His Wedding Date (The Second Chance Love Series, Book 2) (5 page)

So, he basically didn't know shit. Maybe he was the stupidest man in the world where women were concerned, blind to what they wanted or what they felt.

And going to this wedding certainly wasn't the smartest thing to do–but he was going to do it.

If he actually saw Rebecca go through with it, he was finally going to make himself forget about this woman he'd known his whole life, one he'd loved for nearly as long. He promised himself he would.

* * *

Shelly knew at least a dozen reasons why she should not be hopeful. She should probably make a list, and it would be a long one. She liked lists. They gave her some sense of control. Yes, mistaken, she knew, but she still felt better with a list.

No. 1 on her list of why she should not be hopeful–and it was a huge one–was that Rebecca had been married before, very briefly and disastrously, while Brian was away in the Peace Corps. It had been the only time in her life when Shelly had truly believed she was going to have a chance with Brian.

She'd been in high school then and spun impossible dreams about what would happen when Brian returned. He'd be free, and Shelly planned to be right there waiting for him.

Of course, it hadn't worked out that way, not at all. Brian had come home as Rebecca's marriage was falling apart, even though it had barely begun. Brian had glued himself to her side immediately. The whole marriage quickly seemed like a colossal mistake, quickly righted when it ended, and then the world had gone right on spinning along as Brian thought it was meant to, with him and Rebecca in love again.

Shelly then made one of the smartest decisions she ever had where Brian was concerned. She got away from him.

She'd left Tallahassee, putting hundreds of miles between them while she was in college and again when she'd gone out into the working world.

She'd fought hard to forget him. She'd dated a lot, going out with almost anyone who asked her, trying to be open-minded, to believe another man was out there for her, a better man.

There had to be, didn't there?

If Brian wasn't the one?

But she'd never found another man she wanted nearly as much as Brian, never felt as much for another man, although she'd really tried. It had always left her feeling sad and alone and like she was making a mistake of gigantic proportions.

She'd really tried. She had been more hopeful back then, more idealistic, more—immature, she feared. She'd still believed she could get almost anything she wanted in life if only she worked hard enough and long enough.

She didn't believe that anymore.

And then, nearly a year ago, he'd ruined all her efforts to get over him, to forget about him, by coming to work here.

Engineering school had never been part of her plan, but after a few advanced math classes in college, she'd been hooked.

In engineering, things made sense. If you put two and two together, you got four, every time. She liked the logic of it, the predictability. She'd had very little in her personal life she could count on. She'd needed it in her work.

She just should never have come to work here, should have known letting Brian's father help her get this job might backfire one day. She should have severed all connections with Brian's family.

Then it might not have mattered that her boss, Charlie Williams, had lost a valued employee last year, a senior engineer he relied upon to help him run the business. Charlie had needed help fast. He'd called his old friend, Brian's father, to see if he could recommend someone.

And there was Brian, thinking it was time for him to get out of his father's firm–and to give Rebecca an ultimatum of sorts.

He'd moved to Naples, and all Shelly's carefully won emotional distance from him had vanished into thin air.

Now Rebecca was getting married again.

Shelly wanted to hope again, and Brian, who'd never asked her for anything, wanted her to go to the wedding with him, and what had she done? She'd agreed, because she'd never been able to deny him anything.

She'd been fooling herself all along.

She hadn't gotten over him.

Maybe she never would.

* * *

Walking into her apartment that night, spotting the still unopened wedding invitation, Shelly realized she'd been so shocked by what had happened, she'd never even asked Brian who Rebecca
was
marrying.

She picked up the envelope, cautiously turned it over to see once again the pretty script of Rebecca's mother's handwriting, and still, Shelly didn't want to open the blasted thing.

Coward!

She practically yelled it at herself.

She was. No other word applied.

Shelly Wilkerson, coward extraordinaire.

Shelly didn't doubt that, even though she'd severed all ties with the area after her father died, there were a half-dozen people she could call or e-mail and get all the details.

But everyone she could connect with knew how she felt about Brian, and they'd want to know if she ever saw him anymore. If she still had that silly crush on him she'd had in high school. If Rebecca's marrying someone else had made her hope again.

No way she was going to put herself through that.

She'd have to settle for a name to start with.

Luckily for her, the name was right in front of her, in the envelope in her hand. Still, she hesitated to open it. It felt as if she were about to commit some horrible invasion of Brian's privacy, though obviously that had already been done when Rebecca's wedding invitations had gone out.

Coward!

It would have helped if, over the years, she could have at least disliked Rebecca, but Shelly had never felt that way. Rebecca couldn't help it if she was one of those women put on earth to make other women feel inadequate. She was elegantly beautiful and incredibly poised, and had impeccable political connections, as well as a wealthy family. All that, and she still managed to be a nice woman.

Shelly had no doubt she would have been Rebecca's best friend if Shelly hadn't known, almost from the beginning, that Rebecca loved Brian and he loved Rebecca. Shelly was pretty sure Rebecca knew it, too, and yet, she'd always been kind to Shelly, even friendly. Which had made things even harder and left Shelly feeling even stupider for how she felt.

Okay,
that did it.

She pulled out the invitation.

Samuel and Margaret Harwell request the honor of your presence at the marriage of their daughter, Ms. Rebecca Harwell, to Mr. Tucker Malloy...

Tucker Malloy?

Oh, my God!

This must be killing Brian. Absolutely killing him.

No wonder he was determined to go to the wedding. He knew what a disaster that marriage had been the first time around. He had to think, at least on some level, that it would be again.

Or maybe that Rebecca would come to her senses and not go through with it.

Surely she wouldn't go through with it.

Rebecca had been devastated the first time, left alone with a little boy who wasn't more than a few months old. Shelly had been there. She'd seen how awful it had been for Rebecca.

Brian had been there, too, arriving just in time to pick up the pieces, right that odd universal wrong and be by Rebecca's side again.

This was crazy, Shelly thought.

The whole world had gone crazy.

Chapter 3

Friday dawned warm and clear with a slight breeze, a perfect day for flying. Unless you were Shelly Wilkerson, a stupidly hopeful woman on the way to a wedding with a man she loved, who was himself in love with the bride-to-be.

She was also not the happiest, most comfortable flyer and really didn't like to be alone with Brian, nor that close to him, and here she was, flying, alone with him, in the tiny space of a two-seater plane, stuck this way for a couple of hours.

What could possibly go wrong this weekend?

She just had to do better, she kept telling herself. For her own sake, had to do better in managing her own life if she was going to have any hope of being happy.

"What did you say?" Brian asked.

Dammit!
Now he'd caught her talking to herself.

"You didn't tell me who she was marrying." Shelly nearly shouted to be heard over the noise of the engine, maybe a tad more aggressively than she might have if she hadn't been so angry at herself and the world in general.

"Would you have believed me?" He turned away from the controls of the plane for a moment to face her.

"Probably not," she said. "I'm still having a hard time believing it myself."

Tucker Malloy.

She had never been sure whether she liked him, though nine years ago no one in Tallahassee could have been more thrilled than Shelly was at the idea of another man marrying Rebecca. Tucker had always seemed a little too sure of himself, a little too handsome, almost untouchable.

Shelly would have bet no one had ever touched Tucker Malloy's soul, and what woman wanted a man whose soul she couldn't touch?

Less than two years after the marriage had begun, they'd separated. Tucker Malloy left town, and as far Shelly knew he'd never come back, even to see his son.

What in the world had happened with Brian, Rebecca and Tucker? Less than a year ago, Brian had been engaged to Rebecca. Now she was marrying her ex-husband.

"I'm sorry, Brian." She barely managed to get the words out. "I'm so sorry—"

"Don't be," he said, cutting her off.

Shelly touched him voluntarily for the first time in years, putting her hand on his arm, wishing she dared to let herself do more than that. "Can I just... feel badly for you because... "

She sighed, knowing she'd be a fool to say any more.

She loved him and hated seeing him hurt like this. "If you need someone to talk to... "

"There's not that much to tell. Out of the blue, Tucker called Rebecca one night last summer and said he wanted to see Sammy. He started coming to visit on weekends, and—aw, hell! I don't know. I just don't know how Rebecca could take him back. But she is."

Okay, but it couldn't be that simple. Brian wouldn't have given up without a fight. There was a lot more to that story than Brian was telling, but Shelly didn't want to pry.

Well, she kind of wanted to pry, because she really wanted to know, because it made no sense to her, and it had hurt him, and... She really wanted to know.

"I can practically hear the questions going through your head," he said a moment later.

"Sorry. You've got to admit, it brings to mind a ton of questions."

"Yeah, it does." He swore softly. "I didn't... I don't know all of it, all of why she agreed to take him back, but... She finally told me she'd never felt for me the things she felt for him."

Shelly worked to keep from making a sound, but she couldn't hide how much that shocked her and how much she knew it had to hurt him.

"I know." He tried to play it off like it was nothing. "Sucks to be me right now."

"I... I... I don't know what to say," she finally got out.

"And I know one more thing for sure," he admitted, looking like he hated saying this even more than the last bit. "When I came back to Tallahassee, and she was married and pregnant, I didn't... I wouldn't say I actively tried to break up their marriage. I don't think so. Nothing happened between us. But I knew she wasn't happy, and I made sure she knew I was there for her and that I still loved her. I didn't come out and say, leave him and you and I can be together again, but I gotta admit, I did everything but say it."

"Well, it's probably not the most honorable thing you've ever done, but... I understand. I mean, it was true. It was how you felt," Shelly said.

"Yeah? Well, I did one more thing. Last confession about me and Rebecca and Tucker. Before he left her all those years ago?"

"Yes," Shelly said.

"Tucker came to see me. He wanted me to promise him that if he left her, I'd be there for her, that I'd take care of her and Sammy."