New Year's Wedding

by Muriel Jensen

  But they had been beautiful tonight.

  He took a sip of the champagne and felt its chill in his chest. The air coming through his broken windows made the room too cold for champagne.

  He lay his head against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes, combating the terrible loneliness he felt without the sound of Cassie’s movements in the loft.

  Still, the fire was proof that his life was never intended to handle the glamorous but impulsive way she behaved. He’d thought he could stay with her until she was free to come back to Beggar’s Bay with him for good.

  He knew now that wouldn’t work. Geography really didn’t matter. He’d still be the guy who wanted to deal in basics, and she’d always be the woman who ordered six standing chandeliers from a prop supplier in Paris.

  There was a light knock on the door. He held his watch against the lantern to check the time. It was after ten. He couldn’t imagine who would be coming by at this hour.

  That question was answered the next moment when Donald’s face appeared in the broken window. “Grady, are you still up?” he called.

  “Yeah. I’m coming.” Grady went to the door and yanked it open. “Don. Hi. I thought you were spending the night with Jack and Sarah.” He stood aside to let him in.

  “That was the plan, but I got worried about you moping around in here.” Donald had changed into jeans and his stadium jacket over an argyle sweater. He held up a bottle of brandy in one hand and had palmed the bottoms of two paper cups in the other. “I’ve got coffee and brandy,” he said. “A much better combination than coffee, cream and sugar ever was.”

  “Sure. Watch your step. There’s still water and debris all over the floor.” Grady closed the door and led the way back to the great room. They sat on the sofa by the light of the lantern. “What made you think I’d be moping?”

  Donald removed the plastic lids and poured brandy into the cups, glancing at Grady as he did so. “The fact that you love my daughter and you’re pushing her away.”

  Grady wished he hadn’t opened the door, but when he took a sip of the coffee concoction, he was glad he had, after all.

  “We’re not right for each other,” he said.

  “Why is that? Because she’s a celebrity?” Donald leaned back with his own cup, crossing the ankle of one leg over the knee of the other. “Because she really doesn’t care about that stuff.”

  “Right.” Grady told him briefly about his life, his father, his change of plans to be able to help his mother.

  Donald nodded. “I know.” He empathized. “Diane told me what a good son you’ve been and that your father was...” He glanced at Grady then looked down at his cup. “Sometimes illness takes away your ability to deal with anything but your own problems. I had that experience with Cassie’s mother. She couldn’t cope with her life without taking drugs, and eventually it didn’t even matter that she loved me, that she loved her kids. She chose the drugs over us.”

  That was true for Cassie’s family, but Grady remembered a kind, loving father before his illness changed him. “He’d been a good dad.”

  “He had to have been,” Donald said. “I can see in you that you had a good role model.”

  Grady sipped at his cup, feeling the hot, brandied coffee slide down into his stomach. “My parents hadn’t been able to save much, and they had debt. His inability to work made my mother’s and my lives very basic. There was no room for frivolous thinking, no having things easy. Life was pretty hard.”

  “But, that was then,” Donald said. “You’ve matured and moved on. Or is this about that other woman? Celine?”

  “Celeste,” Grady corrected. He gave Donald a judicious look. “You and Mom have done a lot of talking.”

  Donald laughed. “It’s hard to keep up with your mother. She’s worried about you, particularly after the fire. So she shared that with me.”

  “Okay, I appreciate that, but you’re not my parent, here.”

  “I know. But I’m Cassie’s parent. I’m working for her, as well as for you. And if you want to spend the rest of your life stuck in place, I want a different future for her.”

  Grady was angry that Donald had reduced his life’s problems to being “stuck in place.” But in making himself think before he reacted angrily, Grady realized that that described his situation very well.

  “That’s why I can’t let this go any farther. We’re two very different people.”

  “Who seem to have a great time together.”

  “We do, but...” He swept a hand around the room. “I live in a simple, sturdy, log house. And she rents standing chandeliers. How does that ever come together?”

  Donald turned to him, looking a little surprised that he wasn’t getting the point.

  “Okay, if you want to use a log house and a chandelier as a metaphor for your lives, I think it works. Did you not notice today that the house burned and the wedding had to be moved outside where the chandeliers lit up the landscape—and made a beautiful wedding?”

  Feeling a little cornered, Grady rebutted. “Don, she’s the one who burned the house.”

  Donald nodded on a sigh. “Can’t deny that, but it’s important to note that her intent was beauty and not destruction. And then, with the venue up in flames, she made the proverbial silk purse out of a sow’s ear. I think that was the nicest wedding I’ve ever been to.”

  “She’s rash!”

  “She is.”

  “She never thinks twice.”

  “Because she sees things pretty clearly the first time.”

  Grady rolled his eyes. “Don. She got you out of the burning house, then went back inside to...to...I don’t know...probably to save her chandeliers. That’s thinking clearly?”

  Donald stared at him, both eyebrows raised, a small gasp of surprise coming from his open mouth. “Is that what you think?”

  “It’s what I know,” Grady snapped. “I went in to get her, remember?”

  Donald ran a hand over his face and shook his head. He put his coffee cup down and leaned back into the sofa. “Grady,” he said gravely, “she went back in for you.”

  Grady thought about that a minute, stunned. He’d found her near the kitchen, doing what? Trying to save the food that had been brought over last night? He couldn’t quite follow Donald’s reasoning. “I wasn’t here,” he said.

  “We didn’t know that. You never told us you were leaving early to go to the bakery. She went to the sofa to wake you with fire all around her, and when she didn’t find you, she came for me and practically shoved me out the door so she could come back in and look for you.”

  No. That wasn’t possible. The house was on fire and filled with black smoke. He hadn’t been able to see anything when he’d gone in after her. What had it been like for her, her claustrophobia dragging on her every step?

  Grady sat in silence for a long moment, unable to process the whole concept of Cassie trying to save him from the fire, probably with all the symptoms of claustrophobia impeding her.

  “I thought...” He struggled to form a coherent sentence. “I thought she’d gone back in to get the wedding stuff. The chandeliers.”

  “Did you find her moving a chandelier toward the door?”

  “No. I found her in the kitchen.”

  “Looking for you. And you have to know how hard that was for her. She deals with her condition almost daily and without drama.”

  Grady was speechless.

  “She is as different from you as she can be,” Donald said gently, “and that could work against you if she didn’t love you and truly appreciate you for the good, kind man you are.”

  Resting his elbows on his knees, Grady covered his face with his hands and tried to find balance in a life that was falling over. “She never told me why she went back.”

  “She wouldn’t,
” Donald said. “Maybe she thought you’d realize why.”

  “God,” Grady muttered, hands still covering his face. “What does that make me?”

  “It makes you just like her,” he replied, a small smile in his voice. “You ran in after her. Maybe you’re more alike than you imagine.”

  * * *

  DIANE’S HOME WAS small and charming, with an interesting collection of brightly painted folk furniture and knickknacks.

  Diane dropped her purse on a wooden chair painted red with black polka dots and told Cassie to put her things at the foot of the stairs. “We’ll take them up later. I need a cup of tea. Want one?”

  “Please.”

  “I hope you feel good about what you accomplished today,” Diane said, stopping on her way into the kitchen. She beckoned to Cassie. “That was a lovely wedding.”

  “It was.” Cassie stopped in the middle of the room to look around at a mind-blowing collection of hand-painted signs. Signs of encouragement, signs of observation, funny signs, and all done in primitive style. “Diane, these are wonderful. I suppose you remember where you found each one?”

  “I do as a matter of fact. That one—” she pointed to one painted blue with dark blue lettering “—about the risk of failure but the joy and freedom of taking the risk. Grady’s father and I had come home from our teaching jobs in Italy to give birth to Grady here. I wanted him to know that freedom, but when his father got sick we were caught in a cycle where physical and emotional survival ruled our lives. I’d found this in a little shop on a side street in Boise, though I never really got to live the lesson. But isn’t it perfect?”

  Cassie swallowed around a lump in her throat. It was perfect. Life wasn’t, but the sign was. She pushed back from the easy slope to a pity party when she remembered that she’d conquered her claustrophobia, at least for that moment, when she’d searched for Grady in the fire. Her love for him was stronger than what she was afraid of. She thought with a little twist of irony that what she now feared the most was living the rest of her life without him.

  Diane pointed her to one of two chairs at a little round table in the corner. “Have a seat. How about a cookie with your tea?”

  Cassie sat but put a hand to her stomach. “No, thank you. I ate too much at the wedding.”

  Making a face at her, Diane filled the kettle. “You did not. You hardly ate anything. I watched you. I know it had something to do with that little boxing incident your dad and I interrupted.”

  “Oh, it’s nobody’s fault. Well, the house burning is my fault, but...”

  “You don’t have to explain.” The kettle clanged as Diane put it on the stove and turned on the burner. “I guess in his upset over the whole thing, Grady blames you, but not because he thinks you did it on purpose.”

  “I know. But that would be almost easier to understand. It’s because he thinks I messed up his life with glamour and fuss. He says life works best for him when it’s real and on track.”

  Diane brought over two mugs and two black tea bags, and sat opposite her. “He thinks that because when he came out of school to help his dad and me, our finances were a mess and his father was irascible and ungrateful.

  “Grady worked a lot of double shifts to make us solvent again, and remained kind and loving to his father despite getting very little back. He just put his head down and kept going when there was very little positive from day to day. When his father passed away, there was a lot to do—a lot to pay for—then, finally, things were looking up.

  “Grady helped me move to this town to be with my sisters, and when he saw how beautiful it was, he decided to stay. I thought life would finally open up for him. Then, early this year, he met Celeste.”

  Cassie nodded grimly. “I’ve heard about her.”

  Diane made a face. “She just looked like trouble, but she fussed over him and, for the first time in a long time, he took a chance.” She pretended to stick a finger down her throat. “She called him ‘lover boy,’ wanted to go to fancy places, do fancy things, then she got tired of him and married somebody else. He was heartbroken.”

  “I know.”

  “He took it as proof positive that he wasn’t entitled to have fun and do extravagant things. He became even more of a head-down, on-track kind of man. Thanks to Ben and Jack, he manages to have fun, but not too deeply, and never for very long. But, he’s such a good man. Don’t give up on him, Cassie.”

  “He’s given up on me, Diane.” It hurt to say it, but in loving him, he claimed she’d broken his heart and his dreams.

  “He needs a couple of days to find his feet. All the stuff going on with the wedding and then the fire...”

  “I’m going over there in the morning to meet the cleaners and the contractor I hired, and to arrange to have the chandeliers shipped back. I’ll leave an account at the bank for both of them, but I have to fly back the following day.” Cassie’s voice cracked and she took a minute to pull herself together. No more loft, no more Bay Boutique, no more get-togethers with Corie and Sarah, no more Jack and Ben, no more Grandma and Helen and Diane.

  No more Grady. She stood to alleviate an undefined pain. “I can’t bear to be here anymore.”

  Diane got to her feet and wrapped her arms around her. “He’ll come to you in Paris.”

  “He won’t. It’s over.” She patted Diane’s back and moved her gently away. “I got along without Grady for twenty-five years, I can do it again. My life is busy and exciting, and I can get back into it.” She paused, trying to imagine that, but it all seemed empty now that she loved a man, had family and felt at home in Beggar’s Bay.

  “Drink your tea,” Diane said. “Life always makes more sense when you’re running on caffeine.”

  Right. She could do this. It was just a matter of convincing herself she couldn’t have Grady and she had to leave.

  They talked about Diane visiting her in Paris with Cassie’s father. “He says there’s a bakery near your apartment that makes wonderful pastries.”

  Macarons.

  The very thought brought back her playful discussion with Grady about her stealing all the macarons and him being a gendarme, giving chase.

  She crossed her arms on the table, put her head down and dissolved into tears.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CASSIE RAISED HER head at the loud knock on Diane’s door. She took a napkin from the middle of the table and dried her eyes as Diane, with a who-could-that-be frown, went to answer it.

  “That better be Grady coming for you,” she said.

  Cassie seriously doubted it. He’d thought it made good sense to tell her he would “always care for her” but never love her. What chance was there for a man who thought like that to change his mind? Why did she want a man so determined not to love her, anyway?

  She didn’t anymore, she told herself firmly as she stood and pushed in her chair. She squared her shoulders on the chance that it was Grady at the door; she didn’t want him to see her looking as bereft as she felt.

  “Cassidy Chapman?” The sound of her name in an unfamiliar male voice floated into the kitchen. Then two men in Beggar’s Bay Police Department uniforms appeared in the doorway, Diane standing behind them, both arms extended in a gesture of confusion.

  “I don’t understand,” she was saying. “Cassie Chapman is here, but you have to be wrong. I mean, she’s been at a wedding all day.”

  The older of the two officers—Brogan, according to his badge—held up an important-looking document. “We have a warrant for your arrest.”

  Cassie blinked, wondering if she’d fallen asleep at the table and was dreaming. “What?”

  Brogan approached her, barring her path to the door. The other, younger, taller officer came up beside him, looking severe. His badge r
ead Kubik. Her heart picked up its beat.

  “You’re under arrest,” Brogan said, “for assaulting Oliver Browning on Black Bear Ridge Road on December 31.”

  “He was stalking me,” she said, aware that she looked nervous and probably guilty. Because, technically, she was. “Well, he wasn’t, but I thought he was. He was working for my grandmother, but he had a camera, and I’d seen him hiding and watching me before in town, so I naturally assumed... I mean, the paparazzi are always after me.”

  “He has a black eye,” Kubik said, “multiple contusions, his jacket was torn, and you tossed his camera at a tree and broke it in several pieces.”

  Well, this wasn’t good. Oliver had assured her he’d understood her reaction. He’d told Grady he wouldn’t press charges. Something must have changed his mind.

  “I...” she began when Brogan came around to put her hands behind her back. He read her her rights as he put the plastic cuffs on her wrists.

  The other officer took hold of her elbow and began to lead her away. “But I...I...” She stammered, unable to decide how to defend herself. She had hit Oliver, she had broken his camera, she didn’t remember ripping his coat, but she probably had by the time Grady had pulled her off him. But what had made him decide to press charges, after all? And wouldn’t this look good alongside the news story about her meltdown in Ireland?

  “You can explain it all to your attorney,” Brogan said. “Put her in the car, Kubik.”

  “My son is on the BBPD,” Diane said, following them to the door. “I’m calling him right now. You have no right to take this poor woman...”

  And that was all Cassie heard as Brogan handed Diane his card so she knew who to complain about and closed the door.

  The night was dark and cold, and Cassie still wore her maid-of-honor dress. For once, she wished she hadn’t left the green raincoat behind at the foot of Diane’s stairs with her things.