"On behalf of my wife and myself..." It was a traditional opening gambit for a groom's wedding speech and it caused everyone, Rachel included, to laugh and applaud. Reece could carry off even the corniest of lines with grace and charm. "I'd like to thank you all for being here to celebrate our special day," he said, concluding the sentiment and drawing out another appreciative murmur. American and Brit guests alike were loving him, especially the female ones. His dark tuxedo was tailored to heighten their imagination of the near-triangular athlete's torso beneath and ever tuft of his dark hair was waxed perfectly into place.
He's immaculately-groomed, therefore so is the bride.
Rachel smirked at her own wordplay and swallowed the tinge of envy which coloured it. Kyla was gazing up at her new husband with a got-the-cream smile on her perfectly-curved lips. At least this bride knew what a catch she'd reeled in, but then a woman as smart, sassy and gorgeous as Kyla could keep chucking them back in the sea until she knew she'd landed a prize. Then again maybe it was Reece who'd caught
her
. Or maybe they were two expert anglers whose lines had snagged and... Rachel's metaphor grew tangled as fishing-wire and she felt glad it wasn't her making the speech.
"Kyla wanted me to say special thanks to my friends and relatives who have hopped across the Pond to join us. Not that coming to Hawaii is an especial chore, but it's an expense that none of you needed to incur and we're delighted that you took the opportunity. So delighted, in fact, that we're bringing you all on honeymoon with us..." Laughter broke out once more around the palm-fronded reception area. "I'm not joking... Kyla and I will be spending the first few days here in her native state and have invited some friends along with us -- many thanks to Kyla's parents for allowing us all the fabulous Frutchey-family beach house in Maui. That's on the proviso that our guests allow us a little 'us' time." Much grinning, Rachel noticed, particularly from the British party in the reception's middle table.
"Of course there's one person joining us there to whom Kyla and I owe particular thanks." Reece glanced down at Rachel, and his bride turned her garlanded head to bestow a radiant smile. Rachel was blushing even before Reece had named her. "People have been inquiring since the rehearsal about the identity of our beautiful second bridesmaid. Let me introduce you to Rachel Stanton, without whom this celebration would never have happened." The ripple of amused interest made her drop her eyes further, though Reece's acknowledgement gratified her. "Rachel was Kyla's student and the daughter of my client and she took it upon herself to -- well -- throw us casually together. Kyla had no idea that her top student was plotting to hook her up with a family friend."
Rachel was pleasurably mortified. The sun-blonded bride was bedazzling her with a grateful, slightly impish smile. The groom, towering above her in six foot two of bespoke-tuxedoed magnificence, was gracing her with a grin fit to melt a girl. For that moment in time she got to bask in the twin suns of their affection. On one level it wasn't much consolation, but on another it meant everything -- to be decked out in an exquisite pale green bridesmaid dress, hibiscus flowers in her hair, seated at the head table on the day of this beautiful couple's gorgeous wedding.
"Well our happiness is much to do with her subterfuge, and we hope that her place here today demonstrates something of the gratitude we share. You know, if I were Mormon I'd marry her as well." It was the sort of cheeky aside Reece could pull off safely, eliciting only a comical slap from his new wife. All perfectly clear that Rachel was a shy little girl, however curvy, to Kyla's fully-flowered woman.
Your loss, mister,
she thought, not remotely believing it.
The bride leaned down the table to her, looking ravishing in her simple spaghetti-strapped wedding gown, her bosom peeking out discreetly from the corseting of the white bodice. "I'd marry you too, baby," she whispered in Rachel's ear, so that Greta Frutchey, chief bridesmaid and Kyla's sister, could not hear. The little flourish was so unexpected that Rachel was sure she blushed right down her bare neck to the tight-compressed orbs of her breasts. Her ex-teacher shot her a cheeky wink and resumed a graceful pose next to her husband.
It said much of her, Rachel sometimes joked, that she had brought together the two great crushes of her teenage years. An act of unswerving selflessness. "So how did you become the great match-maker?" asked Tyler, the bride's college-grad cousin, as she danced with him after the meal. He was slender and well-presented, two years her senior and obviously hot for her. A cooling sea breeze wafted across the dance floor and the sun set the horizon ablaze, but even as this young fair-haired suitor pressed himself gently to the skirts of her dress, arms linked around her waist, she could not summon up much sense of romance. Maybe the proximity of the groom was spoiling her for any other man, or at least for any around her own age.
"When I was still at school Reece was helping my dad build this modern town-house right in the middle of London. It featured in
Dream Dwellings
, this TV show about crazy-ambitious building projects? It was all reinforced glass and loads of light pouring in from above. Reece was chief architect on the build so we all got to know him pretty well."
Got to know him
... He'd been suave and funny and cool, totally intimidating a girl embarking on her A-levels. At school Rachel had brushed off advances from boys and the occasional creepy teacher. So smitten had she been by Reece Everett, however, his mere presence had rendered her a babbling fool, even after the squash lessons he'd given her on her dad's suggestion. He acquired for her the status of a Ryan Gosling or a Heath Ledger, only
this
idol showed up in her house most weeks. Then began his appearances in her night-time visions, the ones where he took her in all sorts of charming naked manly ways.
When she tried a little nervous flirtation during waking hours -- "So, who are you building your own dream home for?" - he brushed it off with a brotherly "Haven't met her yet." She knew she was growing into quite the little hottie; glossy black hair, juicily-rounded tits and ass, and didn't the schoolboys notice? Reece's refusal to play, however, always made her feel like a kid again.
"And my cousin taught you history, right?" said Tyler, giving her all his best slow-dance moves. "She must have stood out a little."
"Yes..." Rachel smiled. "Miss Frutchey was quite the exotic staff-member. We'd always ask her why she'd left the sunshine."
It
had
seemed unlikely, this slender, glamorous Hawaiian teaching History at
North London Collegiate School
. Bombshell-blonde with mesmerising Pacific-island eyes. "
Hapa haole
," she'd once explained. "My mom's Caucasian as all get, and my daddy's an Islander. "As for how I got here," she would respond affably to the students' queries, "it's just where life took me."
She had confided more to Rachel after class one day. "Between ourselves, I moved here because of a guy, but stayed because of a job. Always have a Plan B, Rachel, just in case Plan A flakes out on you."
"So why England?" Rachel had pursued. Kyla had been sitting cross-legged on a desk, lovely in a print dress, hair draped over one shoulder in a long ponytail. Rachel had imagined her teaching some kind of Hawaiian beach class in a bikini and sarong, the very fact that she could conjure up such an image rather disconcerting.
"Hey, school is school," Miss Frutchey had replied blithely. "Plus, I've always had a soft spot for those sexy Tudors and naughty Victorians. And I get to teach that stuff here. I guess I'm not a traditional Hawaiian gal..."
Rachel had giggled with her and thought she was just
so
sophisticated. They had discussed Rachel's university prospects along with her boy-troubles and man-crushes. Kyla had been sympathetic and funny, helping her laugh off her sillier teenage notions. She had also lent her books, the most memorable of which was Sarah Waters'
Tipping the Velvet
. "It's a whole aspect of Victoriana which might not even have existed, but you'll wish it had, it's so vibrant and liberating..."
Miss Frutchey's motives for recommending a young Victorian woman's journey of lesbian self-discovery had surely been innocent. Still the proffering of the book along with the vivid eroticism within its pages had resulted in deliciously wet dreams. Thoughts and sensations of being wrestled into Reece's masculine control were now as odds with those of Sapphic seduction at the hands and tongue of her beautiful worldly teacher. So foreign were the latter thoughts to Rachel, she had become hopelessly tongue-tied the next time she met Kyla. She had started blathering about Reece as a cover: "You should meet him, Miss -- you two would get along so well..." Remembered the contents of the book, she added: "That's if you're still..." Then she faltered and floundered, feeling wildly silly.
"Honey..." Kyla came to her rescue. "I still date guys. Rachel, just because I enjoyed a lesbian-themed novel, I haven't crossed over. Although maybe I've straddled the line a little... Now shouldn't you be going to your next class?" That was the way of it. Either Reece or Kyla could so have had her -- it made her squirm to admit it to herself - but the objects of her schoolgirl desire remained frustratingly appropriate in their behaviour.
"I set them up," she explained to her dance-partner, leaving out all the other stuff. "I showed Reece some photos of Kyla I'd taken on my phone during a school trip to the Globe Theatre and told him he had to come meet her. She was taking our History class to TGI Friday's for dinner just after we'd finished our Finals and I told him he had to show up just as though by accident. He said he didn't do set-ups, but he was still there that night. I knew he wouldn't be able to resist."
"You're quite the little one-woman dating agency," said Tyler, his face hovering close to hers.
"I suppose so..."
Rachel wondered what exactly had possessed her to do it. She supposed that since
she
wasn't going to have either of these older, wiser individuals that they might as well have each other. There had been the 'giving two nice people a shot at happiness' element, but just as strong was a wicked sense of pimping them, of instigating something wild and hot. Of course however fevered her imagining of their first meeting, the reality might have fizzled like a soggy firework. She recalled her trepidation on the night in question.
How deliciously her stomach had squirmed on spying Reece at a table across the restaurant. His grin on seeing her had been sheepish, as though this slip of a girl had him at a disadvantage. She had waited till most of her classmates had departed, then made her move. "Hey, Miss Frutchey..."
