Dying To Marry Read online

  That coupling would have been as scandalous then as Dylan Dunhill with Lizzie Morrow was now.

  Jake hadn’t known about Pru’s crush back then. Pru herself had told him on their one and only date a few months ago, when she’d had too much to drink and had draped herself over him during the car ride home. “But you only had eyes for trashy Holly Morrow,” she’d slurred, both literally and figuratively. “I don’t know what you saw in that skinny, shy girl in the raggedy hand-me-downs. Yeah, she put out. But I would have, too. A choice between her or me? I mean, c’mon.”

  Jake knew what he saw in Holly Morrow. And it hadn’t taken the mention of her name, the memory of his feelings for her, his love for her, to peel Pru off him and deposit her just inside her front door; Jake would have politely rebuffed her, regardless. The next morning, Pru had called him, giggling about his “taking advantage” of her “low tolerance” for alcohol by making love to her right there in her car, which apparently was what she’d told her friends. Jake had told her five times that nothing had happened, that they hadn’t even so much as kissed, but Pru had decided to believe, or decided to pretend, that they had slept together.

  That was how easy it was to make up a lie. To make up a lie and share it. And suddenly, something that had never happened had happened. Jake knew about the power of lies all too well.

  “Thank you soooo much, Jake,” Pru gushed as he handed her the magazines. “I’m planning on bringing these old magazines to the free clinic Down Hill that the less-than-fortunate in Troutville utilize. Even if those folks can’t afford the fashions in Vogue, they still like to dream,” she added, patting the glossy cover of a beauty magazine.

  Jake responded the way he often did to the unbelievable things that came out of Pru Dunhill’s shiny pink mouth—by just looking at her in disbelief and wondering, somewhat vaguely, if there was anything inside her resembling a decent human being.

  “My goodness, Arianna,” Pru said, staring from the magazine cover to her friend, “You could so easily be a supermodel if you chose to be.”

  But Arianna chose to do absolutely nothing, other than live off her trust fund and occasionally offer decorating tips to her parents’ friends. “Interior decorator” was Arianna’s and Pru’s supposed profession, but in reality, both women dined, shopped, gossiped all day, and paraded themselves in front of Jake and Dylan Dunhill.

  Pru Dunhill was constantly talking up Arianna to Jake. Pru wanted Jake to convince Dylan that Arianna was the woman for him. Pru had been trying to do just that for years with no success. Dylan had dated Arianna in high school and a few times over the years because it was expected by both their families, but he’d never been able to summon any real romantic interest in her. Pru was forever pushing Arianna on Dylan, at family functions, at the mansion, on the streets, everywhere. Even now, when Dylan was spoken for, an engaged man, Pru hadn’t stopped. In fact, she seemed to be working double-time to make Dylan see that he’d overlooked Arianna. Which meant that Arianna walked around in very revealing outfits and Pru spent a lot of time making thinly veiled nasty comments about Lizzie Morrow, Dylan’s fiancée.

  “You are one impossible man to find, Jake Boone,” Pru tsk-tsked with a seductive shake of her head as she stood straight up and turned slightly sideways as she always did to accentuate her chest. She smoothed her hair and twisted a bit on her heels. “Haven’t you gotten my messages about the reunion next weekend? I’ve been calling you all week long.”

  “Pru, I have no interest in attending our class reunion. If you’re forgetting, we had two very different high school experiences. And besides, I work on the weekends. In fact, I’m working now and I’m late for a meeting, so—”

  “Oh, silly Jake,” Pru interrupted, ignoring his need to move along. “You were an entirely different person back then! You would be the hit of the reunion. When everyone sees how you’ve changed, they’ll be positively shocked. I mean, no one else in our class went from complete and utter ruffian to a successful Mr. GQ. Everyone from the wrong side of the tracks stayed there. But you showed everyone what a little polish can do. Do try to attend, Jake. I’ll save you a dance.”

  If that was a promise, he most certainly would not try to attend. Not that he would try, period. He’d already “tried” once with Pru, and that had been more than enough. Why he let Dylan talk him into finally asking out his sister was beyond him. Dylan insisted his sister had some good qualities and that maybe she’d become a normal person if she was happily ensconced in a relationship with the guy she’d loved for twenty years. Their one and only date hadn’t been an out-and-out disaster, but Jake didn’t like Pru and he never would.

  “Dylan’s going to the reunion, isn’t he?” Arianna asked hopefully. “He’s on the list.”

  “Yes, he mentioned he’s planning to go,” Jake responded, eyeing his watch—a pointless gesture, since the two women had no interest in others’ social cues. Such as the fact that Jake was desperate to escape them.

  “I suppose he’ll be going with Lizzie Morrow,” Arianna said, venom dripping onto the name.

  “Well, she is his fiancée, so I imagine so,” Jake said, mentally shaking his head in wonder. Dylan and Lizzie were getting married in three weeks whether Pru or Arianna liked it or not.

  Pru mock-shivered. “I will never understand that match. My brother with Lizzie Morrow! My gorgeous, successful brother with that lowlife bimbo. Ick—what he sees in her is beyond me. I mean, the woman is so beneath him!”

  “She’s totally bottom of the barrel,” Arianna added, tossing her long blond hair behind her shoulder.

  Pru leaned in close as if sharing a confidence. “When my mother told me that my brother—the most eligible bachelor in town, in the state, probably—had been carrying on some kind of secret affair with Lay Me Lizzie, I almost dropped dead.”

  “Of course he kept it a secret,” Arianna said. “He was obviously way too embarrassed to let anyone know he was dating her.”

  “Trust me, for Dylan to be engaged to her, she must have something on him,” Pru insisted. “He can tell me he’s in love till he’s blue in the face, but I know she has something on him. Something really bad. There’s no other reason he’d marry her.”

  Jake had had more than enough. “Not that I want to dignify any of your sickening conversation with my own two cents,” he said, his stomach turning, “but just what terrible deed do you think Dylan has committed that would be worthy of such blackmail? Did either of you ever stop to think that he simply loves Lizzie? You two should know better than anyone that Dylan Dunhill defers to no one. He’s his own man. If he didn’t love Lizzie, very much, I might add, he would not be marrying her.”

  “Give me a break,” Pru said, rolling her eyes.

  “I agree with Pru one hundred percent,” Arianna said. “She is very smart. I mean, c’mon, Jake. Why would a man like Dylan want Lizzie? Did you see Lizzie today? She’s wearing the tackiest outfit I’ve ever seen—I spotted her a half mile away this morning. First of all, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a skirt that short, that bright, or that cheap-looking. I swear it’s made out of a plastic garbage bag or something!”

  The two women shared a laugh. “And c’mon, that hair?” Pru said. “How bleached can it get before it all falls out?”

  “Lizzie’s hair is so big, it’ll take forever to all fall out!” Arianna added.

  As the women laughed, Jake felt his stomach turn over, as it had been doing since they began their verbal attack on Lizzie Morrow.

  “I’m not going to waste my time correcting you both,” Jake said, “But I happen to like Lizzie a lot. And your brother happens to love her,” he added with a sharp glance at Pru. “So why don’t you keep your vicious comments to yourselves.”

  “Jeez, Jake,” Arianna muttered. “A little harsh.”

  “No,” Jake corrected as a train rumbled into the station. “It’s the two of you who are harsh—and that’s about the weakest word I can think of to describe you both.”

&n
bsp; “Whatever,” Arianna snapped. She said something under her breath, but with the roar of the train slowing to a stop, Jake couldn’t hear her. His lucky day.

  “Oh, come on, Jake,” Pru exclaimed. “Don’t be such a fuddy-duddy! C’mon, give us that famous Jake Boone smile. C’mon, let’s see it.” She leaned against him and ran a hand along his stomach to tickle him, just above his belt buckle, and pressed her body hard against his. He felt her breasts crush against his chest, and she spread her legs against his leg and leaned even closer against him. “Smile for me, Jake,” she whispered huskily in his ear as she ran a finger along his neck. “C’mon, honey.”

  “Get a room!” Arianna shouted with a giggle.

  Embarrassed and repulsed, Jake stepped back, but Pru stepped forward and almost stumbled. He reached out to steady her, and she fell into his arms. “There’s so much more where that came from, Jake,” she whispered. “You know where I live.”

  In a dungeon? he wanted to say, but held his tongue.

  “Oh, look, there’s the bimbo bride-to-be now,” Pru said, nodding her chin way up the platform.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jake saw Lizzie Morrow and her friends Gayle and Felicia come through the station’s double doors onto the platform. They stood close to the wall and seemed to be in animated conversation. For a second he imagined they were waiting for Holly Morrow. The four had been best friends their entire lives until Holly had moved away after high school, and whenever he saw the three women, he always felt Holly’s absence the strongest, as though something were definitely wrong with this picture.

  Holly would have a good laugh over that. What was wrong with this picture, according to Holly, was anyone living in Troutville a second longer than they had to.

  He shook thoughts of Holly from his mind. The last place he’d ever see her was in Troutville.

  “I can’t believe Lizzie’s walking around in public in that outfit!” Arianna exclaimed, loudly, of course. “And look at those tacky friends of hers. They make me so sick.”

  “I happen to like Lizzie’s friends, too,” Jake snapped. “So I’d appreciate it if you kept your comments about them to yourselves.”

  Arianna smiled. “Jake, you don’t need to be so charitable. Just because you’re friends with Dylan doesn’t mean you have to like his so-called fiancée’s friends.”

  “Ugh—don’t even call her his fiancée,” Pru said. “That’s way too official. I doubt they’ll ever make it to the altar.”

  Jake eyed Pru and mentally filed away that last comment. “There’s my client now, so good-bye, ladies.” As he stepped away, he heard Arianna say to Pru, “He so wants you.”

  Of all the false statements that came rushing out of Pru and Arianna’s mouths, that one could easily take first place as the least true.

  As the train slowed to a stop at the Troutville station, Holly spotted her cousin immediately, despite how crowded the platform was. Lizzie’s long platinum curls, fuchsia top and ruffly skirt stood out against the gray, soggy August morning. Holly’s heart leapt at the sight of Lizzie, who as usual was in the middle of an animated conversation, talking with her hands and throwing her head back in laughter.

  Oh, how good it was to see Lizzie! Holly saw Lizzie so infrequently, which was Holly’s own fault. Several times a year, Lizzie would take the two-hour train ride to Hoboken, where Holly lived, and sometimes, Lizzie’s mom and Gayle and Flea would come, too. And every time the train took them all away, back where Holly couldn’t bear to go, couldn’t even bear to think about, her heart would close up just a little bit more.

  When the train doors opened, Holly saw Lizzie stop in mid-sentence and jump up and down, trying to see over heads through the windows. Holly laughed. Standing next to Lizzie was the old gang, Gayle Green and Flea Harvey, whose real name was Felicia. The four of them had been best friends through grade school and middle school and high school, and whenever Holly talked to Lizzie, Lizzie’s conversation was peppered with who Gayle was dating and what exquisite dress Flea had made, and for just a moment, Holly was almost nostalgic for the old days, the friendship, the insular world they’d created in the face of exclusion and derision.

  The four girls had spent their after-school hours in an abandoned playground near the railroad tracks that separated their Troutville from the Dunhills’ Troutville. There, they dreamed for the present, for the future. They talked about boys they liked, clothes they wanted, teachers they liked, what they wanted to do after high school. And every so often, when it hurt so bad it couldn’t be ignored or forgotten, they’d talk about how they were treated in Troutville. The rumors. The stories. The lies. And they’d soothe themselves with dreams of leaving town after high school. But only Holly had left. Lizzie had become a barmaid at Morrow’s Pub. Gayle was a secretary and had recently enrolled at the local college. And Flea, an exceptional seamstress, now owned the small dress shop she used to work in.

  When Holly used to bring up plans for after graduation, the girls would talk big, about heading to sleepy southern towns or for the big city lights, but Lizzie’s mom had broken her leg at the graduation ceremony itself and Lizzie felt she should stick around until her mom’s leg healed. But it never did heal properly and Lizzie stayed on at the bar—waitressing until she came of legal age to bar-tend. By then, Lizzie had said, she had put down some new roots, some different roots, made some new friends at the bar. She liked her job and she liked her cozy little bungalow.

  Gayle had stayed for a man. A boy she’d been crazy about in high school had gone to law school and come back and opened his own practice, and when Gayle saw his advertisement for a receptionist, that was that. After a few of her hints about dinner or a drink, he’d told her he thought it best not to mix business and pleasure. So Gayle took pleasure in just continuing her crush and had decided to pursue becoming a paralegal or even a lawyer herself.

  Then there was Flea, who’d dreamed of making dresses for a major designer in New York City and opening her own business, but had instead taken a job sewing dresses in a claustrophobic back room of a dress shop Down Hill, which at least she now owned. Word-of-mouth of Flea’s amazing handiwork had spread, and Up Hill women sometimes ventured down to her shop or had her come to their homes with fabrics and a sketch pad.

  Their lives were full and busy, and after a while, Holly had stopped asking when they were going to leave town. And her friends had stopped asking her to come visit, since she always made excuses. They enjoyed coming to Hoboken, a fun town just across the river from New York City. And when she’d drive them to the train, that tiny part of her wished she could go back with them, to find the peace with Troutville that they’d found. The peace with themselves.

  As Holly looked out the window, she noticed that Flea was arranging her hair back around her face, taking care to cover the patches of scars on her neck. Oh, Flea, Holly thought, her heart squeezing. Flea had barely escaped a fire when she was fourteen, but she hadn’t escaped the nasty rumors that her own father had set the fire for the insurance money. Flea had just added those mean lies to all the others that people liked to tell about the four friends.

  It’s because you’re all so pretty and smart and kind, Holly’s mother always said whenever Holly came running home with tears in her eyes. You may not be rich, but you and your friends have character—and that’ll end up buying you everything you need.

  Before Holly had left for Troutville this morning, she’d called her mother in Florida, and let her know the big news that Lizzie was getting married—to a Dunhill. And that Holly would be spending the weekend—and possibly the next three weeks—in Troutville.

  “You just forget the past, honey,” her mother had advised. “And don’t you worry about Lizzie. She’s a flamboyant girl, but she’s got a good head on her shoulders. If she’s marrying a Dunhill, then he must be all right. Who knows, maybe things have changed at last.”

  But Dylan Dunhill wasn’t all right. How could he be? And what could have possibly changed in Troutvill
e, ten years or not? Nothing had changed during the eighteen years Holly had lived there. Perhaps the sunny warmth and swaying palm trees of Florida had worked their magic on her mom, making her forget just how awful they’d all been treated in Troutville. Then again, her mom had always been a turn-the-other-cheek type of person. “We know who we are and what we’re made of,” her mom had often said, “so who cares what some people think of us?”

  Holly cared. She’d always cared. She’d tried so hard not to, just as Lizzie, Gayle, and Flea had tried. But they’d all failed. They’d cared plenty.

  Holly sighed. Heavy-hearted, she stood and collected her suitcase from the overhead rack and waited to exit the busy train. She glanced out the window as another flash of blond hair caught her attention.

  Holly stiffened.

  It was Prudence Dunhill.

  Pru stood in the center of the platform, unmistakable despite the decade that had passed since Holly had seen her. Voted “Best Looking” by their class, Pru had saucer-wide blue eyes, long blond hair, and a fantastic figure. On prom night, just before Holly’s argument with Jake, Holly had run into Pru and her friend Arianna having their own argument in the school gymnasium’s courtyard; apparently, Arianna, who’d been crowned prom queen, was upset that Pru had been voted Best Looking. Arianna felt that she should have taken that honor (she’d come in second) as her boyfriend at the time, Dylan, had won Best Looking and prom king. Holly had been shocked by their conversation; the two girls had been friends forever, but there was nothing friendly about their fight.

  “Well, I won, Arianna,” Pru had snapped. “What do you want me to do about it? If everyone thinks I’m the best-looking girl of our class, I must be.”