Two-Penny Wedding Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Epigraphs

  Dear Reader

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  Praise for previous books by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  Nanny Angel

  “Karen Toller Whittenburg’s contemporary spin on Mary Poppins is whimsical and amusing. Love is all around in this charming book.”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  ld;This is a wonderful fantasy, with soft, human characters…. A delightful story.”

  —Rendezvous

  The Pauper and the Princess

  “Karen Toller Whittenburg writes some very tender, very sensual scenes.”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  “Well-told tale that will hold the reader’s interest due to strong-willed, dimensional characters.”

  —Rendezvous

  Wedding of Her Dreams

  “Karen Toller Whittenburg bets that clever characters, fast pacing, and wonderfully witty dialogue will delight readers, and wins hands down.”

  —Romantic Times

  “A delightful romance packed with witty characters, humorous situations, and sensuous dialogue that will keep you smiling long after the last page is turned.”

  —Rendezvous

  Dear Reader,

  Magic, like love, is in the eye of the beholder. So who’s to say that magic, along with love, can’t be stitched into the seams of a wedding dress…an antique gown that changes the lives of three special brides and their unsuspecting bridegrooms. I imagined just such a dress and the predicament of a bride who avoids putting on the dress for fear she’ll find herself falling in love with the wrong man. In Two-Penny Wedding, Gentry Shaw convinces her bridesmaids to try on the wedding dress, but as each of them succumbs to love as a result, Gentry comes face-to-face with magic in the form of her first and only love, Jake Daniels.

  Daydreamer that I am, I believe it could happen, and as you read about Gentry and Jake, I hope you will . believe it, too. After all, isn’t there a touch of magic, a gentle twist of fate, any time a man and woman fall in love?

  Two-Penny Wedding

  Karen Toller Whittenburg

  Jolie, Debbi, Crystal, and Bonnie

  This one’s for you.

  Chapter One

  While her three bridesmaids waited in the bedroom, Gentry Elizabeth Northcross adjusted the neckline of her wedding gown and checked her appearance one last time in the dressing-room mirror. The gown left one shoulder bare and angled from the other in a slim, formfitting line that draped completely over one breast and not nearly so completely over the other. From there, the sequined fabric nipped in at her waist, mapped the curve of her hips and flared to a scooped and scalloped hemline, which struck her mid-thigh in front and mid-calf in back. Attached to the swath of material at her shoulder was a diaphanous, cathedrallength train, which floated behind her, its sequins shimmering like a river of rainbows with every move she made.

  The gown was one-of-a-kind, avant-garde, very chic, and every time she looked in the mirror, the neckline seemed a little lower and the hemline a little higher. Resisting the impulse to tug on one or the other, she opened the dressing-room door and stepped into the bedroom.

  Three women—two brunettes and a blonde—turned their heads in her direction. Three pairs of curious eyes—blue, brown and gray—looked her over from head to toe. Three startled expressions and a shared silence confirmed Gentry’s worst fears. She smiled anyway, and did a slow pirouette for her audience. “Well, what do you think?”

  “Oh, Gentry, it’s so…unusual.” That, from Heather, the doe-eyed, diplomatic friend.

  “Isn’t it a little tight for a wedding gown?” Hillary’s eyes were blue, but she saw the world in practical black and white.

  Gentry pulled the gossamer train into a glittery circle around her feet and waited for her best friend and maid of honor to comment. Sydney Ryals examined the gown from sequins to scallops before she lifted skeptical gray eyes. “Where did you get that? The Fairy Godmother’s Thrift Shop?”

  “Sydney!” Heather scolded softly. “It’s not that bad.”

  “Yes, it is. She looks like she was standing on the wrong end of the magic wand when it backfired.”

  “Sonny had it made for me,” Gentry said defensively. “One of his artist friends designed it.”

  “Whoever created this must think he’s Salvador Dali.” Sydney wrinkled her nose as she studied the dress again. “Well, you absolutely can’t wear it.”

  “Of course I’m going to wear it.” She smoothed the sequins covering her hips, uncomfortably aware of the way the fabric clung to her skin. “I wouldn’t dream of hurting Sonny’s feelings by rejecting his thoughtful gift.”

  “What about our feelings?” Sydney’s gesture included the other two. “Our reputations as women of style are at stake. And if your gown looks like that…” She gave a delicate little shudder. “Your fiancé didn’t have his protégé design our dresses, did he?”

  Gentry pursed her lips, annoyed with Sydney for being honest. “No, he didn’t.”

  “He did choose the color.” Hillary settled on the bed and opened a bottle of nail polish. “Gentry selected the style, sent a picture to me, and Heather and I ordered all three of them from Harrods. If you hadn’t been so busy, you could have voiced your opinion. As it is, the dresses will be delivered tomorrow and I can only hope you haven’t put on any weight since you sent your measurements.”

  Sydney dropped onto the chaise longue, picked up a magazine and began flipping through the pages. “Unlike you, Hil, I don’t have to worry about every mouthful of food going straight to my hips. What color did the artistic Sonny select for our ensemble?”

  Hillary looked up from her nails. “Pink.”

  “Rose petal,” Heather corrected her. “That’s the color listed on the order form.”

  “Pink?” Sydney made a face as she looked to Gentry for confirmation. “You let him talk you into pink?”

  Gentry was beginning to wish she hadn’t asked her bridesmaids to spend the entire week before her wedding with her. “He likes the color contrast with my hair.”

  “It’s a visual thing.” Hillary resumed polishing her nails. “You know how artistic men adore contrast.”

  “No, but I know how awful I look in pink. And it isn’t exactly your color, either. If Sonny wanted to see Gentry’s long red tresses against a Pepto-Bismol background, why didn’t he make her dress rose petal pink?”

  “Who can explain the artistic mind?” Hillary gave her head a dramatic toss. “Face it, Syd. Not everyone has your knack for making a fashion statement with sweatpants and flannel shirts.”

  “Play nice, girls.” Heather stepped around the gauzy trail of the wedding train and moved to the window seat, her favorite spot in the room. As children, the four friends had spent hours in this bedroom—Heather sitting in the window seat, knees drawn to her chest, Sydney draped lazily in the chaise longue, an open book or magazine in her lap, Hillary and Gentry lying across opposite ends of the canopied bed—planning futures that had never materialized. “The four of us haven’t been together for ages. We only have seven days and, frankly, I don’t want to spend any of them listening to you two pick at each other.”

  Hillary held out a newly polished fingernail to check the color. “It was only t
wo years ago, Heather. That really doesn’t qualify as ages.”

  “Well, it seems longer than that to me. I don’t know why we can’t see one another more often.”

  “It would be too taxing for Gentry,” Sydney said. “I don’t think she should get married any more often than every two years. These weddings that don’t happen are trying for all of us.”

  “Not to mention the length of her engagements,” Hillary added. “Do you realize, Gen, that, counting both engagements, you’ve been engaged to Sonny longer than it took you to get your art degree?”

  “Does that exclude the brief interlude she was married to someone else?” Sydney asked. “Or do we add in those few months as a bonus for going the distance?”

  “Sonny and I believe a long engagement is the best foundation for a long and happy marriage.”

  “What were you aiming for…a century of wedded bliss? Wouldn’t that require about a decade of engagement?”

  “I think it only calls for a little more than eighteen months, exactly what Sonny and I have had.”

  “This time,” Hillary clarified. “Last time it was a full two years.”

  “And that wedding didn’t happen. What does that do to the long-engagement theory?” Sydney asked.

  “Not a thing,” Gentry said with unruffled confidence. “This wedding will happen as planned. Nothing can stop it from being absolutely perfect.”

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that what you said two years ago?” Sydney flipped a page in the magazine. “Just hours before you left Sonny Harris at the altar to elope with another man.”

  “I’ll thank you not to remind me of that embarrassing lapse in sanity.”

  “Oh, my.” Hillary’s eyebrows rose in alarm. “I hadn’t thought of that. Syd’s right, Gentry. You can’t be married in a white dress. You’ve been married before.”

  Sydney noisily turned another page. “That tradition went out when Elizabeth Post took over for Emily. Since there aren’t many virgins left, brides can wear white as a symbol of their pure hearts.”

  “Who says there aren’t any virgins,” Heather protested from the window seat.

  “I said many, not any.”

  “You’re misinformed,” Hillary stated flatly. “The fact is, Gentry has been married before and she should wear an ivory or cream-colored bridal gown, not white.”

  “That marriage was annulled.” Gentry’s tone posted a warning that this subject wasn’t open for discussion. “Wiped from the records. It didn’t count. It didn’t even exist. I can wear white if I want to.”

  “I don’t see how you can say it didn’t count.” Sydney idly turned a page in the magazine. “Most of the guests you’ve invited to this wedding were here for the last wedding, when you took off with a man you’d known less than two weeks. The smartest thing you ever did…in my humble opinion.”

  There was a moment of stilted silence while Hillary, Sydney and Heather focused on nail polish, a shampoo ad and looking out the window, respectively, to avoid meeting her eyes. Gentry positioned the oval mirror to give herself a view of the room, then stepped back to look at her reflection. “A week from today I’m going to marry the man I should have married two years ago, and I expect my friends to be happy for me.”

  “I’m happy for you.” Heather, always the peacemaker, paved the way.

  “Of course we’re happy for you,” Hillary said. “But I still say you shouldn’t wear a white gown. It just isn’t the correct thing to do.”

  Sydney’s gray eyes met Gentry’s green ones in the mirror. “If you’re happy, I’m happy.”

  “Good, because I’m very happy.”

  “Hooray,” Sydney said dryly. “Now all we have to do is find you something else to wear. Has Sonny seen that dress?”

  “Only a sketch. He says it would be bad luck to see it before the wedding.”

  “Doesn’t he think it would be in bad taste for you to get married in a white gown?”

  Gentry, Sydney and Heather turned a common frown on Hillary, who shrugged. “All right, all right. But I still don’t think a pure heart is an adequate substitute for a time-honored and tasteful tradition.”

  Sydney shook her head. “Honestly, Hillary, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were raised in a convent. You act like you’ve never even been introduced to the concept of sex.”

  “I’ll have you know I’ve been introduced plenty of times, but I fail to see what that has to do with anything.”

  “It means that, according to your time-honored and tasteful tradition of virginal brides, Heather is the only one in this room entitled to wear a white wedding dress.”

  “Hey, just because I haven’t met the right guy…”

  Hillary dismissed Heather’s protest with a wave of her hand, fingers splayed so as not to muss the nail polish. “It means, Sydney, that Gentry is the only one of us who shouldn’t wear white. She’s been married. We haven’t.”

  “It’s women like you, Hillary, who kept the ERA from being ratified.”

  “A feat for which you should be thanking me. Equality with men would be a step down for some of us.”

  “Please don’t start that,” Heather said quickly. “Gentry told you her first marriage was annulled. And she eloped then, anyway. So, technically, this is her first wedding and she can wear any color she wants.”

  “May I suggest rose petal pink?”

  “No, Syd, you may not.” Gentry smoothed the front of her dress and tried to find some redeeming beauty in its uniqueness. “Is this really that bad?”

  “Yes,” Sydney said.

  “It’s awful, Gen.” Hillary wrinkled her nose for emphasis.

  “I’ve seen you in more flattering outfits,” was Heather’s tactful comment.

  With a frown, Gentry checked her reflection again. “Don’t you think you could grow to like it?”

  “Not in this lifetime,” Sydney said.

  “We’re your best friends.” Hillary relaxed against the headboard of the bed. “Would we lie to you?”

  “I wish you would.” In the mirror, Gentry sought Heather’s diplomacy…and received an apologetic shrug of consensus. She lifted her chin. “It’s Sonny’s opinion that matters,” she said stubbornly. “I’m wearing this dress.”

  “It’s your funeral.” Sydney dropped the magazine onto the floor and cupped her hands behind her head. “But then, in my humble opinion, that’s true no matter what dress you wear.”

  Hillary threw a pillow, hitting Sydney’s elbow. “Shut up, Syd. Just because we think she should have stayed married to Jake—”

  A startling, self-conscious silence filled the room, leaving the name echoing in the stillness. All three of the women shot a guilty glance at Gentry, looked away and then began talking at once.

  “Did you guys know that Lucy Pendrax is pregnant?”

  “Let’s listen to some music.”

  “What time is it? I thought we were going to swim before dinner.”

  “Jake.” Gentry raised her voice over their forced chatter and pronounced the name with deliberate casualness. “See? You can say his name in front of me. It doesn’t affect me in the slightest. I hardly even remember what he looks like.”

  Sydney picked up the pillow and propped it behind her head. “Tall, darkly good-looking and sort of mysterious, along the lines of Antonio Banderas, with the body of Schwarzenegger, eyes like Brad Pitt’s, the charisma of Harrison Ford, and a smile that stops your heart.”

  “Don’t forget the way he looks in a pair of Levi’s.”

  “Heather!” Sydney’s tone held surprised admiration. “Don’t tell me you noticed Jake’s butt?”

  “Hips,” Hillary corrected her. “The other term is simply too crude to be used when speaking of one of the finest examples of masculine derrieres I’ve ever had the pleasure of gazing upon.”

  “I’m sorry I asked you three to be in my wedding.” Hands on her hips, Gentry turned to look at her friends in disgust. “If you’d give Sonny a chance,
you might discover he’s twice the man Jake Daniels is, and he’s much more handsome.”

  “Depends on which way he’s facing,” Sydney said.

  “Sonny is gorgeous,” Hillary agreed. “But I’ll take that wild, rugged, sexual quality that Jake has, any day.”

  “Me, too,” Heather said. “In a heartbeat.”

  “You’d live to regret it, too.” Gentry picked up the pillbox hat with matching sequined netting and put it on her head. “Wild and rugged sexuality is not a component of a long and happy marriage.”

  Sydney’s brow furrowed in confusion. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  For a moment, Sydney was speechless. “No wonder Jake kicked you out after only three months.”

  “He did not kick me out. I left him.”

  “But why?” Heather asked. “You two were so insanely in love.”

  “Insane being the operative word.” Gentry adjusted the bridal headpiece and the netting, uncomfortable with the memory of that time in her life. Jake Daniels was in the past and that’s where she meant for him to stay. “I sometimes wonder if I didn’t imagine the whole episode. And now that Sonny and I are back together, it’s really like Jake never existed at all.”

  “Does he still go on those weekend fishing trips with Ben?” Hillary asked. “They were good friends once.”

  “I wouldn’t know. My brother never said anything to me about Jake one way or another. Now that Ben’s married, I doubt he’ll have much time for fishing with anyone. Unless Sara takes up the sport.” Gentry gave an indifferent shrug and hoped that would put an end to this particular topic.

  “I may never forgive Ben for falling in love with her.” Hillary sighed as she recapped the bottle of nail polish. “He swore he would wait for me.”

  “There you have it, Hil,” Sydney said. “He knew there was no danger you would ever grow up.”

  “Ben’s married. I still can hardly believe it.” Heather leaned her head against the dormer wall and looked out the window. “Honestly, Gentry, weren’t you flabbergasted when he told you he was married?”