Susan Elizabeth Phillips - Call Me Irresistible

The president and first husband gazed at each other as he passed, then immediately took off after him. A buzz rose from the guests. The groom’s mother came to her feet, and then his father. Meg couldn’t let Lucy face this alone, and she hurried back up the aisle. With each step her sense of dread grew stronger.

When she got to the narthex, she spotted the frothy top of Lucy’s veil over Ted’s shoulder as Tracy and her parents gathered around her. A pair of Secret Service agents stood at full alert by the doors. The groom’s parents appeared just as Ted pulled Lucy away from the group. With a firm grip on her arm, he led her toward a small door off to the side. Lucy turned, searching for someone. She found Meg, and even through the tulle waterfall, her entreaty was clear. Help me.

Meg rushed toward her only to have mild-mannered Ted Beaudine pin her with a look that stopped her in her tracks, a look as dangerous as anything her father had conjured up in his Bird Dog Caliber movies. Lucy shook her head, and Meg somehow understood her friend hadn’t been pleading for her to intercede with Ted. Lucy wanted her to deal with the mess out here, as if Meg had even a clue how to go about that.

As the door shut behind the bride and groom, the former first husband of the United States advanced on her. “Meg, what’s going on? Tracy said you know about this.”

Meg gripped her bridesmaid’s bouquet. Why did Lucy have to wait so long to rediscover her rebel’s heart? “Uhm . . . Lucy needed to talk to Ted.”

“That’s obvious. About what?”

“She’s . . .” She saw Lucy’s stricken face in her mind. “She’s having some doubts.”

“Doubts?” Francesca Beaudine, furious in fawn Chanel, shot forward. “You’re responsible for this. I heard you last night. This is your doing.” She charged toward the room where her son had disappeared only to be restrained at the last moment by her husband.

“Hold on, Francesca,” Dallas Beaudine said, his Texas drawl in marked contrast to his wife’s clipped British accent. “They have to sort this out for themselves.”

The bridesmaids and groomsmen rushed into the narthex from the sanctuary. Lucy’s siblings clustered together: her brother, Andre; Charlotte and Holly; Tracy, who was darting murderous looks at Meg. The minister went to the president, and the two engaged in a quick conversation. The minister nodded and returned to the sanctuary, where Meg heard him apologize for the “short delay” and ask the guests to stay where they were.

The chamber ensemble began to play. The door at the side of the narthex remained closed. Meg was starting to feel sick.

Tracy broke away from her family and charged toward Meg, her rosebud mouth puckered in outrage. “Lucy was happy till you showed up. This is your fault!”

Her father came to her side and put his hand on her shoulder as he regarded Meg coldly. “Nealy told me about your conversation last night. What do you know about this?”

The groom’s parents heard his question and closed in. Meg knew Lucy was counting on her and fought the urge to back away. “Lucy . . . tries so hard not to disappoint the people she loves.” She licked her dry lips. “Sometimes she can . . . forget to be true to herself.”

Mat Jorik was from the No Bullshit School of Journalism. “Exactly what are you saying? Spell it out.”

All eyes fastened on her. Meg tightened her grip on the calla lily bouquet. No matter how much she wanted to run she had to try to make this at least a little easier on Lucy by laying the groundwork for the difficult conversations that lay ahead. She licked her lips again. “Lucy isn’t as happy as she should be. She has some doubts.”

“Rubbish!” Ted’s mother exclaimed. “She had no doubts. Not until you manufactured them for her.”

“This is the first any of us have heard about doubts,” Dallas Beaudine said.

Meg briefly considered pleading ignorance, but Lucy was the sister she’d never had, and she could at least do this much for her. “Lucy realized she might be marrying Ted for the wrong reasons. That he . . . might not be the right man for her.”

“That’s preposterous.” Francesca’s green eyes shot poisoned darts. “Do you know how many women would give anything to marry Teddy?”

“A lot, I’m sure.”

His mother wasn’t pacified. “I had breakfast with Lucy on Saturday morning, and she told me she’d never been happier. But that changed after you arrived. What did you say to her?”

Meg tried to dodge the question. “She might not have been quite as happy as she seemed. Lucy’s good at faking it.”

“I’m something of an expert on people who are faking it,” Francesca snapped. “Lucy wasn’t.”

“She’s really good.”

“Let me offer up another scenario.” The groom’s petite mother bore down with the authority of a prosecuting attorney. “Is it possible that you—for reasons only you know—decided to capitalize on a perfectly normal case of bridal nerves?”

“No. That’s not possible.” She twisted the bronze bouquet ribbon through her fingers. Her palms had begun to sweat. “Lucy knew how much all of you wanted them together, so she convinced herself it would work out. But it wasn’t what she really wanted.”

“I don’t believe you!” Tracy’s blue eyes flooded with tears. “Lucy loves Ted. You’re jealous! That’s why you did this.”

Tracy had always worshiped Meg, and her hostility hurt. “That’s not true.”

“Then tell us what you said to her,” Tracy demanded. “Let everybody hear.”

One of the bouquet ribbons shredded in her damp fingers. “All I did was remind her she needs to be true to herself.”

“She was!” Tracy cried. “You’ve ruined everything.”

“I want Lucy to be happy just like the rest of you. And she wasn’t.”

“You figured all this out in one conversation yesterday afternoon?” Ted’s father said, his voice dangerously low.

“I know her pretty well.”

“And we don’t?” Mat Jorik said coldly.

Tracy’s lips trembled. “Everything was wonderful until you showed up.”

“It wasn’t wonderful.” Meg felt a trickle of perspiration slide between her breasts. “That’s only what Lucy wanted you to believe.”

President Jorik subjected Meg to a long, searching gaze and finally broke her silence. “Meg,” she said quietly. “What have you done?”

Her soft condemnation told Meg what she should have known from the beginning. They were going to blame her. And maybe they were right. No one else believed this marriage was such a terrible idea. Why should a confirmed loser think she knew better than all the rest of them?

She wilted under the powerful force of the president’s Mayflower blue eyes. “I—I didn’t mean—Lucy wasn’t . . .” Seeing such disappointment reflected in the expression of a woman she admired so much was even worse than enduring her own parents’ censure. At least Meg was used to that. “I’m—I’m sorry.”

President Jorik shook her head. The bridegroom’s mother, who’d been known to annihilate puffed-up celebrities in her television interviews, got ready to annihilate Meg until the cooler voice of her husband interceded. “We may be overreacting. They’re probably patching things up right now.”

But they weren’t patching anything up. Meg knew it, and so did Nealy Jorik. Lucy’s mother understood her daughter well enough to know Lucy would never subject her family to this kind of distress if she hadn’t made up her mind.

One by one, they turned their backs on Meg. Both sets of parents. Lucy’s siblings. The groomsmen and best man. It was as if she no longer existed. First her parents, and now this. Everybody she cared about—everyone she loved—had written her off.