Free Always A Bridesmaid (Left At the Altar) by Jana Richards Page A

grinned back. "Maybe."
    "I know what you're thinking. A person would have to be crazy to subject himself to that kind of humiliation a second time. Maybe you're right."
    "Why did you ask Chantal to marry you the second time?" Dani held her breath, not sure if he would answer such a personal question, or if she had any business asking it.
    "I was only nineteen the first time I proposed to her. Like Mom said, I'd been totally hooked on Chantal since I was sixteen. She was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen, and so different from the other girls I knew. So poised, so elegant, and so damn sure of herself."
    "And sure of her affect on men."
    "Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, you heard the story about how she broke our engagement to marry a guy with a lot more money."
    "Our friend Harry."
    "Right. I wallowed in self-pity for a while and drove my mom crazy with my whinging. Eventually I got a scholarship to university and immersed myself in work. I dated other women, but no one seriously."
    "Nothing could compare to that first love."
    "No, I suppose not." He shook his head, as if brushing away old memories. "Then four years after our first engagement ended, Chantal entered my life again. She was divorced from Harry and I was still in university, still broke. We had a short, intense affair before she left."
    "She left? Where did she go?"
    "To Paris. She hadn't bothered to tell me she'd been planning to go to the Sorbonne all along. Just when I thought we could make it work this time, she said goodbye."
    "That's awful."
    "Yeah, but at least I didn't propose that time."
    "I guess that's something to be grateful for. But I don't understand. She'd already dumped you twice. Why would you go back to her a third time?"
    He took a deep breath. "That's a question I ask myself all the time. Two years ago when we met again, she was newly divorced from her second husband and wanted to pick up where we'd left off. I was hesitant at first, and I made her work hard to win back my trust. She said our first engagement didn't work because we were so young, but now we were older and we both knew what we wanted. And eventually, I believed her. So I asked her to marry me again and she said yes."
    "Were you happy?"
    "Yeah, very happy. But then I started noticing things I'd never noticed before, like the way she behaved toward other people. Sometimes she treated my mother like a servant. When I'd call her on it, she'd cry and say she was under so much pressure planning the wedding. I don't know if she'd always been like that or if I just started noticing it."
    "Don't feel bad. I think she was different back when we were in university." She had loved Chantal like a sister when they were eighteen. But somehow she had morphed into one of the ugly step-sisters. Or maybe Dani had just grown up and seen her for what she was.
    "I ignored all the warning signs, the late night phone calls that she said were to her wedding planner, the many trips to Toronto she claimed were to visit her sister. And, well, you know how it ended. You were at the church."
    "If I really was Sigmund Freud, I'd probably say she only wanted you until she had you. Once the thrill of the pursuit was over, she lost interest."
    He grinned wryly. "I've come to that sad conclusion myself."
    "Admitting the problem is the first step to recovery."
    Zach laughed and waved his hand, as if to wipe away the past. "Enough about my sad love life. What about you? What deep, dark secrets are you keeping?"
    Her heart rate kicked up a notch. Her past love life wasn't as colorful as Zach's, but it was no less painful to her. She'd never talked about it to anyone, not even her closest friends. At least she never let on how much she'd been hurt by men she'd thought she'd been in love with.
    The GPS voice sounded. "In five hundred meters turn right, then bear left."
    "Oh look, we're in Oakville," she said. Saved by The Voice.
    Zach flashed her a look that told her he wouldn't let her forget this conversation.
    Great