Chapter Twenty

Ominous gray clouds gathered beyond the glass door.

“You have a beautiful home.”

Isobel wrestled a smile into place for Jen, the writer from Stylish Bride. “Thank you.”

Jen turned away from the French doors and the sweeping view of Lake Michigan beyond Shea and Isobel’s large deck.

Isobel placed a steaming cup of coffee on the dining table. “I apologize for the delay. My husband is running a little late.”

Jen slid into a dining chair and reached for the coffee mug. “It’s fine. This isn’t anything too formal. It’s supposed be fun and relaxed.”

“Maybe I’ll send him another text…”

With a flick of the wrist, Jen halted Isobel’s quest for her cell phone. “Sit. We’ll chat until he gets here.”

Isobel managed a tremulous smile as she sank slowly into a chair at the table.

“So, how long have you been designing wedding dresses?”

“Not long, actually.” Isobel’s fingers found the hem of her blouse under the table. “I’ve been sketching designs for years, but only recently started to create the gowns.”

Jen retrieved a notepad from her oversized leather bag and flipped to a stark-white page. “Where did you study?”

“Study?”

Jen propped an elbow on the table and cradled her chin in the palm of her hand. “Did you go to one of the New York schools, or did you stay closer to home?”

“Oh. Uh, I don’t have a formal education.” Isobel folded and refolded the gauzy fabric of her blouse. “Since high school, I’ve worked in a bridal store doing alterations. I guess I picked up the elements of design and dress construction that way.”

“How clever of you.” Jen’s warm smile was filled with sincerity. “I can’t wait to see your gowns. Vanessa was so pumped, and trust me, it takes a lot to impress her.”

With a soft buzzing noise, Isobel’s cell phone vibrated on the kitchen island and she lurched to her feet. “Do you mind if I grab that? It’s probably Shea.”

But when she scooped up the device, she didn’t recognize the number on the phone’s display. Worry bit at her as she silenced the call, letting it go to her voicemail. Where was he? Was he held up at work, or had something happened to delay him?

She returned to the table, but before she lowered herself into the chair, a noise sounded at the back door. Soft hope to bloomed in her chest and she rushed forward.

Then Shea stepped inside the house. He filled her world and the tension in her shoulders instantly began to melt. The blue sweater he wore caused his eyes to sparkle like precious jewels in his handsome face, but at his expression, the words on the tip of her tongue dissolved like sugar in the rain.

“Is everything okay?” she whispered, keeping her voice low so Jen wouldn’t overhear them.

White teeth flashed quick and bright. “Of course.”

The bite of her disappointment stung. He was late and there was a reason, a reason he was now hiding from her.

He’d pushed the sleeves of his sweater past his elbows, and the script tattoo on his forearm briefly passed by her vision when he slipped his hand to the back of her head.

He drew her to him and dropped a soft kiss on her forehead. “We’ll talk later,” he murmured.

She pulled back enough to see his face. “Is it Finn? Did you talk to him?”

“It’s not Finn.”

Her concern deepened.

“Finn’s okay.” He tapped his finger lightly on the tip of her nose. “Everything’s okay.”

“No one ever says everything is okay unless everything is not okay.”

A smile quirked on his soft mouth, but the shallow lines of his worry remained. “Trust me. Just this once.”

Too preoccupied to argue with him anyway, Isobel reached for his hand, prepared to pretend great happiness that he’d finally arrived.

A seismic tremor jolted her when she realized she wouldn’t be faking it. Not completely.

He squeezed her hand. “You’re shaking.”

Unable to explain the source of the nervous tension coiling through her, Isobel shook her head.

A part of her had feared this moment since she’d agreed to Vanessa’s offer. What if their lies were found out? What if Jen discovered there was no happy marriage, no booming wedding dress design business, no story they wanted to print in their magazine? Who wanted to read about a no-name wannabe designer going through a divorce?

But another part of her, the rational part, understood the magazine feature was an incredible opportunity and the anxiety rattling her the past several days derived from something else. Something entirely unrelated to any future business ventures.

“I just want to get this over with,” she muttered.

They returned to the dining room, and after quick introductions, Shea settled into the chair beside Isobel.

“This island is so charming.” Jen reached for her coffee. “Have you lived here all your lives?”

“I have, but Shea emigrated from Ireland with his family when he was young.”

“Ireland?” Jen sipped her coffee and returned the cup to the table. “You don’t happen to know anything about that delightful Irish pub downtown, do you?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Shea said. “I own it.”

Jen’s face lit up. “You’re kidding. We ate there last night and had a blast.”

From there, their conversation meandered, and Isobel relaxed. Jen had a way of talking as though she were an old friend that’d stopped by for a visit, and it wasn’t until she picked up her pen to scrawl something in her notebook that Isobel remembered they weren’t old friends catching up.

Jen was a pro. A truth seeker at work, collecting information and hanging substance on her shadowy sketch of their perfect lives. Idyllic small town. Good-looking Irish husband. Adorable children. Beautiful home. Talented, happily married couple owning not one but two successful businesses.

“When did you two meet?”

Isobel glanced uneasily at Shea. “In high school.”

“You were high school sweethearts?” Jen scribbled something in her notebook. “How romantic.”

Isobel’s throat tightened with the surge of her emotions. She didn’t find teen pregnancy or extreme poverty and hunger all that romantic.

Jen shot Isobel a conspiratorial smile. “Is he the first boy you kissed?”

Working at a bridal store for so many years had its perks and Isobel mimicked the brides that paraded through her life, their sweet faces lit up from inside with love and hope for the future.

“He’s the only boy I’ve ever kissed,” Isobel admitted, her words true, but her smile fake.

Jen’s clear blue eyes slid to Shea. “When did you know she was the one?”

“The first moment I saw her.”

He said the words so convincingly, even Isobel wanted to believe him.

“Did you meet in class?”

A shudder passed through Isobel and she shivered. She didn’t want to talk about high school, or that blasted cafeteria, or any of the things that happened back then.

“At the beach,” she blurted. “We met at the beach.”

They were faking a happy marriage, she might as well add some fake happy memories to go along with it.

“That’s not true,” Shea said quietly.

Her fake smile faltered.

“It was the pier.” His warm gaze landed on her face and the icy fear wrapping around her heart began to melt. “I’d been on the island, I don’t know, a month maybe, before I discovered the public beach. I remember it so clearly. The wind was biting, but the sun was out, and all of a sudden, there she was, standing at the end of the pier. I don’t think she even saw me, but I knew right then that I would marry her one day.”

Isobel’s heart beat wildly against her breastbone.

“Aww.” Jen flipped the page in her notebook. “Tell me about your wedding. Was it a big family affair or a small gathering? Or maybe a destination wedding?”

The question landed like a gut punch knocking Isobel’s memories loose.

After Shea had found her in the park, he took her with him back to campus, where he was about to begin fall semester. But once there, Isobel didn’t fit in to Shea’s new life. He had a large group of friends that she didn’t know, and when he introduced her to them, found she had nothing in common with. She was fat, and she missed her mom with a grief so sharp and strong she frequently, often unexpectedly, dissolved into tears.

On top of that, the devastation of her dad’s rejection still tormented her, and with every day that her due date drew nearer, fear of her impending labor intensified. Fears that turned out to be well-founded.

Shea’s large, warm hand closed around hers, pulling her back to the present.

He intertwined their fingers. “We were young and broke.” The shadow of a rueful smile darkened his handsome face. “I couldn’t give her any of what she deserved. We had a small ceremony, just the two us and the justice of the peace.” His lips brushed her palm. “It was perfect.”

Perfect.

She flinched.

In the old courthouse, they sat hand in hand in the clerk’s office, waiting for the justice of the peace. A deep furrow puckered the spot between his dark brows.

“Why do you want to marry me?” she whispered. “Is it because of the baby?”

“Absolutely not.” The column of his throat worked when he swallowed. “You’re everything. Smart and kind. Beautiful. You’re everything that’s good and true in this world. You’re perfect.”

His words had lived like a threat inside her heart ever since. At first, she’d thought he teased. That his words were nothing more than a cruel joke, because of course she was anything but perfect. Her own father was ashamed of her.

But almost immediately, she realized he wasn’t joking. He believed what he said, and for the next eighteen years, she lived in fear of the day he discovered the truth. That she was hopelessly, irrevocably imperfect.

“You two are too stinking cute.” Jen’s conspiratorial smile widened. “Let’s talk about the important stuff—your dress. Did you make it yourself?”

Fake smile affixed, Isobel recounted the details she could recall through the haze of her depression. “Well, it’s true we didn’t have much money, so I found a dress at a secondhand store.” It was at least four sizes too big, but it was the only one they could afford that also fit around her eight-month pregnant belly. “It had huge puffy sleeves and a lace overlay that looked like a doily, so I removed them both. I tried to convince myself it was vintage, but really it was just an old, ugly dress.”

“Do you have pictures?”

“Thankfully no, no pictures.”

“Wait.” One of Shea’s long legs stretched out under the table and he pulled his wallet from his hip pocket.

He flipped open the leather billfold and pulled a small, cracked picture from one of the protective sleeves. Isobel caught a glimpse of a dark-haired girl on the beach, possibly in a wedding dress, before he passed it off to Jen.

“What is that?” Her head snapped to Shea. “Is that me?”

“It is.”

“Where did you get that?”

He hitched one shoulder. “I took it.”

A faint smile on her face, Jen studied the aged photograph. “The dress isn’t nearly as awful as you describe.”

She held out the photo, and Isobel reached for it with a trembling hand.

The picture had been taken the day she and Shea married, and the girl in the photo didn’t appear nearly as fat as Isobel remembered feeling. Nor was the dress she wore quite so horrid as her mind recollected. Her face was turned away from the camera, but even in profile, she could make out the youthful roundness of her features and the soft expression that played on her face.

Despite all the grief and fear and doubt she’d experience during that period of her life, that day, the day she married Shea, Isobel was at peace.

“So, what’s next for you?” Jen asked.

Isobel peered at the young girl in the old photograph. What would she have answered in response to Jen’s question? What had she wanted for her life?

“I have no idea,” Isobel murmured.

Jen’s infectious laugh pulled a reluctant smile from Isobel.

“It’s true. I have no idea what’s going to happen next.” Her gaze touched the dog-eared photograph again. “I hope more of the same. I’m enjoying my happily ever after. What more could I want?”

Jen closed her notebook. “It has been so much fun talking with you both and I can’t wait to write your story.”

Sliding the notepad into her bad, she climbed to her feet. The three of them walked to the front door together, then Shea and Isobel watched Jen slip behind the wheel of her sleek black car and back out of the driveway.

“That was nice.” Shea spoke in a smooth, even tone. “What you said about happily ever after.”

Jen’s car had rolled down the street, growing smaller and smaller until the tiny black dot eventually disappeared, before Isobel found the courage to face her husband.

A soft sadness clung to the corners of his eyes. “Did you mean a word of it?”