The Bridesmaid's Baby. Barbara Hannay

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СКАЧАТЬ don’t say that.’ Mattie laughed nervously. ‘You’ll make me cry.’

      ‘And me,’ moaned Lucy.

      Already, at the mere thought of an emotional bridegroom, she could feel mascara-threatening tears about to spill.

      Oh, help. Weddings were such poignant affairs. And today Will was going to be there, looking dashing as the best man. How on earth was she going to get through the next few hours?

      Dressed in matching dark formal suits with silver ties and orange blossoms in their lapels, Jake, Will and Tom were ushered into the minuscule vestry and instructed to wait till it was time to take their places at the front of the church.

      Will anxiously patted a pocket in his suit jacket. ‘The rings are still safe.’

      Jake grinned and laid a reassuring hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘That’s the third time you’ve checked the rings in the past five minutes. Relax, man, they’re not going to grow legs and run away.’

      ‘Jake’s the guy who’s supposed to be nervous,’ added Tom with a grin.

      Will nodded and tried to smile. ‘Sorry. Don’t know what’s got into me.’ He shot Jake a questioning glance. ‘Aren’t you even a little nervous?’

      ‘Why should I be nervous?’

      ‘You’re getting married.’ Will wished his voice wasn’t so hoarse. His sleepless night was really getting to him. ‘It’s par for the course for a bridegroom to have the jitters,’ he said.

      ‘But I’m marrying Mattie,’ Jake responded simply, as if that explained everything. And his glowing smile made it patently clear that he knew, without doubt, he was the luckiest man alive.

      Will wished he felt a fraction of his mate’s happiness.

      ‘So where are you heading for your honeymoon?’ he asked. ‘Or is that a state secret?’

      Jake grinned. ‘The exact location is a surprise for Mattie, but I’ll tell you two.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I’m taking her to Italy. She’s never been overseas, so we’re going to Venice, Lake Como and the Amalfi Coast.’

      ‘Wow!’ Tom’s jaw dropped. ‘That’s so over the top it’s fabulous. You’ll have an amazing time.’

      Jake nodded happily but, before he could say anything else, the minister appeared at the vestry door and sent them a smiling wink. ‘Could you come this way now please, gentlemen?’

      A chill ran down Will’s spine. For crying out loud, what was the matter with him today? Anyone would think he was the one getting married, or that they were criminals being led to the dock.

      ‘All the best, mate,’ he whispered gruffly to Jake.

      ‘Thanks.’

      The two friends shook hands, then headed through the little doorway that led into the church, where an incredible transformation had occurred.

      Not only was the place packed to the rafters with people dressed in their best finery, but there were flowers and white ribbons everywhere—dangling from the ends of pews, wound around columns, adorning windowsills and filling vases, large and small.

      And there was organ music, billowing and rippling like the background music in a sentimental movie. Will tried to swallow the lump in his throat. Why was it that weddings were designed to zero straight in on unsuspecting emotions?

      He glanced at Jake and saw his Adam’s apple jerk.

      ‘You OK?’ he whispered out of the side of his mouth.

      ‘I’ll be fine once Mattie gets here.’

      ‘She won’t be late,’ Will reassured him and again he nervously patted the rings in his pocket.

      There was a flurry in the little porch at the back of the church and, as if everyone had been choreographed, the congregation turned. Will felt fine hairs lift on the back of his neck. His stomach tightened.

      The girls appeared in a misty mirage of white and pink. Will blinked. Lucy, Gina and Mattie looked incredibly out-of-this-world beautiful in long feminine dresses and glamorous hairstyles, and with their arms filled with flowers.

      He heard Jake catch his breath, felt goose-bumps lift on his arms.

      The organist struck a dramatic chord.

      Lucy and Gina, apparently satisfied with their arrangement of Mattie’s dress and veil, took their places in front of her, Lucy first.

      Will couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t trembling.

      Lucy stood, shoulders back, looking straight ahead, with her blonde head high, her blue eyes smiling. To Will she looked vulnerable and yet resolute and his heart began to thunder loudly.

      It was so weird.

      He’d seen countless weddings and endless processions of bridesmaids, but none of them had made him feel the way he felt now as the organist began to play and Lucy began to walk down the aisle with her smile carefully in place.

      She’d always tried to pretend she was a tomboy, keeping her hair short and wispy and preferring to live in T-shirts and jeans, but today nothing could hide her femininity.

      Her pastel off-the-shoulders dress and the soft pink lilies in her arms highlighted the paleness of her hair, the honey-gold tints in her skin, the pink lushness of her lips. She had never looked lovelier.

      Except perhaps…that one night on a shadowy veranda, when she’d turned to him with tears in her eyes…

      He willed her to look at him. Just one glance would do. For old friendship’s sake. He wanted eye contact, needed to send her one smile, longed for one tiny link with her.

       Come on, look this way, Lucy.

      She smiled at the people in the congregation, at her particular friends, at Jake, but her gaze didn’t flicker any further to the right. It was clear she did not want to see Will.

      Or, perhaps, she simply felt no need.

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