Free Stand-in Groom by Suzanne Brockmann Page A

smiled, as if he were following her thoughts.
    “I don’t think so,” she said.
    “After a couple of days you could run home to your parents, claiming that Emilio was heavily into bondage and discipline, and that you left him, because that’s not quite your style.”
    “How do you know that B and D isn’t my style?” she couldn’t resist asking.
    He laughed in surprise, but recovered quickly. “Even if it is, I’m betting that you wouldn’t share that fact with your mom and dad.”
    “Oh, that’s a bet you’d win.”
    “Spencer and Anziano.”
    Chelsea looked up to see the wedding-chapel hostess beckoning to them. “Oh, God,” she said. “It’s time.” She turned to Johnny. “It’s not too late for you to back out.”
    “For seventy-five K,” he told her, “I’m not going anywhere. Unless we can add to that Circus Circusscenario and say that after we get a room upstairs, we get to take turns tying each other up.”
    He hadn’t realized that the wedding hostess was standing right behind him. He turned to see her there, and realized she’d overheard him. She was trying her best not to look shocked.
    Johnny gave her one of his best smiles. “It’s a wedding-night tradition in Chelsea’s family,” he said conspiratorially.
    “He’s kidding,” Chelsea said, but the woman didn’t look convinced.
    As she followed the woman into the chapel she turned to give Johnny a chilling look.
    “Oh, good, the Ice Princess is back,” he said with a grin. “I was hoping I’d get to marry both of you—it’ll make married life
really
interesting.”
    Ice Princess? Marry both …? “What are you talking about?” she asked, but he just smiled. With his light banter and silly questions, he’d managed to make her feel thoroughly relaxed. She liked having him around, she realized. And then she remembered those kisses. She liked having him around too much.
    Chelsea’s pulse started to accelerate at the thought that within the next few minutes she wasgoing to marry this man, and she tried not to think, not to feel, not to anticipate.
    The hostess took the forms they’d filled out and the copies of their birth certificates from Chelsea. “One moment, please.”
    “No kissing this time,” she told him under her breath. “We shake hands, do you understand?”
    “No way. The man says you may kiss the bride, not you may high-five the bride.”
    “This is a business deal. We should shake—”
    “Where I come from, people embrace and kiss when a deal is made.”
    She stopped short. “Where
do
you come from?”
    “I was born in the North End, but while I was growing up, I lived about a block away from the Projects.”
    “The … Projects?” It was an impossibly tough part of town, filled with gang violence, drug abuse, struggling welfare mothers, and drive-by shootings. And Johnny had grown up there.
    “Yeah. I won’t tell your daddy if you don’t.”
    “Oh, God, someone told you about George’s wife, Cathy.”
    “So she does have a name. Troy filled me in. Her status as a Projects kid hasn’t exactly won her anypopularity awards with the Spencer clan. Or should that be Klan, spelled with a
K
?”
    Chelsea briefly closed her eyes. “I’m so sorry. You have every right to be offended.”
    “You can make it up to me—by letting me kiss the bride.”
    “John …”
    He took her hand, squeezing her fingers gently. “Chelsea, this may be the only time I ever get married. Yeah, I’m doing it for the money, and yeah, it’s weird, but please, let me at least do it right. And doing it right means when the guy says kiss the bride, I kiss the bride.”
    She gazed up at him. “It matters to you that much?”
    “Yeah. It does. Absolutely.”
    “One kiss, and then you’ll retire your lips—permanently?”
    “Are you sure you want me to?” He lowered his voice. “I can do an awful lot with my lips—without running the risk of consummating this marriage.”
    Chelsea felt her cheeks heat. “I