Free Stand-in Groom by Suzanne Brockmann

already. The second time should be a piece of cake.
    “What time does our flight to St. Thomas leave?” he asked.
    Of course, this time when they said “I do,” it would be for real. She had to clear her throat before she could speak. “In two hours.”
    “We have plenty of time.”
    “Yeah.”
    Johnny was watching her, his dark eyes unreadable. “So what
is
your favorite color?”
    “Red.” She glanced at him. “Yours?”
    “Blue.”
    Chelsea looked down at the forms they’d had to fill out to get a marriage license. “I didn’t even know how old you were until I read this.”
    “I’m twenty-six.”
    “Yeah, I can do the math. I minored in math in college.”
    “Now, you see, I didn’t know that. What was your major?”
    “I did a double major—computer science and physics. And then I went on to get my business degree.”
    Johnny whistled through his teeth. “Well,
I’m
impressed. I had no idea I was marrying a scholar.”
    “How about you? What was your major?”
    He shook his head, smiling slightly. “I didn’t go to college. At least not exactly.”
    Chelsea was embarrassed. She shouldn’t have assumed. Quickly she changed the subject. “Your birthday’s in October.”
    “Yep. I’m a Libra.” He looked over her shoulder at the forms she held in her hand. “You were born late in January—an Aquarian, huh?”
    She lifted an eyebrow. “Are we compatible?”
    “Librans are pretty much compatible with everybody,” he said with a smile.
    “What a relief.”
    “What’s your favorite holiday?”
    Chelsea had to think. “I don’t know. Christmas, I guess.”
    “Mine’s New Year’s Eve. It’s such a high-energy night—everyone’s all jazzed up for the coming year, with high expectations. And hope. The hope on that night is off the scale.” He paused as the woman who was acting as a sort of hostess came out into the waiting room and took the couple who had arrived directly in front of them into the chapel.
    They were next.
    Johnny looked back at Chelsea. “Who’s your favorite dead president?”
    She blinked. “What?”
    “For most people it’s a toss-up between Washington and Lincoln, with Kennedy running a close third, but I’m an FDR fan, myself.”
    “I don’t think I have a favorite president—dead or alive.”
    “You must’ve had one when you were a kid.”
    “When I was a kid, it was Washington,” she said. “Definitely. That whole story about the cherry tree. ‘Father, I cannot tell a lie, I chopped down the cherry tree.’ I always thought he was a lot like Mr. Spock on
Star Trek
. Vulcans can’t tell a lie, either. It’s supposedly physiologically impossible.”
    “Except Spock
could
lie because he was half-human,” Johnny pointed out.
    “Which says a lot for humanity, doesn’t it?” Chelsea sighed, her smile fading.
    “You feel bad, don’t you,” he guessed perceptively, “for fooling all those people at the church today.”
    “My dad was so …” Chelsea shook her head, smiling ruefully. “God, for the first time during the twenty-eight years I’ve been alive, I actually saw him with tears in his eyes. All I could think of was the way I was lying to him.” She miserably blew out a short explosion of air. “And not only was
I
lying to everyone, but I’ve gone and dragged you into it too.”
    “At least now when you go to hell, I’ll be there with you, so you’ll have someone to talk to.”
    “That makes me feel
so
much better.”
    “It’s not too late to back out,” he said. “We can just walk out of here, spend the next twenty-four hours playing the five-dollar blackjack table at Circus Circus and drinking beer with whiskey chasers on the house.”
    Chelsea had to laugh. “Sounds tempting.”
    “Then when we’ve had too much to drink tokeep our balance at the blackjack table, we can get a room upstairs and sleep it off for another twenty-four hours straight.”
    Sleep. As in share a bed. Yeah, right, they would sleep.
    Johnny