Three Weddings and a Murder

by Milan, Courtney

  “What are you planting?”

  “Oh, these?” He looked down at the burlap sack. “Well, Simon. You’d better be the one to explain, as you won’t let me help.”

  Simon upended the sack and wordlessly let its contents spill across the path. Ginny would have known those smooth, papery roots anywhere. It felt as if a giant fist closed gentle fingers around her heart.

  “Tulip bulbs?” she asked.

  “There are three more sacks in the carriage house, and what I had to do to find this many bulbs in early summer…” He gave her an easy smile, but there was a flicker of something deeper in his eyes. “I’ve been planting them, these last days.”

  She took a breath, but her lungs couldn’t quite seem to contract properly.

  He picked up a bulb. “You told me that the tulips at Barrett’s Folly made you think of madness—of money tossed away without thought for the future.”

  His voice had grown a touch raspy. She turned to him.

  “I was hoping that when you saw these, you would have different memories.” He took her hands in his. “I’m not done with it yet. But I planted every bulb with my own hands. And with every one, I make a promise. I promise that from here on forward, I will guard you from your darkest fears. I will keep you safe. I will hold you dear to me.”

  Her eyes stung, and Ginny found herself blinking rapidly.

  “You were right,” he said. “The lady always wins.”

  “The lady,” Ginny said, reaching out to him, “can share.”

  He took her hand. “I know. That’s why you should always win. Ginny, will you marry me?”

  The tulip bulbs were strewn around them. Their hands were connected over fertile soil, rife with promise.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes. A million times yes.”

  ON THE GLORIOUS MORNING three and a half weeks later when Simon finally made her his, he could think of nothing but his bride.

  He scarcely noticed the blue and cloudless sky, nor the white stone of the church when he entered. He didn’t take note of the decorated chapel, of the sheaves of tulips that adorned the pedestals, or the petals that had been strewn down the aisles. It was the wedding of the Season, but he barely realized that his guests were streaming in. Instead, he focused on the doors where his bride would enter.

  He almost couldn’t quite believe she would be here.

  When the organ began playing, and the crowd rose, his whole heart swelled. And when she entered... Ah, sweet Ginny. She wore a gold gown of watered silk, swept up in complicated bows and flounces. She carried a simple bouquet of yellow tulips. And she came down the aisle, slowly, to stand before him.

  He could scarcely breathe.

  And then, she gave him a smile—a long, slow, mischievous smile that brought him back from the heavens opening up to angelic choirs. By the time the vicar made his way through the meandering ceremony, he’d remembered again and again why he most loved her—why nobody else had ever been able to complete him as she had.

  And so when he spoke his vows, he didn’t just blurt them out. Just because the words were part of a sacred ceremony didn’t mean that they couldn’t be part of a game, too.

  “With this ring,” he said, as solemnly as he could manage. “I thee wed.”

  The emphasis was intentional. He hadn’t consulted her on the ring. He hadn’t even so much as made mention of it, and she’d simply trusted the details to him.

  She should have known better. He pulled out a ring with an entirely too-realistic beetle on it, large, ostentatious stones set like bulbous orbs in its head. Her eyes widened.

  To give her credit, she didn’t flinch. She didn’t even pull her hand away. She just met his eyes in a silent dare: If you put that thing on me, so help me, I will…

  Just because he’d put her first didn’t mean he couldn’t tease her a little. He’d practiced hiding the real ring in the palm of his hand for days. He slipped the weight onto her finger, and when she took her hand from his, she found he’d placed a single, perfect gold band on it instead.

  Her only response was a faint, relieved huff and a twitch of her lip.

  With one raise of her eyebrow, she let him know that he’d won this round—but that she’d be back for more. A lifetime of more.

  Simon could hardly wait.

  USUALLY I WRITE about real places. But there are no such places as Chester-on-Woolsey, Anniston, Castingham, or Chapton. There is no Prince’s Canal, either. I made up locations because the British railway timeline didn’t fit my fictional needs. I either had to change history or change geography; I chose the latter.

  But this story is still based on historical events. The 1840s in England saw fortunes being made (and lost) on railways, and there was a lot of animosity between competing methods of transportation. Canal owners and railway owners clashed, but there was also a good bit of railway-on-railway hostility. (“Railway-on-railway” sounds so dirty.)

  In 1846, the railway bubble collapsed. Simon’s decision to diversify came at precisely the right time. But for those who might worry about it, in my version of Britain, Simon and Ginny’s company survived the collapse of the bubble—as did many of the major arterial connections.

  Want to know when Courtney’s next book comes out? Sign up for her new release e-mail list at http://www.courtneymilan.com, follow her on twitter at @courtneymilan, or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/CourtneyMilanAuthor.

  Courtney Milan is a New York Times and a USA Today bestselling author. Her books have received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist. She's twice been a RITA® finalist, and her second book was chosen as a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2010. Courtney lives in the Rocky Mountains with her husband, a medium-sized dog, and an attack cat. She’s working on a garden, an older house, and her next book.

  More about Courtney’s other works, and an excerpt from her latest release, can be found at the back of this book. Click here for a shortcut.

  For my mother and father.

  I love you.

  I am deeply grateful to my family, Bill, Shannon, Erik, and Sarah for their love and support. I’d also like to say a great big thank you to the outstanding editorial team who worked on my story, Janine Allen and Martha Trachtenberg. Leigh, Courtney, and Tessa, as always, I count myself lucky to be your friend.

  Saturday Evening

  ANNA KINCAID WAS the turned-down pagecorner in the book of Charlie Drexler’s life. With a placeholder like Anna, he had to question his decision to skip ahead in the first place. But firefly nights of long ago and not-so-forgotten memories aside, the sight of Anna picking her way across the summer grass, precariously balancing a tray of, yes sir, those were deviled eggs all right, would still have knocked the wind out of him.

  Dream girl walking.

  The corn-silk hair she’d crimped as a teen whipped long and naturally straight behind her, maybe because straight hair was the current fashion, but he rather hoped it was because she’d finally realized she was goddamn beautiful in her own right. A white cotton dress with spaghetti straps slipping off bronzed shoulders conjured sensuality from innocence, and the curve of her hips, backlit by a setting sun, shamelessly reminded him he was a man who’d been buried in the books for far too long. His heartbeat hesitated and then kicked up with the wind that carried the familiar scent of her vanilla soap.

  Eschewing the vanity of perfume, Anna had always opted for natural scents and handmade soaps. To his way of thinking, her fancy soaps might be a natural, organic vanity, but they were a vanity all the same. Yet year after year, he’d bitten back the urge to point out the flaw in her reasoning simply because he flat-out loved the way she smelled.

  The way she smelled.

  The way she shook back her hair when she laughed.

  The way she moved.

  And unlike times past, today he wasn’t the only one taking notice of Anna. An overfed blue jay pecking the corncob bait on the railing of the Carlisle front porch paused to crane its neck and jabber a compli
ment as, with downcast eyes, Anna sideways-climbed the tricky steps. On second thought, maybe it wasn’t the steps that were tricky, maybe it was balancing those eggs while wearing high heels. High heels that showed off a pair of amazing gastrocnemius muscles. All he really knew was that he wanted Anna to look up. And when she saw him, he wanted her to smile.

  Raking a hand through his hair, he waited for the moment of truth. Anna reached the top, stepped onto the porch, looked up, and stopped dead in her tracks. Helpless to contain the excitement welling inside him, he grinned—quite possibly beamed—at her. Anna’s mouth, on the other hand, didn’t roll out of its peppermint-pink bow. Her ridiculously blue eyes didn’t crinkle at the edges, and she didn’t offer so much as a glimmer of the smile that had hounded him for more than ten years. If she had, he might’ve never recovered the breath to speak. “Hello, Peaches.”

  “Charlie.”

  His worst fear had been that the Anna of his boyhood would tromp up the steps and rage at him, and he’d prepared himself for the worst. Or so he’d thought. What he hadn’t prepared himself for was this. This neutral look on her face. This indifferent demeanor. It was as if Anna simply didn’t care one way or another that he’d returned to her with an open mind, determined to find out what he’d missed. It was as if the girl who’d looked up to him, who’d, let’s face it, worshipped him, didn’t care one way or another that he’d come home.

  His chest deflated…briefly. But he was never one to stay down for the count. “Care to dance?” He grabbed her by the hand, pulled it high above her head and twirled her beneath his arm.

  “Damn it, Charlie,” she muttered as they both lunged for the plate of deviled eggs.

  Triumphantly he held out the rescued eggs. “No harm done.”

  “To the eggs.” She arched a matter-of-fact brow and made a quick survey of each high heel.

  He set down the plate on the porch swing and moved in close. One hand found her hip and the other grazed her palm, and magically her arm rose with his. Her body canted forward until he could feel the brush of her warm breasts against his chest. Her knees buckled ever so slightly as he pulled her against him. She was trembling at first, but then she steadied. Her heart beat against him, keeping time with his own, and their breathing synchronized—as if their bodies knew how to talk to each other even if they didn’t.

  He swallowed hard. Man up, Charlie.

  She shifted positions, bringing her hips in line with his, and by now, at least one part of him needed an admonishment to man down. “About that dance.”

  Sliding out of his arms, she quickstepped back, almost tumbling off the steps in the process. She skirted him, retrieved the platter off the porch swing and stuck it in his hands. “Welcome home, Charlie. The eggs are for you.”

  “You remembered.”

  Her nose scrunched up. “What?”

  “Deviled eggs are my favorite.”

  “Are they?”

  “C’mon Peaches, don’t be mad.”

  “Stop calling me Peaches. Mad about what?”

  He squinted at her. She squinted back with no trace of animosity. Surely she wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. He refused to accept this display of equanimity as truth. She was either mad and covering it up by playing it cool, or she had amnesia, and amnesia was the least parsimonious explanation for her behavior he could think of. “Look, Anna, can we go somewhere private and talk?”

  Shaking her head emphatically, she said, “No way.”

  “Why not?”

  “First, it would be rude to disappear from your welcome home party. Simone has been planning this for the past two weeks—ever since your feet hit dirt in town, and second it was Simone who asked me to bring the eggs, and third—”

  She might’ve disabled his hands by sticking him with the platter of eggs, but he was far from disarmed. After all, he was carrying a backup weapon. In less than a heartbeat he’d loaded up the trusty charm gun. “Hey, girl.” He aimed a smoky look her way, one that could have felled hundreds, maybe thousands of librarians in a single shot.

  Her eyes widened in surprise. “Are you supposed to be Ryan Gosling in this scenario? Since when do you follow librarian humor?”

  “Since I saw your Facebook page.”

  “You checked out my Facebook?” Her lips transformed into a defiant pink pucker.

  “You’re not the girl next door anymore, Anna. You’re the hot librarian.”

  Her eyes flashed with determination, but her mouth signaled his impending victory. Anna’s you-cannot-make-me-smile pucker was a sure sign he could.

  He cocked the charm gun. “Hey, girl. When’s amnesty day at the library?”

  He pulled the trigger. “’Cause I need to turn in an apology, and it’s ten years overdue.”

  Her pink lips twitched at the edges. Wait for it…ha! Like a field of prickly poppies answering the call of the morning sun, her expression opened and transformed into a thing of beauty—the best smile he’d seen since the day he’d left Tangleheart, Texas.

  “Twelve years if you want to be accurate.” The smile crept into her voice too.

  “So you did miss me.”

  Her face flushed, and her mouth flatlined. “I’m just pointing out the facts, Charlie. No apology is necessary, and I don’t mean to sound harsh, but I think the past belongs in the past.”

  “Then let’s go someplace private and talk about the future.”

  “You’ve got more nerve than sense, Charlie.”

  “And you’ve got great legs.”

  “I run.”

  His gaze crawled unapologetically from her well-turned calves, up up up and around her curves, climbing higher and higher until at last it reached her big baby-blue eyes. “It shows.”

  “Guess running’s my own form of therapy, so I won’t be needing your apology or your psychiatric services, Charlie. I’m over it.”

  Blinking hard, he forced his attention away from her knockout body and onto her words. And when those words sank in, he said, “I’m not a psychiatrist.”

  “I heard—”

  “You heard wrong. I’m a pediatrician.”

  “But you don’t even like kids.”

  “You sure about that?” He’d always liked kids. Just wasn’t the kind of thing a guy wanted front and center on his high-school yearbook page.

  Charlie “Drex” Drexler—student body president, captain of the football team, voted man most likely to break your heart, really likes small fry.

  Nope. Never would’ve worked.

  Anna tilted her head, surveying him. “You’ve changed.”

  Finally, they were getting somewhere. Because he had, in fact, changed a great deal. And he was smart enough to realize he was going to have to prove to her that he was a different man. She wasn’t about to let him take her home with him, or anywhere else for that matter, anytime soon if he didn’t. He didn’t know much about what Anna Kincaid had been up to all these years, but one thing was certain, fantasizing about getting Charlie Drexler naked wasn’t it.

  ANNA KINCAID DID NOT WISH to speak ill of the dead, nor did she wish to think ill of the dead.

  Which was why she’d made a conscious effort, all these years, not to think of Megan O’Neal. The virtue attached to this plan was iffy at best, since the very fact that it required effort for her not to think ill of poor Megan, meant that on some level she did. Sticking out her chin, she beat down a gnawing sense of guilt. The principle might be flawed, but it was the best she could manage for the girl who’d ruined Charlie Drexler’s life.

  And imperfect though it may have been, she’d stuck fast to that principle until this very evening, when Charlie had shown up on the Carlisle front porch, taken her in his arms, and turned her heart back twelve years.

  In that instant, she’d cast aside all pretense of virtue and indulged in a heartache as raw and sore as the original had been the night Charlie left town. Tonight, when he’d pulled her close, even the knee-buckling feel of his solid chest again
st her cheek couldn’t stop her mind from churning through the murkiest part of their past.

  If it hadn’t been for Megan O’Neal, Charlie might have taken a different road in life. All these years, conflicting emotions toward the girl—jealousy and pity, resentment and compassion—had been lying abed, twisting in the sheets, cuddling and kicking just below the surface of Anna’s consciousness. Not thinking about Megan had not blocked out Anna’s feelings about Megan, at least not completely. Trembling, she clasped her arms about her waist. Her eyes closed.

  Enough.

  Forcing her eyes open, she turned her attention to the present. A quick glance around the interior of the Carlisle farmhouse drew a frown. Farmhouse, of course, was Simone-speak for one of the most well-appointed homes in Tangleheart. Set on a one-hundred-acre spread of rolling green hills, the only crops this farm could boast were the pair of miniature donkeys Nate bought in order to legitimize his agriculture deduction and the stories he liked to spin of his simple, country life.

  With no other guests in sight, and the table in the nook set for four—five if you counted the high chair—Anna knew she’d been had. And by her closest girlfriend no less. At least the house smelled like her favorite homemade cinnamon rolls. “Thanks for setting me up, Simone.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome. Thanks for bringing the appetizer. I hate the way deviling the eggs stinks up the house.”

  Another person might’ve interpreted Simone’s reply as wry humor, but she knew her friend better. There wasn’t a wry bone in Simone’s five-foot-nine, Pilates-toned, post-baby body. Simone was too distracted, rushing around, trying to make everything perfect, to take note of the chagrin in Anna’s voice. Giving it another whirl, Anna inclined her head toward the table set for four. “You said this was Charlie’s welcome home party.”

  “It is.”

  “Looks more like a welcome home trap to me.”