“What was I supposed to do, Terri? Believe me, I was as shocked as anyone when it popped up, but I could hardly spill the beans to Rach when she was mooning all over it, could I? Besides, it all worked out grand, didn’t it? So it might not have been in the cards, to be fair, but what can you do?”
Terri was so disgusted, she thought she might throw up. To think that he could blithely go along with something so despicable…
“Gary,” she said, deciding to throw the idea out, as clearly he was too dim to put two and two together. “Did you ever consider thatmaybethe reason Ethan Greene has been hounding you, as you say, is not because he fancies Rachel but becausethat ring is his?”
To his credit, he looked completely bewildered, as if the idea had never even crossed his mind. “Huh? But how could it be? It was in my stuff.” But she could see his eyes grow wary at the prospect.
“Yes, but perhaps he’d also been carrying a Tiffany’s bag, and they got mixed up?”
Gary shrugged. “Nah. Anyway, not my fault.” He was seriously slurring his words now, and Terri figured it was pointless trying to get him to see sense at this stage. She wondered if he would even remember this conversation tomorrow.
Still, whatever Gary’s feelings about Ethan, Terri needed to know his true intentions toward her best friend.
“So this whole engagement only came about because the ring turned up out of the blue? You hadn’t planned it all along?”
“Nope. I mean, I don’t mind going along with it though. Rachel’s great, easy on the eyes, good fun, scorcher in the sack,” he added, and Terri cringed in disgust. Clearly he’d forgotten whom he was talking to and was an even bigger creep than she realized.
At the same moment, Gary laid his head on the table and closed his eyes, muttering something that sounded like, “I could get used to all this free stuff—beer, diamonds…” and then let out a huge snore.
She waited for a moment, making sure he was out cold before she could contemplate her next move. Her first instinct was to whack him over the head with something, she was so enraged by what she had just learned.
Although she’d suspected all along that something wasn’t right, she certainly hadn’t anticipated this.
Should she tell Rachel? Break the news to her friend that her so-called fairy-tale engagement was a complete sham and had only come about because Gary had come out the better end of a mistake?
She had to. Although, thinking about it, no doubt Ethan Greene was doing exactly that himself right now.
Trying to imagine that conversation, Terri winced. Why should he have to suffer the consequences when dumbass Gary was the one at fault?
Terri looked again at the love of Rachel’s life, drunkenly snoring his head off.
She hoped he had the mother of all hangovers tomorrow morning and would be racked with guilt and shame.
Or would he even remember?
She shook her head. Poor Rachel and all her big dreams about tradition, family, and happily ever after.
Being stuck with an oaf like Gary for a fiancé would surely be the very opposite of a fairy-tale ending.
Chapter 34
Gary could hear someone calling his name. He was in a murky place, something cold and hard was pushed against his face, and for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what it was.
“Ah, Ma, give it a rest,” he mumbled.
“Gary, wake up.”
There, he heard it again. Why couldn’t he open his eyes? They seemed glued shut. He was slowly becoming conscious, and the first thing he noticed was the shooting pain in his skull, and it was as if his head was locked in a vise. Why did his head hurt so much? And again, where the hell was he?
“Gary, come on. Wake up.” There was an insistent tapping on his shoulder, and blearily, he realized he knew that voice.
Finally, he was able to open one eye, then the other one. There in front of him stood Rachel. His fiancée, he remembered. She didn’t look happy though.
“Gary.” She shook his shoulder. “What are you doing here?” It was more of a demand than a question.
There was a whiskey bottle in front of him, along with two shot glasses. He appeared to have his head resting on the dark wood of a table and was sitting on a chair. He noticed that not only did his head hurt, but so did every other part of his body. He could only imagine it had to do with the fact that he had slept practically upright all night.
“Hey, babe,” he mumbled as he started to slowly pick his head up from the table.
