Mother told me the dress shop was two doors down from the house where her uncle Stanley Hollingworth lived. I've never yet known her to give anyone a set of directions without at least one reference to a landmark that hasn't existed for years. It wasn't until the third time I'd examined every building in the block that I realized she must have meant not the house where he currently lived but the one he'd grown up in, three quarters of a century ago.
Sure enough, two doors down from the old Hollingworth house was a small cottage painted in Easter egg pastels, including a tasteful pink and baby blue colonial-style sign in front reading Be-Stitched-- Dressmakers. I walked down a cobblestone path between a low border of immaculately pruned shrubs, opened a glossy sky blue door, and walked in to the tinkling of a small, old-fashioned bell. The whole thing was almost too cute for words. And since I positively loathe cute, I walked in prepared to dislike the proprietor intensely.
And found myself face-to-face with one of the most gorgeous men I'd ever seen in my life. He looked up from the book he was reading, brushed an unruly lock of dark hair out of his deep blue eyes, and smiled.
'Yes?' he said. I stood there looking at him for a couple of embarrassing seconds before pulling myself together. More or less.
'I'm here about a wedding. Where's Mrs. Waterston?' I asked, and then realized how rude that sounded.
'In traction,' he said. 'Down in Florida. I'm her son, Michael; I'm filling in while her broken bones mend.'
'Oh, I'm sorry. I hope she's better soon.'
'Not nearly as much as I hope it,' he said gloomily. He had a wonderful, resonant voice. Perhaps he was a musician. I'm a sucker for musicians.
'How can I help you?' he asked.
'I'm Meg Langslow. I'm supposed to come here to be measured for a bridesmaid's dress.'
'A bridesmaid's dress,' he said, suddenly looking very cheerful. 'Wonderful! For whose wedding?' He stood up and turned round to pull out the top drawer of a file cabinet on the back wall, giving me a chance to discreetly eye his wonderfully long, lean form. I decided I was looking forward to bringing Eileen in here so I could point out to her that this, not the beefy Barry, was my idea of what a hunk should look like. And I peeked at the book he was reading--Shakespeare. Not only gorgeous, but literate, too.
'Samantha Brewster, Eileen Donleavy, or Margaret Hollingworth Langslow. Take your pick.'
His hand froze over the files and he looked up warily.
'You're not sure which? Are you, perhaps, comparison shopping to see who has the least objectionable gowns before committing yourself?'
'No, I'm stuck with all three of them. Langslow is my mother, Brewster is marrying my brother, and Donleavy is my best friend. I know it sounds odd, but this is a very small town.'
'Actually, after two weeks here, very little strikes me as odd,' he said. 'And you're right; this is a very small town. I'm surprised I haven't run into you before.'
'I don't live here anymore. I've come home for the summer, though, to help with all the weddings. I assume one set of measurements will do for all three; the first and last ones are only two weeks apart.'
'Should do,' he said. 'What a summer you're in for. Here we are. Brewster ... Langslow ... and I'll start a file for Donleavy.'
'Start a file? She's the first one up; you mean she hasn't even been here yet?'
'Not since I took over, and if your friend had been in before Mom left for Florida I'm sure she would have started a file.'
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and began counting silently. I had gotten to three when he asked, 'Are you all right?'
'I'm fine,' I said. 'Eileen always advises me to count to ten when I lose my temper. I generally still feel like throttling her when I'm finished, though.'
I opened my eyes.
'She was supposed to have come in with one of her other bridesmaids months ago to pick out dresses so your mother could order them in our sizes. I mean, that's what she told me she'd done. The measurements were just supposed to be for the fine-tuning, or whatever you call it. Which I thought would be happening this week. She lied to me!'
Calm down, Meg, I told myself. Do not lose your temper at Eileen, especially in front of this very nice and extremely gorgeous man. Who was not, I had already noticed, wearing a wedding ring. I made a mental note to interrogate Mother about him; no doubt she and the aunts on the Hollingworth side of the family already knew not only his entire life history but also several generations of his family tree.
'I'm sorry,' I said. 'It's just that I'm the one who's trying to pull this all together, and she's the one who's unintentionally sabotaging everything.'
'We'll manage something,' he said, with a smile. 'I don't recognize the name--what does she look like?'
'She's about five-ten, frizzy blondish hair down to her waist, a little on the plump side. Kind of looks like she just got in from California, or maybe Woodstock. The original.'
He chuckled and walked over to a curtained doorway in the back of the shop and called out something in a rapid, musical tongue. A little wizened Asian grandmother, well under five feet tall, popped out and they chattered at each other for a few moments.
'She was in and looked at all the books several months ago, but didn't decide on anything,' he reported finally. 'Took down several stock numbers but hasn't called back.'
'I'll have her in here Monday. Oh--Monday's Memorial Day. Tuesday, then. She'll be in town by then. You are open Tuesday?'
He nodded. 'That would be great. Why don't we have Mrs. Tranh measure you now for the other weddings.'
'Fine,' I said, my mind still focused on Eileen's iniquities. 'And just what did Mother and Samantha decide on? At least I hope they've both decided on something. They told me they had, but perhaps I shouldn't have trusted them, either.'
'Oh, yes, they did. Several months ago. Your mother said she wanted to surprise you and your sister, and we weren't on any account to show you what it was until she had the chance,' he said, a little nervously.
'That's Mother for you. I won't ask you to betray a confidence; I won't even ask you if she picked something ghastly. As long as it's underway.'
'Oh, definitely,' he said. 'And it's not ghastly at all, if you ask me.'
'And Samantha?' I asked. 'She's underway, too?'
'Yes. She hasn't told you anything about what she picked?'
'No, she and the blond bim--the other bridesmaids all got together and decided two months ago. I knew I should have come down for it. How bad is it? Should I be sitting down?'
He pulled a picture out of the file and held it up.
'You've got to be kidding,' I said. He shook his head.
'No, and neither is she, apparently.'
'Oh... my ... God!'
The pictures looked like publicity stills from Gone with the Wind. Enormous hooped skirts. Plunging, off-the- shoulder necklines. Multiple layers of petticoats. Elaborate hairstyles involving many fussy-looking ringlets. And tiny, tiny waists.
'I'll let Mrs. Tranh take you back to the dressing room for measuring,' he said. Damn him, he was fighting back a grin. 'The corsets, particularly, require a lot of rather intimate details.'
'Corsets? In July? Eileen's off the hook. I'm killing Samantha first,' I said. Much to his amusement.
Mrs. Tranh, it turned out, was the tiny, gray-haired Asian woman. Vietnamese, I think. Neither she nor any of the other seamstresses would admit to speaking any English. However, she had no difficulty communicating with sign language and firm taps and tugs exactly how I should stand or turn so she and the flock could measure me. There were only five of them, I think, but the dressing room--formerly the kitchen of the tiny cottage--was so small, and they darted so rapidly about the room and up and down the stairs--to the sewing rooms, I supposed--that they seemed like dozens. They were all so short that I felt like a great, clumsy giantess. And knowing that they had
