The Wedding Date

by Young, Elizabeth

• ISBN13: 9780060799229
• ISBN10: 0060799226
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-01-01
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

One wedding. No funeral. One unqualified catastrophe. "Dominic" was the little white lie thirty-and-still-unwed Sophy Metcalfe told to soothe her nagging mother. But now her perfect sister Belinda is tying the knot and Sophy's going to have to produce the charming, successful ideal boyfriend she invented -- since the genuine article vanished after a single, resoundingly unsuccessful evening. Desperate, she hires a male escort sight unseen to get her through the Nuptials from Hell. But the trouble with white lies is they tend to multiply -- especially at a gala disaster filled with new intrigues and old flames. And the trouble with Josh, her hired date, is he's kind of cute, in a rugged, too sexy for his own good way. And then there's the biggest trouble of all -- because every wedding day is followed by a night. And, of course, a morning after ... Performed by Jasmine Hyde

Excerpts

The Wedding Date

Chapter One

I blame it entirely on the pressure of work, but for thenext couple of weeks Dominic and I were still officiallyan item at the bottom of my in-tray. Every time it rose tothe surface, saying, "Well?" I told it to bugger off, I was fartoo busy and important to deal with it just now.

It finally caught up with me on a Sunday morning,nineteen and a half days before the wedding. Having himdump me would obviously have been the simplest wayout, but that wouldn't keep anybody's end up, least of allmine. I suppose I'd been hoping my imaginative autopilotwould suddenly whack me on the head with a brilliantway out, but since "Abduction by Aliens" was all ithad managed, I was still dithering over alternatives. Theseconsisted of a) giving him the elbow, and b) plan B,which I still hadn't thought of.

Nobody was helping me think of it, either. Alix wasstill asleep, and although a vaguely human body wassprawled on the sofa, it was absorbed in the footballpages and therefore suffering from TMD, aka TemporaryMale Deafness. The headline said, USELESS TOSSERS or something equally rude. This was nothing to what Acehad said the previous evening, when his beloved TossersUnited had been thrashed three-nil by ThessalonikaUnder-Thirteen Girls, or whoever it was they were supposedto have thrashed.

Ace was Alix's "little" brother, though at five footeleven he'd overtaken her by five inches. He was twentysix,quite nice looking under the scruff, and his lightbrown ponytail was usually in vibrant condition, thanksto my Pantene 2-in-1, which he pinched constantly.Withit he wore one gold earring and, except when Tossers hadscrewed up, a chilled-out air I defy anyone to beat.

"You might make some suggestion, even if it's completelybrainless," I muttered. "You could at least showwilling."

Not so much as a primeval grunt.

In the absence of even Ace's input, I looked out of thewindow for something to be irritated with besides myself,for having got into this mess in the first place. Foronce, there wasn't even a crisp packet dancing in thebreeze. Just occasionally this corner of southwest Londoncould look quite passable.

After a thirty-second time lapse, he uttered, "I'd makehim a perv, if I were you.Tell your mum you went roundone night and found him poncing around in high heelsand one of your bras, all upset because he couldn't findenough socks to stuff it with."

"Dominic's not like you," I said testily. "He doesn'thave to hunt under the bed every morning for any twoputrid socks that haven't actually walked to the washing machine by themselves. He's got whole drawersful, allneatly rolled up and color-coded." In fact, he was such aperfect, tidy, organized pain, a knife in the guts wouldhave been no more than he deserved.

"S&M, then." The little toad was grinning his face off."What if he suddenly asked you to do the MissBumwhack bit?" He put on a lecherous, gasp-and-pantvoice. " ‘I've been a really, really bad boy -- I was playingwith my winkle all night -- ' "

"For God's sake, he'd never call it a winkle. Anyway, Irefuse to have a relationship with a perv."

"Suit yourself. Sling me a couple of those chocolatefingers, will you?"

I slung. There were four left in the packet on the coffeetable. Four, and I'd bought them only an hour previously,while picking up the papers at the Pop-In News 'n'Grocery round the corner.

He bit half off both of them and continued with hismouth full. "Your mum was bound to resort to emotionalblackmail in the end. It's a mum's favorite weapon, andif you haven't sussed that out by now, then quite frankly,I despair of you."

In fact, I could almost have written a learned paper onEmotional Blackmail, Maternal Variety of. Well beforephoning home an hour and a half previously I'd beenpsyching myself up for a hefty dose of precisely that.

The conversation had gone roughly like this:

"I'm terribly sorry, Mum, but I don't think Dominic'sgoing to be able to make it, after all."

"Oh, Sophy, really! I knew you'd let me down again, just when everybody's dying to meet him. I told wretchedMaggie he was almost definitely coming and you knowwhat that woman's like -- do please try to persuade him."

"I really can't promise. He's terribly busy."

"Nobody's that busy, dear." At this point her voice hadtaken on a plaintive note. "Sometimes I wonder whetheryou're ashamed of me and Daddy."

"Mum!" (I did my best to produce an appalled littlelaugh here.) "How can you say such a thing?"

"Well, I can't help wondering, dear. Every single timeyou've promised to bring him home, something'scropped up at the last minute. I'm sure you can persuadehim if you try -- but I really can't talk now -- I've got amillion things to do -- nobody has any idea how much organizationgoes into a wedding -- I'm worried sick aboutthe seating plan for lunch -- Sue and George still aren'tspeaking and Granny hasn't a clue what's going on -- Ihope to heaven they don't start rowing at the table -- youknow what Sue's like after a few drinks -- and the floristI picked has changed hands and the new manager's lostthe order -- I've had to go and see her twice -- still, mustrush, and I'm sure you can talk him around if you putyour mind to it. Bye-bye, dear."

I should have expected nothing else. My mother isnothing if not predictable ...

The Wedding Date. Copyright © by Elizabeth Young. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from The Wedding Date by Elizabeth Young
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