Susan Elizabeth Phillips - Call Me Irresistible

“He said that every married woman needs a place of her own to keep her sane. Can you imagine anything more thoughtful?”

Meg had a more cynical interpretation. What better strategy for a wealthy married man to employ if he intended to set up a private space for himself?

“Pretty incredible” was all she said. “I can’t wait to meet him.” She cursed the series of personal and financial crises that had kept her from hopping a plane months ago to meet Lucy’s fiancé. As it was, she’d missed Lucy’s showers and been forced to drive to the wedding from L.A. in a junker she’d bought from her parents’ gardener.

With a sigh, Lucy settled on the couch next to Meg. “As long as Ted and I live in Wynette, I’ll always come up short.”

Meg could no longer resist hugging her friend. “You’ve never come up short in your life. You single-handedly saved yourself and your sister from a childhood in foster homes. You adapted to the White House like a champion. As for brains . . . you have a master’s degree.”

Lucy leaped up. “Which I didn’t earn until after I’d gotten my bachelor’s.”

Meg ignored that piece of craziness. “Your work advocating for kids has changed lives, and in my opinion, that counts for more than an astronomical IQ.”

Lucy sighed. “I love him, but sometimes . . .”

“What?”

Lucy waved a freshly manicured hand displaying fingernails polished the palest blush instead of the emerald green Meg currently preferred. “It’s stupid. Last-minute jitters. Never mind.”

Meg’s concern grew. “Lucy, we’ve been best friends for twelve years. We know each other’s darkest secrets. If there’s something wrong . . .”

“Nothing’s exactly wrong. I’m just nervous about the wedding and all the attention it’s getting. The press is everywhere.” She settled on the edge of the bed and pulled a pillow to her chest, just as she used to do in college when something upset her. “But . . . What if he’s too good for me? I’m smart, but he’s smarter. I’m pretty, but he’s gorgeous. I try to be a decent person, but he’s practically a saint.”

Meg tamped down a mounting sense of anger. “You’re brainwashed.”

“The three of us grew up with famous parents. You, me, and Ted . . . But Ted made his own fortune.”

“Not a fair comparison. You’ve been working in nonprofit, not exactly a launching pad for multimillionaires.” But Lucy still had the ability to support herself, something Meg had never managed. She’d been too busy traveling to remote locations on the pretext of studying local environmental issues and researching indigenous crafts, but really just enjoying herself. She loved her parents, but she didn’t love the way they’d cut her off. And why now? Maybe if they’d done it when she was twenty-one instead of thirty she wouldn’t feel like such a loser.

Lucy propped her small chin on the edge of the pillow so that it bunched around her cheeks. “My parents worship him, and you know how they are about the guys I’ve dated.”

“Not nearly as openly hostile as my parents are about the ones I date.”

“That’s because you date world-class losers.”

Meg couldn’t argue the point. Those losers had most recently included a schizoid surfer she’d met in Indonesia and an Australian rafting guide with serious anger-management issues. Some women learned from their mistakes. She obviously wasn’t one of them.

Lucy tossed the pillow aside. “Ted made his fortune when he was twenty-six inventing some kind of genius software system that helps communities stop from wasting power. A big step toward creating a national smart grid. Now he picks and chooses the consulting jobs he wants. When he’s home, he drives an old Ford truck with a hydrogen fuel cell he built himself, along with this solar-powered air-conditioning system and all kinds of other stuff I don’t understand. Do you have any idea how many patents Ted holds? No? Well, I don’t, either, although I’m sure every grocery store clerk in town does. Worst of all, nothing makes him mad. Nothing!”

“He sounds like Jesus. Except rich and sexy.”

“Watch it, Meg. In this town joking about Jesus could get you shot. You’ve never seen so many of the faithful who’re armed.” Lucy’s worried expression indicated she might be concerned about getting shot herself.

They had to leave for the rehearsal soon, and Meg was running out of time for subtlety. “What about your sex life? You’ve been annoyingly stingy with details, other than the stupid, three-month sexual moratorium you insisted on.”

“I want our wedding night to be special.” She tugged at her bottom lip with her teeth. “He’s the most incredible lover I’ve ever had.”

“Not the longest list in the world.”

“He’s legendary. And don’t ask how I found that out. He’s every woman’s dream lover. Totally unselfish. Romantic. It’s like he knows what a woman wants before she does.” She gave a long sigh. “And he’s mine. For life.”

Lucy didn’t sound nearly as happy about that as she should. Meg pulled her knees under her. “There has to be one bad thing about him.”

“Nothing.”

“Backward baseball cap. Morning breath. A secret passion for Kid Rock. There has to be something.”

“Well . . .” A look of helplessness flashed over Lucy’s face. “He’s perfect. That’s what’s wrong.”

Right then, Meg understood. Lucy couldn’t risk disappointing the people she loved, and now her future husband had become one more person she needed to live up to.

Lucy’s mother, the former president of the United States, chose that moment to stick her head in the bedroom. “Time to go, you two.”

Meg shot up from the couch. Even though she’d been raised around celebrities, she’d never quite lost her sense of awe in the presence of President Cornelia Case Jorik.

Nealy Jorik’s serene patrician features, highlighted honey brown hair, and trademark designer suits were familiar from thousands of photographs, but few of them showed the real person behind the American flag lapel pin, the complicated woman who’d once fled the White House for a cross-country adventure that had led her to Lucy and her sister Tracy, as well as Nealy’s beloved husband, journalist Mat Jorik.

Nealy gazed at them. “Seeing the two of you together . . . It seems like yesterday you were both college students.” A sentimental wash of tears softened the steely blue eyes of the former leader of the free world. “Meg, you’ve been a good friend to Lucy.”

“Somebody had to be.”

The president smiled. “I’m sorry your parents couldn’t be here.”

Meg wasn’t. “They can’t stand being separated for long, and this was the only time Mom could get away from work to join Dad while he’s filming in China.”

“I’m looking forward to his new movie. He’s never predictable.”

“I know they wish they could see Lucy get married,” Meg replied. “Mom, especially. You know how she feels about her.”

“The same way I feel about you,” the president said, too kindly, because in comparison to Lucy, Meg had turned out to be a major disappointment. Now, however, wasn’t the time to dwell on her past failures and dismal future. She needed to mull over her growing conviction that her best friend was about to make the mistake of a lifetime.

Lucy had elected to have only four attendants, her three sisters and Meg. They congregated at the altar while they waited for the arrival of the groom and his parents. Holly and Charlotte, Mat and Nealy’s biological daughters, clustered near their parents, along with Lucy’s half sister Tracy, who was eighteen, and their adopted seventeen-year-old African American brother, Andre. In his widely read newspaper column, Mat had stated, “If families have pedigrees, ours is American mutt.” Meg’s throat tightened. As much as her brothers made her feel inferior, she missed them right now.