The Bride Wore Crimson

by Adrianne Lee

  Oh, I doubted I’d have little trouble getting him into bed, especially since his gaze felt spicier than the chicken I’d brought. He took in the food, the drink, and my skimpy sundress and exclaimed in a tone so sexy my lady parts tingled, “Damn, woman, did I die and go to Heaven?”

  “Not yet,” I said, extracting a cold beer from the carrier and twisting off the cap. “But soon…” I sidled seductively toward him, hips swaying. It was a calculated move that I’d practiced at home, learned from Hollywood temptresses I’d once known, but rehearsal hadn’t included a zealous Lab darting between my legs.

  I yelped and lost my balance, teetering on my too-tall high heels. I pitched forward, hand extended to stop my fall as Seth reached out to catch me. Beer spewed from the bottle like uncorked champagne, dousing him from tousled hair to bare feet. And then I slammed into him, knocking him to the floor, his strong body pillowing my impact.

  I felt him quake beneath me. Oh God, had I crippled him? Broken his neck or…? Wait. Was he laughing? I pushed myself up, my gaze meeting glee-filled brown eyes. He was.

  I quirked an eyebrow, grinning, my nose wrinkling. “You smell like a brewery, Quinlan.”

  “I thought you liked beer, Blessing.”

  I licked his cheek with the tip of my tongue. “I do… especially on you.”

  He growled and rolled me onto my back, burying his lips against mine.

  Sonny barked wildly, trying to join in on the game. Seth shooed him away, but the dog wanted to wrestle with us. Giggling like children, we disentangled our limbs, sent the Lab to the backyard to chase squirrels, and headed to the bathroom. As he started the shower running, I peeled off his wet T-shirt. Seth untied the strings on my sundress, and it dropped to pool at my feet. He sucked in a sharp breath, his chocolate eyes shimmering with desire. I grazed my fingers along his flat, furred tummy and lower. The next thing I knew, my red undies landed atop his jeans, and I was in the shower, warm water streaming over me, Seth reaching for the soap.

  I took the slippery bar from him and lathered my hands. I had him just where I wanted him; his secrets were no longer safe. I began spreading bubbles over his hard back, then across his delicious chest. “Did Troy tell you that he arrested Lisa Marie today?”

  “Um,” he said, eyes closed, head tossed back as I moved below his belt line to cup him gently.

  Had he answered my question? Or was he just responding to my touches? What would Mata Hari do in this situation? Keep delving, I decided. “Did Troy tell you why she was arrested?”

  “Umm,” he said, taking the soap from me, lathering his palms, and stroking my nipples until they were so sensitive I couldn’t stand it. His big hands moved to my back, to my bottom, and soon his fingers were gliding between my legs, rousing a need I’d never known I could feel.

  What had I been asking him? Seth’s mouth claimed mine. A moment later, he lifted my legs to wrap around his hips, and he thrust inside me, sending my thoughts away on a flood of sensation. I couldn’t remember my name, let alone what I’d wanted him to tell me.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  As soon as the news of Lisa Marie’s arrest hit the grapevine, the whole town turned into the Gossip Girls. Everyone had an opinion on the subject, facts getting skewered faster than veggies for a shish kebab. Willa Bridezilla was finally IDed as the body I’d found in the florist’s cooler, the official cause of death listed as murder. The police were holding back crucial specifics, like how she’d died, which left the tongue-waggers free to come up with their own theories. I swear every possible scenario was being bandied about, from strangling to poisoning to shooting to the most bizarre—that she’d been stabbed with the cake knife from the Roosevelt wedding server set.

  Was it possible to stab someone with a serrated cake knife? It seemed impossible to me, but Jenny had no trouble buying that theory.

  “Apparently, the police found the matching cake slicer behind the counter at the coffee shop,” she said, digging into a muffin fresh from Cold Feet Café.

  “And the case,” Hannah added, nodding as though she’d seen the police recover these stolen items herself.

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “Velda told me at the diner this morning when I picked up the muffins,” Jenny said.

  “Velda?” I choked on a laugh. That was like saying the tooth fairy told me. “You can’t believe her. She makes stuff up.”

  But Gram seemed just as gullible as Jenny and Hannah.

  “Susan,” she said, “has Bernice apologized to Whitey yet, now that it’s been proven he didn’t steal the wedding server set?”

  “What proof?” I asked, but I might as well have saved my breath. No one was listening to me.

  “No,” Mom said, but she didn’t sound put out about it. She kept sighing and saying, “I can’t stop thinking about poor Priscilla.”

  “I hear she’s flying home today,” Gram said, absently rubbing her tender wrist.

  “My heart is breaking for her,” Mom said. “I can’t imagine that Lisa Marie could rob anything from anyone.”

  I was struggling with that one myself. “Did they find any wedding invitations at her home or in the coffee shop?”

  Again, no one was listening to me. On the other hand, why was I asking them about the invitations? If I couldn’t believe that the wedding server set was found at Pre-Wedding Jitters, how could I take their word for anything else?

  Mom continued. “How could Lisa Marie do what she did to Willa?”

  “She had plenty of motive,” Gram said, chewing her muffin. “Oldest ones in the book. Jealousy and revenge.”

  “True,” Mom conceded.

  Okay, even I couldn’t deny the motive. Willa stole her fiancé. They had that nasty fight in the coffee shop, and she did say Willa was lucky the strawberries she’d dumped on her head weren’t gasoline. But I hadn’t smelled gasoline in the flower shop’s storeroom, nor in the cooler. No gasoline or other accelerant. Willa hadn’t been killed by being burned to death. But how had she died?

  I wanted to kick myself for not brushing aside those flowers like Jenny suggested and finding out for myself exactly how Willa had met her end. Even Jessica Fletcher studies the crime scene. What had I done? Barfed on it. How could I call myself a sleuth? My mind spiraled back to the moment I’d discovered the body, and the blueberry muffin I’d eaten a few minutes ago shifted uneasily in my stomach. Okay, I needed to cut myself a break. I’d reacted like almost anyone might. Hollywood just made investigating seem easy, or at least a lot easier than it was in real life.

  “Is Seth here yet?” I asked, deciding I needed to discuss the Lisa Marie situation with someone who wouldn’t hand me skewed facts. And without sex robbing me of my detecting senses.

  “I saw him coming into the diner as I was leaving,” Jenny said. “I think he was having breakfast with Officer O’Malley.”

  Oh yeah? A working breakfast? Could I risk intruding? Is Meg’s hair red?

  I was tired of crazy speculation and unfounded gossip. I wanted actual facts, straight from the horse’s mouth, as Gram was fond of saying. I already tried seducing the truth out of Seth, but I’d only managed to realize that I’d never make it as a temptress spy. The outcome of my stab at being Mata Hari, however, made me eager to see him. I sighed, remembering. Note to self: Keep your mind on the mission. ’Cause that had worked so well last night.

  “I’ll be back before we open,” I told Mom, and then took off for Cold Feet Café. The day promised to be another scorcher, the temperature already in the seventies at eight a.m. I hurried along, keeping my eyes toward the ground, not wanting to get stopped or to engage in more speculative notions about Lisa Marie and Willa Bridezilla. I’d been avoiding random encounters with townsfolk since finding the body, and I knew there were at least three Curious Cathys who’d love to catch me alone and pump me for “the scoop.”

  I arrived at the café without encountering them, breathing a sigh of relief, and was drawn inside by the tantalizing aro
ma of frying food. I hadn’t realized until my stomach reacted to the delicious odors that half of a sugar-free muffin wasn’t enough fuel to get me through until lunch.

  I hadn’t considered, however, how packed the café would be. There wasn’t even an empty stool at the counter. I should’ve known, given it was gossip central and the only place to get a decent cup of coffee, now that Pre-Wedding Jitters was temporarily closed.

  I spied Meg’s fiery hair way in the back and hoped she was seated with Troy and Seth. I purposefully didn’t meet anyone’s gaze or acknowledge a single “good morning, Daryl Anne” with more than a nod of my head. Two booths from Meg, I heard Velda cry out, “Daryl Anne, we need to talk.”

  I felt as though she’d poked a knife in my back. I kept walking, didn’t turn around. I pretended I hadn’t heard her, although I was certain everyone in the café had. I quickly slipped into the booth across from Meg, realizing only as my fanny hit the cushion that she was not sitting and chatting with her fiancé or my boyfriend but a different man altogether. He was shorter than Troy and Seth by a few inches, fairly good-looking in a leading man’s best friend kind of way.

  I blurted out, “Dillon, what are you doing here?”

  “Good morning to you, too, Daryl Anne.” Dillon Farwell had the weary blue eyes and weak smile of a man who’d had little sleep and was overly stressed about something. Like the murder of his beloved fiancée. His black dyed hair gave his pale face a sickly hue. I reminded myself to be kinder. After all, he was grieving.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, my voice gentle and calm, while inside I was dealing with a myriad mixed emotions. After all, I’d found the body, and he might want details. I hadn’t come here to relive the worst moment of my life but to get some facts. Hard, cold facts. Cold. Cold, cold flesh. Damn. Would that memory continue to randomly pop to mind forever?

  Dillon stared at his coffee as though some dark wisdom were written there. “It’s definitely a tough time for Willa’s family and friends and… everyone.”

  No matter my dislike of the tiny brunette, I had to remember that Dillon had loved her. “And you.”

  He cringed as if I’d suggested he eat worms, and then another strange emotion passed through his eyes, as if he had a guilty secret that he ached to confess but couldn’t quite find the words.

  I glanced questioningly at Meg. Had he shared with her what was bothering him? “So, what’s going on, you two?”

  She ordered me a cup of coffee, and after it arrived and I’d taken possession of it, she said, “Dillon has been telling me something rather interesting.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I looked from one to the other.

  “I think you should tell her, Dillon,” Meg urged.

  He pushed against the back of the cushion and made a face that said he didn’t like repeating himself. Or maybe it meant he regretted having told Meg. I said, “She’ll just tell me later if you don’t tell me now, Dillon.”

  I could see he knew it was true. He took a quick gulp of coffee, then blurted out, “Lisa Marie didn’t steal our wedding invitations from Zelda’s. I did.”

  I almost spit coffee at him. “What? Why?”

  His sigh could’ve been heard to the front door, but then he leaned closer to me, lowering his voice. “I didn’t want Willa and her mother to send them.”

  I said, “I don’t understand.”

  “It was a mistake. The whole thing. Sure I was flattered by the attention she paid me when we met at my casino concert.” Did I forget to mention that Dillon is an Elvis impersonator? A pretty good one by all accounts, when he isn’t working in his father’s grocery store. He scratched his forehead. “The one-night stand led to another and another. I’m not proud of myself, but she’s, er, she was persuasive, you know?”

  I could imagine.

  He went on. “Before I knew it, Willa was demanding I break it off with Lisa Marie and marry her.”

  “It didn’t hurt that she was a trust-fund baby,” Meg said, the comment cutting.

  If he was after sympathy, he wasn’t getting it from me either. Cheaters suck. If you’re in a relationship with one person but find yourself more attracted to another, then do the honorable thing and extricate yourself from the first relationship before diving into the next. “Go on.”

  His ears were a little red. “Hey, I admit that her being rich played into my decision-making. But who could blame me? I figured I could quit the grocery store and devote myself full-time to my music career.”

  I understood ambition, but what kind of longevity did an Elvis impersonator realistically have? The waitress showed up to refill our coffee, and I ordered a Big Finn special, eggs over easy, crisp bacon, crunchy hash browns, and wheat toast.

  “Tell her the rest, Dillon,” Meg said.

  “Willa’s father had other ideas. He wanted me to learn his business, starting in the mail room.”

  A fit punishment for dumping Lisa Marie.

  “Like I hadn’t put up with enough of that old-man shit from my own old man,” Dillon grumbled, and fell into a brooding mood, glaring out the window at a seagull perched on a nearby piling.

  My food arrived, and I dug in, mixing the eggs and hash browns with a dollop of ketchup. As I munched a piece of bacon, I mulled over what Dillon had said and realized he hadn’t once mentioned the L-word while speaking about Willa. Why? I eyed him curiously, wondering if his distress was about his fiancée’s demise, as I’d assumed when I sat down, or about something else altogether. “So what are you saying?”

  “I told Willa I wasn’t going to marry her.”

  Definitely about something else. “When did you break up with her?”

  “Weeks ago.”

  I frowned, chewing my eggs and potatoes as well as what this meant. “Then why was Willa still planning the wedding?”

  Dillon narrowed his eyes. “She said I was not going to humiliate her or her family.”

  Meg rolled her eyes. “Did you tell her to get over it?”

  “No. I didn’t dare.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked, slathering jam on my toast.

  “Her father said I’d made a commitment to his daughter, and by God, I would live up to it or live to regret it.”

  “He threatened you?” Meg’s eyes rounded.

  Dillon nodded. “To sue me for breach of promise and include my whole family, who were not fond of Willa, in the lawsuit.”

  I gulped. Willa’s dad had lawyers at his beck and call. Dillon’s family could lose everything.

  “Wow, she was worse than I thought, and I thought she was pretty bad,” Meg muttered.

  Dillon smirked. “I told her dad to go to hell.”

  “Pretty brave of you,” I said, wondering if he’d thought that decision through.

  “Didn’t do any good,” he said, his tone suggesting Willa was one crazy bitch. “She kept planning and ordering stuff for the wedding. As though it were still on. She meant to send those invitations.”

  “Why?” Meg shrugged. “It’s not like you were going to show up at the church.”

  “She and her old man actually figured I would and that I’d marry her as planned.”

  “Wow,” Meg said.

  Dillon shook his head, that weary expression taking hold of him again. “I couldn’t get rid of her.”

  I was thinking someone had done Dillon a favor by offing Willa. Like maybe Dillon. My food turned to pebbles in my stomach. Lisa Marie’s motive for killing Willa was powerful, but not nearly as powerful as his. Were Meg and I sitting with the real bridezilla killer? I shoved my plate away from me.

  “Meg and Daryl Anne,” Dillon said, “I have a huge favor to ask you.”

  I didn’t like the sound of this. Was he intending to pick my brain for details of the crime scene to ensure he hadn’t left any clues that would point to him, instead of Lisa Marie, as the killer? I said a leery, “Okay?”

  “The sheriff is wrong about Lisa Marie,” he said. “She didn’t kill Willa.”


  Oh God, maybe he was going to confess. Maybe he wanted us to go with him to the police station as he turned himself in. Wait. Why would he want that? My nerves were scrambling my common sense.

  Dillon was looking at me strangely, as if trying to read my expression. He said, “She wants you to visit her in jail.”

  My last image of Lisa Marie flashed into my mind, her words as fresh as if she were yelling at me now: “Daryl Anne, I didn’t do this. I swear it. You have to help me.” Why had she said that? What help did she think I had to give her? Did she imagine I could actually solve a crime like Rick Castle? Because she was wrong. I’d never once had Lisa Marie on my suspect list. I sure hadn’t thought of her as a killer either. Even if the victim was the bitch who stole Dillon. Wait. Maybe the fact that I’d never suspected her was exactly why she thought I could help. I really did believe she was innocent. Why? For one thing, she’d seemed to be coming around to the idea that if Willa hadn’t stolen Dillon, someone else would’ve. And that wiped out any jealousy/revenge motive.

  “Why does she want to see us?” Meg asked.

  He rubbed his jaw. “She says, you know, when your mom was killed, well, you and Daryl Anne solved the murder.”

  “That’s not technically true,” Meg said.

  Although we had tried to solve it.

  Dillon wasn’t giving up. “She said Daryl Anne is good at unraveling things to get to the truth.”

  I am? If that’s true, and I’m not saying it is, then maybe he should worry I’ll come up with proof that he killed Willa.

  “Come on, Daryl Anne,” Meg said. “What harm will it do to hear what Lisa Marie wants to tell us?”

  Famous last words.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  There’s something so satisfying about helping a woman find a dress that suits her body type, enhances her curves, and makes her feel as beautiful as every bride should at her wedding. Getting to that point isn’t always easy, however. Too often the bride can’t set aside long-held body issues and see what is reflected in the mirror, no matter how many supporters ooh and aah or even shed happy tears. And too often, not everyone in a bride’s shopping entourage has her best interests at heart and criticizes every choice until the bride is confused and disheartened, no longer trusting her own instincts or dreams.