Free Lori Wilde - There Goes The Bride by Unknown

Jim Bob never regretted any decision more.
    When Honey had told him he would get absolutely no say in raising Delaney, he’d stepped out of the picture as far as discipline was concerned. Even when he didn’t agree with something his wife was doing, like putting Delaney on a strict diet, or pressuring her into plastic surgery, or egging her on to marry Evan, he’d kept his mouth shut. Jim Bob’s ideas on child rearing had gotten his oldest daughter killed. What in the hell did he know? He couldn’t buck Honey on anything.
    Jim Bob peered over the top of his newspaper. Honey was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the wedding veil as if it were a poisonous viper. She was so damn determined this wedding had to meet some impossibly high standard she’d set up in her own mind. It was costing him a fortune, but the money wasn’t what bothered Jim Bob. He worried that Delaney was getting married simply to please her mother.
    Not that he disliked his future son-in-law. Evan Van Zandt was a good guy and came from a very respectable family. Delaney could do far worse. It was just that, because of Honey’s overprotectiveness, Delaney had never really experienced life. Evan was the only man she’d ever dated. She’d never lived on her own, nor was she well traveled. She hadn’t even worked at anything other than this little business venture she’d started, except teaching undergrads when she was working on her master’s degree.
    If it weren’t for Honey pressuring her friends into using All the World’s a Stage when they sold their houses, he doubted Delaney could keep the business afloat without tapping into the trust fund his mother had set up for her. Jim Bob couldn’t help feeling that his daughter deserved so much more out of life.
    But how could he advise Delaney on marriage when his own was in such rocky shape?
    Where had things gotten so messed up?
    He looked at Honey. A sweep of blond hair had fallen across her cheek, and his heart wadded in his chest. The past was gone, and he felt the future ebbing away like hourglass sand. God, he’d screwed things up so badly.
    “I’ve let you down,” he said to Honey.
    “Excuse me?” She looked up, assessing him with cool green eyes that revealed nothing. The same inscrutable eyes Delaney had inherited.
    “Over the years, I haven’t been the kind of husband you deserved.”
    She stared at him for a long moment then said, in the oddest tone of voice, “I got exactly what I deserved.”
    “You didn’t deserve an alcoholic.”
    “James Robert, you’ve been sober for fifteen years. It’s all in the past. Forget about it.”
    “I’ll never be able to forget it. Or what I did to you and Delaney,” he said. “I haven’t really made full amends.”
    “Yes, you have.”
    “If I’d truly made amends then why haven’t you forgiven me? I’m so sorry I hurt you, Honey. So very sorry.”
    “You’re forgiven. Now can we stop talking about this, please?”
    “You should have divorced me.”
    “I’m going to keep this veil,” she said, getting up and crossing the room to put the veil in her closet. “If Delaney wants it back, she’s going to have to ask me for it.”
    It irritated him that she pretended to forgive him when he knew she hadn’t. She punished him every day. Like she was doing now. By not allowing him to say what he needed to say. By dismissing his apology as inconsequential.
    “I want things to be better between us,” Jim Bob said. “Like they used to be when we were first married. Remember?”
    “Let’s go to sleep, James Robert. It’s late.”
    “Stop changing the subject. I don’t want to talk about wedding veils. I want to talk about us. How we’re going to spend the rest of our lives once Delaney is married and off on her own and she’s no longer the glue holding us together.”
    Honey looked at him with those calm green eyes that revealed nothing about what she was really feeling. “I don’t know what you intend to do,