Stand-in Groom

by Suzanne Brockmann

  He skirted the dance floor as he headed toward Chelsea. She’d been avoiding him rather skillfully since he’d kissed her outside of the church. That was going to stop. Right now.

  He touched her arm and she glanced up at him, giving him a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. She looked around for the quickest route to escape, but there was none. So she did the next best thing. She transformed into the Ice Princess.

  This time he was ready. This time he was watching for it to happen, and sure enough, right before his very eyes, she turned into the Queen of Cool.

  He bowed slightly to the older ladies. “You’ll allow me the pleasure of dancing with my bride,” he said to them.

  Chelsea was the only one who protested as he gently pulled her onto the dance floor. “John, it’s not time yet. We’re not supposed to dance until—”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the bandleader said into his microphone. “May I present Emilio Giovanni and Chelsea Santangelo-Anziano-Spencer.”

  “What did he just say?” Even the Ice Princess couldn’t keep from laughing, and when she did, Johnny caught a glimpse of the real Chelsea underneath.

  “I told him we were hyphenating our names, and while I was at it, I thought I might as well throw in mine too. Santangelo-Anziano-Spencer. It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” He smiled. “Of course, our children will have to spend years in therapy to recover from having a name that doesn’t fit on an address label.”

  She bristled. “There aren’t going to be any children.”

  “Relax. I was making a joke.” He pulled her into his arms as the band began to play.

  But she pulled back slightly to gaze up at him. “This isn’t the song I asked them to play.”

  “No, it’s the song I asked them to play. The bandleader agreed it was more dignified than ‘I’m Too Sexy for My Shirt.’”

  “I recognize the melody, but I don’t know the name,” Chelsea said, frowning slightly.

  Across the room, someone started tapping their water glass with their spoon—a request for the bride and groom to kiss.

  “It’s called ‘Misty,’” he told her as a dozen more spoons joined in. “It’s a jazz standard. You’re probably not into jazz, right?”

  She shook her head. “I listen to Top 40—when I have time to listen to the radio.”

  The ringing sound was unmistakable. He gazed into her eyes and caught a glimpse of trepidation—she knew what it meant. “They’re not going to stop until I kiss you,” he said softly.

  She moistened her lips. “I know.”

  He lowered his head, but she stopped him, her voice low and serious.

  “John, it’s acting—you know that, right?”

  “Acting.”

  “When we kiss each other,” she explained. “When I kiss you … it’s not real.”

  For a minute he just stared at her. She looked incredible. Her wedding dress was out of this world, with a snugly fitting top and a heart-stoppingly low-cut neckline. It was a dress that had been made to be worn with a Wonderbra, and Johnny was willing to bet that Chelsea had one on. His view, as he looked down at her, was something to behold. God bless the designer who had introduced that fashion phenomenon.

  But despite his enticing view, it was Chelsea’s eyes that kept drawing his gaze. She was looking at him calmly, steadily. Despite that one flash of nervousness he’d seen back at the church, she now seemed utterly cool and almost distant.

  Johnny had always considered himself to be a good judge of women, in tune with their desires, aware of their needs. But Chelsea Spencer was a bundle of contradictions—one minute warm and friendly, filled with good humor and laughter, and the next cool and aloof, impossibly calculating and businesslike.

  Which was the act?

  Johnny had thought the Ice Princess was the disguise, but now he honestly didn’t know.

  It’s not real.

  The sound of the clinking was nearly deafening now, so he lowered his mouth to hers, kissing her harder and deeper than he probably should have. But hey, it wasn’t real, right? And the wedding guests deserved to get their money’s worth.

  He pulled her closer, molding her slender body tightly against his as he took possession of her mouth. It wasn’t real as she trembled, as she drove her fingers into his hair, as she kissed him back with a passion that took his breath away.

  There was no way, plastered against him the way that she was, she could have failed to notice his instant hard-on. That was all too real.

  She pulled back, a faint blush tingeing her cheeks, her eyes wide as she gazed up at him.

  It was then, in that fraction of a second before Chelsea conjured up her Ice Princess persona, that he saw it. Molten desire burning in her eyes.

  She was lying. The way she responded to him was real. And if that were true, he had to believe the Ice Princess was the act. It had to be.

  “You’re one hell of an actor,” he murmured into her ear.

  She didn’t say a word.

  “I’m glad Chelsea’s finally found someone.”

  Johnny turned to see one of Chelsea’s brothers standing next to him. No eyeglasses. It was Troy.

  He looked more like Chelsea than the other brother did. He was blond and slender with a more masculine but no less elegant face.

  “So has my little sister told you all the nasty family gossip?” he asked. “All of our dark secrets?”

  Johnny shrugged. “We haven’t had time to talk about much of anything besides the wedding plans.”

  “Oh, good, that means I can fill you in.”

  “I’m not sure I want to be filled in—”

  “Yes, you do. You’re part of the family now. You deserve to get a look at the skeletons in the closets. See the guy over there, about fifty years old, dark suit, bald spot, heading toward the bar?”

  There were a dozen men who fit that description, but Johnny nodded anyway.

  “He’s my father’s second cousin, Philip Spencer. Former CEO of a company called Tristock. He spent eight years in jail for vehicular manslaughter. DUI. Got offered another job with the company on the day he got out. After all, he’d only killed a young woman—he hadn’t done something truly awful like embezzle corporate funds. Oh, and look. See the couple sitting all alone at the table in the corner of the room?”

  Johnny followed Troy’s gaze.

  “That’s my cousin George and his wife. We don’t remember what her name is, because she grew up in the projects in the South End. We call her George’s Wife, or That Gold Digger from the Projects Who Married George. After all, it’s obvious that she married Georgie for his money—never mind the fact that he chose to teach school instead of work for my uncle, and never mind the fact that he spent most of his share of my grandfather’s trust on a tiny little house in the suburbs. The rest of it he’s spending lavishly on renovations on that house so that the Wife can bake bread or something ridiculously low-class. See, she never went to college, which, as we all know, is either a sign of total stupidity, sheer slothfulness, or pure evil.”

  Troy clearly didn’t buy in to any of what he was saying, but Johnny couldn’t keep from commenting. “Your family really believes that?” God, what would they think of him?

  Troy rolled his eyes. “You should hear my uncle Ron—George’s father—go on and on and on about the Wife. Some times even right in front of her, the tactless bastard. She could be a prizewinning rocket scientist, and my family would still call her That Girl from the Projects.” He smiled at Johnny. “Don’t worry about it—Chelsea told me you come from royalty.”

  “That shouldn’t matter.”

  “Yeah, but in this family, it does.”

  “Excuse me,” Johnny said. “I should go find Chelsea—”

  But Troy caught his arm. “She’s right there—dancing with Benton Scott—he’s an old Harvard friend of mine.”

  Sure enough, Chelsea was on the dance floor, in the crush of dancers. She was laughing at something her partner said.

&n
bsp; “When Chelsea was in high school, she had the biggest crush on Bent. He went out with her a few times, but it wasn’t serious—she was seven years younger than he was. Then Bent knocked up his law-firm partner’s daughter, and like a good little law clerk on the fast track toward making partner himself someday, he married the girl. Chelsea cried for about six months.”

  Johnny looked more closely at the man Chelsea was dancing with. He looked like money. Everything about him, from his perfectly coiffed dark blond hair to his quietly expensive tailored suit and his Hollywood movie-star face, screamed dollar signs. His fingernails looked manicured. His shoes were freshly shined, presumably by one of the servants. His straight white teeth gleamed as he laughed with Chelsea.

  It was hard to imagine Chelsea crying for six months over anyone—except possibly this man. Who was married, and had gotten married not for love, but for money.

  Just as Chelsea was in the process of doing.

  Johnny headed for the bar, in search of a drink. He was willing to bet that he wasn’t just a stand-in for Emilio, but that he was a stand-in for this Bent guy as well.

  The revelation made him feel all kinds of things he didn’t want to feel. Disgust. Envy. Frustration. Jealousy.

  He wanted to go onto the dance floor and cut in. But that was stupid. Chelsea might have pretended to marry him in a church just a few hours ago. She was intending to marry him for real at a wedding chapel in Las Vegas before the day ended.

  But he had no right to feel jealous. He wouldn’t—and would probably never be—anything more to her than a business partner.

  There was a line at the wedding chapel.

  Johnny was still wearing his tuxedo. When he found out that they’d be going to the wedding chapel straight from the airport, he’d refused to change into jeans and a T-shirt for the flight. But he’d been comfortable enough on the plane to put his head back and go straight to sleep during the flight to Nevada, even without changing his clothes.

  Chelsea had changed, though. She’d put on a pair of wide-legged white pants with a white silk blouse. It was what she would have chosen to get married in—if she’d had a choice. In fact, this Las Vegas setup was entirely the way she would have planned. The ceremony was going to be short and sweet, and she and Johnny were going to walk toward the justice of the peace together, as equals. And—if she had her way—they would seal the deal with a handshake.

  She’d had enough of Johnny Anziano’s soul-shattering kisses earlier today.

  She glanced at her watch, trying her best not to be nervous. Why should she be? She’d done this once today already. The second time should be a piece of cake.

  “What time does our flight to St. Thomas leave?” he asked.

  Of course, this time when they said “I do,” it would be for real. She had to clear her throat before she could speak. “In two hours.”

  “We have plenty of time.”

  “Yeah.”

  Johnny was watching her, his dark eyes unreadable. “So what is your favorite color?”

  “Red.” She glanced at him. “Yours?”

  “Blue.”

  Chelsea looked down at the forms they’d had to fill out to get a marriage license. “I didn’t even know how old you were until I read this.”

  “I’m twenty-six.”

  “Yeah, I can do the math. I minored in math in college.”

  “Now, you see, I didn’t know that. What was your major?”

  “I did a double major—computer science and physics. And then I went on to get my business degree.”

  Johnny whistled through his teeth. “Well, I’m impressed. I had no idea I was marrying a scholar.”

  “How about you? What was your major?”

  He shook his head, smiling slightly. “I didn’t go to college. At least not exactly.”

  Chelsea was embarrassed. She shouldn’t have assumed. Quickly she changed the subject. “Your birthday’s in October.”

  “Yep. I’m a Libra.” He looked over her shoulder at the forms she held in her hand. “You were born late in January—an Aquarian, huh?”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Are we compatible?”

  “Librans are pretty much compatible with everybody,” he said with a smile.

  “What a relief.”

  “What’s your favorite holiday?”

  Chelsea had to think. “I don’t know. Christmas, I guess.”

  “Mine’s New Year’s Eve. It’s such a high-energy night—everyone’s all jazzed up for the coming year, with high expectations. And hope. The hope on that night is off the scale.” He paused as the woman who was acting as a sort of hostess came out into the waiting room and took the couple who had arrived directly in front of them into the chapel.

  They were next.

  Johnny looked back at Chelsea. “Who’s your favorite dead president?”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “For most people it’s a toss-up between Washington and Lincoln, with Kennedy running a close third, but I’m an FDR fan, myself.”

  “I don’t think I have a favorite president—dead or alive.”

  “You must’ve had one when you were a kid.”

  “When I was a kid, it was Washington,” she said. “Definitely. That whole story about the cherry tree. ‘Father, I cannot tell a lie, I chopped down the cherry tree.’ I always thought he was a lot like Mr. Spock on Star Trek. Vulcans can’t tell a lie, either. It’s supposedly physiologically impossible.”

  “Except Spock could lie because he was half-human,” Johnny pointed out.

  “Which says a lot for humanity, doesn’t it?” Chelsea sighed, her smile fading.

  “You feel bad, don’t you,” he guessed perceptively, “for fooling all those people at the church today.”

  “My dad was so …” Chelsea shook her head, smiling ruefully. “God, for the first time during the twenty-eight years I’ve been alive, I actually saw him with tears in his eyes. All I could think of was the way I was lying to him.” She miserably blew out a short explosion of air. “And not only was I lying to everyone, but I’ve gone and dragged you into it too.”

  “At least now when you go to hell, I’ll be there with you, so you’ll have someone to talk to.”

  “That makes me feel so much better.”

  “It’s not too late to back out,” he said. “We can just walk out of here, spend the next twenty-four hours playing the five-dollar blackjack table at Circus Circus and drinking beer with whiskey chasers on the house.”

  Chelsea had to laugh. “Sounds tempting.”

  “Then when we’ve had too much to drink to keep our balance at the blackjack table, we can get a room upstairs and sleep it off for another twenty-four hours straight.”

  Sleep. As in share a bed. Yeah, right, they would sleep.

  Johnny smiled, as if he were following her thoughts.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “After a couple of days you could run home to your parents, claiming that Emilio was heavily into bondage and discipline, and that you left him, because that’s not quite your style.”

  “How do you know that B and D isn’t my style?” she couldn’t resist asking.

  He laughed in surprise, but recovered quickly. “Even if it is, I’m betting that you wouldn’t share that fact with your mom and dad.”

  “Oh, that’s a bet you’d win.”

  “Spencer and Anziano.”

  Chelsea looked up to see the wedding-chapel hostess beckoning to them. “Oh, God,” she said. “It’s time.” She turned to Johnny. “It’s not too late for you to back out.”

  “For seventy-five K,” he told her, “I’m not going anywhere. Unless we can add to that Circus Circus scenario and say that after we get a room upstairs, we get to take turns tying each other up.”

  He hadn’t realized that the wedding hostess was standing right behind him. He turned to see her there, and realized she’d overheard him. She was trying her best not to look shocked.

  Johnny gave her
one of his best smiles. “It’s a wedding-night tradition in Chelsea’s family,” he said conspiratorially.

  “He’s kidding,” Chelsea said, but the woman didn’t look convinced.

  As she followed the woman into the chapel she turned to give Johnny a chilling look.

  “Oh, good, the Ice Princess is back,” he said with a grin. “I was hoping I’d get to marry both of you—it’ll make married life really interesting.”

  Ice Princess? Marry both …? “What are you talking about?” she asked, but he just smiled. With his light banter and silly questions, he’d managed to make her feel thoroughly relaxed. She liked having him around, she realized. And then she remembered those kisses. She liked having him around too much.

  Chelsea’s pulse started to accelerate at the thought that within the next few minutes she was going to marry this man, and she tried not to think, not to feel, not to anticipate.

  The hostess took the forms they’d filled out and the copies of their birth certificates from Chelsea. “One moment, please.”

  “No kissing this time,” she told him under her breath. “We shake hands, do you understand?”

  “No way. The man says you may kiss the bride, not you may high-five the bride.”

  “This is a business deal. We should shake—”

  “Where I come from, people embrace and kiss when a deal is made.”

  She stopped short. “Where do you come from?”

  “I was born in the North End, but while I was growing up, I lived about a block away from the Projects.”

  “The … Projects?” It was an impossibly tough part of town, filled with gang violence, drug abuse, struggling welfare mothers, and drive-by shootings. And Johnny had grown up there.

  “Yeah. I won’t tell your daddy if you don’t.”

  “Oh, God, someone told you about George’s wife, Cathy.”

  “So she does have a name. Troy filled me in. Her status as a Projects kid hasn’t exactly won her any popularity awards with the Spencer clan. Or should that be Klan, spelled with a K?”