The Reluctant Bride

Professional Reviews

Rating: 4 Lips
“ Fiona McGier’s style is easy to read and she has done a good job showing us the conflicted backgrounds of the two main protagonists, although Daniel’s story is a bit sketchy. Her scenic descriptions are atmospheric and the characters are, for the most part, well-defined and believable. Although her sex scenes aren’t explicit, you’ll have no trouble figuring out what’s going on. The finale is satisfying but not sweet enough to send you into a diabetic coma, which fits this type of story. Just put your Blackberry on mute and enjoy The Reluctant Bride.”
Tim
TwoLips Reviews

Excerpt

Pamela twirled around in her gown, letting her mother see the full effect of the swirling skirt, with the veil floating in the air around her head.
“ Well? What do you think, Mom?”
Maribel sighed.
“ Honey, even if you weren’t my daughter, I’d think you were the most beautiful bride I’d ever seen! And the fact that you are wearing a dress that I designed just makes it that much more of a special thrill for me. You are so gorgeous!”
Maribel moved closer to hug her daughter, and they both smiled as she aimed a gentle kiss at Pamela’s cheek but stopped just short of making contact, so as not to smear the makeup which had been so painstakingly applied that morning.
Pamela giggled.
“ Not like you are prejudiced or anything, right, Mom?”
Maribel shook her head firmly.
“ No. You’re breathtaking, my dear, and the dress is divine.”
Pamela frowned at her mother, then turned to look into the mirror and met her mother’s eye in their reflection.
“ I still think the dress should have been more of a cream color, though. I mean, it’s too, too white! It’s not like I haven’t been living with my intended for the past six months now. We certainly aren’t angels deserving of pure white!”
Her mother raised her eyebrows and shook her head.
“ Don’t be ridiculous, Pam dear. No one’s virginal on their wedding day anymore. At least they shouldn’t be! Why even back when I married your father, I wanted to try him out before we got married. And he felt the same way.”
Pamela giggled at her mother’s easy admitting of something she’d denied to her daughter for years.
“ That’s not what you used to say!”
Maribel rolled her eyes.
“ But that was when you were a teenager, and way too young to be engaging in sexual intercourse with anyone. Now you’re an adult and so is your groom.”
She moved closer to smooth out a fold and pat the skirt back into the perfect arrangement that only she could see.
“ Besides, a cream color wouldn’t have been so spectacular with your skin tone. It’s perfectly set off by the stark white of the dress. That’s the effect I was aiming for. Heavens, girl, I could lie in a tanning booth for twelve hours a day for a week, and still not have the fine color you have. And along with your beautiful skin you have the hair and eyes that suit it so well. Daniel’s such a lucky man.”
Pamela made a face at herself in the full-length mirror while she smoothed down imaginary wrinkles in the dress. “I hope he stops texting and taking calls from his office long enough to notice that!”
Maribel raised her eyebrows in surprise, as Pamela shook her head.
“ Mom, you know it’s true! I can’t ever get him to take his damn bluetooth out of his ear! That crackberry of his is always taking his attention away from me!”
Maribel shook her head.
“ Honey,” she began in a cautionary tone, “You know how close he is to making full partner in his firm. He’s thirty-five and not getting any younger. But he’s been doing so well, that he’s almost there. Once that gets offered, you two won’t have to ever worry about your finances again.”
Pamela turned to regard her mother soberly.
“ But will I ever be able to get his undivided attention again? Ever? Mom, he even keeps the crackberry on the nightstand next to the bed! If it beeps at him while we’re making love, he tries to hide it but he looks at it, to see how urgent it is! For crying out loud, even while he is trying to pleasure me, he’s worrying about his damn job!”
Maribel shook her head again.
“ Pam, that’s what it’s like being married to a driven, career man. Your father was like that in his younger days. Many’s the times he missed dinner, or canceled our dates because he had to stay in the office to deal with clients. Your father was the first black lawyer to make full partner in his firm. You’d better believe that if he’d had a Blackberry back then, he’d have had it on even while we were in bed. And I’d have supported him doing it! It’s a cutthroat world out there. You need to grab every advantage you can if you want to succeed and get ahead.”
Pamela sighed heavily.
“ I guess so…but I just wish I could feel like I’m as important to him as his job is.”
Maribel lit a cigarette, looking around for an ashtray. When she didn’t see one, she pulled a tiny gold box out of her purse and opened it up to reveal a small holder for her to rest her cigarette on while she poured herself another glass of champagne out of the bottle they’d opened earlier.
“ Pamela, you are important to him. Every partner needs to have a wife. You’ll be expected to help him to entertain his clients, and to go with him to company functions. There’s so much to do once he makes full partner that he won’t be able to keep up with everything without your help. So you’ll know just how important you are to him then. You’ll see—”
Pamela made another face at her mother, then drank the rest of her glass of champagne in rapid gulps. She belched in a most unladylike manner, shooting a guilty look at her mother as she poured herself another glass.
Maribel glared at her.
“ Was that really necessary?”
Pamela shrugged.
“ Yes. It was to remind me that I’m still me…in spite of this gorgeous dress and this ridiculously fussy hairdo you insisted on. And this perfect makeup that I’d never be able to recreate even if I wanted to. It was to remind me that I’m still Pamela Wilson. That despite all this fairytale stuff I’m still the biracial daughter of Joseph and Maribel Wilson, and I’m a vet who takes care of people’s overly pampered dogs and cats. I don’t smoke, though I sometimes drink too much, and I’ve been known to belch and fart in public when the spirit moves me. I may have a mother who’s been trying for years to make me over into the kind of lady she brought me up to be, but I’ve been resisting her for as long as I can remember! So there!”
She defiantly stuck her tongue out at her mother, who smiled and shook her head in return.
“ Honestly, you were a willful child, Pam, always butting heads with me. I thought you’d outgrown your need to rebel against what you see as the constraints of proper behavior. Daniel’s been so good for you, helping to ease you into society by taking you to the best places, making sure you’d be seen everywhere with him. Don’t be a fool and risk everything now by throwing one of your silly tantrums.”
Pamela finished the champagne in her glass and reached for the bottle again, only to have her hand slapped quickly by her mother, who took the bottle and emptied the last of the wine into her own glass.
“ No! No more for you until the ceremony’s over. I don’t want you embarrassing yourself by belching in church, or slurring while you’re repeating what will be the most important words of your life. I’m going outside now, to make sure everything’s ready. It’s almost time for you to walk down the aisle. I’ll be back in here as soon as I can, to let you know when you need to come out.”
“ Yes, Mother,” Pamela said with an edge to her voice—but the sarcasm was lost on Maribel, who was already out the door in a swish of expensive perfume with a hint of cigarette smoke.
With a heavy sigh, Pamela defied her mother’s orders and sat down on the chair Maribel had just vacated, heedless of the wrinkles she was surely causing in the expensive fabric. She picked up the smoldering butt her mother had forgotten to stub out and took a quick drag, then coughed steadily for the next few minutes.
“ Crap! That’s probably going to smear some of my eye makeup,” she said out loud almost gleefully as her eyes teared up from the unaccustomed smoke.
She checked her watch, hidden inside of the tiny wristlet she’d insisted she be allowed to wear as she walked down the aisle. After all, it would be covered by the flowers she was to carry. It also held her cell phone, her keys, her debit card, a little bit of cash, and her driver’s license, along with her birth control pills. She always took them before bedtime but had lost them more than once, so she’d gotten into the habit of carrying them with her everywhere. She joked that the wristlet was just big enough to hold everything that a woman needs, to be prepared for anything.
She shook her head.
“ Almost time. Daniel, you’d better have turned off your ’tooth like I asked you to. No phone, no crackberry—not during the ceremony, the reception, or the wedding night! For just this one day, I want to feel like I’m the most important thing you’re thinking about. Not your boss, not your clients. Me. Your wife.”
She glared at herself in the mirror.
“ Or there’s gonna be hell to pay, and I’m just the bitch to collect the toll.”
She defiantly stuck her tongue out at her reflection, then turned her head slightly and stared moodily out the window, which was her version of patiently waiting. She tried to will herself to be happy and wondered why her stomach still had butterflies in it.
“ Calm down in there!” she said out loud, but the butterflies ignored her. She tipped the empty champagne bottle against her lips, but got only a tiny drop her mother had missed. Then she went back to staring out the window.