Jeannie Watt - Once a Champion

Everywhere she went, Liv expected to run into Greg, to the point that she’d considered a restraining order. When she’d heard word he’d gone out on a date with another woman, she’d been thrilled, until he’d phoned to tell her that no one compared to her. She shuddered to think about it.

If it hadn’t been for Beckett—caring for him, grooming him, riding him, pouring out her guts to him—she didn’t know if she would have made it through those long months. Beckett had helped her stay strong when Greg had pushed his hardest.

And then it struck her.

It wasn’t the stress of wedding shopping or her father’s health that was keeping her awake, or even fear of losing Beckett. It was Matt—Matt, who was behaving just like Greg, refusing to take no for an answer. Pushing.

Déjà vu all over again. She was not going to tolerate a replay of the Greg months. This time it might be over a horse instead of her future, but she didn’t care. Matt was pushing and she was instinctively protecting herself. And rightly so—especially after he’d indicated the situation wasn’t yet concluded to his satisfaction.

“Yes, it is, Montoya.” Beckett’s ear flicked back as Liv spoke. The situation was over and if Matt showed up again, she’d make good on her threat to call the sheriff.

Finally she patted the horse on the rump and headed back to the house, picking her way across the field in the moonlight. The front door was slightly ajar, just as she’d left it, and Liv slipped inside, holding her breath as the heavy oak made a distinctive scraping noise just before the latch caught.

Liv held perfectly still for a few long seconds, her hand still on the doorknob. Then, when no sound came from her father’s room, she walked silently down the hall.

She yawned as she got into bed, hoping now that she’d figured out what was bothering that she could sleep.

It was her last conscious thought.

* * *

LIV OVERSLEPT.

She would have slept even longer if her father hadn’t knocked on her door and asked if she wanted him to fuel up her car before she left. Liv grabbed the clock, which she’d turned toward the wall the night before, and yelped when she saw the time.

“Liv?” Tim called through the door.

“Uh, yes. Thanks. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Thanks to a lack of early-morning traffic and highway patrol officers, Liv arrived at Malinda’s Bridal Boutique only a few minutes after it had opened. She was not surprised to find her mother and Shae already at the racks.

Liv fended off the associate with a quick I’m-with-them gesture, then started across the highly polished parquet floor, feeling awkward, as if arriving at a party late after everyone else had already settled in. As she approached, Shae held up a dress, said something, and her mother laughed, her need-to-please agreeable laugh. Excellent.

“You’re here,” her mother said to Liv, beaming as she reached out to hug her while still holding a beaded oyster-colored dress in one hand. “Right on time.”

Shae smiled and also gave Liv a perfunctory hug, enveloping her in a subtle cloud of fragrance. “Glad you could make it.” She pushed her long dark hair over her shoulder, and Liv couldn’t help but notice how perfectly cut it was.

“Me, too.” Liv had no illusions as to why she was in Shae’s wedding—because it wouldn’t look right if she weren’t. She and Shae were sisters, after all. Stepsisters, but they’d lived together since they were fourteen and should have been closer than they were.

It was hard to be close to someone who intimidated you, however, and from day one, Shae had intimidated Liv—because Liv had allowed herself to be intimidated. She and Shae had little in common, valued different things, and Shae was so very popular while Liv was not. Of course she’d been intimidated.

Their only common ground was that their parents were married, which added to the problem. Vivian wanted her husband happy and her husband’s children happy, so on the occasions when Shae and Liv had disagreed, Liv eventually backed down. For her mother.

To add to the tension, Shae, under coercion, had made a few futile attempts to include Liv in her social activities, but neither had been comfortable with that, so eventually they settled into living parallel lives in the bedroom they shared. There’d been moments when they’d acted like sisters—shared a secret or two, groused about a teacher—but for the most part it was every girl for herself.

“This is the preshop,” Vivian explained, as if Liv weren’t already aware.

“Yes,” Shae said, hanging a pink silk dress. “You can imagine what a free-for-all this would be with seven bridesmaids giving their opinions.”

“We’re going to narrow it down to three choices today,” Vivian said, rejoining the hunt.

Seven bridesmaids? “I thought Reed wanted a small wedding,” Liv said as she casually flipped through a few dresses, wincing at the price tags and realizing that it would be almost impossible for her to come up with seven friends to serve as bridesmaids—not unless she included Beckett and her father.

Shae laughed, that confident yet somehow seductive laugh that Liv envied and had occasionally tried to emulate with little success. “Reed doesn’t know what he wants.”

“He seemed like he knew what he wanted last time I talked to him,” Liv said conversationally. They’d had a fairly decent discussion at the family Easter Sunday dinner. Liv liked Shae’s fiancé, a handsome, mild-mannered guy who still had a backbone. Shae had made a good catch there.

Shae’s smile shifted slightly. “We’ve talked and he’s beginning to see things my way. After all, you only get married once.”

“Unless you’re one of the seventy-five percent of divorcées who remarry,” Liv muttered.

“How on earth do you know that statistic?” Shae asked in the same voice she’d used when Liv had actually known the answers to the questions on the history exams in high school.

“I made it up.”

Shae laughed. A real laugh. Then she turned back to the racks and pulled out a pale green sheath. “How about this?”

“Not bad,” Liv murmured. Except for that six-hundred-dollar price tag. Surely Shae wouldn’t do that to her seven friends. Liv glanced over at her mother and recognized the frozen smile, the make-Shae-happy look.

Shae looked at the price tag. “Wow.”

Liv held her breath.

Shae shrugged and put the dress back on the rack, looking over her shoulder at Vivian as she did so. “This is a possibility.”

Liv felt the air whoosh out of her lungs. Really? A six-hundred-dollar possibility? She made an effort to bite her tongue—for her mother’s sake. This was not a matter of Greg or Matt trying to control her. This was Shae. Shae who always got her way.

After two more racks, Shae turned to Liv and Vivian. “Shall we move on to the next place and see what else we can find?”

“Please,” Liv said with feeling, earning herself a sharp look from her mother. “I think we should explore all options,” she added on a more upbeat note. Vivian’s frown relaxed.

At lunch, Shae shook her head as she dipped a tea bag into a cup of hot water. “I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s impossible to find a decent dress for under three hundred.”

“Can you find something you can tolerate?” Liv asked. She’d seen more expensive dresses than she wanted to think about in the past three hours. Each place they went hammered home the point that the wedding industry was all about spending as much as possible to celebrate what? A union that may or may not last? It was a shameful exploitation of a solemn occasion and Shae was plunging in with both feet, practically shouting, “Here I am! Take my money and provide me with an illusion that has nothing to do with reality!”