The Runaway Bridesmaid (3 page)

She turned on her heels – a pair of five inch, ivory silk Louboutins that had cost almost a month’s salary but which she planned to mount in a glass case to appreciate as a true work of sculptural art after the wedding – and headed up the stairs to the bridal suite.

She knocked and when there was no reply, she pushed open the door. Gosh, her sister could bring chaos to an empty room! Her belongings were strewn on every available surface, she had even opened the drawers of the elegant, kidney-shaped dressing table to drape her discarded hosiery over. A quick sweep of her eyes told Rosie that Freya was not there.

Yet her wedding dress still hung in its plastic carrier on the front of the gaping wardrobe door. Where on earth was she? Wherever she was she must still be in the cream silk kimono Jacob had presented her with the previous evening, her hair in the huge Velcro rollers their hairdresser, Carl, had fussed over that morning.

Rosie dashed over to the window and peered down into the garden. Everyone was there now, and had taken up their positions ready for the imminent arrival of the bride. Even the minister, a local ginger-haired man with a comical comb-over who had christened both Rosie and Freya, was surreptitiously checking his fob watch.

‘Oh God! Trust Freya!’ muttered Rosie, her heart drumming at her ribcage and her breath quickening as panic began to swirl through her veins, depriving her lungs of essential oxygen. ‘The only thing she had to do was put on her bloody dress and turn up on time!’

Was that too much to ask?
Yes, she guessed it was.

She sprinted out of the room and into the corridor, cursing as she wrenched her ankle running in her unfamiliar shoes. As she reached down to rub the pain away, a tinkle of laughter emanated from a door at the end of the corridor which Rosie had assumed was a linen closet next to the glass cube masquerading as an elevator.

She paused, straining her ears, and her heart softened. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips. Freya was most likely snatching a few moments before the craziness of the wedding with the guy who had swept her off her feet. They must have got carried away and forgotten the time. Freya always
had
operated on a different time zone to everyone else. She replaced her smarting foot on the floor and tiptoed towards the door. As she drew nearer, her hand hovering over the ornate brass door knob, a deep-throated groan floated to her ears.

Rosie froze. Why had level-headed, reliable Jacob agreed to bunk off from his duties of herding his relatives for a snatched sojourn of delight with his fiancée, thirty minutes before the ceremony? Oh God! And here she was about to blunder in without even knocking!

Her face glowed with embarrassment as she cracked open the door and pulled it towards her. She stood immobilised in the doorway, mesmerised by the glistening bronzed back and the hint of incongruously white orb buttocks. She opened her mouth to announce her presence but words refused to form in her scrambled mind or on her lips which were parting like a gobsmacked goldfish. She began to retrace her steps until her shoulder bumped into the door jamb forcing out a gasp of pain, not from the collision but from the dawning recognition of the owner of the muscled torso.

‘God, Sis, don’t you ever knock?’

The man coiling his arms around her sister’s body twisted his head towards the interruption and mirrored Rosie’s horrified expression.

‘Giles!’

Chapter Four

She was told later that it was the engagement of the fight or flight reflex – a mechanism that primes the body to attack when under extreme threat or to run away. A harsh whooshing sound reverberated through her ears and the urge to evacuate the contents of her stomach became almost irresistible.

Rosie spun on her heels, ignoring the splice of pain in her injured ankle and her shattered heart, and shot back down the corridor towards the staircase. Perspiration prickled at her armpits and beneath her breasts yet her mouth was dry as she struggled to swallow the rising bile. A clamp closed around her heart, squeezing out the air from her lungs until she was forced to pause on the landing to catch her breath.

Breathe, breathe
.

Perhaps that solitary yoga session that Lauren had dragged her to would have some benefit after all. No, she was definitely going to vomit if she remained still. A tsunami of dizziness threatened to subsume her in its depths and a small part of her brain urged her to relent and to sacrifice herself to the desire for unconsciousness.

Think calm, breathe in, breathe out
.

With a gargantuan effort to hang onto her breakfast, she reached her suite, groped for the handle and pushed her way in. The cloying perfume of the stargazer lilies Freya had insisted adorned every available horizontal surface assaulted her nostrils and scattered her senses further. She swooned and slumped down onto the bed.

What was she going to do?
She had orchestrated every aspect of the forthcoming nuptials, personally supervised every aspect with as much attention to detail as she applied to any work project, right down to the texture of the table linen and even the bride’s honeymoon lingerie. Every second that she had not spent nose-to-screen, swinging through the corporate jungle where money is king and its accumulation the only goal worth pursuing, she had spent scouring the cathedrals of bridal consumerism. The day would run like clockwork, or it should if only her miserable, self-centred sister could keep her eye on the ball and her crazy libido in check.

A cold tremor invaded her chest as the full realisation of the treachery of the man she had given her heart to dawned on her. Freya was about to get married! How could he?

But worse than that. Freya was her sister! She knew Giles was her date for the wedding. She also knew how much Rosie had been looking forward to spending the day on the arm of the most eligible man this side of the Hudson River. Did Freya have to steal
everything
she had, including her boyfriend? Unbidden, her thoughts flicked back to the last incident when Freya’s selfishness had swept her breath away and the scolding she had taken from Lauren about not standing up for her right to pursue her own dreams without Freya’s taking precedence.

. She had been heartbroken when she found her mother’s eternity ring missing from her antique silver jewellery box which she still kept on her dressing table in her childhood bedroom above Hamilton’s Hardware Store where she grew up. But she had been even more devastated when she discovered that not only had the ring been removed by Freya, she’d had it remodelled to her own tasteless specifications as her wedding ring.

Was this despicable, self-centred behaviour her fault, too? She’d really struggled to forgive Freya for her truly contemptible behaviour this time. Her sister had known how much that symbol of her parents’ happy marriage had meant to her, that she herself had planned to wear it when she eventually found someone to spend her life with, someone as dependable, honest and considerate as her father.

When she had disclosed Freya’s deplorable, insensitive actions to Lauren she had been clear in her diagnosis that if she didn’t get a grip on her doormat tendencies with her sister and put herself first for a change, she would be looking at her sanity in the rear view mirror. Her best friend was right.

Her body had begun to shake and sweat had caused the man-made fabric of the hideous bridesmaid dress to glue to her skin. A spasm of humiliation shot down her spine as the full realisation of Freya’s betrayal slapped her square in the face. How could she possibly endure this blissful day after the horrific scene she had just witnessed? She knew the image would remain imprinted on her mind’s eye like a photographer’s negative for the rest of her life. How could she smile as her little sister married her handsome ‘prince’ with this knowledge bouncing around her head? It should be an occasion to wholeheartedly rejoice in, for a multitude of reasons, and now it would be a nightmare of averted glances and false smiles. All that hard slog organising every last perfect detail had been spoilt.

And how could she look Jacob in those dark brooding eyes of his with honesty and integrity when she congratulated him on becoming attached to her sister? Surely her expression would give her away; performing arts had never been her forte.

Why did this have to happen, especially today, especially when she had only just learned of the demise of her beloved aunt? She had not even been able to start grieving for her, so anxious were they to protect Freya from any distress on her special day – the best day of her life! Freya had certainly excelled herself this time.

Enough was enough!

She made a decision, and if she failed to act upon it immediately she feared the injection of courage may seep from her bones and drain out from her tingling fingertips.

She shot up from the bed, grabbed her Burberry holdall and began stuffing in her clothes and toiletries. An avalanche of emotions crashed through her gut, but she refused to allow them to douse her determination. For once, just this once, Rosie Hamilton was going to do something for herself. Something she truly wanted, no, needed, to do to preserve not only her sanity, but her self-worth. How she could have contemplated otherwise horrified her.

She shoved the internal self-analysis into a dark crevice of her mind to be explored on a more auspicious occasion, zipped up her bag and sprinted down to the foyer. Thankfully the car park was at the rear of the hotel away from the white muslin and rose-bedecked gardens.

Just as she thought she had managed to make a clean getaway, a voice as rich as melted caramel called her name.

‘Rosie? Is that you?’

She tossed her holdall behind one of the foyer’s over-stuffed leather armchairs and turned to face Jacob, resplendent in his wedding tuxedo, carrying off the required pink cravat with aplomb. A faint hint of his wood-spice aftershave floated on the air. Rosie took in his rugged, handsome features, the way his mahogany eyes crinkled at the corners as he ran his fingers through his thick quiff of hair, the colour of liquid coal, a slight tremor belying his nerves. His broken nose only added to his attraction in Rosie’s opinion.

‘Oh, hi Jacob.’

‘Are you looking for Freya? I don’t think you’ll find my gorgeous bride-to-be in the car park!’ He smiled and his face lit with the joy of a man about to be made the luckiest person alive. ‘I wanted to assure you, Rosie, that I will do everything in my power to bring all the happiness in the state of New York to the gorgeous girl whom I will be fortunate enough to call my wife. Nothing will be too much trouble for my princess.’

Rosie’s stomach churned. Freya did not deserve such a decent man. But, despite the pain her sister had caused, despite the gut-wrenching agony her date had bestowed upon her, there was no doubt whatsoever what her response to Jacob would be.

‘I’ve just come from her room. She’s putting the final touches to her makeup and she’ll be down in five minutes. She doesn’t want you to see her before she makes her big entrance, so why don’t you wait for her in the garden. You could send Dad up, though? So he can escort her?’

‘Sure, Rosie. Erm, are you okay?’ Jacob rested his elegant fingers on her forearm and for the first time Rosie had to battle to prevent her tears from escaping their water-tight cage. ‘I know how hard you’ve worked to pull this wedding off. It’s a spectacular achievement, especially with your job being so full-on. Hey, if you are ever stuck for employment, there’s definitely a place for a women with your talents at my law firm.’

Rosie managed a watery smile and was relieved when Jacob turned and, as instructed, made his way back to the end of the red-carpeted aisle to await the imminent arrival of his bride.

As she made her way to her rental car, the heel of her stiletto imbedded in the gravel and she stumbled to the ground, for once grateful for the padding of her dress. She removed her shoes and tossed them into the back seat with her overnight bag. Her eyes caught on a waiter sneaking an illicit cigarette behind the lollipop bay tree on the stone front steps. Was he jeering at her naivety for believing she and Giles had an exclusive relationship? Was he laughing at her stupidity for falling for his smouldering charisma in the first place? He was her boss after all. All the agony columns warned against having a dalliance with your boss – it inevitably ended in tears, yours mainly. What had she been thinking?

She slammed the door of the little red roadster and revved the engine. She flung the wayward waiter her harshest glare, stepped on the accelerator and sped down the immaculate, tree-lined driveway of the Stonington Meadows Country Park Hotel, scattering the rose-coloured gravel in her wake like confetti.

She had chosen the ‘flight’ option. In more ways than one.

Chapter Five

Rosie drove as if her life depended on it. Living in New York meant she did not own her own car, but each time she rented one for the weekend to take a trip out to the beach or to visit her father, she relished the feel of the wind in her hair and the warm sunshine caressing her face through the windscreen. Today, however, she noticed none of these favourite things as she slung the steering wheel around the sharp bends in the road, the scene of Giles and Freya ensconced in a clinch amongst the starched and folded bed sheets and pillowcases replaying on a loop through her mind as though a broken film reel. But this was more in the horror movie genre than romantic comedy.

At last the tears had arrived, along with the rain, which hammered onto her windscreen and ran in rivulets down the driver’s side window like streamers flapping in the breeze. Somewhere in the deep recesses of her mind her inner safety guru warned her to slow down, that her emotional state and the driving conditions combined were a recipe for ending the day in a collision, or the hospital.
So what?
the devil on her shoulder argued.

But she knew she couldn’t visit a further tragedy on her father. She slowed her speed, pulled off the road at a break in the trees, and slumped – like a puppet clipped of its strings – over the steering wheel where she succumbed to huge, racking sobs and the darkness that enveloped her world. As though she’d pressed the replay button, the conversation she’d had with her Aunt Bernice’s English solicitor as she was about to join the Friday night exodus from Manhattan for the journey to Stonington Beach, spun through her mind.