Melanie turned right off the elevator, rounded a corner and unlocked an oak door with a window trimmed in clear, leaded-glass squares. She ushered him in before her and stayed near the door, checking her phone while he wandered.
“The building was restored years ago,” she said, following him slowly as he walked around the first office. “But they kept the crown molding and the chair rails.” She chuckled. “It’ll give you a sort of Old World detective atmosphere.”
He smiled at that, looking around the office that was maybe ten by ten. Through the window, he saw the lot next door, a day-care center with toys strewed all over the yard. There was a very small bathroom at the back of the office.
The second office was smaller, possibly eight by eight. It also had a very small bathroom at the front. He went out across the hall and found a long, narrow kitchen with a row of cabinets and a small refrigerator. “Last tenant left the fridge. I can’t vouch for how well it works.”
“Well, I like it,” he said, taking another walk-through. “But my partner has to see it and he’s getting married on New Year’s Day, so this is probably second in line in his priorities.” He took out his cell phone. “I’ll take some pictures so he has some idea.”
“Oh, don’t bother.” She handed him a sheet of paper with all the space’s specs and the address of a website that showed the place in detail. “He can look it up online and take his own tour. I don’t have anyone else interested right now, so we can wait until after the wedding. If I do get a nibble, I’ll let you know.”
He was impressed by her eagerness to accommodate them. “That’s very kind. Thank you.”
Well, that was a relief, Grady thought as he drove home. The office space at the mill seemed like a definite possibility to him, if Ben agreed, and he couldn’t think of anything better than being just a hallway away from the Bay Bistro.
Being a hallway away from Cassidy Chapman was another matter. Before this afternoon, he’d been bracing himself for the minor uproar caused by simply being part of a wedding. Now that uproar was going to be in his home, and the beautiful woman responsible for all that was going to be there, too.
How had he gotten into this?
Ego, he guessed, turning up the road that would lead him home. A supermodel had asked him for help and he’d obliged without a second thought. Served him right.
The house was quiet when he arrived. He knew it wasn’t empty because Cassie had no way to get anywhere. The accordion closures above the loft railing remained open. He stood in the middle of the great room and called her name.
She appeared at the railing, a polite smile in place. “Hi,” she said. “Did you find an office?”
“Maybe. Depends on whether or not Ben likes it. I’m going to email him some photos, then I’ll microwave that casserole my mother left. Will you be ready for dinner in about fifteen minutes?”
“Sure.”
“Coffee with dinner? Only other thing I have is beer.”
“Coffee’s good.”
“Your dulce de leche or is that just for breakfast?”
“Whatever you have. I have to start the day with dulce de leche, but for the rest of the day, it doesn’t matter.”
“All right. See you in fifteen.”
She disappeared into her room and he took off for the small room off the kitchen where he kept his computer and printer and other stuff that didn’t fit anywhere else. He wished he could put the blue armoire from his mother in there, but he knew she’d expect it to be visible when she came. And she wouldn’t be shy about asking where it was.
He and Cassie chatted over dinner. She told him she was expecting a delivery from Castle Props tomorrow, and possibly one from a Paris designer. That news rattled the resolution he’d just made about coexisting, because standing chandeliers and French designers were so contrary to all he knew, and made him uncomfortable. But she said the words with such ease and confidence that he had to believe it was going to happen.
“Just wanted you to have a heads-up. And...” She looked suddenly apologetic. “Would you mind if Corie, Sarah and Helen meet here with me tomorrow to talk about the flowers? That way I can be here to receive the Castle Props stuff.”
“Sure. Do whatever you need to do. Until the wedding, I’ll just work around you. My life will go back to normal after.”
“After I’m gone?” she asked.
He nodded. “Right. I have Java Chip ice cream for dessert.”
“Java like coffee?”
“Yeah. With chocolate chips.”
“Sounds heavenly.”
He got up to get it and pulled down two bowls. “You’re going to have to fast for weeks when you go back to your normal life.”
She shrugged as though it didn’t matter. “I’ve done that before. Once I modeled ski clothes and forgot that it had been a couple of years since I’d skied. I broke my femur. I went home to recover and the nurse my father hired was a wonderful cook.
“And another time when I was seventeen, Paul Preston dumped me right after I went with him to the Grammys.”
“Paul Preston the rock star?”
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t he too old for you? I mean, he’s forty now, so when you were seventeen, he was...”
“Thirty-two. Yes. But I was scared by the new world I’d entered as a model, and he was big and sure of himself and I was flattered by his attention.”
He got that. Same thing had happened to him when she’d picked him out for her rescue.
“Anyway, after that, I drowned my sorrows in macarons.”
“If I wanted to drown my sorrows, it wouldn’t be in coconut.”
She put both elbows on the table and watched him scoop ice cream, a memory smile on her face. “Not macaroons with a double o, but macarons...” She gave it a French roll of her tongue.
He went a little weak.
“It’s like a cookie cake with a flavored cream center. They make all kinds of them, but my favorite was salted caramel. Oh, my! They’re hard to describe.”
He carried the bowls to the table. “So you OD’ed on macarons?” She laughed when he tried to copy her accent.
“I did. But two weeks later, I learned that Eterna Cosmetics wanted me as their spokeswoman. I quickly recovered and went to the gym. I was myself again, maybe even better, before shooting began the following month.”
“So, all it’ll take is a couple of weeks in the gym to erase all the signs of Texas and Beggar’s Bay?”
Her expression sobered slowly and her blue-sky eyes became as dark as dusk. “Nothing,” she said, picking up her spoon, “will ever erase Texas or Beggar’s Bay.”
CHAPTER SIX
IN THE MORNING Grady went to rent wedding clothes with Jack, Ben, Gary and Soren while Cassie made a coffee cake with streusel topping for her meeting with the Palmer women. Corie brought Rosie, who seemed delighted to be part of the feminine proceedings.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” Cassie said as they all gathered around the kitchen table, Rosie tucked in between her new mother and her new grandmother.
Sarah stabbed her fork into the coffee cake and said with a shake of her head, “I can’t believe you just whipped this up before we got here. It’s only nine thirty. You are going to be a marvelous addition to this family.” She put the bite into her mouth and groaned in approval. “Wow. Did you learn to make this in Paris?”
Cassie laughed. “I think it’s in the Betty Crocker cookbook. Nothing brilliant about it. You add butter and brown sugar to anything and you’ve got something swoon-worthy. So, back to the matter at hand.”
Sarah turned to Corie with a haughty expression. “She’s going to be marvelous but bossy.”
Corie made a so-what sound. “She’s a Manning. You’re married to one. You know what they’re like
. Well, she’s a Manning-Chapman, and Jack’s a Manning-Palmer, so they’ve compromised a few gene pools, but they are all the same. Please give her your full attention or she’ll take away our coffee cake.”
Corie put an arm protectively around hers. “Go on,” she said to Cassie.
“I was thinking,” Cassie said again, “that maybe I don’t have to send for flowers. We’ll see what you think about this idea, then we’ll call your local florist and see if she can do it. It’s pretty basic, but beautiful. Even the simplest flower seems to raise an occasion to an elegant event.”
They were listening, except for Rosie, who was eating all the streusel off her coffee cake. “What about dark pink Gerbera daisies, pink roses and delphiniums, maybe, for a little blue to coordinate with your Caribbean blue? It’s not even close in shade, but that’s better, because it won’t look like we tried to match it and failed.”
Corie opened her mouth to speak but Sarah put a hand on her arm. “I have the perfect solution!” she said. “To the blue, I mean.”
Everyone leaned toward her. “When I was living with Ben and Jack after my apartment caught fire and Jack had just come home, I dried some gorgeous blue hydrangea that are now the most amazing shade of gray blue with pink in it. They’d be perfect with pink roses and Gerbera daisies. In fact...” She dug her phone out of her purse and scrolled through her photo album until she found the flowers.
“They’re on the mantel in the guest house Jack and Ben’s parents rent out to Helen’s writing friends.” She showed the photo around the table. There were oohs and aahs of approval. Cassie smiled across the table at Sarah. “Well, how brilliant of you to have done that. Did you have some prophetic knowledge that Corie was going to need them?”
Sarah laughed lightly. “At the time, I thought I was the one who needed them because I thought they’d be beautiful in the room Jack had just remodeled. Just proof, I guess, how closely connected we all are.” She turned to Helen. “Is it all right with you if we take that arrangement apart for Corie’s flowers? I’ll buy another bouquet for you.”
“Of course you can take it. We’ll find something else to put there.”
“Then, if we’re in agreement,” Cassie said, “I’ll call the florist right now to make sure it’ll work.”
They nodded. Sarah shooed her away. “Go make the call. We’re going to split your piece of the coffee cake while you’re gone.”
A very helpful woman named Denise at Beggar’s Bouquets assured her that she could have Gerbera daisies and pink roses in abundance.
Cassie held the phone to her chest and turned back to the table. “Three bouquets for us, a little basket for Rosie, a corsage for Helen, and four boutonnieres for the guys and Soren. Then loose flowers to string into the bunting, and bouquets for the tables?”
They all turned to Corie, who raised her hands in surrender. “I leave it to you. It sounds wonderful.”
Cassie held the phone to her ear and repeated all that, then asked, “For the bridal bouquet, can you do that swirling silver wire around the flowers that’s so popular now? Maybe with a few pearls in it?” She listened for a moment. “Wonderful. I think wrapping the boutonnieres in wire would be great, too. I’m expecting the ribbon to arrive tomorrow. Can I bring that to you? Perfect. Thank you, Denise.”
With a smile of victory, she carried the phone with her to the table. “That’s taken care of. I ordered the standing chandeliers and the tulle to make a sort of bunting to go around the loft railing and maybe a few of the columns. What else do we need to do? Some kind of favor for the guests?”
“There’s no time for that, sweetheart,” Helen said. “Otherwise we’ll all be going crazy rather than being able to focus on the next few days.”
“I have to go shopping in the morning for a dress,” Sarah said. She turned to Cassie. “What are you going to wear, and try not to look too spectacular?”
“I told you to wear something you already have,” Corie reminded Sarah. “Don’t go buy anything.”
“I never had much in the way of dressy clothes when I did home health care,” Sarah said. “It’ll be fun to have something that makes me feel glamorous.”
“I hadn’t packed that much to go to Ireland, and I left in a rush.” Cassie looked around the table, wondering if her family was expecting her to explain. They didn’t seem embarrassed or in any way upset, so rather than skating past an explanation, she brought it on. “Do you want to know what happened?”
Corie said gently, “Only if you want to tell us.”
“’Cause we really don’t care,” Sarah added. “We don’t know you all that well yet, but we’re sure there had to be some kind of misunderstanding.”
Cassie told them what she had told Grady, how the entire incident had come about, without explaining that the invasion of her personal space had to do with her claustrophobia. She explained what she’d done later to apologize, and how the makeup artist had forgiven her.
They were comfortingly indignant that the news story hadn’t shared her side or that she’d done her best to make amends and been forgiven.
“My point is,” she said, “that I don’t have anything to wear, either. I picked up some things yesterday at the little Beggar’s Bay Boutique, but I wasn’t looking for more formal things, so I didn’t notice if they had anything.”
“They do,” Sarah said. “That’s where I’m going. Why don’t you come with me?”
“We’ll come, too.” Corie smoothed Rosie’s rich, dark braid. “I have to find something for Rosie. Helen, want to make it a crowd?”
* * *
GRADY BROUGHT THE guys home with him after their fittings, planning to order a pizza. He had beer in the fridge and milk for Soren. He was surprised and vaguely disappointed to find the house still filled with women. He loved them all but felt a pang of longing for the simplicity of his old bachelor lifestyle before he’d been invited to Texas.
Now Jack had married, Ben was getting married, and he was sharing space with a woman who completely disrupted everything he knew to be familiar and sound.
Those thoughts were softened just a little by the fact that Cassie and the Palmer women had apparently expected their return and had raided his fridge to make everyone lunch. Cassie had sliced his stash of sausage and cheese onto crackers, and someone must have run out for vegetables because he didn’t remember having yellow peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes or green onions.
He went into the kitchen to pour a glass of milk for Soren and found Cassie slicing apples and pears, something else he didn’t remember having.
She was pink with...well, he wasn’t sure what it was, but it gave a depth to her natural glow. She was happy. Apparently she loved the hubbub of a house filled with people and the low roar of several conversations going on at once. Pitched a little higher was the sound of children laughing on the stairs to the loft as they played with an electronic game.
“Hi,” she said with a very genuine smile he didn’t want to crush despite his wavering mood. “Sorry there’s so much fuss, but I thought if they stayed until the Castle Props stuff arrives, we’ll have help unpacking it. And I’ll replace all your food. I’m going shopping tomorrow for something to wear to the wedding. You guys are renting suits?”
“Yes. We’re going to look spectacular.”
“I have no doubt.” She looked out the kitchen window at the swishing tree limbs. “Wind’s picking up out there.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty much an all-winter thing around here. Lots of windstorms. I like the sound of it.”
She looked up, interested. “It sounds a little like the decibel level in here. I’m surprised the noise doesn’t bother you.” Then she nodded as though she suddenly understood. “That’s because it’s natural, isn’t it? Not something man-made in an attempt to be glamorous.”
“Don’t be smart,” he scolded
with a grin. “It is natural. They use the sound in relaxation tapes.”
“True. And that would work if you don’t think about the destruction wind can bring about. Roofs blown away, buildings toppled, crops destroyed.”
“Now you’re being deliberately argumentative. I’m talking wind, not hurricanes or tornadoes. Anything under twenty-five miles an hour.”
She grinned back. “I’m just making the point that even natural things have the potential to do damage. Wind’s ability to destroy can make glamour look pretty good.”
He wondered how a woman could be exasperating and charming at the same time. “So, when are you leaving, again?” he teased.
“Not sure. I guess I’ll stay until it ceases being fun harassing you.”
“Thanks. I have to work the next couple of days, so I’ll have crime and criminals to distract me. You want this on the buffet I noticed you set up on the credenza?”
“Please.”
He turned with the plate and stopped in surprise when his mother appeared in his way, a large, square, food storage box balanced on the flat of her hand. Sure, why not? The day was already far beyond his control, anyway.
“Hey, Mom,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“I made a chocolate sour cream cake.” She went around him to place it on the table. “I didn’t realize you were having company. I’ll just leave it right here and be on my way.”
“No, Mrs. Nelson.” Cassie hurried from the sink, drying her hands on a towel. “Please stay. Would you like a cup of coffee? This isn’t company, it’s my family. You probably know my sister Corie’s getting married and we’ve gotten together to plan her wedding on New Year’s Day. We’re expecting a heavy package delivery anytime now, so the guys are hanging around to help bring it inside.”
His mom looked reluctant but Cassie poured a cup of coffee and put it in her hand. “Actually, you’re just in time, if Grady doesn’t mind sharing your cake. We’re having finger food for lunch, but I have nothing for dessert.”
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