since having to stand in front of the class in junior high to recite the Gettysburg Address.

  And, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, she seemed nervous around him, too. Not uncomfortable, not intimidated. Just aware. As if she sensed the same vibe he did and wasn’t sure what to make of it, either.

  He cleared his throat, realizing that she was still waiting for him to speak. “Not because I’ve changed my mind about buying the dress for her. A father should always do that for his daughter, you know?” Jared paused, unsure how much to reveal to her. “It’s just-—”

  “We didn’t set a budget.” Katie’s expression told him what he’d been thinking earlier, that she hadn’t really expected Mandy to come into the shop.

  “There’s that.”

  “And she’s young.”

  “Yeah. She’s young. It’s not my intention to get you entangled in Mandy’s personal affairs, but, well, from a business standpoint, I feel I should tell you that I’m still hopeful she won’t go through with it. But I’ll pay for your work regardless.”

  A smile lifted one corner of Katie’s mouth. “I suspected that’s how you felt. About Mandy getting married, I mean. I wasn’t worried about payment.”

  Despite the uncomfortable topic, he found himself returning her smile. He bet she did a wonderful job putting her customers at ease, especially since most probably came into her shop stressed out from wedding planning.

  “It’s just that I want her to be free to do what she wants. If Kevin is what she wants—eventually—that’s fine. He’s a great kid. But she’s always talked about being an astronomer. She gets terrific grades in her math and science courses, and she’s taking the SAT again soon, hoping to raise her score a few points so she has a better shot at scholarship money,” he explained. “She’s at a point in her life where the options for her future are wide open. I guess you’d understand all that, though.” After all, Katie had gone to college out in Boston, and she seemed the self-motivated type, someone who’d studied hard as a teen.

  “Well,” she said, taking a cautious step forward to lean one denim-clad hip against the hood of his truck, her body just out of arm’s reach. “Math and science didn’t come natu
rally to me. I always liked history best. But I understand wanting to pursue your dreams. Everyone can relate to that, I think.”

  He wondered if he was crossing the line he’d always tried to set for himself with women, moving from the professional to the personal, but he asked, anyway. “That’s why you went to Boston?”

  The smile continued to play at the corners of her mouth. ‘‘I majored in Communications at Boston University. I told my father I wanted to go into journalism, and even did an internship at a Boston television station one summer.”

  “You were on Boston television?”

  She laughed. “No. I was only behind the scenes. I did meet a number of interesting people, though. But my real dream was to do design, so I took a few classes at the New England Institute of Art. It was walking distance from B.U., so it worked out wonderfully for me. After graduation I went into theater work in Boston. Did Miss Saigon, a few Shakespeare productions, that kind of thing, designing costumes. It was a lot of fun.”

  “And now you make wedding gowns.”

  “And now I make wedding gowns.” Her tone remained light, friendly, but anyone with a lick of sense could see from the subtle darkening in her expression that it wasn’t a topic she cared to discuss. At least, not the reasons why she did what she did.

  Still, he felt she understood where he was coming from with Mandy. After carrying the stress alone for so long, chatting with someone about his daughter—someone who didn’t instantly assume he lacked parenting skills—seemed to lighten the load.

  “Mandy’s lucky you’re her father.”

  Jared glanced sideways at Katie. He could tell from the brightness of her hazel eyes that she meant what she said. It was exactly what he needed on a day when he doubted himself.

  “Thanks.” He pushed off of the truck. “And thanks for letting me know she came in today. I wasn’t expecting it to be so soon.”

  “No problem.” She took a step back, and at that moment it occurred to him that keeping in touch with the dressmaker over the next few months would mean he’d be able to keep tabs on Mandy and her wedding plans. Plans Mandy might or might not share with him.