Kaye Dacus - Stand-In Groom

Leaving Anne to have to go on without them. To have the stigma of being the girl who had to depend on the charity of relatives for a place to live. The girl who was teased when changing clothes for gym class in the locker room because of all the burn scars on her back. No boy would ever want to be with a monster like her.

That legacy followed her through junior high into high school, combined with the fact that she had a burning need to please every adult she came into contact with, including all of her teachers. What other students saw as Anne trying to ingratiate herself by volunteering to help or getting the best grades had been no more than her need for approval by anyone in a pseudo-parental role—at least, that’s what a friend had written in a psych paper about her in college. The teasing had followed her, too. Especially being nearly six feet tall at thirteen with no athletic ability whatsoever.

She returned to the living room and started replacing items in the box. The trip to Baton Rouge in ninth grade had been great because only the kids with the top grades—other nerds, geeks, and social outcasts like herself—had gone. No one had teased her about her height, her grades, her lack of “real” parents.

She cracked open her high school scrapbook. A photo of her with her “older brothers” and Forbes slipped out. Maggie and Errol’s three older sons, Whit, Andre, and David, along with Forbes had done their best to protect Anne from the worst of the teasing. But they’d had their own lives and couldn’t be around all the time.

Tucking the photo back into the book, she continued flipping through. She stopped in the pages representing her junior year. A piece of paper with purple ditto-machine ink glared back at her:

ACADIANA HIGH SCHOOL

NOMINEES FOR JUNIOR PROM COURT

As a joke, someone had nominated her for prom court. She’d tried to make light of it, not to take it seriously. That was hard when Aunt Maggie heard, though. Since Maggie had no daughter of her own, she and Anne had a strong relationship. But Aunt Maggie couldn’t understand why Anne wasn’t excited about being nominated, until Anne finally confessed that she didn’t have a date for the dance and knew no one would ask her to go.

Maggie had suggested Anne ask one of her cousins to go as her date. It was the only major argument she and Aunt Maggie ever got into. Anne won but felt terrible for disappointing her mother’s sister, who’d been so kind as to take her into her home to live.

Once the flyers had been passed out among the junior class, the teasing intensified and started getting nasty when the chess team, chemistry club, and honor society started campaigning for her.

She could remember that worst day like yesterday. Three of the cheerleaders had cornered her outside the gym on her way out of PE—one of them was her cousin David’s girlfriend. They threatened her with all sorts of retribution stolen straight from the Molly Ringwald movies they’d seen too many times. She was doing her best to get away when a masculine voice rang across the hall.

“Leave her alone!”

The three cheerleaders had squeaked and spun around.

Cliff Ballantine—tall, slender, and well liked, with dark hair and brooding good looks—stood over the three twits like an avenging angel. She’d only seen him in the school plays or across the room at assemblies. The cheerleaders scurried away, and Cliff had escorted her to her next class.

Anne didn’t go to junior prom by her own choice. By the end of the school year, Cliff was working for Aunt Maggie part-time, and Anne was helping him with his English homework so he could graduate.

Maggie had taken every opportunity that summer to have the two of them work together. Although with every appearance of being outgoing and happy-go-lucky, Cliff let only a few people, including Anne, see his vulnerable, somewhat introverted side. She was the only girl at school who knew he lived with his mom in a trailer park on the edge of town instead of at his deceased grandparents’ address that he used to be in the Acadiana High district—the school with the best drama program in town. He was the only person outside the family she ever told all of the details of the plane crash to. She also recognized that he used his good looks and charm to get people to do what he wanted. She’d confronted him about it the year before he graduated from college, but he just laughed, patted her cheek, and asked her if she could go to the library and find him some books for a sociology research paper he had to write.

She put the scrapbooks, the wedding plan book, and everything else back into the box and snapped the lid on.

If Cliff hadn’t really wanted to marry her, why had he asked in the first place? They’d never really been “boyfriend and girlfriend”— he’d gone on dates with other girls in college. But when he moved away to California, he’d seemed to cling to her like a lifeline—and, of course, a constant source of money when he quit whatever part-time job he was willing to take on.

Ask him.

She lugged the box back to the closet and returned to the bathroom to start getting ready for her date. She stared at herself in the mirror as a slow smile spread across her face. After all these years, she’d finally figured out how to talk to Cliff. She’d make an appointment with his personal assistant, George.

Her cell phone buzzed and started playing “That’s Amore.”

“Hello, George.”

He didn’t respond immediately, and her smile faltered.

“Anne, I—we—something has come up.”

She trudged into the living room and sank into her big chair. “That’s okay if you have to cancel tonight.”

“Oh no, it’s not about tonight—well, it is, but it isn’t—” He let out a frustrated breath into the phone. “I’m making a muck of this. Here’s the issue. Mr. Ballantine just received word from his agent that he’s gotten a call for Mr. Ballantine to star in what’s sure to be one of the biggest movies he’s ever done. Mr. Ballantine doesn’t want to turn it down.”

Anne frowned. “Okay.”

“The movie starts filming in September in New Zealand for ten weeks.”

“Ten—oh. So they want to postpone the wedding?” A tingle started at the base of her skull. Postponing the wedding would mean George would be around that much longer.

“Well, no. They’d like to move the wedding up to the last weekend in August.”

Anne’s fantasy of George being around for an additional two or three months crashed into a heap of anxiety. “Last weekend in August? With everything we have left to do? Are they still determined to have it the same size?”

“Yes. Everything still the same, just moved up almost two months. Anne, I know this is an imposition on you. But Mr. Ballantine has instructed me to spare no expense in making it happen. Do you—do you think it can be done?”

Her stomach started churning again. Six weeks to do what was going to be difficult in four months. “Of course. But I think instead of going out for dinner tonight, we should have something delivered to my office and work on a new timeline.”

The relief in his sigh was palpable through the phone. “I’ll meet you at your office at six. I lo… I’ll pick up dinner. What do you fancy?”

Anne left the choice of meal up to him—she wouldn’t be able to eat anything anyway—and bade him farewell for the time being.

So much for a leisurely, romantic dinner.

The weeks between the engagement party and Courtney’s wedding sped by, even though Anne did everything to utilize every minute of every day. After a quick trip to New York to get Cliff settled into his Manhattan condo, George returned to Bonneterre to assist her with anything she needed.

He helped her avoid the media—including Kristin and Greg, the couple who’d pretended to be potential clients to try to pump her for information on the wedding. The looks on their faces when George had walked into the office and recognized them brought a smile to her face every time she thought about it.

She admired and respected him…and she was falling madly in love with him. She couldn’t start her day until she’d talked to him on the phone, and she couldn’t sleep at night until they’d prayed together to close out the day. At least once a week, they went out on what she called “real” dates—just the two of them with none of her family present—where they didn’t discuss anything remotely related to their jobs.

He enjoyed spending a lot of time with her family, which was understandable, given his estrangement from his own relatives. She could be happy for him that as adults, he and his youngest brother had reconnected with each other and were now friends, even though Henry lived in Australia. George’s pride in his brother’s success as a barrister specializing in entertainment industry law shone through whenever he spoke Henry’s name. She imagined Henry to be a lot like Forbes, explaining the close friendship between George and her cousin.

As the wedding drew closer, Anne saw more of George but spent less time connecting with him. She was past the point of no return in the relationship, yet had no confirmation George felt the same.

The memory of their conversation about whether a marriage based on friendship could survive continued to haunt her, especially given the fact George didn’t exhibit any more romantic interest than he had in the beginning—saying good-bye with a kiss on the cheek, taking her hand only when assisting her in or out of the car or when they prayed over their meals.

Between the doubts over their relationship and the details of the impending wedding, Anne barely slept the week before the event. She needed every minute of each day to make sure everything was ready, every contingency plan in place, every reservation confirmed.