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“Well . . .” A look of helplessness flashed over Lucy’s face. “He’s perfect. That’s what’s wrong.”
Right then, Meg understood. Lucy couldn’t risk disappointing the people she loved, and now her future husband had become one more person she needed to live up to.
Lucy’s mother, the former president of the United States, chose that moment to stick her head in the bedroom. “Time to go, you two.”
Meg shot up from the couch. Even though she’d been raised around celebrities, she’d never quite lost her sense of awe in the presence of President Cornelia Case Jorik.
Nealy Jorik’s serene patrician features, highlighted honey brown hair, and trademark designer suits were familiar from thousands of photographs, but few of them showed the real person behind the American flag lapel pin, the complicated woman who’d once fled the White House for a cross-country adventure that had led her to Lucy and her sister Tracy, as well as Nealy’s beloved husband, journalist Mat Jorik.
Nealy gazed at them. “Seeing the two of you together . . . It seems like yesterday you were both college students.” A sentimental wash of tears softened the steely blue eyes of the former leader of the free world. “Meg, you’ve been a good friend to Lucy.”
“Somebody had to be.”
The president smiled. “I’m sorry your parents couldn’t be here.”
Meg wasn’t. “They can’t stand being separated for long, and this was the only time Mom could get away from work to join Dad while he’s filming in China.”
“I’m looking forward to his new movie. He’s never predictable.”
“I know they wish they could see Lucy get married,” Meg replied. “Mom, especially. You know how she feels about her.”
“The same way I feel about you,” the president said, too kindly, because in comparison to Lucy, Meg had turned out to be a major disappointment. Now, however, wasn’t the time to dwell on her past failures and dismal future. She needed to mull over her growing conviction that her best friend was about to make the mistake of a lifetime.
Lucy had elected to have only four attendants, her three sisters and Meg. They congregated at the altar while they waited for the arrival of t
he groom and his parents. Holly and Charlotte, Mat and Nealy’s biological daughters, clustered near their parents, along with Lucy’s half sister Tracy, who was eighteen, and their adopted seventeen-year-old African American brother, Andre. In his widely read newspaper column, Mat had stated, “If families have pedigrees, ours is American mutt.” Meg’s throat tightened. As much as her brothers made her feel inferior, she missed them right now.
Out of nowhere, the church doors blew open. And there he stood, silhouetted against the setting sun. Theodore Day Beaudine.
Trumpets began to sound. Honest-to-God trumpets blowing a chorus of hallelujahs.
“Jesus,” she whispered.
“I know,” Lucy whispered back. “Stuff like this happens to him all the time. He says it’s accidental.”
Despite everything Lucy had told her, Meg still wasn’t prepared for her first sight of Ted Beaudine. He had perfectly bladed cheekbones, a flawlessly straight nose, and a square, movie-star jaw. He could have stepped down off a Times Square billboard, except he didn’t have the artifice of a male model.
He strode down the center aisle with a long, easy gait, his dark brown hair kissed with copper. Jeweled light from the stained-glass windows flung precious gems in his path, as if a simple red carpet weren’t good enough for such a man to walk upon. Meg barely noticed his famous parents following a few steps behind. She couldn’t look away from her best friend’s bridegroom.
He greeted his bride’s family in a low-pitched, pleasant voice. The trumpets practicing in the choir loft reached a crescendo, he turned, and Meg got sucker punched.
Those eyes . . . Golden amber touched with honey and rimmed with flint. Eyes that blazed with intelligence and perception. Eyes that cut to the quick. As she stood before him, she felt Ted Beaudine gazing inside her and taking note of everything she worked so hard to hide—her aimlessness, her inadequacy, her absolute failure to claim a worthy place in the world.
We both know you’re a screwup, his eyes said, but I’m sure you’ll grow out of it someday. If not . . . Well . . . How much can anyone expect from an overindulged child of Hollywood?
Lucy was introducing them. “ . . . so glad the two of you can finally meet. My best friend and my future husband.”
Meg prided herself on her tough veneer, but she barely managed a perfunctory nod.
“If I could have your attention . . .” the minister said.
Ted squeezed Lucy’s hand and smiled into his bride’s upturned face, a fond, satisfied smile that never once disturbed the detachment in those tiger quartz eyes. Meg’s alarm grew. Whatever emotions he felt for Lucy, none of them included the fierce passion her best friend deserved.
The groom’s parents were hosting the rehearsal dinner, a lavish barbecue for one hundred, at the local country club, a place that represented everything Meg detested—overindulged rich white people too fixated on their own pleasure to spare a thought for the damage their chemically poisoned, water-guzzling golf course was inflicting on the planet. Even Lucy’s explanation that it was only a semiprivate club and anyone could play didn’t change her opinion. Secret Service kept the international press corps hovering by the gates, along with a crowd of curious onlookers hoping to glimpse a famous face.
And famous faces were everywhere, not just in the bridal party. The groom’s mother and father were world renowned. Dallas Beaudine was a legend in professional golf, and Ted’s mother, Francesca, was one of the first and best of television’s celebrity interviewers. The rich and prominent spilled from the back veranda of the antebellum-style clubhouse as far as the first tee—politicians, movie stars, the elite athletes of the professional golfing world, and a contingent of locals of various ages and ethnicities: schoolteachers and shopkeepers, mechanics and plumbers, the town barber, and a very scary-looking biker.
Meg watched Ted move through the crowd. He was low-key and self-effacing, yet an invisible klieg light seemed to follow him everywhere. Lucy stayed at his side, practically vibrating with tension as one person after another stopped them to chat. Through it all, Ted remained unruffled, and even though the room hummed with happy chatter, Meg found it increasingly difficult to keep a smile on her face. He struck her more as a man executing a carefully calculated mission than a loving bridegroom on the eve of his wedding.
