The Stand-in Groom Page 2
Good grief. An alien had burrowed into her brain. She had a fiancé and a future. She couldn’t think about Mr. Won’t-Mind-His-Own-Business that way.
Stacy glanced around for the saleswoman, but there was no help there. For a woman old enough to know better, she had her eyes riveted on the hunk with a goofy expression that said “Take me” in about twenty languages.
“I think your mother is calling you,” she said, intending to cut off any more chitchat from him.
“I wish my mother would hurry up.” He grinned broadly, making it hard to resent him. “I’d rather unload a boxcar of lumber than hang around here.”
“Is that what you do? Unload lumber?” She was curious despite herself.
“I work in construction—temporarily. And I bet you’re...” He pursed his lips, giving her a few more thoughts she didn’t want. “...a dance instructor.”
“A what?”
He did come up with some surprising comments. That had to be why she was still standing by the mirror listening to him.
“You’re graceful, willowy, artsy-looking...”
“Artsy!” she laughed. “I have trouble drawing trees for my preschoolers.”
“A teacher! I was close.”
“Not even.”
She turned her back to him, pretending to study the triple images of herself in the mirrors but secretly looking at his image behind her.
He had nice ears, flat against his head with little lobes. Enough of this. She turned her attention back to the business at hand.
The dress did feel right. She smoothed the fabric over her waist, beginning to think she should buy it before she changed her mind again. She liked the spaghetti straps, the absence of a long, awkward train, and the scoop neckline, demure and revealing at the same time.
“I vote for that one. Are you going to consult your fiancé?” he said.
“No. I mean, I’m sure he trusts my judgment.”
“If he doesn’t, he’s an idiot.”
“He’s not an idiot, he’s a lawyer.”
He grinned and opened his mouth to say more when an attractive older woman stuck her head around the heavy gold brocade curtain that separated the front of the shop from the back rooms.
“Nicky, I’m still trying to straighten out this mess.” She wobbled on a crutch and gestured with her cell phone. “Maybe you should feed the parking meter. Do you have any change?”
Stacy would bet his mother was the only one who called him “Nicky.” She was sure it didn’t fit the big he-man image he had of himself. She tried not to notice when he patted a front pocket of his worn but snug jeans.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
He walked out, the door tinkling musically when he opened it. She wasn’t the least bit interested in his firm, muscular buns, but the saleswoman’s tongue lolled so far out of her mouth it nearly hit the floor.
Now she could think about the dress without nonstop commentary from him confusing her. Eyelet cotton looked so sweet, so innocent, so right for her.
Perhaps add an airy birdcage headpiece. She liked her hair cut in a short, breezy style. She didn’t want it overwhelmed by a large production number on her head.
Unfortunately, her last haircut needed to grow out some more. The choppy layers definitely didn’t resemble the gamine look she’d been hoping for. The picture-perfect wedding got more complicated every day, and it was only two months away.
The door chimed again. She turned, expecting to see “Nicky,” and would have laughed out loud at the two arrivals if she wasn’t so startled.
The clerk made a strangled little noise, but Stacy giggled, a nervous, startled sound that didn’t seem to come from her.
Two men in masks barged into the shop. The tall one would have been ominous in black pants, black T-shirt, and a black knit ski mask if he hadn’t overdone the whole man-in-black thing.
What was the point of black on a bright sunny day in June? Stacy felt panicky and made another funny noise when she realized he could be a genuine bad guy.
The other guy was chunky and looked sloppy in raggedy jeans and a blue long-sleeved work shirt. The cartoon-character neon-orange ski mask pulled over his head flattened his nose into a lumpish blob.
Why come in here with their faces covered? Robbers robbed banks! What were they doing in a place that probably did all their business with checks and credit cards?
“It’s not Halloween yet,” she blurted.
She hadn’t meant to say anything to call attention to herself, but it slipped out. At least she didn’t see any guns or knives or whatever robbers used. This had to be a joke, a very bad joke.
The pudgy one grabbed her arm, and that was no joke. He yanked her so hard, it hurt. She stumbled forward on the three-inch heels she was wearing, and the man in black, scarier than his partner, got an iron grip on her other arm.
“Stop! Let go of me!” She tried to hang back, but he hauled her toward the door as though she were weightless.
“Keep your mouth shut!” The man in the black mask spoke through a slit, his lips looking thin and mean through the narrow opening.
They pulled her outside and dragged her across the pavement. She tried to dig in her heels and sit down, but the men were too strong.
“You’re making a terrible mistake! There’s no reason to kidnap me. I’m not rich. I can’t even afford this dress! You must have the wrong person.”
“Shut up!” The voice coming out of the orange mask practically squealed.
They wanted her to be quiet? She screamed as loudly as she could.
A dirty green delivery van was backed over the curb to be close to the door of the bridal salon.
“You can’t park on the sidewalk,” she cried out. “You are in so much trouble!”
Parking? She was worried about parking!
The round one released her to open the rear door of the van, but the man in black grabbed her from behind and put one grubby hand over her mouth. She thought of trying to bite, but who knew where that disgustingly hairy hand had been? Instead she kicked, landing a hard one on the soft rump of Orange Mask.
He swore at her, but the door was gaping open ominously, revealing an area with dusty rubbery flooring. The only seats were the two in front, and litter and lawn clippings were strewn everywhere.
“Don’t hurt her,” the tall guy warned as he pushed her headfirst onto a pile of dirty blankets on one side of the van’s floor.
She landed on her stomach with the air knocked out of her. She couldn’t think, let alone react. Things like this didn’t happen at an elegant suburban bridal salon. Jonathan even approved of her shopping there.
Suddenly she wasn’t alone in the back of the van. Another man lunged through the driver-side door in front and scrambled past the heap of wedding dress engulfing her body. He grabbed at one of the two rear doors to prevent it from closing.
Stacy rolled onto her side to see what was happening. Her rescuer was the man from the shop. He took a couple of hard swings at the bobbing orange mask but couldn’t move the kidnapper’s bulk away from the opening.
The chunky man kept trying to crawl inside, and Stacy couldn’t see where his partner had gone. Then a shadow came out from nowhere. She screamed, but her warning came too late. A six-pack of beer came smashing down on Nicky’s head.
He sprawled across her legs, knocking her flat, and the rear door banged shut with a dull thud. Black mask had come through the front and coldcocked him.
She couldn’t get out from under Nicky’s prone body, and the van was moving, going over the curb with a nasty bump, then driving sedately down the leisurely suburban shopping lane.
Didn’t these idiots know they were supposed to speed away from the scene of a crime? They’d just committed a major felony, and they were poking along slower than her Aunt Lucille. Did they expect to win points with the police for good driving?
All her defiance drained away in one big swoosh, and she was suddenly very, very frightened. She was
pinned down by an unconscious, maybe dead, man.
He moaned. Okay, not dead, but maybe concussed. He was a cheeky rascal—her aunt’s terminology—but he had tried to save her from the bad guys. “My hero,” she whispered.
She wiggled desperately and heard a sickening tear. The dress would be ruined. If she got out of this alive, she’d have to pay for it, and who knew what was staining it even as she lay helpless under six feet of muscle and bone with hardly an ounce of fat if her thighs were sending the right message.
“Ohh.”
“Are you all right? Please move if you are! Oh, that sounds so unsympathetic, but you have me pinned. No, don’t move! I don’t think you’re supposed to move with a head injury.”
“I thought you were the quiet type,” he moaned.
Suddenly it occurred to her he was grinding her bottom, her cool, panty-covered backside, against a scratchy wool blanket. The skirt of the dress was bunched around her waist and poofed up everywhere but where she needed it most.
“I hate it when people say I’m too quiet! Does a person have to chatter all the time? Ouch, you’re squashing my legs!”
“They’re very nice legs,” he said, sounding alarmingly groggy. “And other very nice parts, too. What did he hit me with?”
“Beer, well, a six-pack actually. Where does it hurt? No, don’t move—head injury. Yes, do— Ouch!”
He sat up, and so did she, struggling to put some skirt between herself and the dirty blankets on the van floor. She hoped the sprinkling of black hairs on them had come from a dog, not that it mattered much in the big picture.
“Maybe you should lie still,” she warned him.
He looked pale, as pale as a sun-bronzed face could, and she wanted to touch him to see how badly he was hurt. On second thought, running her fingers through his unruly locks was too intimate for comfort.
“I’ll be okay.” He cautiously moved his head. “He clobbered me with beer?”
“Yes. You should see a doctor.”
“No, I have a hard head. I just need to rest a minute.”
“Right, and we’re just out for a little ride with friends.”
“Who are these guys?” he asked in a whisper.
“I don’t have a clue.”
“Didn’t they mention why they grabbed you and threw you in here?”
“No. It’s not as if my parents are rich or anything. Thanks for trying to stop them.”
“Trying,” he said.
He crawled to the other side of the van and slumped against it. This was not good.
“This man is hurt!” she yelled to the pair in front as the driver slowly pulled away from a stoplight. “You have to take him to the emergency room!”
“Shut up!”
“He could be badly hurt.” He’d risked his life for her. She couldn’t just let him suffer without trying to help.
“Maybe I should tie them up, Perce?”
“And maybe you should give them our addresses and phone numbers, you idiot.”
“Sorry, forgot about the no-name part.”
The van hit a bump, and Nick groaned.
“You have to let this man go!” she said in her firmest playground voice. “Let me go, too. You grabbed the wrong woman!”
“Shut her up!” the driver ordered.
She closed her eyes, terrified of what Orange Mask would do, then peeked through her fingers because she couldn’t stand the suspense.
The big silver roll of duct tape her kidnapper held made her gulp.
2
“Must be itchy under that ski mask, Perce,” Nick said mildly, after a long drive that climaxed in a boat ride to a remote island.
The tall kidnapper gave him a shove between the shoulder blades, and Nick walked a little faster up the rutted path toward a dilapidated shack at the edge of the woods. He and Stacy had been taken to an island in the middle of an inland lake somewhere in North Central Michigan, but beyond that, Nick didn’t have a clue where they were.
If his hands weren’t taped behind his back, he could have taken both of the inept thugs with a couple of chops and kicks. They didn’t seem to be armed. What kind of idiots pulled off a kidnapping using nothing but a six-pack?
His head ached where he’d been clobbered, and his hands were getting numb, but Stacy had it worse than he did. Harold, the name of the other kidnapper according to his partner, who yelled at him a lot, had his beefy paw wrapped around her upper arm like a vise, half dragging her as she stumbled along on spike heels.
The long white skirt of the wedding dress tripped her every few steps as she tried to keep her balance.
The orange mask was floating somewhere on the lake, snatched off when the porky man succumbed to seasickness. His clothes got soaked when he stumbled getting out of the small boat to get on the island, and he grumbled constantly without getting any sympathy from his partner.
“My gut aches,” Harold complained. “You didn’t tell me about the boat.”
“Think I wanted you to blab about the plan?” his partner snapped. “Cretin! I never heard of anyone tossing his cookies in a rowboat with a one-horse motor.”
“There were waves,” Harold whined. “I feel like I’m gonna die.”
“I should make sure you do. Moron, how could you forget the cell phone?”
“Sorry!” His voice quivered. “I musta left it on the counter when I took the beer out of the fridge. You gotta admit the six-pack came in handy.”
“Until you guzzled five cans and upchucked them in the lake.”
“Ain’t there a phone somewhere on this island?” Harold asked sullenly.
Too bad Nick had left his own cell phone charging in his car when all this went down.
“No, there ain’t a phone somewhere on this island,” Percy mimicked. “I been here lots of times with my uncle Rudy.”
“It’s locked.” Harold rattled the metal doorknob of the shack with his free hand and looked back at his partner with malevolent eyes nearly engulfed by fat bulging up from his cheeks and overhanging his brows. Who said Neanderthals were extinct?
“Of course it’s locked, stupid. You think Uncle Rudy wants just anybody using the place? The key’s on the ledge above the door. Get it.”
Harold found the key but knocked it into the weedy grass bordering the corrugated tin wall of the shack.
“Pick that up,” he ordered Stacy, apparently forgetting her hands were taped behind her.
She shook her head vigorously, which was all she could do with duct tape still muffling her.
Nick admired her nerve, considering her captor could snap her arm with his big meaty hands.
“I ain’t putting my hand in there,” Harold complained. “Could be snakes.”
“Get the darn key!” his partner roared.
“Why do I have to do the dirty work?” Harold’s face scrunched up like a giant baby’s, and he looked about to bawl.
“Because you’ve got the brain of an orangutan! I can’t turn my back on this guy to hunt for a key you dropped.”
Nick gauged his chances of taking out both men while they were arguing, but without the use of his hands, it was a bad idea. He didn’t want Stacy to get hurt, and it wouldn’t be smart to get bopped on his aching head again. So much for his superhero status.
After Harold got the door open and yanked his prisoner inside, Percy pushed Nick’s shoulder to get him to move forward. One quick turn and a kick in the right place would take care of him, but lunging at Harold would be like colliding with a big rubber balloon. He’d bounce off the pudgy buffoon without hitting anything vital.
Nick stepped gingerly into the musty-smelling cabin, one small room probably intended to serve as a fishing shack. In the dim light from two small front windows, he could see an antiquated iron stove in one corner, a table with a chipped orange Formica top, two mismatched wooden chairs, a rust-stained sink, and an old-fashioned kitchen cupboard with flaking green paint. A lumpy bare mattress lay on a painted white-metal bedframe.
“I gotta go back to the mainland and phone in,” Percy said. “Tie their feet with that rope.” He pointed at the dingy gray strands in the corner.
Since their hands were already secured behind their backs with duct tape, Harold mustered enough courage to push them down on the unsavory striped mattress to truss their ankles. Stacy made little strangling noises to suggest they take the tape off her mouth, but both of them ignored her.
“You stay here and keep your eye on them,” Percy ordered his partner, as Harold began tying up Nick.
“No way! This place stinks.”
This from a man who reeked like garbage, Nick thought. He kept quiet with great effort so they wouldn’t think of slapping duct tape on his mouth, too.
“They’re tied up. What can they do?” Harold cajoled, too.
“I’ll be back as soon as I get to a phone,” Percy said.
“You ain’t leaving me here.” He folded his massive arms across his chest. “You stay here. I’ll go call.”
Percy scratched his cheek and chin under the ski mask, then yanked on the rope around Nick’s ankles to test it.
“I guess they’ll stay put,” he grudgingly admitted.
Yes, both of you go, Nick silently urged. Nothing would suit him better. The kidnappers’ first mistake was bringing him along. Their second was not searching him.
“I don’t see why we gotta call,” Harold complained. “Like we ain’t trustworthy or somethin’.”
Percy cussed at his partner for talking too much and walked out the door, yanking off the mask as soon as his back was turned. Nick got a glimpse of sweaty red hair and not much else before Harold blocked the doorway and trailed after his partner.
Stacy made throaty little noises as soon as the pair was far enough away not to hear.
“If you don’t mind me getting up close and personal, I think I can rip off the tape with my teeth,” he said, trying to sound upbeat.