“No, thank you.” Jeanette’s toe, in a dull pink pump, tapped a stern tattoo. “I would prefer you worry about Miss Blogden’s gown rather than my attire. She and her mother are supposed to be here in half an hour. Mrs. Blogden will be furious if the dress isn’t finished.”
“Don’t worry.” Samantha retrieved a sewing kit and some pink silk from an antique armoire, then returned to the dais where the dress in question was reflected in a three-way mirror. “It won’t take me long.”
“Good grief, Sam!” Jeanette advanced from the office to the hat stand in the middle of the room—a more strategic spot for lecturing. “Must you always wait until the last minute? You know what Mrs. Blogden’s like.”
Sam sighed. Besides wearing boring clothes, Jeanette’s favorite activity was to lecture Sam on her habit of procrastinating. Sam listened sometimes, and even made sporadic efforts to change, but somehow her bad habits always crept back.
“Don’t worry,” Sam said again. “The dress will be ready.” Kneeling beside the mannequin, she twirled a piece of silk into a rose shape and stitched it onto the skirt of the wedding gown.
Jeanette chewed her lip. “I hate to leave you alone with her, but I promised Matt I’d come home early tonight.”
“Oh?” Sam glanced sideways at her sister. “How is Matt?”
Jeanette’s expression closed up. “He’s fine,” she said shortly.
Sam didn’t press. She knew Jeanette and her husband had been arguing a lot lately, but Jeanette was as unrevealing as her suit when it came to talking about her marriage. Sam hoped the couple found some way to resolve their problems—for the sake of their three children if nothing else.
“Go on then,” Sam told her. “Go home. Don’t worry about Mrs. Blogden.”
“I can’t help worrying about Mrs. Blogden,” Jeanette muttered. “I can’t afford to lose any clients.” She straightened a veil on the hat stand. “By the way, Brad Rivers called half an hour ago. He wanted to talk to you.”
“Brad?” Sam’s thimble fell to the floor and rolled off the dais, but she paid no attention. “What did he want?”
“If you’d been here on time, you would know.”
Sam rolled her eyes at her sister’s back as Jeanette retreated into her office. “Did he say anything?” she called after her.
“Not really.” Jeanette’s muffled voice floated out. “Just that he would call again later.”
How odd. Sam crouched down to look for her thimble. She’d barely talked to Brad since Christmas, eight months ago. She’d just returned to Southern California after a two-year absence, and when she arrived—late—at her mother’s house, she’d been delighted to see him. Only he hadn’t been so happy to see her. He’d been stiff, almost unfriendly. She’d thought at first that her long absence was responsible for his behavior. But as the day wore on and he didn’t loosen up, she’d realized something else was bothering him. She’d asked him flat out what was wrong, but he’d said everything was fine.
She’d called him several times over the next several months and left messages, but some barrier remained. When he’d made some excuse not to come to Easter dinner, everyone in her family had been surprised. He’d spent every holiday with them since Samantha was fourteen. And suddenly he couldn’t come because of “pressing demands at work”?
Hurt and confused, she’d stopped calling. He hadn’t made any effort to contact her. Until today.
Sam frowned at the rose she’d just sewn into place. What could he want to talk to her about now, after ignoring her for so long?
Jeanette came back out of her office with her purse and a stack of magazines. “Here are the latest bridal magazines. And something else I thought you’d like to see.”
She held up a tabloid newspaper and Sam stared at the picture on the cover of a man splaying his hand outward in an effort to block his face from the camera.
Is This Man Too Good to Be True? screamed the headline.
In spite of his outstretched hand, Sam recognized him immediately. “Brad?” She reached for the tabloid. “Does this have something to do with why he called me?”
“Maybe.” Jeanette held the magazine out of Sam’s reach and flipped through the pages. “It says that he’s selling RiversWare for $100 million and giving half the profits to his employees. Can you believe that?”
“He always was generous.” Absently, Sam sewed another rose on the dress. “But what does that have to do with me?”
“It says in here somewhere…oh, here it is, listen to this—‘although Rivers declined to be interviewed for this article, a reliable source tells us that he plans to use the money to convince his sweetheart to marry him!”’ Jeanette lowered the newspaper and stared at Samantha. “He must mean you, Sammy.”
Sam pricked her finger with the needle. Swearing under her breath, she sucked at the spot of blood before it could stain the white satin. “You’re crazy. Brad and I were never interested in each other. We were just friends.”
Jeanette snorted. “What guy is friends with a girl? Brad was in love with you.”
“No, he wasn’t. He was in love with Blanche Milken, remember?”
“Ha. He never cared about Blanche the way he did about you. He wasn’t the same after you and Maria Vasquez left on that wild road trip cross-country—and you should have seen his face when Mom told him that you’d decided to go backpacking across Europe!”
“You should have seen his face when he saw me last Christmas!” Sam retorted. “The rocks at Stonehenge had more expression. He was not welcoming home his long-lost love, believe me.”
“You always were blind about Brad. But I don’t have time to argue with you. I’ve got to run.” Jeanette set the magazines and tabloid on the floor. “It’s past six o’clock. Come lock the door after I leave.”
Sam automatically complied—Jeanette worried about Sam being alone in the shop after hours—then returned to where she’d been sitting, her brow furrowed. Blind about Brad? That wasn’t true. Sam had known him better than anyone.
Her gaze drifted to the stack of magazines. The tabloid rested on top. Slowly, she picked up the newspaper and opened it. Inside was another picture, although the caption identified this one as being five years old. Brad stood with his hands shoved in the pants pockets of his ill-fitting brown polyester suit, his shoulders slightly hunched. His gray-blue eyes, the color obscured by the glasses he wore, gazed off into the distance as if contemplating some thorny dilemma.
Samantha smiled a little. She remembered that suit—he’d bought it at a thrift shop to wear to graduation. She recognized his pose, too—it was so typically Brad. The first time she’d seen him, when he moved in with his grandmother down the street from her parents’ house, he’d been standing exactly the same way. He’d been seventeen, a senior in high school, quiet and serious. Only fourteen herself, she hadn’t seen much of him until one day at school when she came upon some of the jocks—including her boyfriend, Pete—picking on him. Indignantly, she’d
