Hope inhaled a deep breath and remained calm for the woman beside her. “Some men—some people—don’t know how to express what they’re feeling in a way we all understand. For fathers, I think the wedding day is that one last hurrah that he can do for you. He’s trying to show his love by giving you everything he thinks you want. But I’m guessing—behind the frustration and anger—that he’s afraid.”
Deanna sniffed. “Of what?”
“That he’s failed you. That if he’d done something more or less or different, then you wouldn’t be having second thoughts about getting married.”
Deanna blinked a few last tears from her dark brown eyes and looked at Hope. “Dad never failed me.” Lucky woman. “It’s just that today has gotten so out of hand. There’s so much that has to happen.”
“There’s only one thing that has to happen.” Hope reached over and patted Deanna’s hand. “Don’t think about the pressures of the day—that’s what I’m here for. Think about yourself, and the future you’ll have with your husband.”
A soft knock at the door ended the conversation. “Dee?” The groom covered his eyes as Hope let him in. “Your dad said you were freaking out. Is everything okay?” he asked, peeking between the fingers of his crisp white gloves.
Hope pointed to the woman rising to her feet. “I thought maybe you two could use a quiet minute alone.”
He dropped his hand and turned to his bride-to-be. “Wow.”
Deanna blushed at his unabashed appreciation for the image she created in the subtly blinged gown she wore. “Jeff. You shouldn’t see me before the wedding.”
“There is going to be a wedding, right?”
Hope politely faded into the woodwork when the bride’s and groom’s eyes locked onto each other’s. There was so much love, acceptance and desire in Jeff Stelling’s eyes that she didn’t see how any woman could hesitate to commit to a man who looked at her that way.
“That’s all that has to happen today.” Deanna repeated Hope’s words and met her fiancé in the middle of the room. “You and me. I want to spend my life with you.”
“I love you, Dee. Come upstairs and start that life together with me. Please?”
“I love you.” He leaned in for a kiss before Deanna shooed him out. “Okay. Go up to the church. Tell Dad I’ll meet him upstairs. Hope? Can you make me gorgeous again in five minutes?”
Crisis averted. Tally up one more happily-ever-after. For someone else. The phone was vibrating against her hip again. Her past was calling. Ignoring it, Hope smiled. “You bet.”
Chapter One
“Really?” Hope squinted and averted her eyes from the bright headlights that filled up her rearview mirror. “You’re following a little close, buddy.”
She gripped the steering wheel more tightly and pressed on the gas to put some distance between them. She wasn’t a nervous driver at all. But normally she wasn’t out this late, and she didn’t take the shortcut off the interstate through the heart of the city. But cleanup after the Barrister-Stelling wedding had run long past the end of the dinner and dancing. And though she wasn’t the one actually bussing the tables, there were family pictures and table decorations she’d promised to hold on to until after the honeymoon. Then the gifts had to be delivered to their parents’ hotel rooms. Other than the hotel staff, she’d been the last person to leave the reception.
So what if her panty hose had long since cut off the circulation to her toes? Or if she’d have to unload every last box in the trunk and backseat of her car herself because she’d sent her assistant home. Hope had earned a tidy fortune with this event. Earned every last penny playing fashion consultant, wedding planner and family counselor. The sooner she got home, the sooner she could celebrate with a glass of wine and a long, hot bubble bath. Or maybe she’d skip them both and just fall straight into bed and sleep until Monday.
“What the heck?”
The same lights rushed up behind her a second time, nearly blinding her. “Jackass.”
Hope blamed the unlady-like condemnation on the length of the day and the unwanted calls piling up on her cell phone that bothered her more than she cared to admit. She must have a stamp on her forehead that said “Pick on me” today. Just because she tended to be shy and soft-spoken didn’t mean she lacked backbone or a brain or a temper. When the driver flashed his lights through her rear window, she muttered another word in the Ozark accent that crept into her voice whenever she got a little too angry or afraid. She double-checked her speed. She wasn’t poking along, by any means. Still, if the guy was in that much of a hurry...
Pulling closer to the parking lane so he could pass, Hope adjusted her charcoal-framed glasses to try to catch a look at the driver and license plate on the beat-up white van. But it veered so close as it sped past that it nearly clipped the side mirror on her car. “Hey!”
The van shot back into the lane in front of her, forcing Hope to stomp on the brake and skid to a stop. Glass rattled and boxes shifted behind her as several brief images printed like snapshots in her brain. A shadowy figure dressed in dark clothes sat behind the steering wheel. He wore a black knit cap pulled low over his forehead and a white scarf across his nose and mouth, hiding all but his eyes. In those brief milliseconds when he’d looked down into her car, she was certain their gazes had met, although he flew on by before the details completely registered. A shiny silver bumper that seemed at odds with the rusting wheel wells and dinged-up back doors was the last image she saw before it disappeared into the night.
“Where’s a cop when you need one?” She sighed, fighting a niggling sense of unease that her sleep-deprived brain was keeping her from recognizing something important.
“Need some help, sugar?” A trio of young men, dressed in hoods and jeans and more jewelry than she owned, knocked on her passenger-side window.
Startled by their approach and frightened by their leering smiles, Hope stepped on the accelerator and did a little speeding herself—leaving a trail of rubber, laughter and catcalls in her wake.
She drove three more blocks before she eased up on the gas. Hope inhaled a deep breath and ordered herself to get a grip. It was probably just the neighborhood she was driving through that had made her suspicious of the van and driver. Besides the three young men, she’d passed a homeless man pushing his cart along the sidewalk, and at least one scantily clad woman who’d been leaning into a parked car—either picking up a client, making a drug buy or both.
If Hope wasn’t so darned nearsighted, maybe she could have read the van’s license plate, even on the dimly lit street. If she wasn’t so distracted by those unwanted phone calls, she could have gotten a useful description of the driver. If she wasn’t so worn-out, maybe she would have taken the long way home and bypassed this run-down neighborhood where she had no business driving alone, anyway.
Hope breathed a sigh of relief as she finally left the less savory section of the city behind her and drove past the familiar landmarks of renovated art deco buildings, solid midcentury brownstones and converted warehouses that now housed trendy new businesses and condo apartments like her own. Her company improved, too. Instead of the prostitute and gangbangers, and rude drivers crowding her on the street, she drove past a busy bar with a neon green shamrock sign and a group of friends standing outside the front door, sharing
