Page 101 of Love and Other Trials
The wedding dress was here!
In the back of his Bronco…
Holy—
He took a couple deep breaths before walking to the back and popping it open. While he wasn’t a superstitious man, he reached out to touch the dress to make sure it was actually there.
Yup.
The plastic made a rustling sound as he carefully unfolded the balled-up dress. He couldn’t believe it! Someone had balled up Tiffany’s dress and thrown it in the back of his Bronco. Rare panic made his heart race. Surely she’d believe he had no idea how it had ended up in his car. Except shit. Look at Rob—they’d been friends for half their lives and his friend had turned on him without any evidence.
The sound of Ariel’s footsteps pounding down the stairs had his head craning to look at her. She held three vacuum-sealed bags in her arms. He looked back toward the wrinkled wonder in his trunk.
Fuck! What the hell was he supposed to say?
Hey, Elizabeth. You aren’t going to believe this. Someone threw Tiffany’s dress in the back of my car.
But then she was off the stairs and running toward the Bronco and him. The situation hit him.
He’d been framed.
And he had no idea by whom or why.
He stepped a couple feet from the trunk, blocking her view. She was panting and her gaze shot up to look at him. He put his hands on her shoulders and leaned down until they were eye level. “So…I don’t think I’m going crazy, but it seems like Tiffany’s dress is in my trunk.”
Her brows slammed together.“What?”
She zoomed around him and let out a closed-mouth shriek before swinging around and staring at him.
“You see it too, right?”
“But…how?” she sputtered. “I thought you and Jeffrey put it in the wedding cottage.”
An unholy tension rolled through his gut. “We did. Ariel, I have no idea how or why this dress is in my trunk.”
Her mouth parted before she glanced toward it again, her face pale as fresh snow. She stood there, breathing hard, the other wedding dresses lying limply in her arms.
When she didn’t say anything, he stepped forward and put his hand on her shoulder. “You believe me, right?”
Her pupils were dilated, and she looked as wild as he felt. She glanced back toward her sister’s wedding dress…and then at him. She finally nodded. Slowly.
“But…” She made an inarticulate sound. “I don’t understand. Who else?—”
“I don’t know.” He checked his watch, his sense of mission timing never failing him. “Look, we both have questions. But we need to get back. We have less than thirty minutes?—”
“You’re right. I should just be grateful it showed up.”
He loved that perspective. “Right.”
She spun into action, laying her grandma’s dresses carefully in the back after straightening Tiffany’s dress. “I don’t have time to take them back inside. Let’s go.”
He backed out of the driveway and then hit the road. As a pilot on a mission, he hated that sinking feeling of knowing the clock was against you. He felt it today. Even though he knew they could delay the wedding a little, he could still hear the second hand clicking in his mind. Ariel clenched her hands in her lap, staring straight out the window.
“We need a cover story,” he finally said in the tense silence of the car.
She turned her stricken gaze his way. “Dax, this looks really bad.”
He nodded, his jaw clenching. “I know.”
