“You are going to hear it,” Mark insisted, clasping her elbows and gently drawing her closer. “You claimed people shouldn’t plan love. It should take them by surprise, you said, and you were right. Janice and I are fond of each other, but—”
“There’s nothing wrong with fond!”
His eyes widened. “No, there isn’t,” he agreed, “but Janice isn’t a zany producer. I like spending time with you. I’ve come to realize there’s a certain thrill in expecting the unexpected. Every minute with you is an adventure.”
“A relationship between us would never last,” Shelly insisted, drawing on the most sensible argument. “It would be fine for a while, but then we’d drift apart. We’d have to. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re nothing alike.”
“Why wouldn’t a relationship last?” Mark asked patiently.
“For all the reasons I listed before!” Mark was so endearing, and he was saying all the words she’d secretly longed to hear, but nothing could change the fundamental differences between them.
“So you aren’t as adept in the kitchen as some women. I’m a fair cook.”
“It’s more than that.”
“Of course it is,” he concurred. “But there’s nothing we can’t overcome if we’re willing to work together.”
“You know what I think it is?” she said desperately, running her splayed fingers through her hair. “You’re beginning to believe there’s magic in Aunt Milly’s wedding dress.”
“Don’t you?”
“No,” she cried. “Not anymore. I did when I was a little girl…I loved the story of how Aunt Milly met Uncle John, but I’m not a child anymore, and what seemed so romantic then just seems unrealistic now.”
“Shelly,” Mark said in exasperation. “We don’t need to do anything right away. All I’m suggesting is we give this thing between us a chance.”
“There’s nothing between us,” she denied vehemently.
Mark’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t honestly believe that, do you?”
“Yes,” she lied. “You’re a nice guy, but—”
“If I hear any more of this nice-guy stuff I’m going to kiss you and we both know what’ll happen then.”
His gaze lowered to her mouth and she unconsciously moistened her lips with anticipation.
“I just might, anyway.”
“No.” The threat was real enough to make her retreat a couple of steps. If Mark kissed her, Shelly knew she’d be listening to her heart and not her head. And then he’d know… “That’s what I thought.” His grin was downright boyish.
“I think we should both forget we ever met,” she suggested next, aware even as she said it how ludicrous she sounded. Mark Brady had indelibly marked her life and no matter how much she denied it, she’d never forget him.
“Don’t you remember that you threw yourself into my arms? You can conveniently choose to overlook the obvious, but unfortunately that won’t work for me. I’m falling in love with you, Shelly.”
She opened her mouth to argue that he couldn’t possibly love her—not yet, not on such short acquaintance—but he pressed his finger to her lips, silencing her.
“At first I wasn’t keen on the idea,” he admitted, “but it’s sort of grown on me since. I can see us ten years in the future and you know what? It’s a pleasant picture. We’re going to be very happy together.”
“I need to think!” She placed her hands on either side of her head. Everything was happening much too quickly; she actually felt dizzy. “We’ll leave it to fate…how does that sound?” she offered excitedly. It seemed like the perfect solution. “The next time we bump into each other, I’ll have more of a grasp on my feelings. I’ll know what we should do.” She might also hibernate inside her apartment for a month, but she wasn’t mentioning that.
“Nope.” Mark slowly shook his head. “That won’t work.”
“Why not?” she asked. “We bump into each other practically every day.”
“No, we don’t.”
He wasn’t making any sense.
“Jersey Boys was a setup,” he informed her. “I made sure we bumped into each other there.”
“How? When?”
“The day at the beach I saw the ticket sticking out of your purse. Our meeting at the theater wasn’t any accident.”
Mark couldn’t have shocked her more if he’d announced he was an alien from outer space. For the first time in recent memory, she was left speechless. “Tonight?” she asked when she could get the words out. “The library?”
“I’d decided to stop off at your apartment. I was prepared to make up some story about the wedding dress luring me into your building, but when I drove past, I saw you coming down the front steps loaded down with library books. It wasn’t hard to figure out where you were headed. I found a parking space and waited for you inside.”
“What about…the IRS office and the beach?” She didn’t know how he’d managed those meetings.
Mark shook his head again and grinned. “Coincidence, unless you had anything to do with them. You didn’t, did you?”
“Absolutely not,” she replied indignantly.
Still grinning, he said, “I didn’t really think you had.”
Shelly started walking, her destination unclear. She felt too restless to continue standing there; unfortunately the one action that truly appealed to her was leaping into his arms.
Mark matched his own steps to hers.
“It’s Aunt Milly’s wedding dress, I know it is,” Shelly mumbled under her breath. She’d tried to bring up the subject, but Mark had refused to listen. “You broke off an engagement because you believe fate’s somehow thrown us together.”
“No, Shelly, the dress doesn’t have anything to do with how I feel,” Mark said calmly.
“But you’d already decided to marry someone else!”
“I’m choosing my own destiny, which is to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“You might have consulted me first. I have no intention of getting married…not for years and years.”
“I’ll wait.”
“You can’t do that,” she cried. He didn’t understand because he was too respectable and adorable and too much of a gentleman. The only thing that would work would be to heartlessly send him away.
She faced Mark, careful to wear just the right expression of remorse and regret. “This is all very flattering, but I don’t love you. I’m sorry, Mark. You’re the last person in the world I want to hurt.”
For a moment Mark said nothing, then he shrugged and looked away. “You can’t be any more direct than that, can you? There’s no chance you’ll ever fall in love with me?”
“None.” Her breath fell harshly, painfully, from her lips. It shouldn’t hurt this much to do the right thing. It shouldn’t hurt to be noble. “You’re very nice, but…”
“So you’ve said before.”
Falteringly, as though the movement caused him pain, he lifted his hand to her face, his fingers caressing the curve of her jaw.
Until that moment, Shelly hadn’t understood how fiercely proud Mark was. He could have dealt with every argument, calmed every doubt, answered every question, but there was nothing he could say when she denied all feeling for him.
“You mean it, don’t you?” he asked huskily. He was standing so close that his breath warmed her face.
Shelly had schooled her features to reveal none of her clamoring emotions. His touch, so light, so potent, seemed to clog her throat with anguish, and she couldn’t speak.
“If that’s what you want—” he dropped his hand abruptly “—I won’t trouble you again.” With those words, he turned and walked away. Before she fully realized what he intended, Mark had disappeared around a corner.
“You let him go, you idiot!” she whispered to herself. A tear escaped and she smeared it across her cheek.
Mark meant what he’d said about not bothering her. He was a man of his word. He’d never try to see her again—and if they did ha
ppen upon each other, he’d pretend he didn’t know her.
He might eventually decide to marry Janice. Hadn’t he admitted he was fond of the other woman?
Shelly’s heart clutched painfully inside her chest. Before she could stop herself, before she could question the wisdom of her actions, she ran after Mark.
She turned the corner and was halfway down the block when she realized he wasn’t anywhere to be seen. She came to a skidding halt, then whirled around, wondering how he could possibly have gotten so far in such a short time.
Mark stepped out from the side of a building, hands on his hips, a cocky, jubilant smile on his face. “What took you so long?” he asked, holding out his arms.
Shelly didn’t need a second invitation to throw herself into his embrace. His mouth feasted on hers, his kiss hungry and demanding, filled with enough emotion to last a lifetime.
Shelly slid her arms around his neck and stood on her tiptoes, giving herself completely to his kiss, to his love. All that mattered was being in his arms—exactly where she was supposed to be.
“I take it this means you love me, too?” he whispered close to her ear. His voice was rough with emotion.
Shelly nodded. “I’m so afraid.”
“Don’t be. I’m confident enough for both of us.”
“This is crazy,” she said, but she couldn’t have moved out of his arms for the world. Breathing deeply, she buried her face in his chest.
“But it’s a good kind of crazy.”
“Aunt Milly saw us together in her dream. She wrote to me about a tall, blue-eyed man.”
“Who knows if it was me or not?” Mark whispered into her hair and brushed his lips over her temple. “Who cares? If fate had anything to do with me finding you or if your aunt Milly’s wedding dress is responsible, I can’t say. Personally, I couldn’t care less. I love you, Shelly, and I believe you love me, too.”
She glanced up at this man who had altered the course of her life and smiled, her heart too full for words. “I do love you,” she said when she could. “An accountant! In a suit! Hardly the husband I imagined for myself.”
Mark chuckled. “I would never have guessed I’d fall head over heels in love with a woman who wears the type of clothes you do—but I did.”
“I love you, too,” Shelly said and closed her eyes.
The morning of her wedding day, Shelly couldn’t sit still. Her mother was even worse, pacing in front of her, dabbing her eyes and sniffling.
“I can’t believe my baby’s getting married.”
Shelly had to restrain herself from reminding her dear mother that less than a month before, she’d been desperate to marry her daughter off. Thank goodness Jill was there. Without her best friend to reassure her, Shelly didn’t know what she would’ve done. While her mother fussed with the caterers, complained to the florists and fretted about who had a key to the kitchen in the reception hall, Jill led Shelly upstairs to her childhood bedroom and helped her dress. When Shelly was finished, Jill stood back to examine her.
“Well?” Shelly asked, smoothing her hand down the antique dress, loving the feel of the satin and lace against her fingers. It was probably her imagination but now that she was wearing the dress, really wearing it, she could almost feel its magic.
Tears gathered in Jill’s eyes as she stared at her friend.
“That bad?” Shelly teased.
Jill pressed her fingers to her lips. “You’re beautiful,” she whispered. “Mark isn’t going to believe his eyes when he sees you.”
“Do you really think so?” Shelly hated sounding so insecure, but she wanted everything to be perfect today. She was crazy in love—and crazy enough to give her mother free rein planning her wedding. Crazy enough to go through with a formal wedding in the first place. If it’d been up to her, they would’ve eloped weeks ago. But Mark had wanted a proper wedding and her mother certainly wasn’t going to be cheated out of this moment. So Shelly had gone along with it.
Mark and her mother had defeated most of her ideas. She’d wanted to hire clowns to entertain at the reception, but her mother didn’t seem to think that was a good idea.
Shelly had never been that fond of white wedding cake, either. She’d suggested Cherries Jubilee instead, but Mark was afraid something might catch on fire and so in the interests of safety, Shelly had agreed to a traditional cake, decorated with pink roses.
A knock sounded on her bedroom door and Jill opened it. In walked Aunt Milly, looking absolutely delighted with herself.
She introduced herself to Jill, then turned to gaze lovingly at Shelly. “So I see the dress worked.”
“It worked,” Shelly agreed.
“You love him?”
Shelly nodded. “Enough to eat white wedding cake.”
Milly laughed softly and sat on the edge of the bed. Her hair was gray and her face wrinkled, but her eyes were still blue and clear. It was difficult to tell that she was a woman well into her eighties. She clasped both of Shelly’s hands in her own.
“Nervous?”
Shelly nodded again.
“I was, too, although I knew to the bottom of my heart that I’d made the right decision in marrying John.”
“I feel the same way about Mark.”
Aunt Milly hugged her tightly. “You’re going to be very happy, my dear.”
An hour later Shelly and Mark stood at the front of a packed church with Pastor Johnson, who’d known her most of her life. He smiled warmly as he spoke a few words, then asked Shelly to repeat her vows.
Linking hands with Mark, she raised her eyes to his. Everyone else faded away. Aunt Milly. Jill. Her mother. Her long-suffering dad. Her brothers and their wives. There were only the two of them. She felt a jolt of pure joy at the love that radiated from Mark’s eyes. He stood tall and proud, his gaze holding hers, the love shining through without question, shining through for her to read. Shelly knew her eyes told him the same thing.
Later, Shelly couldn’t remember speaking her vows, although she was sure she did. The words came directly from her heart. Directly from Mark’s.
They’d been drawn to this place and this time by forces neither fully understood. Shelly wasn’t entirely sure she believed Aunt Milly’s wedding dress was responsible, but as Mark had said, it didn’t matter. They were there out of love. She didn’t know exactly when it had happened. Perhaps that day on the beach, when Mark first kissed her. Something had happened then, something that touched them both.
The love that began as a small spark had grown and flared to life until they’d been brought here, to stand before God and family, pledging their lives to each other.
To love. To cherish. All the days of their lives.
THE MAN YOU’LL MARRY
For Jenny and Kevin
One
Jill Morrison caught her breath as she stared excitedly out the airplane window. Seattle and everything familiar was quickly shrinking from view. She settled back and sighed with pure satisfaction.
This first-class seat was an unexpected gift from the airline. The booking agent had made a mistake and Jill turned out to be the beneficiary. Not a bad way to start a long-awaited vacation.
She glanced, not for the first time, at the man sitting beside her. He looked like the stereotypical businessman, typing industriously on a laptop, his brow furrowed with concentration. She couldn’t tell exactly what he was doing, but noticed several columns of figures. He paused, and something must have troubled him, because he reached for a calculator in his briefcase and punched out a series of numbers. When he’d finished, he returned to his computer. He seemed impatient and restless, as though he begrudged the travel time. Not a good sign, in Jill’s opinion, since the flight to Honolulu was scheduled to take five hours.
He wasn’t the talkative sort, either. In her enthusiasm before takeoff, Jill had made a couple of attempts at light conversation, but both tries had met with minimal responses, followed by cool silence.
Great. She was stuck sitting nex
t to this grouch for the beginning of a vacation she’d been planning for nearly two years. A vacation that Jill and her best friend, Shelly Hansen, had once dreamed of taking together. Only Shelly wasn’t Shelly Hansen anymore. Her former college roommate was married now. For an entire month Shelly Hansen had been Shelly Brady.
Even after all this time, Jill had problems taking it in. For as long as Jill had known Shelly, her friend had been adamant about making her career as a producer of DVDs her highest priority. She’d vowed that men and relationships would always remain a distant second in her busy life. For years Jill had watched Shelly discourage attention from the opposite sex. From college onward, Shelly had carefully avoided any hint of commitment.
Then it had happened. Shelly met Mark Brady and the unexpected became a reality. To Shelly’s way of thinking, her mother’s great-aunt Millicent—known to everyone in the family as Aunt Milly—was directly responsible for her present happiness. She’d met her tax-accountant husband immediately after the elderly woman had mailed Shelly a “magic” wedding dress. The same dress Milly had worn herself more than sixty years earlier.
Both Shelly and Jill had insisted there was no such thing as magic, especially associated with a wedding dress. Magic belonged to wands or fairy godmothers, not wedding dresses. To fairy tales, not real life. They’d scoffed at the ridiculous story that went along with the gown. Both refused to believe what Aunt Milly had written in her letter; no one in her right mind, they told each other, could possibly take the sweet old woman seriously. Marry the next man you meet? Preposterous.
Personally, Jill had found the whole story amusing. Shelly hadn’t been laughing though. Shelly, being Shelly, had overreacted, fretting and worrying, wondering if there wasn’t some small chance that Milly could be right. Shelly hadn’t wanted her to be right, but there it was—the dress arrived one day, and the next she’d fallen into Mark Brady’s arms.
Literally.
The rest, as they say, is history and Jill wasn’t laughing anymore. Shelly and Mark had been married in June and to all appearances were blissfully happy.
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