"You're right," she said to Jordan. "I did forget to take off Michael's ring. Everything was such a rush. Going for the license, and then getting ready for this dinner tonight."
"No problem. Let's take care of it now, shall we?" Jordan's gaze was steady, almost reassuring, as he slid the ring off her finger with slow deliberation. "What would you like to do with this?" he asked, holding it out to her on the palm of his hand.
Throw it away. Stamp on it. Crush it under the heel of my shoe. Of course she didn't say that. Clinging to the outward forms of politeness was the only way Emily knew to get through the next twenty-four hours. She looked up at Jordan because—amazingly—of all the people in the room, he seemed to pose the least threat. "I should probably give it back to Michael," she said.
"Yes, you damn well should give it back to me," Michael said, finding his voice at last. "That's eight thousand bucks of my money you're holding, little brother."
"Then take it back, by all means," Jordan offered.
"I sure will." Michael snatched the ring from his brother's outstretched hands. "This circus is more than I can stand," he announced, shoving the ring into the pocket of his dinner jacket. "I'm leaving. I'm not going to be a player in this farce any longer. I damn well refuse to act as best man at what was supposed to be my own wedding!"
"Oh, no, Michael, please don't go!" Amelia pleaded. "I know how difficult this must be for you, but we have to think of appearances—"
"To hell with appearances—"
"Michael, calm down," Holt said sharply. "You can't afford to have a temper tantrum. You have your campaign to think of. Governor Kincaid is vulnerable if you manage to garner enough support from people in key positions across the state. Have you forgotten that a lot of potential donors are coming tonight, expecting to talk with you? We can't afford to offend them, or give them cause to think you're not suited to be governor. I appreciate what you must be feeling, but you have no choice but to put the best possible face on this. Unfortunately, none of us has any choice." He accompanied his final words with a glare in Emily's direction.
Michael kept his back to Emily and spoke through gritted teeth. "I guess you're right, Dad, although I hate to admit it. Okay, for the sake of my campaign, I'll put in an appearance when the guests start to arrive."
His voice boiled with suppressed fury, and Emily winced. In the surreal world she had been living in for the past several hours, it no longer seemed absurd that Michael, who had terminated their engagement, should be furious with her, rather than the other way around.
Jordan spoke quietly, his words only for her. "Don't look so stricken, Em. You have no reason to feel guilty because my brother chooses to behave badly. I know it's difficult, but try to keep a sense of perspective about all this."
She blinked, and dragged her gaze back to Jordan. "My name is Emily," she said stiffly, because it was easier to be snippy with him than to sort out what she was really feeling.
"Em suits you better," Jordan said, oblivious to her snub. "Come on, Em, let down your hair a bit. Relax and enjoy the party. You're not nearly as stuffy as you try to pretend, you know."
Stuffy? He was accusing her of being stuffy, just because she felt a little uptight about switching fiancés hours before the wedding? Emily was speechless. Before she could gather her wits enough to deliver a suitably scathing reply, he had changed the subject. With a casual gesture, he reached into the pocket of his dinner jacket and pulled out a small, blue velvet box. He flipped the lid open with his thumb.
"I have a friend who designs jewelry," he said. "I stopped by her workshop this evening and picked this out for you. It isn't a traditional engagement ring, but I thought it was just the right style for you. For us."
Emily glanced down at the box, silenced by the sheer beauty of the ring Jordan was holding out to her. A gold band supported a slender spray of tiny diamonds, reminiscent of the tail of a shooting star. A slightly larger diamond, perfect in clarity and color, represented the star itself. She guessed the ring was much less valuable than the one she'd just given back to Michael, but it was at least twice as pretty, and ten times more original.
Jordan slipped the ring onto her finger, then lifted her hand and turned it palm upward, pressing a kiss against her finger and the band of the ring. "You have to make a wish on a shooting star," he said.
The touch of Jordan's lips against her palm sent a tremor racing down Emily's spine and she had to wait a moment before she could speak. "Did you make a wish?" she asked.
Jordan's eyes met hers, clear and silvery cool. "Yes."
Emily looked down at the ring and, with an intensity that shocked her, wished that it symbolized something more important than her own false pride, and the desire of Jordan Chambers to keep the Laurel Acres deal on track.
"You made a wish," Jordan said.
It was a statement on his part, not a question, but she answered anyway. "Yes."
Michael came back into the ballroom. "Senator and Mrs. Drysdale have just arrived," he said. "Jeff Greiff is escorting them upstairs right now. Carolyn St. Clair and another couple of bridesmaids are on their way, too." He punctuated his words with a glare in his brother's direction, followed by a scornful glance at Emily.
Her fingers clenched Jordan's hand tightly, the weight and shape of her new engagement ring feeling totally alien as he returned the pressure. "We can do it, Em. Let's put on a good show for the mob."
Emily drew in a breath deep enough to kill the butterflies dancing in her stomach. This was it, then. The masquerade was about to begin.
She had only a few seconds to wonder when the unmasking would occur, and what price she would eventually pay for tonight's deception. Then she was smiling and greeting Senator and Mrs. Drysdale just as if she were a completely normal person, instead of a woman who had taken leave of her senses several hours earlier and showed no sign of regaining them anytime soon.
CHAPTER FIVE
By the time the guests arrived at the church for the Sutton-Chambers wedding ceremony, most of them had already heard the incredible news that there had been a change of groom. As a TV newscaster commented sarcastically on Sunrise San Antonio, the city's wedding of the year was going ahead exactly as planned, except for the minor fact that Michael Chambers was now going to be best man, and Jordan Chambers would be the groom.
The minister, persuaded to conduct the ceremony by means of an extremely generous donation to the church building fund, delivered a pointed lecture on the solemnity of the marriage vows, and the distressing tendency of modern couples to make their sacred promises with too much haste and far too little prayer. Marriage, he reminded the congregation, was a sacred commitment, not to be entered into frivolously, even if most people in twenty-first century America seemed to behave as though getting married was more about throwing an elaborate party than dedicating your life to a loving partnership with another human being.
Emily would probably have agreed with the minister's disapproving sermon if she had been able to hear a word that he said. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on your point of view—she was in such a state of mental paralysis that she was basically blind and deaf to the world.
She had woken after a restless, dream-filled night, shaking with panic. Her panic had intensified throughout the long hours of waiting for the ceremony to begin, but by the time she actually got to walk down the aisle, her emotions had congealed into a state of frozen apathy. The numbness was so complete that it created a thick veil between her and reality. All her senses failed to operate. Not only was her vision blurred and her hearing blocked, but her bouquet had no scent, and her skin registered no sensation as Jordan slid a slim gold wedding band onto her finger. The ring fit quite well, and she noted with a distant flicker of relief that it wasn't the one she and Michael had chosen together six weeks earlier. That tiny flicker of relief was as close as she came to experiencing any emotion.
If she'd been capable of feeling surprise, she would have been impressed that Jordan
had been efficient enough to buy a set of wedding rings in the few hours available to him this morning. His parents always complained that their younger son was hopelessly impractical and disorganized. Jordan's offer to volunteer as Michael's substitute groom might be highly impractical, Emily thought, but nothing about his behavior over the past twenty-four hours suggested that he was disorganized. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Her own fingers were nerveless, and she would have dropped the ring Carolyn St. Clair handed to her if the minister hadn't helped her to push it onto Jordan's finger. Once it was there, she stared at it with the same abstract interest she had viewed her own. Jordan had heavy calluses on his fingers, she noted, but his hand was perfectly steady, whereas hers shook like a leaf in a high wind. Her fingertips appeared bloodless with cold, although she wasn't conscious of feeling chilled. How amazing to be cold in San Antonio in August.
After that brief flirtation with awareness, Emily sank back into apathy, and even when Jordan bent his head and kissed her lightly on the mouth, the only thing she felt was mild relief that the wedding must now be over. Apparently they had made it through the ceremony without totally disgracing themselves. That had to be a cause for celebration, provided she didn't focus too hard on the fact that if the ceremony had ended, she must now be Mrs. Jordan Chambers.
"Smile," Jordan murmured in her ear. "You're supposed to be deliriously happy."
Emily responded automatically to the note of command in his voice and turned to face the assembled congregation with a dazzling smile that was all show and no substance. Applause greeted them as she walked back down the aisle, clinging to Jordan's arm, followed by their retinue of bridesmaids and groomsmen. In another example of his unexpected efficiency, Jordan had found time to call two of his friends and invite them to be part of the wedding. Amazingly, given the short time frame, they even wore tuxedos that fit. As for the rest of the groomsmen, Emily doubted if Jordan had actually met any of them prior to last night's dinner. At least she'd known all five of her bridesmaids for several years. Was that a consolation?
Having produced a facial expression that everyone seemed to find appropriate to the occasion, Emily couldn't seem to change it. She smiled through the receiving line, smiled through the various toasts and speeches, smiled through the dinner—which she didn't eat—and then continued smiling brightly as Jordan led her out for their first dance as a married couple.
"You can stop smiling now," Jordan said, drawing her into a traditional ballroom dancing hold. "Try looking dreamy eyed instead."
"I can't." Emily couldn't imagine what might happen to her precarious self-control if she relaxed the muscles that held her lips fixed into a grin. That smile was her best defense, even if it was beginning to feel more like a rictus of rigor mortis than a happy sign of newlywed bliss. If she didn't smile, she was afraid her whole body might crumble into a limp, pathetic heap like the Wicked Witch of the West when sprayed with water.
Jordan swung her in a graceful loop around the small dance floor, looking down at her with the same expression she'd noticed yesterday. The one that seemed almost tender. "Poor old Em. It's been a rotten couple of days for you, hasn't it?"
His way of saying "poor old Em" sounded more like an endearment than all Michael's "sweethearts" and "darlings". But Emily couldn't risk responding to the tenderness, which she'd probably imagined anyway. So she ratcheted up her smile a notch until it reached a new level of gleaming teeth and brittle insincerity.
"It sure has been rotten," she agreed. "And just think, the worst is still to come."
He gave her a quizzical glance. "What does that mean, precisely?"
She was puzzled that he needed clarification. "It means we have at least four months of fake marriage still to get through. More than a year if we wait until after the election to get a divorce."
"Oh," he said. "I thought you were talking about the honeymoon."
Emily tripped over her own feet, and Jordan tightened his hold, guiding her expertly into a twirl dramatic enough to provoke friendly applause from the watching guests. When they were back in each other's arms, spinning more sedately, Emily stared up at him with such intensity that she forgot to blink.
The honeymoon. The honeymoon. Good grief, she seemed to have lost the use of those few brain cells that might have been expected to remain functional. How else to explain that until this moment she'd been so focused on the problems of the prenuptial dinner and the wedding reception that she hadn't given a single moment's thought to the fact that when the reception ended, the honeymoon would begin?
"You've lost your smile," Jordan murmured. "I have to say your new look of haunted dread isn't much of an improvement."
"I was thinking about the honeymoon," Emily croaked.
"Mmm…I guessed as much." He flashed her a charming smile. "I've confirmed all new plane reservations and so on, so don't worry, Em. It was one thing to borrow Michael's wedding ceremony wholesale, but I wanted to do my own honeymoon."
"I just bet you did," she muttered.
He grinned. "Yeah, well, honeymoons are my kind of thing. Anyway, relax. We're not going to Tahiti. That struck me as being the sort of place Michael would choose, not you. I decided we'd both enjoy a few days in Colorado. I've arranged for us to stay at a house in Elk Meadow. That's near Blue Lake, in the Rocky Mountains."
"In Colorado?"
"Yes. Have you ever been there?"
"No. Never." He was right that Tahiti had been Michael's choice, not hers. Equally correct to guess that she would enjoy spending time in Colorado. But choice of destination hadn't figured anywhere on Emily's mental list of concerns about their honeymoon.
She had no chance to explain this to Jordan, however, since he stopped dancing without warning and bent her back over his arm, kissing her with amazing thoroughness while the drummer obliged by delivering a long tattoo on the drums, climaxing in a noisy clash of cymbals. Jordan caught Emily at the waist, lifted her high in the air, and then slowly and suggestively let her glide down his body until her toes touched the floor.
While the guests laughed and their applause intensified, Emily contemplated killing either Jordan or herself, or— better yet—both of them.
Arm still around her waist, Jordan escorted Emily back to their table, and the dance floor was filled by guests, leaving her free to regain her smile and then concentrate once again on not succumbing to hysterics. The smiling part was pretty easy, but she only managed to avoid hysterics by jerking her thoughts away from the topic of honeymoons whenever they started to slither in that ominous direction.
By the time Carolyn St. Clair came to help her get changed into her going-away outfit, Emily had reached the end of her rope. She was emotionally spent and physically exhausted.
Carolyn was normally a perceptive person, but the events of the past couple of days were bizarre enough to throw even her off the scent. She seemed to be convinced that the match between Jordan and Emily was based on passionate, romantic love and she was ecstatic on her friend's behalf. She'd already dropped a couple of hints to the effect that she considered the switch from Michael to Jordan a giant step in the right direction. Hints that surprised Emily, because she would have expected all her friends to prefer Michael. He was, after all, handsome, well connected, ambitious, and conservative in his lifestyle— everything women seemed to want in a marriage partner.
Emily planned to tell Carolyn the truth about her marriage to Jordan eventually, but so far there had never been either time or privacy for such a complicated explanation. They now had a modicum of privacy, although one of the other bridesmaids might put in an appearance at any minute. Besides, Emily was in no mood for a general confession. Especially to Shannon and Erin Sutton, her cousins, who would immediately blab the whole story to her father, their favorite uncle. She couldn't do it, Emily realized. She lacked the energy to start an explanation of something as complicated as her true reasons for marrying Jordan Chambers. Even if she could fathom what those reasons really we
re.
Carolyn unzipped her dress and Emily stepped out of the multiple layers of frothy organza. Taking off her taffeta petticoat, she tried to remember the exact process that had led from Michael's announcement that he wanted to break off their engagement to this moment when she was preparing to set off on a honeymoon with Jordan.
There was no way to get from there to here, Emily decided. Try as she might, she could no longer remember how she'd supped from the devastating scene in the library with Michael to this bridal changing room at the famous Hyatt Hill Country Resort, just outside San Antonio.
Carolyn helped Emily fasten the row of tiny buttons on the lightweight eau-de-nile silk dress she'd spent three weeks choosing as her going-away outfit. That meant she'd spent approximately two weeks, six days, twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes longer selecting her going-away outfit than she had choosing the groom who would be accompanying her.
Emily and the Fifteen Minute Bridegroom. It sounded like the title for a really bad TV movie.
The situation suddenly struck Emily as so ridiculous that she gave a tiny gasp of laughter. Laughter that hovered dangerously close to hysteria. Carolyn heard the edge of nervousness, but apparently interpreted it as excitement. She hugged Emily, her eyes bright with a sheen of tears.
"When you look back, Emily, you'll realize this has been a super day, with lots of great memories for you and Jordan. I've heard guests saying what a lovely ceremony it was, and what a terrific party your parents have put on. Everyone seems to agree the food was delicious and the band is just great. Not to mention the fact that you were a stunningly beautiful bride."
"You're too kindhearted, Caro. What was everyone saying about the fact that the groom and his brother just happened to switch roles?"
"Not much. At least not to me. I guess they were smart enough to figure out they hadn't better make any snide comments when I was in hearing distance." Carolyn grinned. "Besides, one look at you and Jordan dancing together, and nobody could have any doubts about whether you ended up married to the right brother. And that's the only important thing, isn't it?"
His Brother's Fiancée Page 7
