Paper Wedding, Best-Friend Bride by Sheri WhiteFeather

Author:Sheri WhiteFeather
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2016-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

Eight

Lizzie glanced around her condo. Everything was in order, neat as a pin. The decorative pillows on her sofa were plumped. The magazines on the end tables were angled just so. She had a platter of fresh-cut fruit and gourmet cheeses in the fridge, along with a liter bottle of her dad’s favorite soda. She’d invited him over today.

“I hate seeing you like this,” Max said.

She turned to look at him. He’d come by for moral support, but he wasn’t staying. He would be leaving before her dad arrived. “I’ll be all right.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to hang around?” He stood in the middle of her living room, his thumbs hooked in his jeans pockets. “We can both tell him about the wedding. After all, I am the guy you’re going to marry.”

“I think it’s better for me to do this alone.” She couldn’t handle sitting there, pretending to be Max’s fiancée in front of her father, not with how uncomfortably romantic this wedding was beginning to make her feel. “Besides, what’s the point of you expending the energy to try to become his son-in-law when we’ll just be getting divorced later?”

“We’ve been expending that type of energy for everyone else. And at least he already knows me.” He crinkled his forehead. “I’ll never forget the first time I met him.”

“And how awkward it was?” When they were teenagers, she’d invited Max to the house for Christmas dinner, and the three of them had stumbled through a stilted conversation, with a big professionally decorated tree in the background. After Mama died, Dad always hired someone to dress the tree. But for Lizzie that just made the glittery ornaments and twinkling lights seem fake and lonely.

Sometimes, even now, she brought Max with her on that dreaded holiday, just so she didn’t have to suffer through it by herself. Last Christmas was particularly odd. Rather than going to the house, they’d dined on a catered meal at Dad’s high-rise office, before he’d jetted off for an overseas business trip, leaving her and Max alone for the rest of the day.

“Yeah, it’s always awkward with your dad,” he said. “But how often do you see him? Once, maybe twice a year?”

“I wish I didn’t feel obligated to spend every dang Christmas with him.” But it had become a painful ritual neither of them had broken.

Max sent her a concerned look. “Have you decided what you’re going to do?”

“If I’m going to ask him to give me away?” She released an audible breath. It was a loaded question, filled with jittery bullets. “I have mixed feelings about it.” Mixed and shaken. “I’m nervous about walking down the aisle by myself, so in that respect, it will be nice to have someone by my side. But with how distant my relationship is with him, will it even make a difference?”

“Whatever you choose to do, just remember that I’ll be waiting for you at the altar.”

Her temporary groom? Just thinking about kissing him at the wedding was already filling her with a flood of unwelcome warmth.

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