One Night Stand Bride

“I’ve always liked this house,” her father commented to her out of the blue as they found themselves at the small minibar at the same time.

“I think Hendrix mentioned it’s on the Raleigh Historical Society’s list as one of the oldest homes in Oakwood. It’s really beautiful.”

Small talk with her father about her fiancé’s house. It was nearly surreal. They didn’t chat often, though that could be because she rarely gave him a chance. After years of conversations laden with her father’s heavy sighs and pointed suggestions, she preferred their communication to be on a need-only basis.

Maybe that tide had turned. Hendrix, Jonas and Warren had disappeared, likely having a private no-girls-allowed toast somewhere away from the crowd, so there was no one to interrupt this nice moment.

“You haven’t mentioned it, but I’d really like it if you allowed me to walk you down the aisle,” her father suggested casually.

Something bright and beautiful bloomed in her chest as she stared at his aged but still handsome face. She’d never even considered having the kind of wedding where such a thing happened, largely because it had never occurred to her that he’d be open to the idea. They’d never been close, not even after her mother died. The experience of witnessing someone they both loved being eaten alive by cancer should have bonded them. For a long time, she let herself be angry that it hadn’t. Then she’d started to wonder if he’d gotten so lost in his grief that he’d forgotten he had a daughter dealing with her own painful sense of loss.

Eventually, she sought to cauterize her grief in other ways, which had led to even further estrangement. Was it possible that she’d erased years of disappointment with the one simple act of agreeing to Hendrix’s outrageous proposal?

“Of course.” She swallowed a brief and unexpected tide of emotion. “That would be lovely.”

Thankfully, her fiancé was already on board with planning an honest-to-God wedding with all the trimmings. She’d have to talk him into a longer engagement if they were going to have the type of wedding with an aisle, because she’d envisioned showing up at the justice of the peace in a Betsey Johnson dress that could support a corsage. The simpler the better.

But that was out the window. She had another agenda to achieve with her wedding now, and it included walking down an aisle on her father’s arm. Dare she hope this could be a new beginning to their relationship?

“I wasn’t sure you’d like the idea of me marrying Hendrix Harris,” she said cautiously, trying to gauge how this new dynamic was supposed to work. She’d left a message to tell him about the party and its purpose, effectively announcing her engagement to her father via voice mail so he couldn’t express yet more disappointment in her choices.

“I think it’s great,” he said with enthusiasm she’d rarely heard in his voice. “I’m happy that you’re settling down. It will be good for you.”

Keep her out of trouble, more like. It was in the undertone of his words and she chose not to let it sour the moment. She did have some questionable decisions in her rearview mirror or she wouldn’t have needed to marry Hendrix in the first place. The fact that her dad liked the move was a plus she hadn’t dared put on the list of pros, especially given that she was marrying a man her father and everyone else had seen in the buff.

“I think it will be good for me, too,” she said, though her reasons were different than his.

“I did wonder if this wedding wasn’t designed to eliminate the negative effects of that unfortunate photograph on Helene Harris’s campaign.” Her father sipped the scotch in a highball, deliberately creating a pregnant pause that prickled across the back of Roz’s neck. “If so, that’s a good move. Additionally, there are a lot of benefits to being the governor’s daughter-in-law, and I like the idea of being tied to the Harris family through marriage.”