Unveiling the Bridesmaid by Jessica Gilmore Read Free Book Online Page B

mother is on her third marriage.’ He shrugged. ‘No one in my family takes the whole “as long as you both shall live” part very seriously.’
    â€˜My parents met at university, married as soon as they graduated and that was that. I used to think they were really boring. Old before their time, you know? Now I envy them that. That certainty.’
    â€˜Oh, my parents are certain every time. I’m not sure if it’s more endearing or infuriating, that eternal optimism. They were dancers, Broadway chorus dancers, when they met.’
    â€˜No way.’
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ he said wryly. ‘It was very Forty-Second Street . Right up to the minute my twenty-year-old dad knocked up my nineteen-year-old mom and carried her back to Long Harbor to the family bar.’ His poor young mother, a streetwise Hispanic girl with stars in her eyes, wasn’t content with a life serving drinks to the moneyed masses who flocked to the Long Island resort in the summer. ‘I don’t remember much about that time, but I do remember a lot of yelling. She’s Cuban and my dad’s Irish so when they fought crockery flew. Literally. Just before my fifth birthday she packed her bags and walked out. Never came back.’
    He hadn’t realised that he was clenching his fist until Hope’s hand covered his, a warm unwanted comfort. He’d shed the last tear he would ever shed on his mother’s behalf on his fifth birthday when she’d failed to turn up to her own son’s birthday party. ‘I’m so sorry. Do you see her now?’
    â€˜Occasionally, if I’m near Vegas. She has a dance troupe there, she’s doing well but the last thing she needs is a six-foot, twenty-nine-year-old son reminding her that she’s nearer fifty than thirty.’
    â€˜So you were raised by your dad?’
    â€˜And my grandparents, aunts, uncles—anyone else who wanted to tame the wild O’Connor boy. Not that there was much time to run wild, not with a family business like the Harbor Bar—there’s always a surface to clean, a table to clear, an errand to run if you’re stupid enough to get caught. And Dad wasn’t broken-hearted for long. It seemed like there was a whole line of women just dying to become my stepmom. But they all were swept away when Misty decided she was interested. She was fifteen years older than my dad and it was like she was from a different planet. So calm, so together. So one minute I’m that poor motherless O’Connor boy living on top of a bar with a huge extended family, the next I’m rattling around a huge mansion with a monthly allowance bigger than my dad’s old salary. It was insane.’
    â€˜It sounds like a fairy tale. Like Cinderella or something.’
    â€˜Fairy tales are strictly a girl thing. It’s okay for Cinderella to marry the prince, not so okay for an Irish bartender to marry his way into the upper echelons of society. The more polite people called him a toy boy, but they all wore identical sneers—like they knew exactly what Misty saw in him and didn’t think it should be allowed in public. And as for me? Breeding counts, money counts and I had neither. When Dad became Misty Carlyle’s third ex-husband then I should have returned to the gutter where I came from.’
    By unspoken accord they moved away from the railing and began to walk back to the elevator lobby. ‘What happened?
    â€˜Misty. She insisted on paying for college, persuaded my dad to let me spend my holidays with her, Christmas skiing, spring break in New York, the summers in Europe. Of course everyone at school knew I was there on charity—not even her stepson any more.’ It was hard looking back remembering just how alone he had been, how isolated. They hadn’t bullied him; he was too strong for that—and no one wanted to incur Misty’s wrath. They had just ignored him. Shown him he was