"IF ANYONE HERE today has a reason why these two people should not be joined in holy matrimony, may they speak now or forever hold their peace." Reverend Fitzhumme gave the wedding guests a cursory glance, just out of habit. The bride remembered he'd told them at the rehearsal that in his twenty-seven years of performing marriage ceremonies no one had ever spoken up, though he'd been certain a great many had held their peace--if not forever, at least until the reception.

"Reverend?" the bride asked softly, while all eyes in the church were trained on her and her future husband. She ran a slender hand over the skirt of her white satin gown and tucked a stray strand of her flame-colored hair beneath the cap of her veil. "May I take a moment here, please? I have something I'd like to say."

The groom turned and looked down his aquiline nose, his dark brows drawing together in annoyance. "Bronwynn, what are you doing?" he whispered.

She beamed a smile up at him. "I just have a few thank-yous I'd like to say now, Ross."

He sighed impatiently. Reverend Fitzhumme gave his permission with a motion of his hand.

Bronwynn turned and looked out at the assembled guests. An eerie calm had settled inside her, as if her mind had flipped off all the switches that worried and wondered and made decisions. Her gaze settled on no one person, but scanned the faces and hairstyles and ridiculous hats of the men and women of Boston's upper crust. A brief stab of pain penetrated her heart when she saw the empty pew where her parents would have sat had they lived to see this day. It was just as well they weren't there, she thought as her gaze homed in on her cousin Belinda.

"I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for coming today," Bronwynn began calmly. A genuine smile lit her face as she saw her sister Zane's worried look. Zane sat in the first row of pews next to her daughter, Rebecca, who had become bored with the role of flower girl and toyed with the lace trim along the edge of her petticoat, unconcerned with the proceedings. "I would like to thank my sister, Zane, for all her help in planning this wedding, but most of all I would like to thank my cousin, Belinda Hughes . . ."

In the third row Belinda's pretty face dropped.

". . . for being so unspeakably contemptible as to sleep with my fiancé two nights before my wedding, thereby showing me just what kind of a despicable, lowlife, money-grubbing scum he really is." She turned and thrust her bouquet of white roses and trailing English ivy into Ross's hands. His face was as white as the flowers. Bronwynn's eyes sparked fire for the first time in days. "Ross Hilliard, I'd have a sex-change operation before I'd marry you!"

"This property is ideal, Murph. There must be three hundred acres of rolling fields and woods. There's a ramshackle old house, but nobody's lived there for years." Wade Grayson paced back and forth in front of the deep green sofa, the telephone dangling from the long fingers of one hand while he held the receiver to his ear with the other. Across the comfortable living room a big yellow Labrador sprawled by the stone fireplace watching his master pace.

"Sounds great, Wade, but I thought we sent you up there for R and R, not to investigate business ventures for the two of us."

He set the phone on the pine coffee table, picked up a bottle of antacid and took a swig. The stuff was actually beginning to taste good to him. The thought sent a shudder through his body as he lit a cigarette and took a long drag.

"Sure," he said, grinning as he flashed the even white teeth that had won over more than one female voter, "but why waste an...

 

Tami Hoags novels have appeared regularly on national bestseller lists since the publication of her first book in 1988. She lives in Los Angeles.


From the Paperback edition.

 

 

Mismatch by Tami Hoag
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