Chapter 1
“I’m going to make a lot of money off Mags.”
Dr. Kitty Summer froze outside the groom’s vestibule in her mint green taffeta bridesmaid dress, the one with the skirt wide enough to fit Kitty, a nurse, and a crash cart. The door was slightly ajar and the insensitive comment by the groom–Becker O’Brien–about the bride–Kitty’s sister Maggie–brought her to a halt. She went numb from tongue to toes.
The back hallways of historic St. Christopher’s church in Boca Rotan were carpeted in red, most likely so the priests could move around without the congregation hearing. Carpeting had allowed Kitty to approach the vestibule undetected by the groom and his groomsmen.
And to think, she’d come over to give Beck her blessing!
Elsewhere in the church, the choir was singing softly and incoming guests were talking loudly. But the only thing Kitty heard were Beck’s insensitive words: Make a lot of money off Mags. Make a lot of money off Mags. Over and over as if her brain was caught in a loop.
“To the groom!”
A chorus of masculine voices echoed the sentiment. The sound of manly guffaws and backslapping was drowned out by the roar in Maggie’s ears.
The wedding was less than thirty minutes away.
Beck was like a gator lurking in a deep swamp. Kitty should have drained the swamp long ago.
Guilt began to pound at her temples. Once her OB/GYN residency began, she hadn’t had time for sleep, much less time to watch over her sisters. She’d chosen herself and her goals over her family and she’d told herself that was okay. She’d told herself she wasn’t hurt when Maggie chose someone else to be her maid of honor. She’d told herself that her job shepherding her sisters was done. She’d protected the girls through childhood from the neglect of an ill mother and a callous father. They were all adults now, and capable of making their own decisions. Besides, Maggie had seemed happy.
That happiness was threatened by Beck revealing he valued money over love. Kitty should have vetted the groom before he ever thought about getting down on one knee.
Guilt found a jackhammer and struck from temples to eye sockets. She had to make this right.
Kitty didn’t want Beck to marry Maggie. And she wasn’t the kind of person who stood by in an emergency wringing her hands. Which meant…
Kitty had to stop Beck from marrying Maggie. Immediately.
A skeleton key protruded from the lock of the vestibule door. Kitty closed the door and locked the men inside. And then she ran to the opposite side of the church to find Maggie.
“Stop the wedding!” Kitty forced her dress through the doorway to the bride’s vestibule like a green grape being squeezed out of its skin.
The Summer half of the wedding party–eleven other bridesmaids, her parents, Grandma Dotty, and the bride–turned to stare disapprovingly at Kitty.
Beck’s sister was a bridesmaid. Her spray-on tan clashed with her mint green dress. She frowned.
Kitty’s father speared his fingers through the blond highlights at his temples. He frowned.
Standing as close together as their Scarlet O’Hara skirts allowed, Aubrey and the twins frowned.
Maggie turned slowly in their mother’s white satin and lace princess gown, frowning, of course.
Everyone was frowning except Kitty’s mother, who was on a heavy dose of anxiety meds, and Grandma Dotty, who smiled at Kitty as if she’d just said the cutest thing. But Dotty had been smiling like that for the past three years since she’d started down the road to Dementia, the road with increasingly fewer side trips to Saneville.
“My sister, the joker,” Maggie said, but there were deep lines carved into the traditional make-up at her eyes as she tried to smile. Her rich brown hair was French braided to one side and fell in soft feminine ringlets over her delicate lace-covered shoulder.
Delicate lace-covered shoulder…
The Maggie Kitty had grown up with wouldn’t be a delicate bride. She’d be loud and non-traditional. She’d rock a wedding dress with a corset waist, black ribbon rosettes, and a streak of pink in her hair. She wouldn’t recreate their mother’s wedding day. She wouldn’t marry some high society, lowly principled scumbag.
“I…” Kitty glanced at Beck’s sister. “Can I talk to you alone, Maggie?”
“No.” Dad charged toward Kitty. At sixty, he should have had wrinkles and maybe a paunch. Instead, he kept himself toned with Botox and Boris, his personal trainer. He was more interested in keeping up appearances and keeping an eye out for his next lover than Maggie’s happiness. “It’s too late to back out now. We already took the bridal pictures.”
Failure lanced through Kitty’s gut with all the ragged precision of a med student cutting his first cadaver.
Stalling, Kitty squeezed herself and her wide skirt behind a stack of boxes that held purses, cell phones and mint green flip-flops for the beach-themed reception. “A wedding should be a sacred joining of two hearts, where the groom loves, honors and respects–” And doesn’t plan to swindle. “–the bride. That love should allow the bride to be true to herself.”
Aubrey and the twins stopped frowning and blocked Dad’s forward progress.
“True to herself,” Kitty repeated, wondering when she’d last seen Maggie wear heavy eye-liner or Army boots.
“Beck is a great guy,” Maggie said in a soft voice that sounded more like Aubrey’s. “I…I love him.”
“You don’t,” Kitty whispered, catching her sister’s hesitation. “Not really.” Maggie couldn’t love Beck. If she did, she’d be wearing a different wedding dress, getting married in Vegas, and having her reception at a Marilyn Manson concert.
“But…” Maggie’s gaze was flat, as if she’d taken one of Mom’s Xanax pills. It drifted toward their father and her voice dropped to a whisper. “All the guests…We took pictures.”
Who was this woman inhabiting Maggie’s body?
Failure grew claws that raked Kitty’s insides until her stomach quivered with ribbons of despair. It couldn’t be too late. She couldn’t be too late. “That doesn’t mean–”
“Did he cheat on me?” Maggie’s gaze bounced back to Kitty with a flicker of life. “Was he…tempted?”
Tempted? Kitty’s despair-ravaged insides sunk to her mint green painted toes.
This wasn’t an underwear model Maggie barely knew. This was the man who’d supposedly won Maggie’s heart and had been by her side for a year while she and their parents planned this mega-wedding.
No one spoke. Not even Dad. Everyone seemed to be waiting for Kitty’s response.
“I don’t know,” Kitty said slowly and at a socially acceptable volume, when what she really wanted to do was shout. “But–”
“Kathryn.” Her father made it past the sister barricade, clamped his fingers on Kitty’s arm and tugged her toward the door. “Please wait outside, before you ruin Margaret’s day.”
Kitty cast a glance back at Maggie, who looked as though she’d seen a ghost. The ghost of underwear models past? “Maggie?”
“Kathryn.” Her father pushed Kitty into the hall and shut the door behind her.
Kitty nearly sank to the red carpet, as off-kilter and shell-shocked as a woman unexpectedly transitioning to active labor.
This was a disaster. She had less than ten minutes to stop the wedding.
And she could only think of one way to do it.
*
The spectacle was about to begin–Beck O’Brien’s wedding.
Regardless of who he married, Beck had expected some pomp. He’d anticipated his bride would want a lavish ceremony. He was a New Yorker, born and raised. New York was the home of the debutante, and the hub of high fashion. An uptown New Yorker’s wedding was large, lavish, and luxurious.
So he’d smiled when the woman he’d chosen to be his bride wanted twelve attendants. He’d smiled when she wanted to be married in Boca Raton in the same church where her mother and grandmother had taken their vows. And he’d smiled when she wanted to take pictures for two hours this morning.
Because his bride was great. She complimented him in every way–steady when he was volatile, kind when he forgot to be, and forgiving of his long hours. She’d be a vet within the year. How perfect was that for a horse breeder? His bride was as comfortable to him as Bingley, his Golden Retriever.
Sure, she’d been snapping at him these past two weeks like an abused horse in a too-small pen. Sure, she’d been drinking too much leading up to the big day. And sure, she’d felt like a stranger in his arms this morning during their photo shoot. Chalk it up to nerves.
Why should Beck worry? Everything was going his way. Beck was having a great year. His colt O’Brien’s Free Ride had come in third at the Kentucky Derby. He had two horses with riders in the dressage Olympic training program. He was engaged to be married. And his soon-to-be father-in-law was giving him a filly as a wedding gift, a horse with a pedigree tracing back to Man O’War.
Life couldn’t be better.
Beck attributed the sweat at the back of his neck to the discovery thirteen minutes before the wedding that he’d been locked in the groom’s vestibule. But he’d been rescued in time to stand at the altar before one thousand wedding guests–one of thirteen men.
Thirteen…
Beck’s head pounded and his skin felt too tight, as if he’d been out in the Florida sun too long.
He was a horseman, from a long line of horsemen. And horsemen were a superstitious lot. Thirteen was an unlucky number. Seeing your bride before the ceremony was unlucky, too. Just this morning, his horseshoe charm had disappeared off his key ring. If he’d been entering a horse in a race, he would’ve bet against him.
But today–his wedding day–wasn’t about superstitions or lucky charms. The long-awaited production that was his wedding was about to start. There was no time for second thoughts.
Not that he had any. Not any at all.
Beck tugged at his bow tie.
The music began for the bridesmaid procession and the first bridesmaid appeared. It was Kitty. Like all bridesmaids, her dress was the color of a bright margarita (his favorite mixed drink–there was a sign!). The wedding planner had insisted the bridesmaids needed full skirts to balance the massive girth of Maggie’s dress. Getting within kissing distance of his bride for pictures this morning had been about as tricky as walking with Bingley after he’d been neutered and wore a plastic cone around his neck.
Kitty was walking faster than they’d rehearsed, her steps out of sync with the music. She’d always stood out to him among her sisters–the shortest in height, the most delicate features, the darkest hair color, the most intense way of looking at a man. Of looking at him. As if he’d never measure up to her standards.
Take now, for instance. She should have been smiling serenely. Instead, she glared at him as if he was a threat to national security.
Apprehension galloped down his spine like an angry stallion defending his fence-line.
Had the sisters argued? Was his bride having second thoughts?
Kitty ascended the altar and stopped in front of Beck. A wave of murmurs rippled through the church. She was supposed to take her place on the bottom of the altar on the far side, not a step below the groom.
“Are you in love with my sister?” she demanded in a whisper, clenching her small pink peony bouquet with a white-knuckled grip.
Something had happened. Something bad. Beck’s smile wavered.
What had Kitty asked?
Something about love. Beck’s balance wavered. Was he in love? His shoulder bumped his best man’s as he struggled to find the words to answer. “I am.” Was that his voice? Did it waver, too?
It had. He’d better not sound so unsure when it came time to say, “I do.”
Unlucky. The day was unlucky. It couldn’t end soon enough.
Beck steadied himself. He worked up enough saliva to swallow and smiled, but it felt as if he’d borrowed someone else’s lips.
More bridesmaids were marching down the aisle, taking their places without glares or interrogations.
Kitty didn’t move. “If your barn was on fire and you had to choose between that horse of yours and my sister, who would you save?”
“You’re saying she couldn’t walk out?” Beck blurted, immediately disliking his answer. He also didn’t like that people were staring at them. And he especially didn’t like Kitty.
“Move along,” he growled. “I love…” His bride’s name escaped him, damn it. “…your sister.”
“You don’t.” Kitty’s eyes narrowed. “Not really. Not the way you should.”
Something stuck in Beck’s throat. Something sharp and shameful.
Kitty was stuck, too. She didn’t move. Not when the bridesmaids filed past. Not when the aisle was clear. Not when the organist began the first few chords of the wedding march.
The guests stood.
Beck had a bad feeling, a prickle at the back of his neck like the time O’Brien’s Free Ride had pulled up lame last winter.
This was the moment his bride had dreamed of her entire life. The moment Beck had patiently been preparing to endure.
He tried to edge the short wayward bridesmaid aside.
And then disaster struck.
Kitty kissed him.