A Gift of Love

by Judith O'Brien

  As soon as she stepped into his study, Corey realized she needn’t have worried that he had any sort of cozy tryst in mind. Angela was seated in a chair wearing a dressing robe and clutching a handkerchief; her husband was standing rigidly beside her chair in his robe, looking poised to attack. Spence looked immune to whatever drama had taken place in there. With his hip perched on the edge of his desk and his weight braced on the opposite foot, he was looking out the window, idly turning a paperweight on his desk.

  He looked up at Corey as she walked in with her assistants, but instead of the animosity or the cajolery she expected to see, he looked perfectly composed, as if last night hadn’t happened. He nodded toward the chairs at his desk in an invitation for Corey, Mike, and Kristin to have a seat. Unable to bear the suspense, Corey looked from him to Angela. “What’s wrong?”

  “She’s gone, that’s what’s wrong!” Angela cried. “That nitwit has eloped with that – that busboy! I shouldn’t have named her Joy, I should have called her Disaster!”

  Corey sank down into the chair, her shock giving way to happiness for Joy and then to the awful realization that Joy’s last-minute elopement was a calamity for Corey and the magazine. It was too late to substitute another wedding for the next issue, much too late. They were already at deadline now.

  “I notified the groom’s family an hour ago,” Spence told her. “They’ll speak to as many of their guests as they can reach. Those guests who can’t be reached will be met here by one of their relatives, who will explain the situation.”

  “This is a nightmare!” Angela gritted.

  “It’s also created an enormous problem for Corey’s magazine. They’ve invested a great deal of time and money in all this.” He paused to let that sink in before he continued. “I’ve had longer than anyone else to consider alternatives, and I think I’ve come up with a plausible solution. I suggest we let Corey go ahead and photograph the wedding.”

  “There isn’t going to be a wedding!” Angela burst out bitterly.

  “What I’m suggesting is that Corey be allowed to photograph everything-“

  “Except the bride and groom who won’t be there!” Angela exploded.

  “Corey can use stand-ins,” Spencer explained.

  Corey understood exactly what he was suggesting, and she rushed in to help him explain, her mind already racing ahead to the angles she’d use to get appealing photographs without revealing the faces of the bride and groom. “Mrs. Reichardt, we can take shots of another couple dressed as a bride and groom. What I need is a crowd in the background… It doesn’t have to be a large one, but-“

  “Absolutely not!” said his sister.

  “I won’t have it!” Mr. Reichardt stormed.

  Spence’s voice had a razor edge to it that Corey had never heard before. “You haven’t paid for it, I have.” He shifted his attention back to his sister and continued, “Angela, I understand how you feel, but we have a moral and ethical obligation to do what we can to make certain Corey’s magazine doesn’t suffer because of Joy’s… impulsiveness.”

  Corey listened to him in stunned silence, trying to understand how his mind worked. Last night, she’d decided that he was so cheap that he’d been romancing her in the hope of getting free photography for his book. This morning, he was lecturing about ethics and morality and passing up an opportunity to cancel everything associated with the wedding, forfeit what deposits he had to forfeit, and still save himself a small fortune.

  “But what will we tell our guests?” Angela demanded. “Some of the guests are friends of yours, too, don’t forget that.”

  “We will tell them we’re delighted with the bride’s decision, and sorry that she can’t be here… but that we’d like them all to celebrate at the reception as if the newlyweds were present.” Finished, he looked to Corey for approval, and she gave it to him in the form of a relieved smile, but in fairness to Angela she added, “It is very unusual.”

  “So are many of the wedding guests,” Spence said dryly. “They’ll probably enjoy the novelty of a reception for a canceled wedding. That’s something they won’t have already done. A new experience, you might say, for a bunch of jaded cynics.”

  Angela looked ready to hit him. She surged to her feet and stormed out of the room with Reichardt at her side.

  Spence waited until they were gone, then he said briskly, “Okay, let’s handle the details. We need a bride and a groom and a judge.”

  Corey knew he was waiting for her to speak, but as she looked at the forceful, dynamic man who was willing to help shoulder her burdens, her heart was reclassifying him from enemy, to ally and friend, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. He saw the change reflected in her eyes and his tone softened to a caress. “I’ll find a stand-in for the judge.”

  “In that case, all we need are stand-ins for the bride and groom.” Corey looked at Kristin and Mike. “How about you two?”

  “Get serious,” Mike said. “I’m fifty pounds overweight and Kristin is six inches taller than me. The caption beneath our picture would have to read ‘Pillsbury Doughboy Weds the Green Giant’.”

  “Stop thinking about food,” Kristin chided, “and start thinking of solutions.”

  Silence ensued for a long moment before Spence finally said in a tone of exasperated amusement, “What am I, chopped liver?”

  Corey shook her head. “I can’t use you for the groom.”

  A look of surprised hurt flashed across his eyes. “As I recall you used to find me rather photogenic. Now that I’m older, are you afraid I’ll break your lens?”

  “You’d be more likely to melt it,” she said wryly, imagining his tall, muscular physique in a raven black tuxedo with a snowy shirt contrasting against his tanned skin.

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “You’ll be busy with the guests, making explanations and trying to keep them smiling.” She paused to make her point. “Spence, it’s imperative that I have lots of happy faces in these shots. Their success depends much more on the mood of the crowd than of my technique.”

  “I can accomplish that and still be the ‘groom’. I’ll tell the staff to open up all six of the bars on the lawn and keep passing drinks until the last guest leaves or we run out of liquor. If necessary, we’ll have taxis lined up in front in case they’re needed.”

  “In that case,” Corey said with a relieved sigh, “the job is yours. Kristin, you get to be the bride. Spence is several inches taller than you.”

  Spence opened his mouth to object, but Kristin beat him to it. “I’d have to lose twenty pounds to get into Joy’s wedding gown, and it would still only hit me at the knees.”

  “Corey, there’s only one solution and it’s obvious,” Spence said flatly. “You’ll be to be the bride.”

  “I can’t be the bride; I’m the photographer, remember? We’ll have to ask someone else.”

  “Even I cannot trample on good taste to the extent of asking a wedding guest to put on Joy’s gown and play bride for us. You have several tripods here. You can set up the shot, rush into the picture, and have Mike or Kristin press the button. That’s all there is to it.”

  Corey bit her lip, considering his suggestion. She didn’t need more than a couple shots of the bride of groom – one in the garden beneath the gazebo, the other somewhere at the reception off to the side, so using tripods wasn’t a problem. “Okay.”

  “Would anyone like a glass of champagne?” Spence offered, looking completely satisfied with the situation. “It’s customary to toast Corey and me.”

  “Don’t make jokes like that,” Corey warned, and the tension in her voice surprised everyone, including her.

  “Bridal nerves,” Spence surmised, and Mike guffawed.

  They got up to leave, but Spence laid a detaining hand on Corey’s arm. “I want to ask you for a favor,” he said when the others were gone. “I understand how you felt last night, but for the rest of the day, I’d like you to pretend it never happened.”


  When Corey eyed him in dubious silence, he grinned and said, “No favor, no wedding. I’ll cancel it and the deal’s off.”

  He was completely unpredictable, inscrutable, and utterly irresistible with that teasing glint in his eyes. “You are completely unscrupulous,” she informed him, but without any force.

  “Lady, I am the best friend you’ve ever had,” he countered, and when she gaped at the arrogance of that claim, he explained, “I have, in my possession, Joy’s elopement letter. In it, she says very clearly that it was her conversation with you yesterday that convinced her she’d regret it for the rest of her life if she didn’t marry the man she loved. Contrary to what my sister thinks, you brought all this on yourself. Now, do I get my favor or do I cancel the wedding?”

  “You win,” Corey agreed, laughing. She wasn’t certain whether she was relieved or disappointed that he didn’t want to talk about last night.

  “No dark thoughts about me for the rest of the day – agreed?” When she nodded, Spence said, “Good. Now, is there anything else I can do to make things easier for you before the wedding?”

  Corey shook her head. “You’ve already accomplished a great deal. I’m very grateful,” she said earnestly. “And very impressed,” she reluctantly admitted, tossing him a grin over her shoulder as she left.

  Spence studied the easy grace of her movements while he considered her last remark. If Corey was “very impressed” by what she knew he’d accomplished, she’d be dazzled by the rest of it. Upstairs, Joy’s wedding gown was already being altered to the size of one of Corey’s dresses. In Houston, Spence’s attorney was drawing up a letter notifying the tenants in his grandmother’s house that their lease was being terminated, and preparing a large check from Spence to compensate them. In Newport, Judge Lawrence Lattimore was on the phone with a sleepy clerk from City Hall who was being talked into issuing a marriage license on a Saturday.

  All things considered, Spence decided, it had not been a bad morning’s work.

  Even so, he had the disquieting feeling that he was forgetting something important – something other than informing Corey that she was about to become a bride. He hoped to God that she’d been sincere about her love of spontaneity and acting on instinct; he hoped she’d been sincere when she told Joy she’d always loved him and wanted to have his babies.

  That last part didn’t bother him as much as the first. Corey loved him, he knew she did, but he wasn’t thrilled about the sort of wedding she was about to have.

  Of course, based on their early history, she was bound to feel an enormous amount of satisfaction at having forced him to go to such bizarre lengths in order to get her to the altar.

  He smiled to himself, imagining the tales she would tell their children about this day, but his smile faded as he walked out of his study and stood on the terrace, watching the sailboats gliding across the water. If he was mistaken, she was going to be furious, and if he wasn’t mistaken, then he shouldn’t be feeling quite this uneasy. On the other hand, he could merely be suffering from an ordinary case of wedding nerves.

  Spence turned his back on the view and walked over to his desk to make some more phone calls. At the very worst, Corey could get an annulment and no one would ever need to know they’d been married.

  Fifteen

  STANDING NEAR A ROSE-COVERED GAZEBO WHERE HE WAS about to be married by a thoroughly inebriated judge to a totally unsuspecting photographer, Spence chatted amiably with two women who didn’t know they were about to become his in-laws.

  Corey had wanted happy faces for her pictures, and he’d provided two hundred of them for her, with the aid of an amazing quantity of French champagne, a fortune in Russian caviar, and a brief, amusing speech he’d given that had gained their full cooperation. In fact, all the guests seemed to be having a thoroughly enjoyable time.

  The bridegroom certainly was.

  Lifting his champagne glass to his mouth, Spence watched his bride-to-be study the angle of the sun as she readied the last of the tripods for the shots of the actual wedding. The long rain of her ten-thousand-dollar wedding gown had gotten in her way, so she’d tied it up into a makeshift bustle, and her long lace veil was currently slung over her shoulders like a crumpled stole. He decided she was the most exquisite creature alive. Utterly fetching. Completely unself-conscious. And she was about to become his. He watched her hurrying toward him, her eyes glowing with pleasure at the shot she’d lined up. “I think we’re all set,” she told him.

  “It’s a good thing,” Spence chuckled. “Lattimore is roasting alive in that gazebo in those robes you’ve made him wear for the last hour, and he’s been quenching a very big thirst.”

  Corey’s grandmother summed it up differently as she reached up to rearrange Corey’s veil. “That judge is drunk!” she declared.

  “It’s okay, Gram,” Corey said, twisting around to watch her mother unwind her train and stretch it out carefully behind her. “He isn’t really a judge. Spencer says he’s a plumber.”

  “He’s a lush, that’s what he is.”

  “How’s my hair?” Corey asked when they were finished.

  Spence particularly loved her hair today, even though it wasn’t loose around her shoulders the way he wanted to see it tonight, in bed. They’d pinned it up into curls at the crown to keep it from looking untidy in the pictures. “It looks fine,” Mrs.. Foster declared, reaching up to straighten the headpiece.

  Spence offered Corey his arm and grinned. He was so damned happy, he couldn’t stop smiling. “Ready?” he asked.

  “Wait,” Corey said as she straightened his black tie. Spence envisioned a lifetime of Corey straightening his ties.

  Corey felt a sharp ache in her chest as she looked up at the elegant man in a tailor-made tuxedo who was smiling down at her with all the tenderness of a real bridegroom. She’d dreamed this dream a thousand times in years gone by, and now it was only make-believe. To her horror, she felt the sting of tears and hid them quickly behind an overbright smile.

  “Will I do?” Spence asked, his deep voice strangely husky.

  Corey nodded, swallowed, and smiled gaily. “We look like Ken and Barbie. Let’s go.”

  Before they could take the first step onto the white carpet that stretched between the rows of chairs and into the gazebo, someone in the front row turned around and good-naturedly called, “Hey, Spence, can we get this thing going? It’s hot as hell out here.”

  It hit Spence at that moment what he’d forgotten. He looked around for something to use and saw a piece of gold wired ribbon lying in the grass.

  “Ready?” Lattimore said, running his finger around the collar of his robe.

  “Ready,” Spence said.

  “Okay if we make it sh… short?”

  “That’s fine,” Corey said, but she was leaning back, trying to see where Kristin was with the spare camera they’d decided to use for extra shots.

  “Miss… uh… Foster?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s cushtomary to look at the groom.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Corey said. He’d been very nice and very cooperative, and if he wanted to play his part to the fullest, she didn’t mind in the least.

  “Place your hand in Spence’s hand.” On the right, Corey saw Kristin move into position and lift her camera.

  “Do you, Spencer Addison, take Cor… er… Caroline Foster to be your lawfully wedded wife so long as you both shall live?” the judge said so quickly the words ran together.

  Spence smiled into her eyes. “I do.”

  Corey’s smile wavered.

  “Do you, Caroline Foster, take Spencer Addison to be your lawfully wedded wife… husband… so long as you both shall live?”

  Alarm bells began ringing in Corey’s brain, but they sprang from a source she couldn’t understand.

  “For God’s sake, Corey,” Spence teased gently, “don’t jilt me at the altar.”

  “It would serve you right,” she said on a breathless laugh, trying to concentr
ate on the whereabouts of Mike.

  “Come on. Say yes.”

  She didn’t want to. It seemed wrong to perpetrate this sham. “This isn’t a movie, these are still shots,” she said.

  Spence reached out and took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tipping her face up to his. “Say yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Say yes.”

  He bent his head and as his lips moved closed to hers, she could almost hear Kristin rushing forward for this unexpected shot.

  “You can’t kiss her until she says yes,” Lattimore warned in a slur.

  “Say yes, Corey,” Spence whispered, his mouth so close to hers that his breath touched her face. “So the nice judge will let me kiss you.”

  Corey felt a helpless giggle well up inside her at his cajolery and his insistence on being kissed. “Yes,” she whispered, laughing, “but it better be a very good k-“

  His mouth swooped down, smothering her voice, and his arms closed around her with stunning force, gathering her to him, stifling her laughter while the judge happily proclaimed, “I now pronounce you man and wife, give her the ring.” The crowd erupted into laughing applause.

  Caught completely off guard by the deep, demanding kiss, Corey clutched his shoulders for balance as her senses reeled; then she flattened her hands, forcing him away. “Stop,” she whispered, tearing her mouth from his. “That’s enough. Really:”

  He let her go, but he laced his fingers tightly through hers and kept them there while something round and scratchy slid against her knuckle.

  “I need to change out of this gown,” Corey said as soon as they stepped out of the gazebo.