Special Order Groom
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Tina Leonard
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Tongues were wagging once more in Lover's Valley, Texas! Bridal store owner Crystal Jennings's shame had once been the talk of the town. The only reason she'd want to lay eyes on the cause of it — that black-haired, blue-eyed devil, Mitch McStern — was to ask him... why? It figured Mitch would come breezing back to town just as her family started a no-holds-barred, get-Crystal-married campaign. It figured his kisses would still make her pulse race — and he still wouldn't reveal his secret from all those years ago. It figured her family would take his return as a sign that fate had specially ordered Mitch, just to be her groom...
Chapter One
“All I’m saying is that you’d rather have people think you’re a lesbian than go out with a man in Lover’s Valley, Texas,” Bess Taylor declared to her daughter.
“Probably,” Crystal sighed as she stuck another pin into the skirt of a bridal gown. “Mother, can you come up with some new lines, please? Just because I haven’t dated in a while is no reason anyone would wonder if I’ve changed my sexual preference.”
“It’s not normal,” Aunt Elle mentioned in her soft voice. “It’s not normal that you don’t have someone in your life, Crystal.”
“Why? Why is it not normal? I have a busy life. I run a bridal salon. I’m busy dressing brides every day of the week. Why is that not normal?” She glared at the contingent of two women and one uncle who were grouped around the dressmaker’s dummy, pleading with her to change her bachelorette ways.
Every day in her salon, she saw how tense, how stressed brides were. If anything, she had less interest than ever in jumping into one of her own beautiful gowns. In fact, she’d pretty much lost interest in men as a subspecies when her high school sweetheart, Mitch McStern, dumped her the night of the prom to go with Kathryn “the Prom Queen” Vincent. If the right man came along, she would regain interest, she was positive. He just hadn’t arrived.
She shook her head, perplexed. “Why?” she asked them again. “Why am I not normal?”
“Because you’re dressing brides but you don’t get married yourself,” Uncle Martin stated.
“Oh, and if I were a mortuary owner, I wouldn’t be normal unless I died. Then I would be experienced, right?”
Aunt Elle touched her shoulder. “We want you to be happy. You can’t go on living other people’s dreams forever. We think you should go away for a while, Crystal. Let us run the business for you.”
“Go find a man, honey,” her mother joined in. “He’s out there somewhere.”
“I doubt it. And even if he was, I’m sure I wouldn’t run into him.” She hadn’t enjoyed the pain of being left for another woman. Or left at all. She’d learned fast from that one experience. “I’m happy. Why can’t you three see that?”
She stared up at her family. They loved her, they really did. Why couldn’t they see that she didn’t need a man to feel complete?
“I’m getting old, Crystal,” her mother began.
“Please don’t start playing that harp. You’ve been playing it since I was twenty-five.”
“And I’ve been more than patient! You’re going to be thirty tomorrow! What next? Forty?”
Crystal tried not to smile at her mother’s horrified tone. “Look, Mom, if it was that easy, I’d get married just to make you happy. But it’s not. Great guys just don’t grow on trees, okay?”
“They’re all happy.” Uncle Martin pointed out the window. “See all those couples walking along, enjoying a June summer day in Lover’s Valley, the closest thing to God’s country?”
Crystal was slowly losing command of her serene posture. “I do. But they’re not me! If it was that simple, if I could just reach out the door and grab an eligible male, don’t you think I would?” She wouldn’t, but she wanted to win the argument and send her relatives home so she could finish the last-minute alterations on a dress for a bride who’d enjoyed marital relations a little too soon and now couldn’t be shoehorned into her gown.
“You might not do it, but I would!” Aunt Elle cried, her normally soft voice growing loud with daring. “I’d reach out the door and grab the first man I could if you’d just agree to go out on a date with him, Crystal Star Jennings! I can’t bear the thought of you being a wallflower all your life.”
“Well, then go ahead,” Crystal said through gritted teeth. “But don’t blame me if the guy you grab is connected to a furious wife. I’ll swear I had nothing to do with it. I have a weapon, and I’ll protect myself.” She brandished the pin cushion, which cuffed her wrist.
“Go ahead,” Bess urged. “She said she’d go out with any single male you pulled in. It’s just like fishing, sister. Catch us a big one!”
“All right! I will!” Aunt Elle got to her feet. Uncle Martin held the door open and Bess held Elle by the back of her summer dress so she could lean far out into the path of pedestrians—and latched onto the first male sleeve in reach of her fingertips, pulling it with all her might into the bridal salon.
Crystal’s jaw dropped when Elle reeled in her catch, a six-foot-two, ebony-haired, bedroom-blue-eyed hunk…of Mitch McStern. “Not you again!” she exclaimed, wishing with all her might Aunt Elle’s delicate fingers hadn’t been so dastardly.
“Hi, Crystal,” Mitch said.
“Turn him loose, Aunt Elle,” Crystal snapped.
“You said you’d go—” Bess began.
“I know what I said. I don’t have to fall in with a silly prank. A setup.” She turned her back, stuffed the closed sign up in the window and refused to look at any of them. “You can all leave now.” She heard feet shuffling, but didn’t turn around.
Mitch cleared his throat. “They’ve gone. It’s just me, Crystal.”
She told her heart not to beat so fast. She begged her blood not to rush through her veins. With all her will, she pleaded with her ears not to hear the wonderful, heartbreaking baritone of the voice she hadn’t heard in thirteen years.
It was no use.
He was probably married. Heaven only knew, he probably had crowns in every tooth, maybe even six children and no less than two extra inches on his waistline, but she’d never gotten over him.
Never.
