Letter to Reader Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE Copyright
Happy 25th birthday, Harlequin Presents,
May the next 25 years be as much fun!
Love, as always,
Carole Mortimer
Dear Reader,
I have a confession to make: I love weddings! Fancy ones, simple ones—it doesn’t matter. I end up happily sniffling into a tissue each time. What could be more fun, I thought, than writing about a wedding? Writing about three weddings, that’s what! Welcome to the sexy, funny, tender and exciting tales of three brides and three grooms who all meet at—that’s right—a wedding! Three books, three couples...three terrific stories. Here’s the third—and the last. You’ll enjoy it, even if you haven’t read The Bride Said Never! and The Divorcee Said Yes!—though I hope you have!
Stephanie Willingham is thirty-five, stunning and a widow. David Chambers is divorced. He’s an attorney and a rancher, as handsome and rugged as the Arizona hills he calls home. Each has enough memories of just how bad marriage can be to last them a lifetime. Theirs will be an engagement of convenience... or so they think, until the sparks begin to fly in The Groom Said Maybe!
Settle back, open up a box of chocolates and enjoy. If you want to drop me a line, I’d love to hear from you. Write to me at: P.O. Box 295, Storrs, Connecticut 06268, or E-mail me via [email protected]
With my warmest regards,
Sandra Marton
The Groom Said Maybe!
Sandra Marton
CHAPTER ONE
DAVID CHAMBERS sat in the back row of the little Connecticut church and did his best to appear interested in the farce taking place at the altar.
He had the sneaking suspicion he wasn’t managing to pull it off very well, but then, how could he?
Lord, what utter nonsense!
The glowing bride, the nervous groom. The profusion of flowers that made the chapel look like a funeral parlor, the schmaltzy music, the minister with the faultless vocal cords intoning all the trite old platitudes about loving and honoring and cherishing one another...
David frowned and folded his arms. He felt as if he were sitting through the second act of a predictable comedy, with act three—The Divorce—lurking in the wings.
“Dawn and Nicholas,” the minister said, his voice ringing out with emotion, “today you embark upon the greatest adventure of your young lives...”
Beside David, a woman with a helmet of dark hair sat clutching her husband’s arm with one hand and a frilly handkerchief with the other. She was weeping silently and wearing a look that said she was having the time of her life. David’s blue eyes narrowed. Other women were sobbing, too, even the bride’s mother, who certainly should have known better than to be moved by such saccharine sentiment.
Any human being over the age of thirty should have known better, dammit, especially the ones who’d been divorced, and their number was legion. David suspected that if a voice suddenly boomed down from the choir loft and demanded that all those who’d lost the marriage wars stand up, the shuffling of feet would drown out the cherub-faced man at the altar.
“Nicholas,” the minister said, “will you take Dawn to be your lawful wife?”
The woman next to David gave a choked sob. David looked at her. Tears were streaming down her cheeks but her mascara was intact. Amazing, how women came prepared for these things. The makeup that didn’t run, the lace hankies... you never saw a woman carrying a hankie except at weddings and funerals.
“In sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer...”
David slouched in his seat and tuned out the drivel. How much longer until it was over? He felt as if he’d spent the last week airborne, flying from D.C. to Laramie, from Laramie to London, from London to D.C. again, and then to Hartford. His eyes felt gritty, his long legs felt as if they’d been cut off at the knees thanks to the hour and a half he’d had to spend jammed into the commuter plane that had brought him to Connecticut, and sitting in this narrow wooden pew wasn’t helping.
The church dated back to 1720, some white-haired old lady who might have stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting had confided as he’d made his way inside.
David, suspecting that two and a half centuries of history would boil down to pews so closely packed that he’d end up feeling exactly the way he felt now, had offered what he’d hoped was a polite smile.
“Really,” he’d said.
The smile hadn’t worked. He knew, because the old lady had drawn back, given him a second, narrow-eyed stare that had swept over him from head to toe, taking in his height, his ponytail, his stirrup-heeled, silver-tooled boots, and then she’d raised her eyes to his and said, “Yes, really,” in a tone that had made it clear what she thought of a Westerner invading this pristine corner of New England.
Hell.
Maybe she was right. Maybe he shouldn’t have come to the wedding. He was too tired, too cynical, too old to pretend that he was witnessing a miracle of love when the truth was that those two kids up there had about as much chance of succeeding at the thing called wedlock as a penguin had of flying to the moon.
The bride lifted worshiping eyes to her young man. Her smile trembled, full of promises. Pledges. Vows...
And right about then, David suddenly thought of the world’s three biggest lies.
Every man knew them.
The check is in the mail.
Of course, I’ll respect you in the morning.
Trust me.
Lie number one, at least, was gender neutral. As an attorney with offices in the nation’s capitol, David had spent more time than he liked to remember sitting across his desk from clients of both sexes, either of whom had no trouble looking you straight in the eye and swearing, on a stack of Bibles, that whatever sums were in dispute were only a postal delivery away. And they usually were—so