“I’ll talk to them,” the guard said.
Cliff hung back, amused. “Sounds like you’ve got company. Do your thing, Brother.”
Imagining boycotters and protesters of various descriptions—someone could be found to disapprove of virtually any book on any given publisher’s list—Byron stepped forward, trying to look presidential. “What’s up, Mrs. Redbacker?”
She was clearly flustered, an increasingly frequent state during his three-month tenure at Pierce & Rothchilde. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here.” Which had to be a first. “Early this afternooon two women barged in here. One claimed to be your brother’s fiancée and the other seemed quite respectable and normal at first, and I…well, I fell for their act, I must admit. They’re in your office now. They’ve been there for hours, and they won’t leave. They…they’re playing darts, Mr. Forrester.”
“Darts?” Byron repeated.
Behind him, Cliff said, “Liza couldn’t hit the side of a barn.”
Byron grunted. “I’ll bet Nora could take the eyes out of a bull at a hundred feet.”
“Ol’ Granddaddy Pierce is probably doing flips in his grave.”
“Both ol’ Granddaddy Pierces,” Byron said.
“Think we should leave ’em to security?” his brother asked.
“It’s a thought.”
Then his office door swung open, and a dart came flying out, landing with a precise thwack on Mrs. Redbacker’s bulletin board, just inches from Byron’s head.
“I think,” Cliff said, coming up beside him, “your lady’s pissed off.”
“Mine? You’re the one who skipped out on your fiancée three days before your wedding.”
Then another dart whizzed out of the inner sanctum of the president of Pierce & Rothchilde, Publishers. It thwacked against the wall near enough to Cliff for him to know he was the intended target, but the plaster wouldn’t hold it and it fell onto the floor.
Mrs. Redbacker had ducked behind her desk. The security guard was looking to Byron for guidance. With some effort, he remembered he was the boss. He grabbed the dart off the bulletin board. Cliff got the idea and snatched up the one on the floor.
Apparently the two interlopers in Byron’s office got the idea, too, and slammed the door shut.
“You two can go on home,” Byron told his secretary and security guard.
He and Cliff waited until the two had retreated, Mrs. Redbacker with a frosty good-night, the guard without a word.
Then, darts in hand, the two brothers took their grandfathers’ office in a frontal assault.
* * *
CLIFF ADMITTED he should have left Liza a note. He said he should have called. He said he loved her with all his heart and soul.
She relinquished her cache of darts.
Byron allowed he should have called with an update, as promised, although he figured his bumpy flight to Nantucket and his absorption with his mother and brother a good excuse for not doing so. So as not to irritate Nora further, he didn’t mention anything about loving her.
She did not, however, relinquish her cache of darts. And she seemed to have the much bigger cache.
“I ought,” she told Byron, “to pin your stinking hide to your mahogany paneling.”
“Me? What’d I do?”
With great exaggeration, she let her gaze fall on the framed photo of her and Aunt Ellie looking like two peas in a pod, a photo Mrs. Redbacker was supposed to have wrapped and sent via overnight express by now. Of course, she’d had to cope with a sit-in most of the afternoon.
“What’s the problem?” Byron asked, really not sure.
“You’ve had this picture for three years?”
Clearly she wasn’t pleased. “Yes.”
“On your studio wall?”
“Not the whole time. I only had it framed and hung on my studio wall three months ago, when I came off my leave of absence from P & R.”
“It’s a picture of Aunt Ellie,” she said stonily. “Part of your series on her.”
“Yes—”
“I never saw it.”
“No—”
“I’m in it.”
Byron considered that obvious and decided he’d better not comment.
Nora was rigid, darts clenched in her fist. “What,” she said angrily, “if you’d walked into my house and found a picture of you and Aunt Ellie on my wall and I said, yeah, I’ve had it hanging around for three damned years but it’s just a picture of Aunt Ellie and I never even noticed you.”
Thick-skulled Yankee though he might be, Byron finally got it. “Nora, you—”
“Obviously,” she interrupted, really angry now, “I’ve never had the impact on you and your life that you’ve had on mine.”
“Nora, if you’re suggesting you don’t mean as much to me as I mean to you, you—”
“I said impact, Byron. I said nothing about whether it was a positive or negative impact.”
She was definitely not in a mood to have him say anything more about loving her, which he most definitely did.
“How could you have had that picture for three years?”
And, not a woman to hold back anything from him, as she’d pointed out, she started pitching darts at nothing in particular—not even aiming at him—and he and Cliff and Liza all ducked, Byron knowing he’d never get through to her while she was throwing-things mad.
At which point Anne Forrester walked into his office, looking fresh and happier than he’d seen her in years. She and her sons had agreed to meet at P & R and then go out to dinner as a family, for the first time since Cliff had left for Southeast Asia so many years ago.
“Mother,” Byron said, “I’d have warned you, but—”
“You must be Liza,” she said to Nora, smiling. “I heard you were a live wire.”
Nora was clearly mortified. She set down the rest of her darts on Byron’s desk.
“No, Mother,” Cliff said, trying not to laugh, “this is Liza.”
And Liza, who, unlike Nora, could never stay mad for long, rushed out of hiding to greet her fiancé’s mother. Anne covered for her mistake with her usual good grace, giving Byron a look out of the corner of her eye. It was one of those I’m-your-mother looks. Who is this woman and what have you done to make her so mad?
This time, Byron knew the answer. He’d fallen in love with her, was what he’d done. Madly, passionately, forever.
And she’d fallen in love with him. Maybe just as madly, surely just as passionately, and possibly even forever.
By Nora Gates’s account, definitely a crime punishable by darts.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ON FRIDAY MORNING, Gates Department Store went on a low-level alert as Anne Forrester paid a visit. By eleven o’clock Nora had word that not since Margaret Ingalls, had Gates sold so much “pricey stuff,” as Albert put it, to one person in a single hour. By noon a debate was raging whether the wealthy East Coast blue blood had beaten the missing Chicago socialite’s record, taking into account inflation. The mother of the town’s recluse, Mrs. Mickelson reported, had even purchased a set of Wisconsin place mats.
When Nora returned from her midday sweep of the three floors of her department store, she found Byron Forrester with his size elevens propped up on her rosewood desk.
“I think I’ll buy you a dartboard for your office,” he said.
He was never going to let her forget perhaps the most embarrassing moment of her entire life. Cliff, Liza, Anne Forrester—they’d all seen her out of control. Since attacking Byron in his own office with his own darts, Nora had become more subdued, shell-shocked from her peek at his life in Providence. He’d put them all up at the Pierce town house on Wednesday night, calling in his housekeeper to make dinner, change beds, put out fresh towels. Quite sure of himself, Byron had shown Nora his studio, his darkroom, a part of his soul, and she’d realized, with a deep pang of emotion she didn’t understand, that he and his family had stronger roots in the East than she did in Tyler. For three years she’d tho
ught of him as an itinerant photographer, rootless, uncommitted, a wanderer and a rake. But that wasn’t the real Byron Sanders Forrester.
On Thursday morning, they’d all flown back to Wisconsin. Liza, proving herself truly Judson Ingalls’s granddaughter, grumbled about how much money all this flying around was costing. Like Nora, Cliff was quieter and more contemplative. Anne Forrester was radiant and gracious; Nora had liked her immediately. In Milwaukee, Cliff and Liza had headed for Tyler in his pickup, which he’d left in the airport lot. Nora had driven home alone. Byron had rented another car and driven back to Tyler with his mother, whom Nora, thinking it was a sensible idea, had invited to stay with her.
“I won’t be distracted,” Byron had told her as she’d left the airport.
“I’m just trying to be helpful.”
“No, you’re not. You’re just trying to avoid being alone with me before the wedding. Doesn’t matter. There’s always after the wedding.”
“What about your nonrefundable ticket home on Sunday?”
He’d smiled. “I can absorb the loss.”
Good son that he was, he’d moved to the back bedroom, which Nora had set up for her younger guests, and let his mother have the front bedroom. No sleeping naked in the study, no predawn visits to Nora’s room. Setting her alarm, Nora had gotten up early and made oatmeal and fresh apple muffins, which went over well with Anne Forrester. Byron had picked the raisins out of his oatmeal.
Now, in his charcoal-gray turtleneck, wool trousers and his herringbone jacket, he removed his feet from her desk. “This place hasn’t changed since Aunt Ellie’s day.”
“There was no need,” Nora said, remaining standing behind her desk.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?”
“Precisely.”
He nodded, his eyes resting on her in a probing way, reminding her of his photographer’s acuity, and their mad sessions of lovemaking. In another minute, she’d have no choice but to sit down. “Perhaps I should have had a little more of that attitude when I took over at Pierce & Rothchilde. I wanted to put my stamp on the place.”
She shrugged. “That’s a normal impulse, I think.”
“Of course, the reverse can be true—you can be too afraid of change.”
She’d thought he’d go on, but he didn’t. She had nothing to add. The silence between them, however, was uncomfortable. I have to remain strong. I have to remember who I am.
“What’d you think of Providence?” he asked casually.
Too casually, Nora thought. He wanted to know. He wanted to talk, to listen, to understand. Finally, she had to sit. “I had no idea…it’s obvious you and your family have deep roots there. When you went on the road three years ago…” She sighed, wishing she could articulate her still-jumbled feelings. “It must have been a difficult choice.”
“To leave my dartboard and barracuda of a secretary?”
“Well, your executive style may be a bit unusual, but—”
“But I’m a Pierce,” he finished for her.
She nodded. “Yes, and your family’s been in Providence for generations. That means something.”
“What?”
“That’s not for me to say.”
“Bingo. It’s not. It’s for me to say. I’m not just half Pierce. I’m also half Forrester.”
“Pierce & Rothchilde is an important company.”
“So’s Gates.”
“In Tyler, yes. But Pierce & Rothchilde has a wide impact. It’s recognized internationally as a quality publishing company and—”
“So?”
“So it’s important.”
“What, you want to run it?”
She groaned. “No! Byron, I’m trying to be serious.”
“Okay.” He nodded at her and paused a few seconds before going on, “I care about P & R, but I don’t need to run it. I can continue to sit on the board and I’ll still own stock, but it doesn’t matter to me if I remain president—and I daresay it doesn’t matter to most of the people under me. Just because a Pierce almost always has sat in the president’s office doesn’t mean one always must. If Mother wants, she can take over. She says she’s too old, but that’s hogwash.”
“Then you don’t feel obligated to stay on?”
“I did at one time. I don’t anymore.”
Looking away, Nora said in a low voice, “You think I feel obligated to run Gates.”
“No, I don’t,” Byron said gently. “My grandfather instilled a sense of obligation in me. He hadn’t had a son himself, Mother married the wrong man and God forbid a Pierce woman should do something as distasteful as work. Cliff…well, you know what happened to him. So there was me. It wasn’t the same for you, Nora. That’s one of the things so precious and wonderful about Aunt Ellie—she didn’t make you feel you had to take over Gates when she was gone. You’re here by choice.”
Nora looked around her, at the simple, tasteful furnishings Aunt Ellie had bought so long ago, at the framed pictures of Gates Department Store in its early days. She could hear the traffic down on the town square and smell autumn in the cool air coming through her window, which she’d cracked open despite the gray, blustery weather.
“And you love Tyler,” Byron said.
She nodded.
“You don’t see me sitting on the Providence city council.”
“But…”
“But we’ve been there three hundred years. Sorry, love, but I just don’t feel the burden of that. We moved around a lot when we were kids—why the hell do you think my mother married someone in the military?”
Then Albert buzzed, telling Nora that Anne Forrester had finished her shopping. “I’ve arranged to have her purchases delivered directly to your house.”
Had she actually beaten Margaret Ingalls’s record?
“Well!” Anne said, coming into Nora’s office, looking slightly flushed and very content after her Wisconsin shopping spree. “What a delightful store you have here, Nora. I’m afraid I left Rhode Island in such a whirlwind, and then with having been in London, I had a number of things I needed. I’m so relieved I could find everything here. Byron, have you gotten your brother a wedding gift yet?”
Byron grinned at her. “My presence isn’t enough?”
She pursed her lips, obviously accustomed to her younger son’s sense of humor. “I bought them a dozen Waterford goblets—Liza did have them marked in her bridal registry. It’s difficult after all these years to imagine Cliff sitting down to a set table, but I suppose…” She shrugged, smiling. “Liza Baron does have a way with him.”
With that, both Byron and Nora could agree. Nora said, “I’m glad you liked Gates. If there’s anything else we can do for you, don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Oh, you’ve done far too much already. And it’s truly a wonderful store. We’re off to Timberlake Lodge for lunch. Won’t you join us, Nora?”
Nora didn’t give herself a chance to think, but shook her head immediately. “I have a million errands to run—and I need to be back here at one for a meeting. But thank you. Have a good time.”
Anne Forrester rushed along, but Byron lingered. He shut Nora’s office door and walked back to her desk, leaning over it. “You can’t avoid me,” he said. “You can’t distract me. And I won’t leave Tyler until I know you don’t want me in your life, because, Miss Eleanora Gates, I very much want to be in yours.”
Then, with Albert buzzing her, he kissed her hard on the mouth, and it was just as well her lipstick had rubbed off hours ago or Anne Forrester and Albert and everybody at Gates would have known everything. Which, she thought, might have been just as well.
* * *
“ARE YOU GOING to tell me what’s going on between you and Nora Gates?” Anne Forrester asked her younger son, following him onto the porch of Timberlake Lodge.
Byron shrugged. “It’s tough to explain.”
His mother gave him a small smile. “In other words, no, you’re not going to tell me.”
Inside, the
lodge was warm and surprisingly cozy, with a fire going in the kitchen fireplace. Amid the renovations, Liza and Cliff had put together a lunch of curried corn chowder, fresh sourdough bread and carrot-raisin salad. Byron could smell apple pie baking in the oven. Alyssa Baron was there, and Liza’s sister, Amanda, and her brother, Jeffrey. Judson Ingalls was noticeably absent. The lodge, Byron remembered, wasn’t his favorite place. But it couldn’t have been easy for Alyssa, who’d lost her mother at such a young age, to be there, either.
“I should have had a rehearsal dinner,” Anne whispered to Byron.
“Cliff would have croaked.”
“As my dear father would have said, this wedding is all so irregular.” She smiled broadly. “But I don’t give a damn. It’s so obvious Cliff is happier than he’s ever been.” Then her smile faded, and she turned to Byron, her eyes narrowed. “Now if you’ll get your life straightened out, I’ll be a contented woman.”
Byron grinned. “Once a mother, always a mother.”
“Nora Gates—you’d better do right by her, Byron Sanders Forrester. While I was shopping I overheard talk about you two. Quite a considerable amount of talk.”
“Don’t tell Nora. She likes to think she’s above being a subject of gossip.”
Anne Forrester sniffed in her upper-crust way. “That only makes her a juicier target, I’m afraid. I gather her romantic life—or lack thereof—has been a topic of quite considerable speculation over the years. She’s something of an independent sort, rather like her great-aunt, but at least several elderly ladies in the fabric department—have you seen the range of calicos Gates carries?—think that Nora is avoiding romantic entanglements whereas Aunt Ellie simply wasn’t interested.”
Mercifully, Liza spotted them and burst forward, taking her future mother-in-law by the hand and introducing her to her family, thus sparing Byron, a grown man, from having to listen to his mother discuss what people of Tyler were saying about him and the would-be old maid owner of Gates Department Store behind their backs. He certainly wasn’t going to corrobortate any of the gossip. First, it wasn’t his place. Second, Nora would likely have his hide. Third, they’d find out soon enough. In due time, the people of Tyler—the whole world—would know how much he loved Nora Gates. He was willing to tell them right now. But he respected Nora’s ambivalence, her fears, her resistance to change, her need to make that decision for herself. He respected her enough to let her decide when she wanted to admit to the world that she loved him. Because she did. Byron knew she did.
Wisconsin Wedding (Welcome To Tyler, No. 3) Page 19