Wisconsin Wedding (Welcome To Tyler, No. 3)

by Carla Neggers

  And Nora Gates.

  He wanted this time with her, too. God help him, but he wanted to get to know her all over again, just to find out if what he was feeling right now was real. If what he’d done three years ago had been right for her, too.

  He sighed, skimming a rock out onto the lake. What he was feeling right now was regret. For the lies, the choices he’d made, the time lost. And desire. There was no question he was feeling a good dose of desire for the gray-eyed woman he’d loved so many, many months ago.

  He was also damned hungry, he thought, climbing stiffly to his feet.

  By the time he joined Cliff and Liza on the veranda, Nora was long gone and they had put together a simple but fabulous lunch. There was ham and Wisconsin cheese on locally made sourdough rye bread, sliced fresh tomatoes—the last vine-ripened tomatoes of the season, which Liza herself had tucked away—and leftover cranberry-apple crisp, made, of course with Wisconsin cranberries and apples.

  It was almost—but not quite—too cold to eat outside.

  “Nora left?” Liza asked.

  Byron shrugged, trying to seem neutral on the subject of Nora Gates. “Apparently.”

  “You two chitchatted quite a while. She knows you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. She thought she recognized you.”

  “Did she?” He stabbed a slice of tomato with a fork. “She didn’t say anything. Mostly we talked about the geese.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Liza didn’t sound convinced. Cliff eyed his brother, then looked away. “I’ve got a few things I need to get done.” Without another word, he took off with his sandwich and a cup of coffee.

  If Liza was annoyed by her fiancé’s abrupt departure or her future brother-in-law’s sidestepping her questions, she gave no indication. She did not, Byron decided, have a suspicious, devious mind. He already found himself admiring her energy and optimistic nature, and it was easy to see how much she was in love with his older brother.

  Unfolding her long legs from under her on her wicker chair, she planted her feet on the newly painted veranda floor. “So, Byron,” she said, “do you think your brother’s going to string me up for sending you and your mother that invitation?”

  “Did he say he would?”

  She grinned. “No, but I got the drift.”

  “I’d have warned you I was coming, but you didn’t include an address or number—”

  “Intentionally. I figured I’d just strike the match and see if I could start a fire. You want some more coffee?”

  She was, obviously, a woman who didn’t look back. “No, thanks, this is fine.”

  “Cliff didn’t tell me he saw you last night.”

  She spoke without defensiveness or anger. She was a confident woman, too, and sure of Cliff’s love for her. Whatever Cliff’s reasons for ducking out, they had nothing to do with his relationship with Liza Baron. That was rock solid. Byron had been concerned his brother might have fallen for a woman who’d pity him and indulge his isolation, who’d coddle him and exacerbate his problems. Liza Baron, however, was clearly not that kind of woman.

  “We needed to talk first,” Byron said.

  “Have you?”

  “Some. Not enough.”

  Liza nodded. “I guess you two seeing each other for the first time in so many years must be about as unsettling as my coming back to Tyler to live and all. And it’s gotta be a lot tougher.”

  Byron didn’t speak. It was tough to see Cliff—and Nora—and not know how it would turn out.

  “How come you’re here so early?” Liza asked baldly.

  “Let’s just say I’m on an advance scouting mission.”

  Liza slapped what must have been another tablespoon of spicy mustard onto her sandwich. “In case Cliff was marrying some fruitcake or had gone nuts altogether?”

  Byron smiled. “Something like that.”

  “Well,” she said, jumping to her feet, “we’re both probably crazy as hell, but not in the way most people think. Byron…” She paused, suddenly serious. “Byron, I’m worried about Cliff—that I’m making him bite off more than he can chew at one time. Mother says I need to go easy, but then she so obviously wants this big wedding—and then I go and meddle in Cliff’s relationship with his family. I mean, not too many weeks ago he was living up here like a damned timber wolf.”

  “I can leave,” Byron said.

  “No, that’d be the worst thing you could do. The horse is already out of the barn, as the saying goes. I mean, you’re here, Byron.” She looked in the direction Cliff had gone and said, almost to herself, “I ache for him sometimes.” Then she turned to Byron and smiled, her eyes shining with tears. “And he hates it.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “For starters, move out of that damned tent. Looks terrible to have you camping out at the lake. People will think you’re another recluse like Cliff and the whole damned Forrester family’s nuts. We’ve got to find you a regular place to stay until the wedding.”

  “I don’t mind camping—”

  “I mind. The gossip mill in this town’s grinding me and my family to pieces enough without having my future brother-in-law washing his face in the lake. Can you imagine the morning of the wedding? This is going to be one fancy shindig, you know. It just won’t do to have you show up smelling like a musty old tent.”

  Byron laughed; Liza did have a way about her. “I won’t stay here with you two, so don’t even try that one on me again. In fact, I wasn’t planning to stay at all. The wedding’s not until next Saturday.” He thought of his nonrefundable ticket and his Yankee soul almost rebelled, but he added, “I’ll come back.”

  Liza frowned, scrutinizing him. “Business to tend?”

  “No, but—”

  “Then stay. Unless,” she said, obviously well aware she wasn’t being told everything, “there’s some compelling reason you can’t.”

  The reason had just gone screaming back to town. No, Byron thought, not screaming. Not Nora. She did everything purposefully, deliberately. He’d bet she’d never gone over the speed limit in her life. The one time she’d been out of control had been with him, which was why she hated his guts. And also because he’d behaved rather badly toward her, but that was another matter.

  His momentary distraction had given Liza enough time to come up with an impulsive idea. “Hey—why don’t I ask Nora to put you up? She’s anxious to give me a hand, and from what I hear she’s a great hostess. She lives alone, so she loves to have company.”

  Byron didn’t believe it necessarily followed that one who lived alone loved to have company, but he didn’t disabuse Liza of that point. “Nora Gates, you mean?” he asked as innocently as he could, considering he’d not that long ago slept with the woman. Nevertheless, he wasn’t an altogether inefficient liar. “I could never ask her—”

  “I could. Leave everything to me.”

  “People could get the wrong idea—”

  “Good!” Liza was grinning, warming to her solution. “It’d do Nora’s reputation a world of good to have a little dirty talk circulating about her. Gosh, people have already started calling her Aunt Ellie. You never knew her, but she’s a legend in Tyler. She started Gates Department Store. Nora takes after her, but she’s…I don’t know, she’s not Aunt Ellie. It was just the two of them for so many years, and now Nora’s alone….” Her voice trailed off, as she nodded to herself. “Yeah, I like this idea. I’ll let you know what she says.”

  And she was off, serape flying. In another minute, Byron heard her white T-bird roar to a start.

  “She’s tough when she latches on to an idea,” Cliff commented, coming onto the veranda.

  Byron set his empty cranberry-apple-crisp plate on the lunch tray. “Nora will choke on her teeth when Liza asks her to put me up.”

  Cliff raised his dark eyes to his brother. “Don’t be too sure. I saw the way she looked at you. What went on between you two three years ago?”

  “Doesn’t matt
er. Right now she’d like nothing better than to have my head stuffed and mounted on her dining room wall.”

  Cliff gave a small smile. “Not your head, I think.”

  “Very funny.” But his brother was perhaps more astute than Byron wanted to admit. Nora Gates could have forgiven any number of transgressions, any number of things he might have done to her. But he hadn’t done any number of things. He’d made love to her. With her. He groaned just thinking about it. “It won’t work, Cliff. You and Liza don’t need me here. I shouldn’t have come back until I knew for sure you were ready.”

  “I’m ready. Liza knew before I did.” Cliff plopped down in her chair. “The question is, are you?”

  Byron didn’t answer. “Why didn’t you stay for lunch?”

  “Needed to think. Things are just shy of getting out of hand around here. I needed to get a grip. The wedding’s enough of an ordeal…the crowds…” Expressionless, he looked out at the lake. “I didn’t expect you. Even less you and Nora.” He looked at his brother. “I had no idea you were here three years ago.”

  “You weren’t supposed to.”

  “You were protecting me?” he asked bitterly.

  Byron shook his head, wanting to explain, but Cliff had already jumped to his feet and was heading off the veranda. “I don’t want to argue,” Byron said.

  “Then don’t. Come on, I’ll show you around the lodge.”

  Byron didn’t budge. “What about Nora? Cliff, she’ll never agree to put me up. Liza will want to know why—”

  “Liza can be very persuasive when she wants something.” Cliff smiled that twitching smile. “Look at me.”

  “What is it about Tyler that breeds such women?”

  “Long, hard winters, I think.”

  “You don’t believe Nora will turn Liza down?”

  Cliff shook his head. “If nothing else, she’ll want to save face.”

  “Well, you’re crazy.”

  “So people say.”

  But Clifton Pierce Forrester, Byron could now see, was not in any way, shape or form mentally unbalanced. Which wasn’t to say that his years of suffering and isolation hadn’t taken their toll. So had the recent activity around him—the people activity. Byron guessed that a part of his brother wanted to bolt, and perhaps only his overwhelming love for Liza Baron was keeping him from finding another place to hide, retreating from the world he and Liza were building for themselves.

  Instinctively, abruptly, Byron knew that Cliff needed him to stay in Tyler. Just as, three years ago, he’d known that Cliff had needed him to leave. No, not just leave. Never to have come at all. It was a fine distinction, but one that mattered. Whether Cliff would see that or not, Byron wasn’t prepared to say.

  He found himself giving in, nodding. “Okay—let’s have the grand tour of where you’ve been hiding all these years.”

  “Not hiding,” Cliff said. “Healing.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  IT WAS LATE OCTOBER in Wisconsin and night came early. Too early as far as Byron was concerned. Parked outside Nora Gates’s house, he checked his car clock. It wasn’t even seven yet. He had the whole damned evening still ahead of him.

  “She said she’d be glad to have you over,” Liza had told him victoriously upon her return to the lodge. She hadn’t even been gone an hour. “You’re to be at her house for dinner at seven sharp. See, didn’t I tell you? Gosh, she’s just the nicest woman.”

  Byron had wondered if he were Nora’s intended main course. Roasted publisher. He knew writers—and a few editors—with Pierce & Rothchilde who’d share such a fantasy.

  He thought Nora Gates was a lot of things, but nice wasn’t among them.

  His brother had been no help. “You and Nora have things you need to settle. Maybe it’s a good idea to throw you two together for a while.”

  Byron had laughed. “Cliff, that’s like throwing a spider and a fly together to see if they’ll get along. They just won’t. It’s a matter of nature.”

  “Who’s the fly and who’s the spider?”

  Byron left his gear—which Cliff had shoved at him when he’d told him to go, confront Nora like a man, not a fly—in his rented car. The wind had kicked up and it was damned cold on Nora’s pretty tree-lined street. He walked up onto the front porch. It was such a peaceful place. Why the hell was he looking for booby traps? You made her hate you. Now reap what you sowed.

  A tall, skinny boy, probably about thirteen, was shuffling out the door. “I promise I’ll do better next week, Miss Gates. I haven’t had much time to practice with it being footfall season.”

  “Lars,” Nora said, “you’re not on the football team.”

  From the looks of him, Byron thought, he never would be. “I know,” the kid said, “but I watch practice every chance I get. I want to go out for the team next year.”

  “We all have a variety of interests, Lars,” Nora, still out of view, said patiently. “The trick is to find a balance that works. You’re wasting your parents’ money and your time—and, I might add, a considerable amount of natural talent—if you don’t practice.”

  “Right, Miss Gates, I understand. I’ll do better.”

  As Lars came out onto the porch, Nora moved into the doorway, holding open the screen door. She had on charcoal-gray corduroys and a roll-neck charcoal-gray sweater. With her hair swept up off her face, she looked controlled, in charge of her world and very, very attractive. “I hope you do because—” She spotted Byron and straightened up, stiffening noticeably. “Oh, you’re here.”

  All in all, it was the sort of greeting he’d expected.

  “Who’re you?” the kid asked boldly.

  “My name’s Byron Forrester.”

  “He’s my houseguest,” Nora put in, without enthusiasm. “Byron, this is Lars Travis, one of my piano students.”

  The kid’s eyes had lit up. “Gee, Miss Gates, I had no idea— I mean, everybody in town thinks you don’t…that you’d never…”

  “Mr. Forrester is in Tyler for Liza Baron and Cliff Forrester’s wedding next Saturday,” Nora said, spots of color high in each of her creamy cheeks. “With Timberlake Lodge being renovated, I agreed to have Byron stay here. He’s Cliff’s brother. Now, Lars, don’t get any ideas.”

  “No, I won’t, Miss Gates. I just was surprised because I didn’t think you knew any men.”

  And he scampered off the porch, all bony arms and legs, before Nora could strangle him.

  She watched the kid go with narrowed eyes. “I’m doomed. Lars has the biggest mouth in town next to Tisha Olsen and maybe Inger Hansen, and he has very peculiar ideas about me. You’d sometimes think I’m not human.”

  “Isn’t that what you want people to think?” Byron asked casually.

  She transferred her piercing gaze to him. “You’re not going to make this any easier, are you?”

  “You didn’t have to take me in.”

  “I realize that.”

  “Then why did you? If it’s just because you didn’t want to disappoint Liza, you can damned well forget it. Nora…dammit, I’m tired of thinking you’ve got a stiletto tucked somewhere and are going to do me in at any moment. I came to Tyler three years ago, I fell for you, you fell for me, I neglected to tell you my real name, and now I’m back. I can’t change history.”

  “I’m not asking you to,” she said softly, “and I didn’t agree to take you in just so I wouldn’t disappoint Liza.” She smiled mysteriously. “And I don’t have a stiletto hidden on me.”

  “A blowtorch?”

  “Too big.”

  “Nora…”

  “Come inside, Byron. It’s getting cold out. Where are your bags?”

  “Nora, I won’t stay if you—”

  “I’m doing this for myself, Byron,” she said, cutting him off. “Not for you, not for Liza, not even for Cliff. Nobody manipulated me or talked me into anything. If you’ll recall, I do know my own mind. Now, I’ve got dinner in the oven.”

  She walked briskly past him dow
n to the street and reached into the passenger seat of his car, pulling out his disreputable-looking duffel. She made a face. When he was traveling on behalf of Pierce & Rothchilde, he took matching monogrammed bags. Mrs. Redbacker insisted. Nora would have approved.

  She carried the duffel back up onto the porch as if it were something dead and smelly she’d found out on her street. Byron didn’t offer her a hand. Some things Nora Gates just preferred to do herself.

  “You’ll have to move your car,” she said.

  “Neighbors might talk?”

  “The street sweepers are doing a special leaf pickup tomorrow.”

  “Nora…” He leaned against a porch column. “Thanks.”

  In the harsh light of the porch, he could see the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes and where her raspberry lipstick had worn off, but she looked better than she had three years ago. Not as gaunt, not as uncertain of her own future. He’d have told her so if it wouldn’t have infuriated her to have him notice such things. She liked to think men only respected her. And mostly they did. But sometimes they thought about her in other ways, too. Anyway, he did.

  He held open the screen door for her. She didn’t complain. “I’m putting you in the front bedroom upstairs,” she said. “It gets nice morning sun.”

  “I was expecting the torture chamber.”

  She shot him a look, but he thought he detected a hint of amusement in her pale eyes. “A pity I don’t have one.”

  “Going to skewer me in my sleep?”

  “I’m not going near you in your sleep,” she said, dashing inside before he could see if she’d blushed. Not that there was much chance of that. Their lovemaking didn’t embarrass her nearly as much as it ticked her off, challenging her most cherished beliefs about herself. She wasn’t another Aunt Ellie.

  She dumped his bag on the bottom step leading upstairs. It was heavier than it looked, and she was breathing hard, as much from the tension of having him there, he felt, as from exertion. “I’ll get dinner on the table. You can find your way?”

  “I remember,” he said in a low voice.

  “Maybe,” she said starchily, “it would be better if you didn’t.”