Читать книгу Moonstruck In Manhattan - Cara Summers - Страница 9

“THE BRIDE is not going to throw her bouquet.” Chelsea made a wide sweep with her foot under the table and located the sandals she’d kicked off earlier. Her feet were killing her. Getting married on a California beach at sunrise sounded romantic. But it wasn’t so much fun when the bridesmaids had to walk around the rest of the day with sand in their shoes.

“What are you talking about? She has to throw her bouquet!” Gwen said. “Torrie is the most conventional person I know.”

“I might even get up the energy to make a try for it. That is if I could believe catching a bunch of posies would get me a decent date,” Kate said.

“A date? What’s that?” Gwen asked.

“It’s been that long, huh?” Chelsea asked and then joined in the laughter. After rooming together during their senior year in college, she and Kate and Gwen had each gone on to pursue career goals in separate cities. But they’d managed to keep in touch by phone. Chelsea couldn’t help recalling how often they’d had similar conversations over the years, discussing the dating wasteland they’d encountered in the big city. And the dangers, she thought as a little band of pain tightened around her heart.

Loud cheers and whistles drew their attention to a raised platform at the far end of the dance floor where the groom was removing the garter from the bride’s leg.

“You’ve got to be wrong, Chels,” Kate said starting to rise from the table. “The bouquet comes right after the garter.”

Chelsea grabbed her arm. “But it’s not the bouquet she’s going to toss. It’s the skirt.”

Her two friends stared at her, comprehension, surprise and finally amusement flickering across their faces.

“Not the man-magnet skirt?” Gwen asked.

“The one she picked up on that island during her cruise?”

“You got it,” Chelsea said. They’d all listened countless times to the story of how Torrie’s cruise ship, blown off course by a storm, had dropped anchor at a small out-of-the-way island, and how she’d found this little shop where an elderly seamstress had sold her a special skirt. According to the woman, each spring, the old ladies of the island gathered on a moonlit beach to spin the fibers of the lunua plant into thread. Any woman who wore a garment woven out of this thread that had been supposedly “kissed by moonlight” would draw men like a magnet. And one of those men would be her soul mate.

Privately, Chelsea had always wondered if those island women had been sitting on that beach smoking the fibers and spinning stories instead of thread. While the skirt was a great basic black that fit Torrie perfectly, none of them had ever been able to see anything special about the “fibers” or the “thread.” Still, Torrie swore by it, crediting the skirt with attracting men every time she put it on. And now she claimed it had brought her new husband to her.

“You’re putting us on,” Gwen said, glancing at the bride and groom. “She’s not going to toss the skirt. She doesn’t even have it up there with her.”

“She’s wearing it,” Chelsea said. As if on cue, Torrie began to hike up the yards of satin cascading from her waist. “She told me she wasn’t going to take it off until he said, ‘I do.’”

When the three of them pushed back their chairs and rose as one, Kate said, “This is not a very good testimonial to being single in the city. We’ve all got to be desperate to believe in a moon-kissed skirt!”

“I want to catch it,” Chelsea said.

Gwen and Kate turned to stare at her.

“You? We thought you’d sworn off men after Boyd the bum.”

Kate’s elbow cut Gwen short. “We’re not going to mention his name ever again. Remember? A low-life cad like that does not deserve one more minute of our time. And I think it’s great that you’re going to throw yourself back into the dating jungle, Chels. At least one of us should be out there.”

“Oh, but I’m not…I mean…,” Chelsea paused, touched by the concern she saw in her friends’ eyes. Truthfully, she didn’t want the skirt to attract men. She had entirely different plans for Torrie’s man-magnet skirt. But Kate and Gwen looked so happy for her…

“You go, girl.” Gwen said. “If she tosses it our way, we’ll swat it to you.”

“Love you,” Chelsea said, throwing her arms around them for a quick, three-way hug.

By the time they’d elbowed their way in front of the other single women who’d crowded onto the dance floor, Torrie’s wedding dress was back in place and she’d begun to swing the skirt over her head like a lasso.

As Chelsea watched it move in a circle, she thought she saw a silvery flash of light like the glitter of the moon on the rippling surface of the sea. Then suddenly, the skirt was sailing through the air. Leaping high, she snagged just the edge of the fabric between her fingers.

A cheer went up around her and a funny little tingle shot through her as she clutched the skirt close to her chest.

A special plant and the kiss of moonlight? Ridiculous. However, a skirt that supposedly acted like a magnet on men was just the kind of gimmick she needed to sell her next article to Metropolitan magazine.

Glancing down at it, she thought she caught just a glint of silver again, and an image filled her mind—she was sitting behind an editor’s desk at Metropolitan, pen in hand, writing a regular column.

That was her dream.

It was just her imagination that for a split second she’d seen a man in that chair with her.