Saying Yes to the Mess

by M. Kate Quinn

  “That was my thought.” Darius needed to convince Rylee McDermott to be on board with the show. He neglected to reiterate her emphatic thanks, but no thanks. He wasn’t taking that for an answer.

  “How soon can you clinch the deal?”

  Darius’s cell phone sounded with a message alert. He tapped the screen and read the text from Toni at The Memory Center. They’d arranged appointments at two state-run nursing homes for Darius to visit this week. She moved the appointments up a day because of an iffy snow forecast. Time was running short there too.

  “Jake, I’ve got to head back to Sycamore River tomorrow to work on my father’s nursing home situation. Afterward I can contact Rylee and work on a commitment.”

  “Do that. But hope you know there’s a snowstorm brewing out over the Atlantic, and according to Al Roker, if system A meets system B, it could be a whopper.”

  Darius had been so focused on the show and his father’s situation that he’d known nothing about the forecast. “That’s what this text was about. When’s it expected?”

  “Sometime in the next forty-eight hours.”

  “Shit. It better stay out of my way. I’ve got things to do.”

  “Better tell that to Al.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rylee and Kit worked nonstop at the store. The labor only served to fuel her resolve to make this work. Screw Darius Wirth and his TV show. Bad choice of thought. Screw and Darius should not be in the same sentence. The phrase could fuel all kinds of images.

  Freda and Mary Ann came by, wanting to help, so together the four women went over the interior of the store with a fine-tooth comb. They cleaned, they washed, and they polished. They helped Rylee with a list of reps from dress designers for when she’d place orders for the new line. Dress selection was the scariest part of all because finding the right samples from the best designers to exemplify the new look and feel of Rosie’s Bridals was key.

  By Wednesday, news of a nor’easter on the fringes of northern New Jersey was everywhere. No matter where she went, people were abuzz. Her mother had done a big food shop and came by the apartment with an armload of staples. What she thought Rylee needed with a five-pound bag of flour and a pillow-sized bag of dry lentils was beyond her.

  Angie looked around the apartment. The changes Rylee had made were subtle ones, yet it still made her feel judged to have Angie cast her gaze at the new striped toss pillows on the sofa, the rearrangement of the side chairs, the absence of the tablecloth on the dining table.

  They went into the kitchen where things were different as well. New dish drainer, Rylee’s pod coffeemaker on the counter, a new toaster, blinds on the window where frilly curtains had been. Angie’s gaze flitted over everything, pausing at the apple-peeling device affixed to the counter. Rylee hadn’t had the heart to remove it.

  “How do you like the place?” she asked as she unloaded the items from the brown paper bags. Enough carrots to feed a world of rabbits, a bag of potatoes, some spiky-looking herb in a plastic pouch. Ah, and a bottle of chardonnay. Go, Angie!

  “You’ve made some nice changes, honey.” A rueful smile claimed Angie’s mouth. “Rosie would approve.”

  Rylee’s heart skipped a beat. “You think so?”

  “I do.”

  Angie was subdued today. Maybe her mood stemmed from being inside the place that used to belong to Rosie. Suddenly, Rylee felt a stab of guilt. Maybe she should have left everything the way it was. Did every change serve as a swipe of an eraser? What kind of granddaughter was she not to think of that before?

  “Thanks, uh, for all this, Mom.” She tried to lighten the mood, forced her mouth into an upward curve. “Not sure what I’m supposed to do with everything.”

  “Make soup, of course.” Angie brightened. “My famous lentil soup. I can help you, if you want.”

  Now that Angie was Zen and now that she was happily partnered with the earthy Sonny who showed her the bliss of creating things from your own hands, she had become a fan of homemade soups, particularly a legume aficionado. The woman loved soaking beans, dumping them in a pot with handfuls of this and that, and conjuring a big, aromatic pot of hearty and oh-so fiber-rich love.

  Lentil soup was good stuff, true, and Rylee guessed that in light of the weather forecast, it was a natural choice for Zen Angie to bring her the ingredients. And today, with the way that look had come over her mother’s face when her eyes catalogued the differences in the apartment above Rosie’s Bridals, Rylee had one choice.

  “Yes,” she said. “Show me how you make lentil soup.”

  ****

  By the time all the ingredients were bubbling in the pot, the snow had started. It came down in small flakes, rapid and steady, the kind of snow that meant business, not the fat, lazy type of flakes that sometimes floated down from the sky more for show than anything else. By four o’clock it was dark as night.

  “I’d better get home. Sonny will be out looking for me.” Angie, with the prideful smile of one who had a partner anxious for their return, was back to herself. Namaste.

  “Thanks for the soup, Mom.” An odd twinge flittered in her chest. In thirty years mom and daughter had never performed a dual soup project, and it was nice and weird both.

  “Maybe I can’t make pie, but man, can I do soup or what?” Angie grinned.

  “You have enough for you and Sonny?”

  Angie held up a plastic container. “More than enough.”

  When Angie was wrapped in the cape thingy that she’d manufactured on her own loom, black with a white- and burnt-orange Aztec-looking border, she donned an oversized hat and her homemade mittens and carried her container of soup to the door.

  Rylee peered out to the street at the frosty-white dusting on the road and walkways. “You okay to drive?”

  “It’s just a couple blocks, honey bun,” Angie said. She touched a woolen-clad hand to Rylee’s cheek. “You call me if you need anything. We might be snowed in for a while.”

  “I’ll be fine, Mom. Going to spend the next day or so going through more of the mail, seeing where things are with the store.”

  “Off I go, then.” Angie trotted herself to her car.

  ****

  Darius hated both the Mountain View Nursing Home in the far reaches of Morris County and the more local Primrose Manor in Denville. Each had appeared decent enough on the outside, but once he’d walked into the patient areas, the sour air assaulted his nostrils like an open-handed slap.

  In the short time he’d been searching for a new home for his father, he’d learned how to scrutinize the candidates. Was the staff engaged? Did any of the offerings on the food trays look the least bit edible? Did the patients seem cared for, clean, attended to? Nothing compared to The Memory Center, and it pained him that his father couldn’t stay there.

  Back at The Memory Center, he first went to see Toni to let her know his findings. After a back-and-forth with her regarding the ticking clock and the snow halting the search for alternatives, they made the decision to add Pop to the list to be moved to Mountain View, the least offensive facility he’d seen so far.

  “I’m going to stop in to see my father and then head out.” He offered his hand to Toni. “Thank you again for all your help.”

  “Gladly.” A warm smile came to her lips. “Remember this storm’s not letting up anytime soon. Safe home, okay?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Darius took the elevator up to his father’s room, where he found the old man asleep on his side, the blankets up to his chin. Was it cold by the window? He went over to the glass panes and tested the air with his hand. The window was right above the heater, so no, it wasn’t cold there. His father looked grumpy when he slept, always had. His brow tended to scrunch in on itself, and his mouth pulled down in an exaggerated arc. The old man was dreaming. His eyeballs darted back and forth under parchment-paper lids, and his brittle body jerked in conjunction with the movements. What was going on in that foggy brain of his? His heart squeezed. He d
id not want to move Pop from this place. He wished he could just let the old man be.

  He took a tentative step closer and touched a light hand to his father’s head, smoothing the flyaway white hair.

  His father murmured at the touch. “Arabella.”

  Always. Martin Wirth, regardless of his ability to know the day or the year or to recognize the face of his only son, would always call for his wife.

  ****

  The snow was steady and coming down at an angle. Darius had thrown a few essentials into a bag and called to book himself a room at the chain hotel right near The Memory Center. It was just another reason to like the place, having a pretty decent hotel adjacent to the facility for family and friends who needed a room. The snow was heavy and hit his face with an assaulting sting. It swirled at his feet as he made his way down the already-covered walkways in downtown. His heart, too, was heavy, and Pop’s leaving The Memory Center assaulted his insides with the same sting of the snow in his face.

  He stopped into Jabberwocky’s for a whiskey. While he sipped his potent beverage, he pondered the woman with the determination in her eyes—Rylee MacDermott. Her business was an ideal one for his show, but she interested him too. Maybe it was the whiskey, but he couldn’t get her out of his head. She was nothing like Caroline or the others he’d dated before her. Caroline had been one of those women with an agenda, and he’d felt like just one thing on her to-do list. Marry a man, have a baby, buy a house upstate.

  He should have paid more attention. All the signs had been there from the start. He had been so wrapped up in making a name for himself he’d missed her campaigning, all that chatter about diamond shapes and the best months for weddings. Hindsight had made it clear. His silence had boded as compliance to the anxious Caroline.

  The ultimatum came about a year ago, and like that, she was gone. Last he heard, she was engaged to a podiatrist. The news hadn’t bothered him.

  Suddenly, he thought of his dad’s whimper tonight, calling for his Arabella. Maybe that’s what Darius was looking for somewhere deep inside. Maybe he wanted to love a woman enough to be all in, to have her name the only name he could remember when he was an old man.

  He finished his whiskey and ordered another. Rylee MacDermott. Yeah, she had a nice physical appeal, and under normal circumstances he’d probably ask her out to dinner or something. But tonight in the snow and the cold, whiskey on his lips, he wanted to talk to her. That’s it. Just find out if she’d trust him to do right by her grandmother’s bridal shop.

  He guzzled the rest of his drink, paid his tab, zipped up his coat, and headed in the direction of Rosie’s Bridals.

  Chapter Sixteen

  By seven o’clock Rylee’s eyeballs were squirrely. The stack of mail was bottomless. The more she opened, the more appeared. Bills and more bills. She’d had no idea Rosie’s wasn’t as humming an establishment as she’d presumed. The water bill was two payments behind. The electric and gas were due, and she had no idea where the money would come from for those payments. And the taxes. The tax bill was a whopper. Was there really no cushion of money in some account somewhere to cover these bills? Had Rosie’s Bridals been on the brink of a shutdown? Suddenly, she felt guilty for using what precious stash she’d had on frivolous throw pillows at the discount home-goods store and the new toaster from Target. At the moment she was broke as a joke.

  She opened the bottle of chardonnay her mother had brought and decided to enjoy a bowl of the lentil soup. While she was pulling a soup bowl from a cabinet, her cell phone sounded and she grabbed the device and gave it a swipe.

  “Rylee,” a male voice spoke into her ear. She didn’t need him to identify himself. She already knew. It was the pirate. “It’s Darius Wirth.”

  “Hello.” She took a pull of her wine. The wine slithered a smooth trail down her throat. Maybe the beverage would render her immune to the sound of his voice in her ear. She sipped again.

  “Um, I know this is unorthodox, but can I talk with you?”

  “Darius,” she said, surprised at how saying his name gave her heart a giddy jump. “I’ve already told you I’m not interested in being part of your show.”

  “Ten minutes. Just give me ten minutes.”

  “Tonight?” She didn’t want to see him or talk to him or smell him, for that matter. “We’re in the middle of a snowstorm. I’m not going anywhere tonight.”

  “You don’t have to. I’m downstairs.”

  “What?” She finished the wine in her glass. Oh, this was not good. Not good at all. She glanced down at her appearance—pink flannel lounge pants with black-and-white kittens all over them, a black sweatshirt with Got Wine? written across the chest, and multicolored striped slipper socks with rubber gripper thingies on the sole. Oh God. No way, Jose.

  “Just ten minutes. No pressure. Just hear me out.”

  She could almost see his face—those chiseled cheekbones, the hair black like a crow’s wing, flashing eyes like wet river stones. Why hadn’t she thought to wear a cocktail dress tonight? Okay, no. She swallowed an expletive. Quit messing with your own head, fool.

  Letting him inside her apartment would be crazy, considering she found him nearly irresistible in person. And now, reaching a new height in poor choices in regard to the male species, she couldn’t resist the man’s voice either. With another glance at her ridiculous getup, she hoped he’d take one look at her and keep his distance, the pajamas serving as a kind of shield of flannel.

  “Come up the back staircase.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  As he climbed the stairs and with each footfall of his booted feet, Rylee’s mind chanted shit, shit, shit in time with his ascent.

  He was soaked to the gills, his jacket dark with wetness, and his hair shimmery with facets of snow. Oh boy. A wet pirate. She waved a hand. “Come in.”

  Scrutinizing eyes did a sweep of her from head to toe, and although her insides stretched and pulled like Silly Putty, she willed her stupid getup to repulse him enough to stomp away.

  Instead, though, the pirate said the unthinkable. “Cute outfit. Comfy looking for a night like this.” His face had brightened before he’d said the words, and a kind of smirky, slanty, appealing little smile played on his lips. So much for a shield of flannel.

  “I can’t believe you came out on a night like this.”

  “Yeah. I was visiting my father at the nursing home up on Highland Avenue. I knew going back home to Hoboken on a train might get tricky, so I booked a room at a hotel. It’s not far from here, and I can walk it back before it gets too deep out there.”

  Ten minutes. That’s all she’d agreed to. Certainly, within ten minutes the sidewalks outside would still be navigable. Let’s get this over with.

  She pulled her gaze away and remembered her manners. “Here. Let me take your coat.”

  Darius shrugged out of his jacket, and she hooked it on the coat-tree by the door. The black woolen scarf slung around his neck only added to his appeal. He rubbed his hands together and gave a little shiver. “Wicked night.”

  “Okay, so what did you need to talk to me about on such a wicked night?”

  He cast his eyes around the place, the dark orbs assessing and then landing on the counter where an empty bowl and spoon sat next to the large soup pot positioned on the stove. “Something smells good.”

  Rylee swallowed hard. “Um, yeah, it’s soup.”

  “No better night for soup. What kind?”

  “Lentil.”

  “Mmmm.”

  Okay, do not make sounds that a crazy woman could construe as a moan. Her heart did another Silly Putty push/pull.

  Life had a way of putting choices in front of her. What was that old saying? Something about the same boneheaded problems presenting themselves until the lesson was finally learned? Well, she was a slow learner.

  Her problem here tonight was with this wet, glistening pirate who impeded her from making a wise choice, her greatest flaw. Most of her decisions backfired with after
shocks that tended to spread across all things important. Like the weightiness of the bridal shop downstairs that waited for her rescue.

  And at the moment, with this hunk of a man in her apartment looking all dark and mysterious with that brown sweater and the black woolen scarf at his neck, she glanced down at the empty wineglass in her hand and let right and wrong be damned. “Would you like some wine?”

  She needed a shrink and not more wine, but all she had was wine. Wine and soup and a pirate.

  ****

  Darius hadn’t expected this. Yeah, he’d found her kind of cute, even when she’d been a hot mess that first night at Jo-Jo’s Java House. And tonight in that thirteen-going-on-thirty outfit, he found her nearly irresistible. It made no sense. He’d always been a little black dress, stiletto-heel fan. But here in her apartment he was taken with the girl despite of, or maybe even because of, the slack lounge pants and oversized sweatshirt.

  Maybe it was just the whiskey he’d downed. He was here to pitch his show, and he needed to clinch the deal. Everything depended on it. He shook off the urge to flirt with her, the inclination niggling low in his belly.

  Rylee poured measures of wine into two glasses while he seated himself on a stool at the small square butcher-block counter. He took a deep breath. “Thank you for agreeing to see me.” He accepted the wine she slid in his direction, careful not to let his fingers touch hers. “And thanks for this too.”

  Keeping her distance at the opposite side of the island, Rylee MacDermott nodded and reached up to rumple her hair. She had great hair. A lush cascade of dark brown, smooth and sleek, and he imagined in summertime the sun would streak random strands gold or copper. His chest locked, and he willed himself to stop with the imaginings. By summertime this woman would be history to him. His need was now, and it was not about her. It was about the bridal shop.

  “Let me ask you this, Rylee.” He fiddled with the stem of the wineglass. “How soon do you expect to reopen your doors to the store?”