by Jane Graves
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To Brian, with all my love
Chapter 1
They were the ugliest bridesmaid dresses Heather Montgomery had ever seen, and she’d seen her share of them. When you had a family that could fill Texas Stadium, somebody was always getting married, and it was family law that cousins asked cousins to be bridesmaids, even if it meant blood relatives had to stand in line behind five of the bride’s sorority sisters.
This time around, it was Heather’s cousin Regina tying the knot, and she’d chosen these dresses for one reason only: Her high-priced wedding planner had convinced her they were the height of fashion. To Heather, they simply looked ridiculous.
“Regina!” squealed Bridesmaid Number One as she fanned out the skirt of one of the six petticoated, puffy-sleeved, waist-hugging creations. “They’re fabulous!”
Two and Three voiced similar opinions, while Four and Five stroked the satin reverently, making breathy little noises of approval. Heather had given up trying to remember the five names all ending in i—Cami, Taci, Tami, whatever—and which blond woman belonged to each one. In the end, she’d simply assigned them numbers according to hair length.
In the wake of all the oohs and ahhs, Heather traded furtive eye-rolls with her mother. Barbara Montgomery had come along on this dress-fitting excursion, even though she didn’t particularly like her sister or her niece. She was there because family weddings always stirred things up, and if she stayed in the thick of things, she was sure to be around when the pandemonium began. The whole family thrived on chaos in a way that boggled Heather’s mind. Given her own preference for a calm, tidy, organized life, sometimes she wondered if the stork had taken a wrong turn twenty-nine years ago and dumped her down the wrong chimney.
“Oh, yes,” Barbara said. “The dresses are simply adorable. Don’t you think they’re adorable, Heather?”
“Yes,” she said, sounding almost as Stepfordlike as her mother. “Adorable.”
“Of course they’re adorable,” Aunt Bev said as she fluffed the skirt on Three’s dress. “They’re by Jorge.”
“Well, pink must be Jorge’s signature color,” Heather said. “I mean, look at how much of it he used here.”
“They’re not pink,” Regina said with a toss of her head that sent a shudder through the mountain of lace attached to it. “They’re salmon. It’s all the rage this season.” She fluttered her hands. “Go ahead, girls. Try them on.”
Heather went to a dressing room and stuffed herself into the dress. The sleeves drooped to her elbows, at least six inches of hem dragged on the ground, and it fit so snugly around her waist that breathing was a chore.
She pulled back the curtain. One through Five had morphed into gushy, grinning quintuplets with perfectly toned abs that didn’t make the slightest bulge in the waistlines of their perfectly hideous dresses. It was like watching models on a Parisian runway wearing ridiculous clothes, yet for some reason, nobody laughed.
The seamstress smiled as she fanned her gaze over the flawless members of the wedding party. Then she zeroed in on Heather.
“Hmm,” she said, running her hand over the waist of Heather’s dress and shaking her head. “It’s a little tight.”
Heather sighed. “I told Regina to get a fourteen, just in case. I knew it would have to be taken in, but—”
“A fourteen?” Regina said, blinking innocently. “I’m sorry, Heather. I swore you said size twelve.”
There was nothing wrong with Regina’s hearing. It was just her way of coercing her cousin into a smaller size so she wouldn’t have five pencil-thin women walking down the aisle followed by one who looked like a gum eraser. So what if Heather wouldn’t be able to breathe? As long as enough oxygen went to her brain that she stayed upright during the ceremony, that was all that mattered to Regina.
“I can let it out a little,” the seamstress said. “But only a little. There’s not much seam allowance.”
“Can’t you order the fourteen?” Heather asked.
“Too short of notice.”
“The wedding’s not for a month,” Regina said. “I’m sure you can drop a size by then.”
Drop a size in a month? When she hadn’t been able to drop a size in the past ten years?
“Try the Hollywood watermelon diet,” Four said with a vacuous smile. “I once lost six pounds in a weekend on that one.”
Great. Not only did Heather have to be in a wedding she was going to hate, she had to starve herself for the privilege. As the seamstress knelt down to mark the hem of her dress, Heather wondered how many celery sticks she’d have to eat in the next month so she wouldn’t look like ten pounds of potatoes in a five-pound sack.
“So, Heather,” Aunt Bev said. “Are you seeing anyone right now?”
The eternal question. One whose answer never seemed to change. “No, Aunt Bev. Nobody right now.”
“What a shame. But don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll meet Mr. Right very soon.”
The subtext was so thick, Heather could barely wade through it, and all of it was directed squarely at her mother. My Regina’s getting married, and your Heather isn’t even dating anyone.
“Actually, Heather is concentrating on her career right now,” Barbara said. “A lot of young women are waiting until their thirties to marry.”
“Is that what all the women’s magazines are saying?” Aunt Bev said, looking befuddled. “If so, I’m afraid I wouldn’t know about it. It’s all I can do to get through every issue of Modern Bride.”
“What they’re saying,” Barbara said, “is that some women choose to be successful in their own right before settling down and getting married.”
“And I think Heather is very smart to do that,” Aunt Bev said with an indulgent little smile. “That way, if the worst happens and she doesn’t find a man, at least she won’t be struggling for the rest of her life to put food on the table.”
Heather had long since learned to let Aunt Bev’s comments roll right past her. Her mother hadn’t. Heather could almost feel her mother’s brain working, trying to manufacture a comeback, but when it came to sheer bitchiness, she couldn’t hold a candle to Aunt Bev.
Heather took off her dress and put her clothes back on. As the seamstress marked the other bridesmaids’ hems for alteration, Heather sat down on the bench next to her mother.
“Don’t listen to Aunt Bev,” Barbara muttered under her breath. “She’s just jealous that you have a fabulous career while Regina barely made it out of college.”
Truthfully, there was a limit to the fabulousness of a career as a CPA, if it even counted for anything in the first place where her family was concerned. Career women weren’t put on the same pedestal as those who chose matrimony and the mommy track. What was valued the most was the ability to wed, procreate, raise progeny to adulthood, maintain a clean house, and sustain enough of a relationship with your husband that he doesn’t leave you for his secretary.
“Why don’t I just tell Regina that I don’t want to be in the wedding?” Heather whispered. “She doesn’t want me there in the first place. If I backed out, it would make both of us happy.”
“No. If Regina asked, you have to do it.”
“Angela told her no. Why can’t I?”
“Angela is with the Peace Corps in Uganda.”
“So that’s all I have to do to get out of this? Live in squalor in a foreign country?”
“You’re being unreasonable.”
“What about Carol? She said no, too.”
“You know Carol is having trouble getting her meds straightened out. God only knows how she’d
behave the day of the wedding.”
“So if I pop a few Prozac, I’ll become ineligible, too?”
“As if anybody would actually think you’re unbalanced.”
True. Everybody in her family had a reputation for something. Heather’s was being sane.
“If you come up with some story now,” her mother went on, “everybody will think you’re jealous of Regina because she’s getting married and you’re not.”
Heather started to say she didn’t care what her family thought, but she knew her mother did. In front of Aunt Bev, she portrayed her daughter as a high-flying career woman who couldn’t be bothered with something as mundane as marriage. But Heather knew the truth. Her mother didn’t want to say, Meet my daughter, the CPA. She wanted to say, Meet my daughter, her handsome husband, and her four lovely children.
Fifteen minutes later, after the fittings were over and they’d suffered through a lecture from Regina on the jewelry they were expected to wear for the wedding, Heather and her mother left the bridal shop. As soon as the door closed behind them, her mother rolled her eyes.
“Can you believe those dresses?” she said. “My sister may have money, but she has no taste. None whatsoever. But it doesn’t matter. You still looked beautiful in that dress, despite how horrible it was.”
Beautiful? No. Heather was nothing if not a realist. She wasn’t beautiful. But that didn’t stop her mother from continually professing it, as if repetition would make it come true. While Heather was growing up, she could only imagine how her mother must have watched and waited for her ugly duckling to blossom into a swan. Instead, Heather had ended up somewhere between a chicken and a cockatiel. She had a headful of curls the color of a paper sack that she spent ten minutes every morning taming with a flat iron, a bump on the bridge of her nose she kept swearing she was going to have fixed, and a body polite people called “curvy.” In the past ten years, she’d lost approximately fifty pounds. If only it hadn’t been the same five pounds ten times, she might actually have gained a foothold on being thin.
On the positive side, she had clear skin, blue eyes everyone commented on, and nice white teeth that had never needed braces or fillings. But she’d always felt as if the bad outweighed the good, and if attention from men was any indication, she wasn’t the only one who thought so.
They stopped beside Heather’s car. “You are going on the bridesmaid trip tomorrow, aren’t you?” her mother asked.
Heather groaned inwardly. A weekend jaunt to Las Vegas with Regina and her five picture-perfect friends? She couldn’t wait.
“Yeah, Mom. I’m going.”
“Good. Aunt Bev and Uncle Gene are footing the bill. Take advantage of it.” She gave Heather a quick hug. “Where are you off to now?”
“I’m meeting Alison for a quick drink at McMillan’s.”
“You’ll have a good time in Vegas,” her mother said, then shrugged nonchalantly. “And who knows? Maybe you’ll meet a nice man.”
There it was again. Heather could say she was going to a gay-pride parade, and her mother would still say, Maybe you’ll meet a nice man.
Heather hated to burst her mother’s bubble, but for her, this trip was going to consist of going to a few nice restaurants, sitting by the pool, catching up on her reading, and watching a lot of men watching five blond bridesmaids instead of watching her.
There was nothing like having a drink at McMillan’s to put Tony McCaffrey in a good mood. He loved everything about the place—the antique bar with the inset mirrors, the big-screen TVs, the polished oak tables, the clacking of pool balls, the beat of the music, the hum of the crowd. When he went to heaven, he imagined God would welcome him inside the Pearly Gates and escort him to a bar and grill just like this one. Somebody would hand him a beer and a pool cue and surround him with a host of tall, leggy women with halos of blond hair and whose only desire was to keep him company in paradise.
As soon as he bought this place, he wouldn’t have to die to go to heaven.
Two weeks ago, he’d told his boss, John Stark, that he was leaving. John ran Lone Star Repossessions, where Tony had worked as an auto repossession agent for the past few years. It was a good fit for his skills and personality. He kept his own hours, the money was good, and on the rare occasion when dangerous deadbeats tried to cause trouble, he generally managed to talk his way out of the situation with a smile and a little bit of Texas good-ol’-boy charm. But when this bar had come up for sale, he realized he was destined for bigger things. For once he’d be running his own show rather than being part of someone else’s.
John told him he was sorry he was leaving, but he admired that Tony wanted to go into business for himself. Then he’d pulled a bottle of Scotch out of his desk drawer, poured each of them a drink, and toasted Tony’s future success.
God, that had felt good.
Tracy came to the table and slid his usual Sam Adams in front of him. She’d started working there about a month ago, and she was just his kind of woman—quick with a beer, out for a good time, and very nice to look at, with long blond hair and legs to die for. Someday soon, he intended to do more than just look.
“You’re sure in a good mood,” she said. “Could it be because you’re getting ready to buy a certain bar and grill?”
He smiled and took a sip of his beer, which tasted even better than usual. “You bet it is. Monday’s gonna be a red-letter day.”
“Everybody around here is thrilled that you’re going to be the new owner.” She leaned in and spoke confidentially. “Frank is such a tight-ass.”
She was right. Frank was a tight-ass, and that was the last kind of person Tony intended to be. There was no need to be a slave driver. A happy employee was a productive employee. That was going to be his motto from now on.
He couldn’t believe how everything had fallen perfectly into place. He’d put in an offer, and after a week of negotiation, Frank had finally agreed to finance the majority of the sales price, only to have their negotiations hit a stalemate when Tony was twenty thousand short of what Frank insisted on for a down payment. That was when he asked his friend Dave to loan him the twenty thousand, and in return, he would become a silent partner.
Tony performed the necessary due diligence. He checked out the current demographic trends and the projected business growth in the area. Hired somebody to do a projected profit/loss statement. Ordered inspections of the building and the facilities. Everything had looked good, and they were set to close escrow on Monday morning.
He couldn’t wait.
As Tracy walked away, Tony turned and looked out over the room. Even though the crowd was light at five o’clock, he knew it would pick up considerably in the next hour. Right now, two guys were drinking beer and playing pool. A young couple was deep in conversation at a table near the door. And Tracy had just set a couple of martinis in front of two women sitting in a booth against the wall.
The women weren’t exactly his type—a little too ordinary-looking—but anyone who came through the door with money in his pocket and looking for a good time was going to be his new favorite customer. He intended to become Mr. Hospitality, courting every one of them with great food, drink specials, and a big, welcoming smile. A neighborhood bar was all about making people feel right at home, and that was exactly what he intended to do.
He turned to see Dave come through the door. Tony had arranged to meet him here to get a check for the twenty thousand, which he was going to deposit this afternoon, which meant he’d be right on track for the Monday morning closing. Tony waved at him, and Dave made his way over to the table and sat down.
“Beer?” Tony said. “I’m buying.”
“No, thanks.”
“Aw, come on. Have one with me. I feel like celebrating.”
Dave shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah? Well, you’re not going to feel like it in a minute.”
Tony froze, dread creeping through him. “Dave? What are you talking about?”
Dave blew out a breath. “Bad
news, man.”
“What?”
“I can’t give you the twenty thousand.”
Chapter 2
Bridesmaid dresses are supposed to be ugly,” Alison said as she twirled the spear of olives in her martini glass. “It’s the law.”
Heather took a healthy sip of her own martini, hoping by the time she reached the bottom of the glass, the memory of those dresses would be obliterated.
Oh, hell. Who was she kidding? She could chug an entire bottle of gin and still wouldn’t be able to forget.
Alison tucked a strand of her straight brown hair behind her ear, then put her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her hand, listening to Heather get the bridal-shop experience out of her system. Alison had perpetually widened brown eyes that made her look as if she was interested in anything a person was saying, even when she wasn’t. This was probably one of those times when she wasn’t, but she was too good a friend to say so.
“It wasn’t just that the style was weird,” Heather said. “It was the color, too. They were pink.”
Alison’s forehead crinkled. “Pink’s not really your color.”
“That pink wasn’t anybody’s color. Take a blender. Throw in a chunk of watermelon. Toss in a dozen flamingo feathers. Top it off with a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. Hit the button, and there you go.”
“How about we make a pact?” Alison said. “When we get married, we have veto power over each other’s bridesmaid dresses. That’ll lessen the chances of either of us making a tragic mistake.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Heather said.
They locked pinky fingers, entering into the umpteenth pact they’d made since junior high. The first one had been a pinky swear that unless they both got dates to the Christmas dance, neither one of them would go, which turned out to be a nonissue since nobody asked either of them.
“Do you remember when we were in high school,” Alison said, “and we made lists of the qualities we wanted in the men we married?”
Heather remembered. Her list had included intelligent, well dressed, and good sense of humor. Alison’s list had consisted of nice body, good kisser, and well hung. Even though they’d both been virgins at the time, Alison’s intuition told her that size really did matter.