by Nora Roberts
“It is around here,” Pam corrected. “You could’ve invited her here tonight. You know there’s always plenty.”
“We’re not . . . it’s not . . . We’re not at the point of family gatherings. We had dinner. It’s one date.”
“Two with the coffee,” Sherry corrected. “Are you seeing her again?”
“Probably. Maybe.” He felt his shoulders hunch as he shoved his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know.”
“I hear good things about her, and she does very good work. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be doing Sherry’s wedding.”
“Isn’t she Linda Elliot’s daughter? Or it’s Barrington now.”
“I haven’t met her mother. It was dinner.”
The news pulled Diane away from the window. “Linda Barrington, sure. Her daughter’s close friends with the Browns, and Emmaline Grant, and that other one. They run that wedding business together.”
“I guess that’s the one then,” Carter acknowledged.
“Linda Barrington.” Diane’s jaw tightened as she compressed her lips in an expression Carter knew reflected disapproval. “That’s the woman who had an affair with Stu Gibbons, and broke up his marriage.”
“She can hardly be held responsible for her mother’s behavior.” Pam opened the oven to check her roast. “And Stu broke up his own marriage.”
“Well, I heard that she pushed Stu to leave Maureen, and when he wouldn’t she told Maureen about the affair herself. Maureen skinned Stu in the divorce—and who could blame her—and after that she wasn’t so interested anymore.”
“Are we talking about Mackensie or her mother?” Pam wondered.
Diane shrugged. “I’m just saying what I know. People say she’s always on the hunt for the next husband, especially if he’s someone else’s.”
“I’m not dating Mackensie’s mother.” Carter’s tone was quiet enough, cool enough, to light a fire in Diane’s eyes.
“Who said you were? But you know what they say about apples and trees. You might want to be careful, that’s all, so you don’t have another Corrine Melton on your hands.”
“Di, why do you have to be such a bitch?” Sherry demanded.
“I’ll just keep my mouth shut.”
“Good plan.”
Pam cast her eyes at the ceiling as her oldest daughter stalked back to the windows. “She’s been in a mood since she got here.”
“She’s been in a mood since she was born,” Sherry muttered.
“That’s enough. She’s a pretty girl, as I recall. Mackensie Elliot. And as I said, I’ve heard good things about her. Her mother’s a difficult woman, no question. As I recall, her father’s charming and absent. It takes a lot of spine and stomach to make yourself into something when no one gives you a foundation.”
Carter leaned down, kissed his mother’s cheek. “Not everyone’s as lucky as we are.”
“Damn right. Diane, call those kids in so they can get cleaned up. That’s the two-minute warning.”
When dinner conversation jumped from a rehash of the game, to his niece’s school play, veered into wedding talk and skipped over to his nephew’s desperate desire for a puppy, Carter relaxed.
His relationship with Mac—if there was one—had apparently been taken off the table.
Nick cleared, a gesture that had endeared him to Pam since his first family dinner. Mike sat back, looked down the long length of table in the formal dining room. “I have an announcement.”
“Are you going to get me a puppy, Grandpa?”
Mike leaned down to his grandson, whispered, “Let me work on your mom a little more.” He eased back again. “Your mother and I have an anniversary coming up next month. You’re still my valentine,” he added and winked at her.
“I thought you might like a small party at the club,” Diane began. “Just family, and close friends.”
“That’s a nice thought, Diane, but my bride and I will be celebrating thirty-six years of marital bliss in sunny Spain. That is, if she agrees to go with me.”
“Michael!”
“I know we had to put off the trip we’d planned a couple of years ago when I took over as chief of surgery. I’ve cleared two weeks in February, written them in stone. How about it, sugar? Let’s go eat paella.”
“Give me five minutes to pack, and I’m there.” Pam shot out of her chair, raced over, and dropped into Mike’s lap.
“You’re all excused,” he said, waving at his children.
There it was, Carter thought, there was another reason he’d come home.
The constancy.
CHAPTER NINE
A CRAPPY MOOD DIDN’T SERVE AS AN EXCUSE FOR MISSING A Monday morning breakfast meeting. So Mac took it with her, like a snarling dog on a leash, to the conference room at the main house. Laurel and Parker sat nibbling on cranberry muffins in what had once been the Browns’ library.
The books remained, a kind of frame to the space. The fire crackled cheerfully in the hearth. The old gleaming library table held the setup for coffee, and she knew the engraved console hid a supply of bottled water.
Her friends sat at the round inlaid table in the center of the room. Bright and beautiful, she thought, both of them. Every damn hair in place at eight-freaking-A.M. Just looking at them made her feel sloppy and gawky and somehow less in the torn jeans she’d dragged on.
“And when I called him on it?” Laurel lifted her cup of what Mac knew would be perfectly prepared cappuccino. “He said, ‘I never leave the house without my toothbrush.’ ” She let out a snort of derision, then smiled at Mackensie. “You’ve just missed my retelling of The Demise of Martin Boggs. Why the hell did I go out with someone named Martin Boggs anyway? I hope your date was better than mine.”
“It was fine.”
“Mmm, that good, huh?”
“I said it was fine.” Mac dumped her laptop on the conference table and stalked over to the coffee bar. “Can we get started on this? I have a lot to deal with today.”
“Somebody got up on the cranky side of the bed.”
Mac flipped up her middle finger.
“Right back at you, pal.”
“Girls, girls.” Parker let out a long, windy sigh. “Do I have to separate you? Have a muffin, Mac.”
“I don’t want a goddamn muffin. What I want is to get on with this meeting that’s a total waste of time anyway.”
“We have three events this weekend, Mac,” Parker reminded her.
“Which have all been outlined, organized, scheduled, discussed, blueprinted, and microscoped down to the last overblown detail. We know what we’re doing. We don’t have to talk it to death.”
“Drink some coffee,” Parker suggested, but her tone had cooled. “It sounds like you need it.”
“I don’t need coffee, or a stupid muffin.” Mac spun back around. “Let me just sum all this up. People will come. Two of them will get married—most likely. Something will go wrong and be fixed. Someone will get drunk and be dealt with. Food will be eaten, music will be played. People will leave and we’ll get paid. The two who most likely get married will most likely divorce within five years. But that’s not our problem. Meeting over.”
“In that case, there’s the door.” Laurel gestured. “Why don’t you use it?”
Mac slammed her coffee back on the counter. “Good idea.”
“Just a minute. Just a damn minute!” Parker’s voice snapped out, spoiling Mac’s furious exit. “This is business. Our business. If you don’t like the way it’s run, we’ll schedule a meeting so you can air your grievances. But your bitch-fit isn’t on this morning’s agenda.”
“Right, I forgot we live and die by agenda. If it’s not on the Holy Spreadsheet or keyed into the Magic BlackBerry it isn’t Parker-worthy. Clients are allowed to believe they’re human beings with actual brains and emotions, while you herd them down your preordained path. Everybody falls in line for Parker, or God help them.”
Parker got to her feet, slowly. “If you have a problem with th
e way I’m managing the business, we’ll discuss it. But I have a group coming in about fifty minutes for a tour. I have an hour free today at two, so we can take this up then. In the meantime, I think Laurel had an excellent idea. There’s the door.”
Flushed from the cold, Emma rushed in. “I wouldn’t be late, but I dropped a whole—” She stared when Mac shoved by her, and kept going. “What’s wrong with Mac? What happened?”
“Mac had her bitch on.” Temper smoldering in her eyes, Laurel picked up her coffee. “We didn’t want to play.”
“Well, did you ask her why?”
“She was too busy slapping us around for that.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. I’m going after her.”
“Don’t.” Temper iced in her eyes, Parker shook her head. “Just don’t. She’ll only put her foot up your ass for your trouble. I’ve got potential clients coming this morning, and we have current ones who need attention. We’ll work around her for now.”
“Parker, when one of us has a problem, we all have a problem. Not just in the business.”
“I know that, Emma.” Parker pressed her fingers to her temple. “Even if she’d listen right now, which she wouldn’t, we don’t have time.”
“Besides if we all went ’splody every time one of us had a lousy date, this room would be full of our bloody body parts.”
“Mac and Carter?” Emma shook her head at Laurel. “I don’t see how that could be it. My mother talked to his last night and called me after to try to pump me. As far as I know, everything went fine when they went out.”
“What else?” Laurel demanded. “What makes a woman bitchier than a man? And okay, maybe occasionally each other. But . . .” She trailed off, closed her eyes. “Her mother. God, we’re idiots. Nothing crawls up Mac’s butt like her mother.”
“I thought her mother was in Florida.”
“Do you think distance is any deterrent to the force that is Linda Elliot?” Laurel asked Parker. “Maybe that’s it. That’s probably it, or part of it. But it’s still no reason to rip at us the way she did.”
“We’ll deal with it. We will. But we’ve got three events lined up, and we need to go over the details.”
Emma opened her mouth again, then swallowed the words when she saw Parker flip a Tums off the roll she took out of her pocket. No point, she thought, in having two friends upset. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about the urns for Friday.”
“Great.” Parker sat back down. “Let’s get started.”
SHE KNEW WHEN SHE’D ACTED THE BITCH. SHE DIDN’T NEED A diagram, or to be offered muffins like she was a two-year-old who needed a cookie. And she didn’t need her friends showing her the door. She knew exactly where it was.
She knew how to do her job. She was doing her job right this minute, wasn’t she? Mac cut the first mat for the photos she hadn’t had the heart or the energy to mount the night before. In a few hours, she’d have a completed custom package and a very satisfied client. Because she knew what the hell she was doing without explaining every damn step of the process to her business partners.
Did she need to know why Emmaline selected eucalyptus over asparagus fern as filler in an arrangement?
No, she did not.
Did she need to know Laurel’s secret ingredient for butter-cream frosting?
Right back with the no.
Did she need to discuss Parker’s latest entry in her Crack-Berry?
Dear God, no.
So why the hell did anyone care what filter she planned to use or which camera bodies she’d decided to strap on?
They did theirs, she did hers, and everybody was happy.
She pulled her weight. She put in the time, the effort, the hours the same as the rest. She . . .
She cut the damn mat wrong.
Disgusted, Mac tossed the ruined board across the room. She grabbed another, checked and rechecked her measurements. But when she lifted her mat knife, her hand shook.
With considerable care, she set it down, then took two steps back.
Yes, she knew when she’d acted the bitch, she thought. And she knew when she had to get a grip on herself. As in right now. She knew, too, she admitted with a sigh, when she owed two of the people she loved most in the world an apology.
Even if they had been snotty—and they damn well had—she’d been snotty first.
She checked the time and sighed. She couldn’t do it now. Couldn’t get this weight off, not when Parker was currently escorting clients through the house.
We’re full service. We can tailor every detail to reflect your needs, and your vision of the day. Here’s our crazy bitch of a photographer who’ll be documenting that day for you in pictures.
Wouldn’t that be perfect?
She stepped into the powder room to splash cold water on her face. They were her friends, she reminded herself. They had to forgive her. That was the rule.
Steadier, she went back into her studio.
She let her machine take her calls and gave her current task all her concentration. When she’d finished she decided the client would never know the package had been created by a bitch in the throes of a massive attack of self-pity. Once everything was loaded in her car, Mac drove to the main house.
True, they had to forgive her, but first she had to ask. That was another rule.
Out of habit, she went in the back. When she stepped into the kitchen, she saw Laurel working at the prep counter. With a hand steady and precise as a surgeon’s, she monogrammed heart-shaped chocolate.
Knowing better than to interrupt, Mac held her silence.
“I can hear you breathing,” Laurel said after a moment. “Go away.”
“I just came in to eat some crow. I’ll be quick.”
“Make that very. I’ve got another five hundred of these to finish.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for acting that way, for saying those things. Things I didn’t mean in the first place. I’m sorry for walking out on the meeting.”
“Okay.” Laurel laid down her brush and turned. “Now, the question would be why.”
Mac started to speak, found her throat snapped shut. The sudden barrier had her eyes filling. She could only shake her head as tears spilled over.
“Okay, okay.” Laurel crossed over, folded Mac into a hug. “It’s going to be all right. Come on. Sit down.”
“You have five hundred chocolate hearts to monogram.”
“It’s probably more like four hundred and ninety-five at this point.”
“Oh, God, Laurel, I’m so stupid!”
“Yeah, you are.”
Quickly, efficiently, Laurel had Mac sitting at the counter with a box of tissues and a small plate of as yet unadorned chocolate hearts.
“I can’t take your candy.”
“It tastes a lot better than crow, and I’ve got plenty.”
Sniffling, Mac took one. “You make the best.”
“Godiva should tremble in its boots. What happened, honey? Was it your mother? Light went on,” she added when Mac didn’t speak. “Right after you did the outraged stalk.”
“Why can’t I suck it up, Laurel?”
“Because she knows every button to push when it comes to you. And no matter how much you suck up, she’s got more.”
It was, Mac had to admit, the heart of the target. “It’s never going to change.”
“She’s never going to change.”
“Meaning that’s on me.” Mac took another bite of chocolate. “I know it. I do. I said no. I said no, and I meant no, and I would’ve kept saying it even if Del hadn’t taken the phone and hung up on her.”
In the act of getting down a glass, Laurel glanced back. “Del was there?”
“Yeah, he came by to tease me about Carter—which is a whole other area of what the hell am I doing—and she called from Florida wanting another couple thousand so she could stay another week and finish her recovery.”
“I’ll give Del credit for hanging up on her, but he should’ve come b
ack here to tell us.”
“I asked him not to.”
“So what?” Laurel demanded. “If he had any sense, he’d have done what you needed not what you asked. Then you wouldn’t have wallowed all night and woken up the bitch.”
She set a glass of ice water beside the chocolate. “Drink that. You’re probably dehydrated. How many times did she call after Del left you alone?”
“It’s not his fault. Twice. I didn’t answer.” Mac heaved a sigh. “I’m really sorry I took it out on you.”
“What are friends for?”
“Let’s hope Parker sees it that way. Can I take these up, to sort of sweeten the deal?”
Laurel chose two white chocolate hearts from her supply. “She’s no match for the white chocolate, and you might need the edge. Me, you just pissed off. Easy to get over it. You hurt her feelings.”
“Oh, God.”
“I figure it’s better you know that going in. She’s pissed, too, but it’s the hurt feelings you’ll need to get down to.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Knowing Parker, and she did, Mac went directly to the conference room. The incident had occurred there, so Parker-logic dictated its follow-up would take place in the same venue.
As she’d expected, Parker sat at the table working with her Crack—her BlackBerry. The fire had calmed to a cozy simmer, and the coffee had been replaced with the bottle of water Parker was rarely without. Her laptop sat open and beside it rested a tidy stack of files and printouts.
Parker was never anything but prepared.
As Mac came in, Parker set the BlackBerry aside. Her face was cool and blank. Her business-to-attend-to face, Mac knew.
“Don’t say anything. Please. I come bearing chocolate and every possible variety of apology. You can have as many of them as you want—the chocolate and the apologies. My behavior was ass-hatty in the extreme. Everything I said was from the box of stupid I brought in with me. Since I can’t take it back, you have to forgive me. You don’t have a choice.”
She set the plate down. “There’s white chocolate.”
“So I see.” Silently, Parker studied her friend’s face. Even if she hadn’t known Mac nearly all of her life, she’d have seen the signs of a recent crying jag.