Three Little Words (Fool's Gold #12)

“Really?” Montana asked, always the most trusting of the three. “You’re not just saying that to get us to leave you alone?”


He hated to lie, but if he managed to convince Isabel, then he wasn’t technically lying to them. He was telling a pretruth.

“I’m very interested in Isabel Beebe.”

“How interested?” Dakota asked.

He thought about how Isabel always made him laugh and the way she called him on his crap. The woman had mocked his car. She was also sexy and he would like to do a lot more than kiss her.

“I saw that,” Montana said, her voice delighted. “Did you see that?”

“What?” he asked.

“You got a predatory look in your eyes.” Montana smiled at her sister. “He’s really interested in Isabel. I guess there’s something about the Beebe girls.”

He opened his mouth to protest that it wasn’t like that, but he remembered in time he was trying to convince them that it was.

Dakota poked him in the stomach with her index finger. “You better not be lying.”

He rubbed the spot. “Is this how you act with your patients?”

She ignored the question. “Fine. We’ll tell Mom what you said. But if she finds out this is all an act to get us off your back, you are in such trouble.”

“I’m trembling.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Not now, big brother, but you will be.”

His sisters walked away. He told himself the sound of the front door closing didn’t at all sound like the gates of prison. Because he had bigger problems than sibling threats. He had to figure out how to convince Isabel to play along.

* * *

ISABEL IGNORED THE GROWING sense of concern. Her appointment that morning was with a new bride named Lauren. The twentysomething had brought along a disinterested younger sister and no friends, which was never a good sign. Lauren also had handed over pictures of her favorite dresses. While Isabel could duplicate the look, she knew that the styles wouldn’t look right on Lauren’s larger frame.

But she’d done as the bride requested. As her grandmother had taught her, better to let the bride figure out that the dress she wanted looked awful than tell her in advance. Only after the wrong dress had been discarded could the right one be selected.

Thinking of her grandmother relaxed her and made her smile. The older woman had loved Paper Moon. Making brides happy had been her life’s work.

Despite the passage of time, the store looked very much as it had then. The basic setup hadn’t changed in fifty years. There were displays in the large windows and samples on mannequins up front. A separate room housed bridesmaid and prom dresses. Mothers of the bride had their own space and separate dressing rooms.

Three beautifully carved antique armoires displayed veils, while a fourth had shelves for headpieces, including combs and tiaras.

Madeline appeared at her side. “It’s not going well. She won’t come out of the dressing room.”

There were no mirrors in the bridal dressing rooms on purpose. The true beauty of the gown could be seen only from an array of mirrors arranged under perfect lighting. Isabel’s grandmother had believed every bride was beautiful and had done all she could to make sure that happened.

“I’ll get her,” Isabel said, wishing Lauren had brought along a friend or another relative. The baby sister showed no interest in her sister’s plight. The teen was curled up in a plush chair, texting on her phone.

Except for the technology, she could have been Isabel herself, fourteen years ago. Isabel hadn’t been interested in Maeve’s wedding gown, either, although the reasons had been different. She’d been in love with Ford and desperate to avoid thinking of him marrying her sister. She suspected Lauren’s sister was simply bored by the process.

Maybe, in time, they would grow closer. Not that she and Maeve ever had. Perhaps there were too many years between them, or it could be because their lives were so different. Regardless, she and her sister were more like distant relatives than siblings.

Now that she was in Fool’s Gold, that could be changed, she thought, telling herself to give Maeve a call in the next few days.

She knocked on one of the three large dressing rooms. “Lauren, honey, come on out so we can see how you look.”

“I can’t.”

“Sure you can. Let’s have a look.”

Lauren made a small, unhappy sound, then flung open the door.

“I’m hideous,” she announced as tears spilled down her cheeks. “I look ugly. I love Dave and I don’t want to disappoint him.”

Isabel hated to admit that Lauren was right, but it was painfully obvious that the dress she’d picked wasn’t flattering on her curvy figure. The layers of ruffles only added bulk where it wasn’t needed and the stark white color made her look pale and sickly. Mouse-brown hair and small eyes didn’t help.