The Best Man's Plan

Grace knew now where Chloe had gotten that innocent-little-me expression she’d used earlier. Her hazel eyes wide, Evelyn said sweetly, “I know, honey. I was just making a comment about how pretty you look this evening.”

“Right.” Grace didn’t believe her mother any more than she had her sister earlier. What was with her family today? Was the imaginary scent of orange blossoms clouding their thinking?

Surely they understood that she and Bryan were completely wrong for each other. Grace had no interest in sharing his social fishbowl, watching everything she said or did in case it appeared in a gossip column the next day. And Bryan was undoubtedly looking for someone more patient and biddable, more gracious and tactful than Grace. Someone like Chloe.

Hank marched into the kitchen, frowning at his watch. “Shouldn’t we be going? We’ll be late. Grace, where’s your sister?”

Struck by nostalgia again—her compulsively punctual father had spent most of her life hurrying the family to one event or another—she smiled and said, “I bet she sneaked into Donovan’s room.”

Hank scowled. “Well, go tell them to hurry up. Folks are waiting for us.”

She kissed his weathered cheek as she passed him. “Yes, Daddy.”

There was already a good-sized crowd at the country club when they arrived, Grace following the others in her own car.

“See?” Hank muttered when they gathered outside the entrance door. “I told you we’d be late.”

“We weren’t expected to be the first ones here,” Evelyn replied mildly. “Everyone will want to greet Chloe and Donovan when they enter.”

Hank tugged at the tie his wife had made him wear. “Let’s get this over with.”

Donovan looked almost as enthusiastic as Hank at the prospect of the evening ahead. Grace sympathized with both men.

The ballroom had been decorated in white gauze and gold lamé. Gold and white balloons floated serenely above the floor. Creamy candles and magnolia blossoms filled nearly every available surface. Grace could see the hand of Cassie Barnum in the decorations. It had been Cassie who had decorated for every dance and homecoming party when they’d been in high school together. Since graduation, Cassie, now a florist and mother of three, had decorated numerous weddings, parties, pageants, proms and other local festivities.

Cassie rushed forward to greet them first. She had gained forty pounds or so since high school, but her smile was still bubbly and infectious. “Chloe!” she squealed, hugging her old classmate. “You look beautiful.”

Chloe returned the warm squeeze, then motioned toward her fiancé. “Cassie Barnum, this is Donovan Chance.”

Grace almost laughed at Donovan’s expression when Cassie promptly threw her arms around him. She hoped Chloe had warned Donovan that their old friends tended to be a “huggy” bunch. He was going to be embraced by total strangers and welcomed like a long-lost son. For a reserved, undemonstrative man like Donovan, it was going to be a long evening.

While the rest of her family was surrounded by friends, Grace became the object of Cassie’s attention. After the customary hug, Cassie asked, “Isn’t Mr. Falcon going to be here this evening?”

“Bryan’s been delayed. He’ll be joining us shortly.”

“Oh, good. I can’t wait to meet him.” Cassie leaned closer and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Is he really as handsome as he looks in photographs?”

“Better,” Grace answered candidly, thinking of the impact of Bryan’s beautiful blue eyes when seen up close and personal.

Cassie sighed. “Oh, my goodness. I just hope I don’t embarrass myself by stammering when I meet him.”

Grace’s response was dry. “I’m sure he’s used to it.”

Within the next fifteen minutes, it seemed that everyone in the room had asked her where Bryan was. There was plenty of attention given to Chloe and Donovan, of course, but Bryan was considered the real celebrity. It wasn’t every day that a man who had been discussed in People, Forbes, and Newsweek mingled among them. A man who had dated supermodels, dined at the White House and hobnobbed with captains of industry. Not only that, he was a real-life hero who rescued small children in his free time.

Grace understood why her friends were so fascinated by Bryan. And why they were finding it so hard to imagine her dating such a man. She found that rather hard to believe, herself.

She stayed close to her parents as they worked the room, after discovering that people were less likely to get too personal about her relationship with Bryan when her mother and father were standing beside her. There were several comments about Chloe’s new short hairstyle, and how much easier it was to tell the twins apart now.

“You girls still look just alike, though,” her mother’s old friend Elsie Carpenter remarked. “It’s no wonder all those gossip columnists got the two of you mixed up.”

It made it easier for Grace to keep playing the part of Bryan’s “frequent companion” when she had such validation that the plan had been successful. Among their friends, at least, it seemed to be taken for granted that the media had been wrong, and that the couples had been paired off this way all along.

She was chatting with her old history teacher, Mrs. Kinnelly, when a stir from the other side of the room caught her attention. Unless she was mistaken, her date had just arrived.

A moment later, she spotted him being escorted across the room by her mother. Evelyn clung to Bryan’s right arm, looking so comfortable with him that one would have thought she’d known him forever rather than having met him only recently. “Look who finally made it,” Evelyn sang out cheerily.

Her pulse racing through her veins, Grace cleared her throat in an attempt to make her voice sound normal when she greeted him. She could only assume that her sudden attack of nerves was due to the knowledge that everyone in the big room was watching them. It surely wasn’t only excitement at seeing Bryan again—even if he did look spectacular in his pale-gray jacket, charcoal slacks and crisp white shirt. His bandages were hidden, and he looked completely healthy. His tie was a geometric print of grays and white, and had probably cost more than Grace’s clearance-rack dress.