Wisconsin Wedding (Welcome To Tyler, No. 3)

by Carla Neggers

  “Of course not. Decency isn’t your style.”

  “I don’t blame you for being angry.”

  He didn’t go on, but waited for her to respond. She kept her silence. She couldn’t yet allow herself to indulge in a full reaction. She might start screaming or cursing at him. She might jump him. Worse, she might cry. She’d hate that. The absolute worst, however, was not knowing what she’d do. And that was how it had been from the start when she was around this man: she couldn’t count on being sensible. She couldn’t always predict how she’d react.

  “Cliff is…” Byron broke off with a grunt of frustration and, Nora guessed, out-and-out irritation. She didn’t care. What did he want her to do? Look up at him angelically and say all was forgiven? If he was annoyed with her for her stony silence, with himself for the deep, dark hole he’d dug for himself, then good. She had no sympathy. But he went on quietly, in that gentle voice of her dreams, “Cliff’s my only brother, Nora. He’s been through a hell I can’t even imagine. I had to come back.”

  “Yes,” she said stiffly, in her most holier-than-thou old maid tone. “I suppose so.”

  “Sanders is my middle name.”

  It had a nice ring to it. Byron Sanders Forrester. One of your good upper crust East Coast names. No doubt he knew how to sail and play lacrosse. Probably had a pair of horn-rimmed glasses tucked in a tweed coat pocket somewhere.

  When she didn’t respond, Byron added, “My paternal grandmother was a Sanders. From Boston. Cliff’s named for my mother’s side of the family—Clifton Pierce Forrester. It’s just the two of us. We were raised in Providence. The Pierces have been there almost since the Puritans banished Roger Williams from Massachusetts in 1636 and he came to Narragansett Bay.”

  By now his tone was only half-serious, but Nora neither smiled nor relaxed. She wished she trusted herself to be as spontaneous as Liza Baron was. But Byron wouldn’t charm her. Not this time. “Liza said that Cliff’s from a prominent East Coast family.”

  “That would be the Pierces.”

  She heard a wry bitterness creep into his voice, prompting her to look at him square in the face. Immediately she wished she hadn’t. The man was still, after three years, one handsome devil. If she’d known she’d be seeing him again, she would have prayed to her fairy godmother to turn him into a frog. At the very least, she’d have hoped that she’d take one look at him and ask herself what all the fuss had been about three years ago: how could she have fallen for someone as transparently rotten as he was? He was so obviously wrong for her. Not even sexy. Sort of lazy and worn-out looking.

  But that wasn’t how she’d reacted. If wrong for her on other counts, the man who’d swept her off her feet three years ago still possessed the roguish sexiness and charm that had drawn her to him so disastrously. She could no longer try to blame bad timing. Aunt Ellie wasn’t dying anymore and she wasn’t reexamining the choices and assumptions she’d made about her own life. She was stable, satisfied, successful. In a word, she was happy.

  And still damnably, irreversibly, it seemed, attracted to Byron Sanders. And not just physically. Their attraction to each other had never been purely physical. She and Byron Sanders, in a very real way, had been kindred spirits and—

  She seethed. Byron Sanders Forrester. She’d have to remember. She couldn’t allow herself to forget that he was a liar, if a dangerously irresistible liar.

  He didn’t turn away from her, but met her probing gaze straight on. His eyes were as dark as his brother’s, with fine, almost imperceptible lines spraying out from the corners. They were memorable eyes. But where she’d once found only unshakable confidence and humor, she now detected hints of pain and regret, hints of complexity. He wasn’t just a cad or a rake, and she knew it. Perhaps, deep down, she’d always known it.

  “They were publishers,” he said, still talking about the Pierces. “My great-grandfather and a friend of his founded Pierce & Rothchilde, Publishers, more than a hundred years ago. They moved to their present location in Providence in 1894. The Rothchildes got out of the business in the twenties. Cliff and I are the last of the Pierces.”

  And Cliff was a near-recluse, Byron an itinerant photographer. Pierce & Rothchilde was one of the most prestigious publishers in the country. Nora was intrigued by the questions and potential conflicts those facts presented, but she’d already made up her mind. “I don’t need to know anything about you or your grandmother Sanders or the Pierces or the Forresters. I really don’t.”

  He sighed. “I know you don’t. I guess I just don’t know what the hell to say to you.”

  “Goodbye would be nice.”

  “All right. Goodbye, Nora.”

  But it wasn’t good enough. Nora got three steps back up the path and knew she needed satisfaction. The man had slept with her and she hadn’t even known his real name! She whirled back around, the sun almost blinding her.

  “Unless you can uproot a tree,” Byron said calmly, “there’s nothing handy for you to throw at me.”

  He was maddening. How did he know what she was thinking? What she was feeling? She tilted up her chin, hanging on to the last shreds of her dignity. “Does Cliff know about us?”

  “He knows you don’t like me.”

  “But I never indicated…”

  Byron grinned. “You aren’t as good at hiding your emotions as you think, Miss Gates. But you can relax—he doesn’t know why you dislike me so much.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing.”

  “He just thinks I dislike you because of the series on Aunt Ellie?”

  Byron shrugged, his eyes clouding, his expression unreadable. “I don’t know what he thinks.”

  Nora exhaled at the blue autumn sky. “I could strangle you, Byron.” But the truth was out, and at least it explained—even excused—his presence in Tyler. It did, in fact, have nothing to do with her. She looked back at him. “And that’s only the half of it.”

  “I’m sure,” he said. His tone was neutral, but she saw the lust—the damned amusement—in his eyes.

  “Don’t you get any ideas, Byron Sanders Whoever. You don’t mean any more to me than a bag of dried beans.”

  “Remember the fairy tales, Nora. Jack’s beans turned out to be magic.”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “I’m not—”

  “You never did take me seriously—my hopes, my dreams, who I am. You were only interested in your photography career and a little quick, convenient sex with an unsuspecting small-town woman.”

  Byron’s mouth twitched, but apparently he was smart enough not to smile outright, given that there were uproot-able trees in the vicinity. “Nora, it wasn’t a little sex, it wasn’t quick, that wasn’t all there was to our relationship, and you’re about as much the stereotypical unsuspecting small-town woman as Cliff and I are the stereotypical East Coast blue bloods.” He paused while she came to a full boil. “I’d like to explain why I lied to you.”

  “You don’t owe me an explanation, and frankly I don’t require one.” She looked at him for a moment, daring him to respond, but he didn’t. What could he say? She was proud of her cool tone. She had to prove to herself that his remarks about their love life wouldn’t get to her—at least so that anyone would notice. “All I ask is that you keep what we…were to each other to yourself.”

  And she started back up the narrow path, wondering what she would tell Liza. Because now, for sure, she wouldn’t become involved with the wedding festivities. She didn’t even want to attend the ceremony with Liza’s future brother-in-law there. It was just too dangerous. Even if she trusted him—which she didn’t—she didn’t, in a very different way, trust herself. Seeing Byron Sanders Forrester all dressed up for his brother’s wedding just might do her in.

  “I owe Cliff the truth,” Byron said behind her.

  That did it. Nora swung around, marched down to Byron and slapped him hard across the face, just as Katharine Hepburn slapped Humphrey Bogart in T
he African Queen, Aunt Ellie’s favorite movie. Before she turned around and flounced back up the path, she noticed the red handprint on Byron’s cheek. It just wasn’t in her to feel sorry for him. He owed Cliff the truth. What about her? She’d spent three years thinking—

  Well, she wouldn’t think about Byron Sanders Forrester anymore.

  “You know,” he said, not far behind her, “you always act like an insulted Victorian virgin when you’re mad. It’s a good defense mechanism. But I don’t believe it.”

  She ignored him.

  He had to speak a little louder for her to hear him. Thank heaven Joe Santori and his crew weren’t lurking about, eavesdropping. “I think you’d like to do a hell of a lot more than slap my face.”

  Like what? She almost panicked.

  “I think,” he yelled, “that what you’d like to do right now is skin me alive, and what grates is that you know I know it.”

  Skin him alive. Yes, that was it. That was just exactly what she wanted to do with him.

  She whirled around, stepping backward. “Skin you alive and throw your bones to the wolves, you cad!”

  He grinned. He wasn’t marching in fast little steps the way she was, but moving deliberately, his long legs eating up the distance between them. She wished she’d worn her running shoes and jeans instead of her conservative businesswoman’s outfit. She couldn’t see his eyes against the bright sun. Three years ago, they’d told her what he was thinking, even feeling. Or at least she’d thought they had. She’d only seen what she’d wished to see—which wasn’t like her. She prided herself on her ability to look life straight in the eye.

  “I’ve never met anyone like you, Nora Gates,” he said, still grinning.

  She scoffed. “You told me that three years ago.”

  “Meant it.”

  “Then it was the one thing you said that you did mean.”

  “Oh, I said a lot of things I meant. But I don’t blame you for being skeptical. Nora, the past is past. Let it go. I don’t want my presence in Tyler to be a thorn in your side. You don’t need to avoid me. I won’t—” He broke off, his dark, dark eyes resting on her. “I won’t let what happened three years ago happen again.”

  She didn’t say a word. Could she believe him? Was that what she wanted to hear from him? “What happened and didn’t happen wasn’t just up to you, you know.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Byron…”

  “No one needs to know that we were lovers three years ago. I just mean that I owe Cliff the truth about why I was in Tyler, what I did, why I left. He doesn’t need to know the sordid details about us.”

  He’d said it so easily. As if being lovers with someone was no big deal. Probably the country was dotted with his ex-lovers. Nora raised her chin. “You’re Cliff Forrester’s brother. Everyone in Tyler’s madly curious about him and his relationship with Liza—she’s from one of the town’s more prominent families. He’s been a recluse out here for years and years. You’re going to be well scrutinized.”

  “I expect so.”

  “Has it occurred to you that someone might recognize you as the photographer who did the series on Aunt Ellie?”

  “It’s possible, but—”

  “Then not only will people be asking you questions, but they’ll be asking me questions as well. Did I recognize you? Have I talked to you? Did I know you were really Cliff’s brother?” She gulped for air, tense and irritated, just imagining what could be in store for her. “You’ve put me in one hell of a position.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  His apology seemed genuine. What did she want from the man? Any other woman discovering an ex-lover back in town wouldn’t go nuts at the prospect of people finding out about their long-dead relationship. It wasn’t as if she’d been married to another man when Byron had burst into her life.

  “I weighed all the pros and cons when I decided to come to Tyler,” Byron said.

  “And you came anyway.”

  “He’s my brother, Nora. I had to come.”

  “Just keep your distance,” she told him.

  “Okay.”

  “And don’t tell anyone anything. I value my reputation in this town.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  “Scout’s honor?”

  He winced at the acid in her tone. “I’m not making fun of you.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Nora…”

  “What you are doing, Byron, is belittling me. And I object. Vociferously. You don’t have to understand me, but do not belittle me.”

  He sighed. “Nora, for the love of God, if I took out a billboard and announced that Nora Gates and I fell in love three years ago and it didn’t work out, do you honestly think anyone in Tyler would give a damn?”

  She squared her shoulders. “I swear, if there was a rock handy the coroner would be examining two bodies found at Timberlake Lodge! We did not fall in love. We—”

  “Okay. I’ll put on the billboard that Nora Gates isn’t a virgin and I know it because I slept with her. Or should I be more explicit?”

  “I’m just saying—” her whole body was on fire! “—that whatever it was we had together, it had precious little to do with love.”

  “Then it had to do with sex. I’ll put that on my billboard.”

  “Dammit, Byron!”

  “Don’t ‘dammit’ me, Nora. Just tell me what you really do want.”

  “I want you not to exist!”

  “No can do.”

  “Then at least…” She groaned, wondering what she did want. “At least respect me. I don’t want my friends and customers—my community, Byron—to know that I…that you…”

  “You did. I did. We did. Nora, nobody but you will care.”

  “That shows how little you know about Tyler.”

  Byron didn’t relent. “Maybe it shows how little you know.”

  His tone was soft and seductive, so serious she would have thought he cared and understood, but experience had taught her otherwise. “I’ll take full responsibility for my actions,” she said tightly, “but don’t you judge me, Byron Forrester. I’m not the one who talked a dying old woman into spending so many of her last days having her picture taken. I’m not the one who cynically swept a vulnerable small-town girl off her feet. I’m not the one who said Tyler wasn’t for him and slithered out of town. I’m—” She stopped, staring at him. “What’re you looking so incredulous over?”

  “You,” he said.

  “Me? Byron, aren’t you listening?”

  “Yeah. I’m hearing every word, sweets. Just one question—what vulnerable small-town woman did I cynically sweep off her feet?”

  Nora called him something that, coming from her, would have raised Liza Baron’s eyebrows and dropped the jaws of half the people in Tyler. Aunt Ellie wouldn’t have been shocked; it was her favorite thing to call randy neighborhood dogs who ran amok in her bushes.

  Byron Forrester just laughed.

  It was the same laugh that had awakened her from too many dreams over too many months. A laugh that she hadn’t made up, but was real. Byron wasn’t a fantasy.

  “Relax, Nora,” he said. “Lots of women fall for cads.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You did. At least for a little while.”

  If she stayed there, she would skin him. Or fall for his roguish charms all over again.

  “But I promise,” he went on, “that I won’t tell anyone you were human once for a few weeks. I’ll keep your secret, Nora.” Then his eyes darkened, and he added, “Until you decide you want to tell the whole world yourself that you’re human after all.”

  Spotting Cliff and Liza out on the lodge’s veranda kept Nora from an appropriately physical reaction. She wasn’t a violent person. She wasn’t even remotely homicidal. She just wanted Byron Sanders Forrester out of her life.

  But his brother was about to marry one of Tyler’s first citizens.

  Byron, Nora thought miserably as
she trudged up the path, pretending she hadn’t heard that last gibe, would haunt her forever.

  * * *

  AS BYRON WATCHED NORA in full retreat, a sudden, brisk wind blew off the lake and chilled him to the bone. It was like a parting shot from the owner of Gates Department Store, warning him to keep his distance.

  Well, he thought, too late.

  “Coffee’s ready,” Liza Baron yelled from the porch. “Lunch’ll be ready in a bit.”

  Byron was torn. Given his reception, he wished he’d ignored Liza’s invitation to the wedding and had waited to hear from Cliff himself. The least he could have done was to have worked up the guts to tell Nora the truth last night. Not that she’d given him the chance. There’d been the book of Beethoven sonatas, the beefy piano student. His own unexpected reaction to a woman he’d slept with for a couple of weeks one past summer—which was how he’d tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to think of her the past three years. Standing in her dining room last night, watching her just now in the cold light of day, he’d remembered how very much he’d loved her. Leaving her with so much unsaid, with all the promise of what they could have been together unfulfilled, had been one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do. And also one of the most important. If he’d stayed, he’d have risked destroying any hope for Cliff.

  “What to do, what to do,” he mused, watching the sunlight catch the cool shades of Nora’s hair, making it shine.

  He wondered if he would be doing everyone a favor—including himself—if he just headed back to his campsite, packed up and got the hell out of Tyler.

  “Are you coming?” Liza yelled.

  “In a minute.”

  And he trotted back to his musty tent, threw things into his nonexecutive-looking duffel in a flurry of purpose and action. Then came the cry of geese and another chilly gust off the lake, and he collapsed on Cliff’s rock and thought, the hell with it. What was waiting for him back in Providence? Another smarmy phone call from another author who actually wanted to make a living at his writing? More dubious looks from Mrs. Redbacker? More mornings tossing darts? No, he thought. He wanted this time with his brother. He wanted to get to know Cliff Forrester all over again.