Invitation To A Wedding Read online

  I can’t go through with this,

  Josie thought, even though the week before a wedding should be the most joyful time in a person’s life.

  “Hello, Josie.”

  A voice from the past. Her cheeks burning and her heart racing, she turned around—and fell into the deep black eyes of Ben Standing Bear. And then he smiled, that heart-stopping, breath-stealing smile that had haunted her for years.

  She’d had no idea he was coming tonight, or even that he was in town. Her mother had sent the party invitations. But seeing Ben again was joy indescribable.

  “Ben.” Reason deserted her. Josie longed to be brilliant and witty for him, to impress him with her charm and gaiety. But all she could think of was her upcoming wedding, looming before her like doomsday.

  Had the man of her dreams come too late?

  Dear Reader,

  Many people read romance novels for the unforgettable heroes that capture our hearts and stay with us long after the last page is read. But to give all the credit for the success of this genre to these handsome hunks is to underestimate the value of the heart of a romance: the heroine.

  “Heroes are fantasy material, but for me, the heroines are much more grounded in real life,” says Susan Mallery, bestselling author of this month’s Shelter in a Soldier’s Arms. “For me, the heroine is at the center of the story. I want to write and read about women who are intelligent, funny and determined.”

  Gina Wilkins’s The Stranger in Room 205 features a beautiful newspaper proprietor who discovers an amnesiac in her backyard and finds herself in an adventure of a lifetime! And don’t miss The M.D. Meets His Match in Hades, Alaska, where Marie Ferrarella’s snowbound heroine unexpectedly finds romance that is sure to heat up the bitter cold….

  Peggy Webb delivers an Invitation to a Wedding; when the heroine is rescued from marrying the wrong man, could a long-lost friend end up being Mr. Right? Sparks fly in Lisette Belisle’s novel when the heroine, raising Her Sister’s Secret Son, meets a mysterious man who claims to be the boy’s father! And in Patricia McLinn’s Almost a Bride, a rancher desperate to save her ranch enters into a marriage of convenience, but with temptation as her bed partner, life becomes a minefield of desire.

  Special Edition is proud to publish novels featuring strong, admirable heroines struggling to balance life, love and family and making dreams come true. Enjoy! And look inside for details about our Silhouette Makes You a Star contest.

  Best,

  Karen Taylor Richman, Senior Editor

  Invitation to a Wedding

  PEGGY WEBB

  Books by Peggy Webb

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Summer Hawk #1300

  Warrior’s Embrace #1323

  Gray Wolf’s Woman #1347

  Standing Bear’s Surrender #1384

  Invitation to a Wedding #1402

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  13 Royal Street #447

  Silhouette Romance

  When Joanna Smiles #645

  A Gift for Tenderness #681

  Harvey’s Missing #712

  Venus DeMolly #735

  Tiger Lady #785

  Beloved Stranger #824

  Angel at Large #867

  PEGGY WEBB

  and her two chocolate Labs live in a hundred-year-old house not far from the farm where she grew up. “A farm is a wonderful place for dreaming,” she says. “I used to sit in the hayloft and dream of being a writer.” Now, with two grown children and more than forty-five romance novels to her credit, the former English teacher confesses she’s still a hopeless romantic and loves to create the happy endings her readers love so well.

  When she isn’t writing, she can be found at her piano playing blues and jazz or in one of her gardens planting flowers. A believer in the idea that a person should never stand still, Peggy recently taught herself carpentry.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Prologue

  Ben Standing Bear, Family Medicine. His shingle had been hanging for only one week when the invitation came in the mail. Otherwise, except for a Wal-Mart flyer, his box was empty.

  Who would be sending him an invitation? He hadn’t been in Pontotoc long enough to know anyone. He’d have thought it was a mistake except that it had his name on it, and how many doctors in Mississippi were named Standing Bear?

  None, would be his guess.

  Ben slit the envelope and pulled out the card: Mrs. Betty Anne Pickens requests the honor of your presence at a prenuptial party for her daughter, Josie Belle Pickens and Jerry Bob Crawford.

  Josie Belle. Ben hadn’t seen her in years but her name conjured up her image as if it had been only yesterday—wide smile, the bluest eyes this side of heaven and red hair as wild as she was. They’d been pals in college, study buddies Josie Belle called them, and he guessed it had been true. He’d studied the books and she’d studied ways to get into trouble.

  He smiled thinking about her. She’d been an impulsive scamp, a rebel, a modern-day Carrie Nation who loved nothing better than being the ringleader in a sit-in or a picket line for whatever cause struck her fancy. And many of them did. She’d picketed for a ban on netfishing in known dolphin waters. She’d marched for protection of the snail darter on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway. She decried the slaughter of the mountain gorilla, air pollution, chemical dumping into rivers and streams.

  If you had a worthy cause, Josie Belle Pickens was the girl you wanted on your side.

  Of course, she was a woman now, a woman about to get married.

  Funny. He’d never imagined her settling down for anybody. Besides, who would be brave enough to hitch his wagon to hers for that wild ride she called life?

  You could bet your britches Ben Standing Bear was going to find out. In fact, he could hardly wait.

  Chapter One

  “I do hope you’re not wearing that red dress to the party tonight, Josie Belle.”

  Actually, she’d been planning to wear the blue, but now that Aunt Tess had thrown down the gauntlet, Josie was bound and determined to pick it up. Her mother’s older sister thought she knew everything there was to know about everything, and besides that she acted as if she was on a mission from Moses to save the entire Pickens family from rack and ruin.

  Josie would wear the red dress tonight or die.

  “I most certainly am, Aunt Tess. I like to wear red.”

  “It clashes with your hair.”

  “It makes me feel powerful.”

  “What I’d think you’d want to feel in front of Jerry Bob’s mother is meekness. You know how Clytee Crawford thinks she’s the most important woman in town. If I were you I’d want to stay on her good side. At least until after the wedding.”

  “She doesn’t have a good side.”

  “Josie Belle!” Her mother, who had been anxiously watching the exchange between a daughter she openly called willful and a sister she privately called meddling, felt compelled to offer a mild rebuke. “Behave yourself.”

  “I’m glad you finally put your two cents’ worth in, Betty Anne. Talk to your daughter. I can’t do a thing with he
r.”

  Tess got up from the kitchen table where they’d all been enjoying a cup of coffee until the discussion of the red dress surfaced, and picked up everyone’s cup, even though her sister had barely started drinking her coffee.

  “You two will have to sort this out without me, Betty Anne. If I’m going to put on a pretty face for tonight’s party, I’d better go and get started.”

  Tess Clemson disappeared through the doorway, and Betty Anne shot her daughter a warning look.

  “Don’t say it, Josie Belle.”

  Josie gave her a wicked grin, and suddenly Betty Anne dissolved into laughter. She laughed so hard tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “All right. I’ll say it for you. Tess couldn’t put on a pretty face even if she tried.” Never one to be prepared for emergencies or otherwise, Betty Anne wiped her face with the corner of the tablecloth. Then she waved a hand at her daughter. “Go on. Get out of here. Wear the red dress. Jerry Bob’s is the only other opinion that matters, and he’s crazy about you no matter what you do.”

  “God help him,” Josie said.

  And she meant it. Jerry Bob Crawford of Crawford’s Tractors had to be a saint to put up with her. How he’d ever got up the courage to give her a ring was beyond Josie’s comprehension. Even more puzzling was how she’d said yes.

  As she pulled the red dress over her head, Josie waxed philosophic. She seemed to be doing that a lot since she’d left the glitz and glamor of Chicago and moved back to Pontotoc to be close to her mother after her father had died. If she wasn’t over-the-moon happy about her impending marriage, she was practical.

  “If you can’t have the man you want, then marry the man you can have,” she told her dog, and the big chocolate lab with soulful eyes thumped his tail on the hardwood floor in complete agreement.

  That was the best thing about Bruiser. He agreed with everything she said.

  Against her will a certain Sioux with dancing black eyes and a devilish smile whispered through Josie’s mind. If she were the kind of woman who pondered over what might have been, she’d have worked herself into a fit of the blues. But she wasn’t.

  Instead, she fluffed up her hair that was doing just fine on its own, then went downstairs to meet her fiancé.

  He whistled when he saw her, then looked worried.

  “Hon, don’t you think you ought to get a wrap?”

  “Why? It’s ninety-five degrees.”

  “Mama’s going to be there.”

  She started to say, “I’ll bet she’s seen these before,” then she caught herself. In one week she was going to marry this man, this good, long-suffering man.

  Standing on tiptoe she kissed him softly on the mouth.

  “You worry too much, Jerry Bob,” she said, then she linked her arm through his. “Let’s go to the party and have fun.”

  Fun with Jerry Bob consisted of weekend football games at Mississippi State, visits with friends and an occasional sedate game of bridge, which was a far cry from what she used to do for kicks. But in time she hoped to get used to it. Perhaps she would even learn to enjoy the settled life.

  By the time they arrived at the country club she’d mentally geared herself for a toned-down evening. But heck, it was her party and she planned to enjoy every minute of it no matter how dull it got.

  Jerry Bob parked his Dodge pickup beside an ancient black Cadillac that had been made back in the days when tail fins and titanic proportions were in style.

  “Mama’s already here,” he said.

  He got that anxious look that always made Josie want to pat him on the head as if he were a little boy and say, “Everything’s going to be all right.” Her feelings for him bordered on the maternal, and that scared her a little.

  She’d always dreamed she’d sweep to the altar on a tidal wave of passion. Instead she seemed to be floating along on a small current of coziness.

  “Lordy,” he added, casting a skeptical glance at Josie’s red dress.

  Josie felt like bopping him over the head with her purse. And his mother, too. Instead, she decided to be magnanimous. She figured it would be good practice for the future.

  “Let’s go in and say hello to her.”

  “That’s all you’re going to do, isn’t it, Josie? Say hello?”

  He was referring to the last time she’d spent an evening in his mother’s company, the command performance at one of Mrs. Crawford’s ritual Sunday dinners. Josie’d bitten her tongue through Clytee Crawford’s narrow religious views, but the minute she’d attacked dogs in general and Bruiser in particular, Josie went into battle.

  Her daddy used to say, “Josie, you’re a quick draw with that invisible sword you carry around.”

  “It’s my sword of justice,” she’d say, and they’d both laugh.

  Clytee Crawford didn’t understand about the sword when she’d said, “I think anybody who keeps dogs in the house ought to have their heads examined.” Then smiling sweetly to show she could bloody your head without malice, she turned to her future daughter-in-law.

  “I do hope you’re planning to get rid of that mutt before you and Jerry Bob marry. I shudder to think what it would do to a nice house.”

  “Bruiser will bring a loving heart and good manners to my house, which is more than I can say for some people.”

  Later Jerry Bob told her, “It took Mama three days to recover from that remark.”

  Josie didn’t plan on making any outrageous remarks tonight. The week before a wedding should be one of the most joyful times in a person’s life. She didn’t want to spoil it for Jerry Bob.

  What about you, Josie?

  As the party guests swarmed around congratulating them, the question burned through Josie’s mind. She suddenly felt cold all over.

  I can’t go through with this, she thought as Jerry Bob was borne away from her on a tide of a well-wishers.

  “Cold feet,” her mother had told her two months earlier when Josie told Betty Anne she was thinking of returning Jerry Bob’s ring because she didn’t love him the way a man deserved to be loved. “Every bride-to-be gets them. Don’t worry, darling. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  Josie sincerely hoped so.

  “Hello, Josie.”

  A voice from the past. Her cheeks burning and her heart racing, she turned around and fell into the deep black eyes of Ben Standing Bear.

  “I got your invitation,” he said. Then he smiled, that heart-stopping, breath-stealing smile that had haunted her for years.

  She’d had no idea he was coming, or even that he was in town. Her mother had sent the invitations while Josie had been up to her ears with the usual round of teachers’ seminars that preceded the opening of school.

  “Ben.” Reason deserted her. She longed to be brilliant and witty for him. She yearned to impress him with her charm, her gaiety. But all she could think of was her wedding. It loomed before her like doomsday.

  The man of her dreams had come too late.

  Ordinarily she’d have thrown herself into his arms for a huge hug. After all, he’d once been the best friend she had.

  But that was a long time ago, and she was no longer free to launch herself at him, even in friendship.

  “I’m so glad you could come,” she said, offering her hand.

  “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

  His hand closed over hers, and she wanted to sit down and cry. How could she have been so foolish? How could she have been so mistaken? If you couldn’t have the man you loved, it wasn’t all right to love the man you could have, for on doing so you were no better than a liar and a thief.

  Holding Ben’s hand was joy indescribable. She’d robbed herself of that pleasure. In saying yes to the wrong man she’d consigned herself to years of traveling the dull interstates when she might have been on a rocket ship to the moon.

  “You look great, Josie.” Ben was still holding her hand, and she wasn’t about to be the first to let go. “What are you doing with yourself these d
ays? Besides getting married?”

  She wished he hadn’t added that last part. At the moment she wished she’d never heard the word marriage.

  “I teach drama at the local high school.”

  “If anyone is suited to drama, it’s you.”

  “I take that as a compliment.”

  “That’s exactly the way I meant it, Josie Belle.”

  Josie wished she were the swooning type. The way he said her name made her want to fall into a heap of crushed red taffeta and melted bones.

  “And you, of course, are a doctor now. Where’s your practice, Ben?”

  “Right here in Pontotoc. I assumed you knew.”

  Oh, God. Not here. Anywhere but here.

  Josie wanted to die. She wanted a big hole to open up and swallow her. She wanted to race to the highest hill in northwest Mississippi and scream until her throat was raw.

  How was she ever going to spend the rest of her days with Jerry Bob Crawford while the man she wanted was living in the same town? Pontotoc was not that big. In fact, it had only two major streets. She was bound to run into Ben at the grocery store, the drugstore, on the town square, at the courthouse. For Pete’s sake, she’d see him practically every day of her life. See him and yearn.

  “No, I didn’t know. I’ve been too busy to even pick up the newspaper.”

  “Weddings must take a lot of planning.”

  He looked deeply into her eyes, and she felt the impact all the way to her toes. They gazed silently at one another, still holding hands. People were beginning to turn and look their way, but Josie didn’t care. She was going to hold on to his good solid warmth as long as she could.

  All of a sudden Ben let go, as if he’d just recalled why he was there.

  “When am I going to get to meet this fiancé of yours?”

  For a heady moment she’d forgotten Jerry Bob existed. Scanning the room she saw him standing beside the punch bowl with his mother, both of them scowling in her direction.

  There was no way she could take Ben to them for an introduction. First she’d have to smooth the waters.