The Man You'll Marry Read Online Free Page A

crazy part. I know I am, but I can’t seem to stop myself. I grew up hearing the legend of that wedding dress, and now it’s in my possession. I’ve got a piece of family history hanging in the back of my closet. What if my mother hears about this?” She shuddered at the thought.
    “So you hung the dress in your closet.”
    “I tried keeping it under my bed, but I couldn’t sleep, so I finally got up and stuck it in the closet.” She closed the menu and set it aside. “That bothered me, too. I tossed and turned half the night, then I remembered Aunt Milly had done the same thing when the seamstress gave her the dress.”
    “She put it under her bed?”
    Shelly nodded slowly. “I seem to remember hearing that. She’d tried to refuse it, but the old woman insisted Aunt Milly take the gown home with her. By the time she got to her apartment she’d already met my uncle John, although she still didn’t know she was going to marry him.”
    Jill raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Then what? After she put it under her bed and couldn’t sleep, I mean?”
    “Well, she did the same thing I did,” Shelly said. “She shoved it in her closet.” Shelly felt as if she was confessing to a crime. “I didn’t want the thing staring me in the face so I hung it in the back.”
    “Naturally.” Jill was trying, unsuccessfully, to disguise a smile. Shelly could see how someone else might find her situation humorous, but she personally didn’t think any of this was too amusing. Not when it was her life, her future, being tossed around like…like some cosmic football. At this rate, she’d be married by nightfall!
    “That’s not the worst of it,” Shelly added. She exhaled slowly, wondering why her heart was still beating so fiercely.
    “You mean there’s more?”
    She nodded. The waitress arrived just then and took their orders, returning quickly with glasses of iced tea. Shelly took a deep breath before she continued. “I literally fell into that man’s—Mark Brady’s—arms.”
    “How convenient.”
    “It’s very nice of him to have broken my fall,” she said sternly, “but I wish he hadn’t.”
    “Shelly!”
    “I mean it.” She glanced around to make sure no one was listening, then whispered, “The man’s an accountant.”
    Jill reacted in mock horror, covering her mouth with both hands. “No! An accountant?”
    “Think about it. Could you honestly picture me married to an accountant?”
    Jill mulled over the question for a moment. “Hmm, a CPA,” she repeated slowly. “You still haven’t memorized your multiplication tables, have you? You freeze up whenever you have to deal with numbers. No, I guess you’re right, I can’t see you with an accountant.”
    Shelly raised both hands, palms up, in a dramatic gesture. “I rest my case.”
    Jill reached for some bread, carefully selecting a whole-wheat roll. “Just because you fell into his arms doesn’t mean you’re going to marry him,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice.
    “I know that.”
    “Then what’s the problem?”
    “I can’t make myself believe it,” Shelly said. “I feel like one tiny pin fighting the force of a giant magnet.”
    “That’s preposterous.”
    “I know,” Shelly agreed readily. “I just wish I hadn’t said anything to Mark.”
    Jill set the roll on her plate with exaggerated care. “You told him about your aunt Milly’s wedding dress?”
    “Of course not!” Shelly said. “I told him I couldn’t marry him.”
    Jill’s mouth dropped open. “You didn’t! Did you?”
    Shelly nodded. “I don’t know what made me say anything so ludicrous. I can’t imagine what he must think of me. Not that I plan on seeing him again, of course. Unless—”
    “Unless what?”
    Their lunches were served. Jill had ordered a hot spinach salad with slices of chicken. Shelly’s spinach salad was piled high with shrimp, egg slices and black olives.
    “Go on,” Jill urged once the waitress had gone. “You don’t plan on