Last-Minute Bridesmaid Read Online Free

you feel about that?’
    The doors slid shut and Heath carried on walking across the pale marble floor of the hallway, apparently deaf to the question, and it was only in the solitary space of the elevator that he slowly unclenched his fingers.
    One by one. Willing each breath he took to slow down as the words of that last question repeated over and over again inside his head.
    Feel?
    How did he feel about the fact that the woman who had been his mother’s best friend was marrying his father?
    How did he feel about the fact that Alice had been with his father while his mother lay dying in a hospice?
    How did he feel?
    Heath tugged hard at the double cuffs of his tailor-made shirt and fought back the temptation to hit something hard.
    But that wouldn’t fit into his carefully designed image.
    Heath Sheridan did not get ruffled or upset or display outrageous bursts of emotion and temper. Oh, no. He played it cool. He was a Boston Sheridan and the Boston Sheridans kept their feelings buried deep enough to be icebergs.
    Well, this ice man was not going to melt and let the rest of the world feel the heat of the raging temper that was burning inside him at that moment, threatening to spill out into some ill-judged outburst.
    So what if his father’s choice of bride hit one of his hot buttons?
    He could deal with it. Was dealing with it. Would continue to deal with it.
    Ironic that he should be asked that question outside the very house where his mother had spent the first twenty years of her life. The house had been built for his grandparents, who had been part of a group of aristocratic artist writers and intellectuals in the Arts and Crafts movement in the nineteen-thirties and the Art Deco features were original and stunning, especially in the library. Two storeys of hand-carved teak shelves were connected by a circular staircase which led onto an upper-level gallery, lit by a central domed roof.
    Of course it had the wow factor for visitors to Sheridan Press, who were too much in awe to take notice of the fact that the recent catalogue of Sheridan books would fit neatly into one small part of the lower shelf.
    Heath remembered playing hide-and-seek in the many stunning rooms, attics and cellars when he was a boy on rare visits to London with his parents, but now it was little more than a private meeting venue for his father and his circle of artist friends like Alice Jardine.
    Closing his eyes, he could almost see his mother playing the piano in the drawing room below while he played with his grandparents in the patio garden outside the open French windows. The smell of lavender and beeswax. Old books and linseed oil. Because, above everything else, this house had always been filled with artists, the dinner table chatter was about art, the library full of books and exhibition catalogues about art and, of course, every available wall had been a living, constantly changing art gallery.
    The thought of Alice walking these corridors where his mother had been so very happy was something that he was slowly coming to terms with. But he wasn’t there yet. And he wasn’t entirely sure that he ever would be.
    That was something else he was going to have to work on.
    In the meantime? He had a wedding to survive. A wedding where it was going to be crucial to pretend that all was rosy in the Sheridan family, and father and son were working together like the dream team they were pretending to be.
    Heath strolled over to the lovely polished marquetry desk and sat down heavily on an antique chair, which creaked alarmingly at the weight.
    His father and his new fiancée had ordered a relaxed country house wedding—and that was precisely what they were going to get—with his help.
    Heath opened up his laptop and was just about to dive into the checklist for the wedding arrangements when his cellphone rang and he flipped it open and answered without even checking to see who was calling him.
    ‘Sheridan,’ he said, and jammed the phone