“Mama,” an urgent juvenile voice said at the bathroom door, “the dog just ate part of a law book, the lady out here said. Now he’s hiding under the desk.”
“Not now, Philip,” Jamie Hatworth yelled, “we’re busy.
“Well, what have we decided?” she asked. “Are we pregnant or aren’t we? We are? Probably? Yes, I know, as soon as you buy the cute, little test in the drugstore or see a doctor, whichever comes first, but yes.
“Almost yes,” she said, taking a consensus. “Now, do we have a bridegroom, or don’t we? Just nod your heads, please. Yes, definitely. We have a big, mad one waiting outside.” The assistant editor took a deep breath. “OK, that brings us to item three, the wedding. I hate to ask this, ladies, but do we have a wedding, or don’t we?”
“For heaven’s sake, Jamie,” Lacy said, frowning, “I’ve done Michael and his company so much damage today I have to make some sort of gesture, don’t I? Just maybe the public won’t believe everything they see on television and in the newspapers about those darned harassment charges and the riot if they know that at least I went ahead and married him.”
“That sounds reasonable, dear,” her mother said, giving her a last affectionate pat on the cheek. “Don’t forget to keep your veil down, bunnykins, until the groom lifts it to kiss you at the end of the ceremony.”
“On the other hand, who knows?” Jamie Hatworth muttered, opening the door to the restroom to let them pass. “Maybe this is all a fantasy trip. Maybe I’m really Princess Leia, and I’m going to the wrong kind of shrink if I ever hope to find Luke Skywalker.”
“Oh, rats,” Lacy murmured under her breath, “why couldn’t Pottsy have used a little more ... restraint? Then I wouldn’t have to be doing all this.”
“I usually,” Judge Samuel Markowitz said, “read a few appropriate selections from famous poets to the happy couple before I begin the marriage ceremony.”
His Honor bent his head slightly and looked over his glasses at the large and varied wedding party crowded into his inner chambers. The party that included the bride’s handsome mother and father, Irving and Morton Fishman and their wives, Jamie Hatworth’s sons with Mike the layout artist, the judge’s executive assistant and legal staff, two New York City policemen, Edward, the Echevarria chauffeur, and a delegation of small men from Belmont race track holding a large floral horseshoe rescued from the SWAT team’s sweep and decorated with a large gold ribbon that read, good luck, mick. In the distance the bridal party could hear the driving beat of the Peptic Ulcers rock band playing assorted selections from The King and I.
Lacy held her bridal bouquet of rare cattleya orchids in pale tones of gold and ivory, which Jamie Hatworth had handed her rather stiffly. Michael, her mind kept repeating, with a note of wonder. It seemed incredible that before all these people in the judge’s chambers in the New York Supreme Court Building, she was really marrying him.
From behind her veil, Lacy shot a look at the tall man standing next to her, stony laced and ramrod straight in his elegant, dark Savile Row suit, St. Laurent shirt and gray-on-pearl silk tie. Almost reluctantly she allowed her eyes to travel from Michael Echevarria’s dark, curly head to his thick eyelashes, which tended to look even longer in profile, his straight, handsome nose and the sternly flattened curve of his lips, where she knew dimpled indents could flash when he spoke. As always, she felt her breath catch with unwilling emotion. Just looking at him always had the same effect on her, but this time the familiar breathless feeling was accompanied by a pained heaviness in the vicinity of her heart. Not a good feeling. A terrible feeling, actually, to have when one was gazing at one’s husband-to-be. Not once had Michael looked at her, even when she took her place beside him; he kept his eyes straight ahead. Lacy noticed a small muscle that jumped almost spasmodically in the angle of his tight jaw. In fact, she thought, peering through the double layer of ivory tulle, there was a pronounced twitch in his right eyelid as well.
“Now, Adelaide Lacy and Michael Sean,” Judge Markowitz began in a deep, judicial voice. “Before we begin, let us take a few moments to consider some beautiful thoughts on the joining of two happy people in the bonds of matrimony. Let us dedicate ourselves to the meaning of love as I read the famous poem ‘How do I love thee?’ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.” He opened the book of poetry his legal secretary handed him. “It speaks of the most sublime forms of love that all of us should remember as we tread life’s sometimes stormy roadways that cannot but lead to the happy rainbow with our loved one beside us.
“Married, that is,” His Honor added by way of clarification. He cleared his throat. “‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth of my being and height My soul can reach—’”
“Michael,” Lacy murmured impulsively, feeling that she had to say something, “I’m really sorry you have to marry me.” She saw him stiffen, but he kept his eyes fixed on the judge. She hadn’t noticed it before, but there was a small stream of perspiration that ran down the side of his handsome face and into his shirt collar. “Michael,” she whispered a little more loudly, “I really wish things had turned out better today. I did have Pottsy plan a media event so I could denounce you, but I didn’t arrange for a riot. I just thought you’d want to know.”
For a long moment there was no reaction. Then she saw his eyelid twitch so fiercely that it brought an answering tremor in the muscles in his cheek. The matron of honor gave the bride a discreet poke in the side with her elbow and frowned.
Without turning his head the chairman of the board said in a low, uneven voice, “Lacy, I admit I’ve had to make some hard moves. I can see now I forced you into ... some hard countermoves. You don’t have to apologize.”
“‘—when feeling out of sight,’“ Judge Markowitz was saying with deep emotion, “‘For the ends of Being and ideal Grace—’”
“But I do have to apologize.” Impatiently, Lacy blew the tulle veil away from her mouth. “Oh, Michael, I could have turned you down in the bar that night,” she whispered, “but subconsciously I don’t think I wanted to! I hate to tell you that, but it’s the truth.”
“Shhh,” the matron of honor hissed, bending forward to glare at the groom.
But he was staring straight ahead. “I don’t mind admitting I wanted you any way I could get you, Lacy,” Michael Echevarria’s voice murmured rather rustily, “after that first night in Tu—after the first time we met. I’ve been a damned fool, that’s all.”
“‘I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet need,’“ Judge Markowitz said, frowning a little over the disruptions, “‘By sun and candle-light—’”
Lacy couldn’t drag her eyes away from the tall man beside her who had just confessed that he, too, had made a mistake. “You make it sound as if—” Her voice broke. “As if it’s all over.”
Now Michael Echevarria turned to her, his molten silver eyes full of an expression she had never seen before. Regret? she thought, startled. Torment? Something else?
“Well, isn’t it?” he grated.
“Oh, Michael,” Lacy said, pressing the tulle veiling against her nose distractedly to see him more clearly. “I don’t want you to hate me! I think you did break the law just like Alex van Renssalaer said by threatening to fire me if I didn’t date you, but I still love you. I just wanted you to know I was sorry you have to marry me, that’s all.”
“Lacy,” the matron of honor muttered, lifting her eyebrows and wagging her head sidewise to indicate that other people were listening. “Can you two knock it off?”
“‘I love thee freely, as men strive for right,’“ Judge Markowitz was saying. “‘I love thee Purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion—’”
“I don’t hate you,” the chairman of the board said huskily. The twitch in his carved right eyelid was very pronounced. “On the contrary, Lacy, I’ve found that I can’t live without you. You’ve taken over my life. I’m not normally an insomniac, and it’s really getting to
me.”
“But you don’t love me,” Lacy whispered. “It’s just not the same as wanting a little peace and quiet! Or a good night’s sleep!”
“I’d like,” Judge Markowitz said, raising his voice slightly, “to go on to a few selections from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Unless the participants would like to retire—” He looked around the crowded room. “Well, the participants could go out into the hallway and talk this over.”
“I’m crazy about you, Lacy,” the chairman of the board said firmly, his gray eyes gleaming. “I wouldn’t be standing here getting married to you, sweetheart, if I didn’t love you.”
His words were almost drowned out by a peculiarly doleful noise from under Judge Markowitz’s desk, where Sicky-Poo lay alternately moaning and snarling.
“You do?” Lacy screamed. She would have thrown herself into Michael Echevarria’s arms at that moment, but the judge put out his hand to restrain her. “Darling, I never knew you loved me! You haven’t said a thing all these weeks—”
“I have another selection, from Dante’s Inferno,” the judge said sternly, looking over his glasses. “But I won’t go on unless we really want this. Mick, is there something we should talk over?”
“Of course, I love you, Lacy. I have to love you—to keep you from demolishing not only my company but my life.” Michael Echevarria reached over the judge’s arm to catch his bride’s hand and close his fingers around it. “Darling, I need you. I need things I never thought I needed before. Like someone to argue with me, and tell me when I’m wrong, and keep me from being a ruthless bastard.
“I need to hold you in my arms, sweetheart,” he said softly, shoving the judge’s arm away to draw her to him, “to find you in my bed with me when I wake up in the middle of the night and want to talk to you. God, it will be good to wake up in the middle of the night for a change, instead of trying to watch the Late, Late Show and going nuts.”
Judge Markowitz was listening intently as he studied the faces of the bride and groom. “I think while we’re getting this cleared up,” he said, readjusting his glasses, “we might as well move on with more beautiful thoughts. How about a nice Shakespearean sonnet? I used to have one that begins—” He pushed his glasses back on his nose and recited, “‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May—’”
“Oh, darling,” the bride said, “you tear my heart out when you look at me like that.” She grabbed for the white silk handkerchief in the groom’s pocket and used it to dab at the perspiration-wet curls at his temples. “Your poor eye.
“There,” she told him, touching her finger tip lightly at the corner of his lid, “does that make it feel better?”
“It helps,” the black panther said softly, kissing the tips of her captive Fingers. “Everything helps, precious. I just didn’t know it before.”
“‘—But thy eternal summer shall not fade,’ te-dum, te-dum, something. I haven’t used this one in years,” the judge said. “Ah—’Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st—’”
“I don’t believe this,” the matron of honor muttered, staring at Freddie, the bartender. “Are you crying?”
“‘—So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee,’“ the judge finished triumphantly. “What about,” he suggested, “the utility version of nuptials I reserve for weddings aboard sightseeing boats and on the observation platform of the Empire State Building?”
“There’s just one thing, darling, if you’re going to marry me,” Lacy murmured. She stuck the white silk handkerchief back into the groom’s breast pocket. “I don’t want to argue with you, but I can’t move up to Gloria Farnham’s job without some sort of training. I’m going to have to keep short hours, anyway, because—”
“Go for it, Sam,” the president and chairman of the board ordered. He grabbed his bride to him and kissed her through the veil on her nose. “Before we lose it.”
Judge Markowitz nodded. “Adelaide Lacy, do you take this man.” His Honor said at machine-gun speed, “to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
“Wait a minute,” the bridegroom interrupted. He took the bride’s hands from the back of his neck gently. “Darling, see if you can just turn around for a moment, and say, ‘I do.’”
“Of course,” Lacy said, her eyes shining like emerald stars. “I do, I do, I do.”
“Once is enough,” the judge said. “Michael Sean, do you—”
“You bet I do,” he growled. “Look, honey.” He held out his hand so the best man could place two golden wedding rings in it. “One for you, one for me. Plain, no frills—solid gold from Kay’s Jewelers. I sent Freddie over to Atlantic Avenue this morning to get them.”
“Under the powers vested in me,” Judge Markowitz shot ahead, “by the state of New York, I now pronounce you husband and wife.” He twitched the edge of his robe and looked down, feeling a suspicious dampness around his ankles. “Great guns,” His Honor exclaimed, staring. “Some damned thing’s eaten the hem off my robe!”
“Darn, Michael, I’ve underestimated you,” the bride said smiling. She was admiring her solid-gold wedding band glistening on her slender white hand. “You do have a sense of humor, after all, you rat.”
“Only with you, dearest, only with you,” he murmured, pulling her into his arms again. “You’ve reformed me.”
“The veil,” Lacy screamed. “Watch the veil, Michael!”
“To hell with it,” her husband muttered, the zap! bam! and powie! of his burning kisses searing through two layers of silk tulle.
“I came up to kiss the bride,” Otto Posniaski, the other groomsman said, looking around. “Have I missed anything?”
Judge Markowitz closed his book of poetry with a sigh. “This was just one of those weddings. You get them every once in a while. I wouldn’t hang around if I were you,” he said to the longshoreman best man, who was watching the bridegroom kiss the bride. “Why don’t you come and have some more champagne? The crowd seems to be going that way.”
“Lacy, you can throw your bouquet now,” the matron of honor offered hopefully. “Lacy—the bridal-bouquet toss for the next bride, remember?”
“When Mickey concentrates, he don’t hear a thing,” Freddie, the bartender, told her. His admiring eyes swept over Jamie Hatworth’s petite figure as she tried, more or less, to gently kick the bride in the ankle to get her attention. “Listen, you beautiful, little doll, have you got a date for the reception?”
“Oh, Michael,” Lacy murmured when she could get her breath. “You really have the most fantastic kisses—did I ever tell you that? I guess I would have followed you to the ends of the earth, anyway. Oh, good grief, that reminds me,” she said, pulling back to smile up at him mistily. “I’ve got a really great surprise for you. Michael—don’t look at me like that!”
“I don’t know,” Jamie Hatworth told the best man. She reached over and jerked the magnificent shower of ivory and gold orchids out of the bride’s oblivious grasp and hugged it to her nicely rounded bosom. “Actually, I’m spoken for at the moment. But I’m reconsidering big, strong, macho types, believe me,” she murmured, turning to look him over. “I never saw one cry all down the front of his tux before.”
The judge examined the hem of his robe, frowning. “I’m hoping,” he told his legal secretary, “we don’t have to call the exterminator for something as big as I think this is.”
“Don’t look like that Michael,” Lacy cried. “You don’t have to look like that, just because I said I have a surprise for you! It’s something good, don’t you believe me?”
“Angel, I can’t help it, I have some conditioned reflexes I have to work on, that’s all. Can we wait,” he said, looking at the bridal party milling around the champagne bottles in the judge’s outer office, “until the reception at the Pierre?”
“Well, we certainly can’t talk very well here,” Lacy agreed. The sound of champagn
e corks popping in the reception area was accompanied by a snarling salvo indicative of a Doberman attacking. “We need some place where we can be alone.”
“I know just the place, dearest,” Michael murmured, kissing her. “In fact, I’ve made reservations for a great suite on the penthouse floor. Although there’s a nice little bar downstairs we can drop in on any time we want.”
“Michael.” Lacy breathed, “oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re a sentimental fool. I can’t believe it!”
“Only for you, dearest,” he murmured. “The place has great food, even if you do have to call room service for it.”
“Don’t tell me,” she cried. “Wait—does it have music, like selections from the movie Dr. Zhivago? In quadraphonic sound?”
“And a great view of the city at night,” he confirmed, kissing her ear. “The Lear jet’s standing by for us at La Guardia—we can make Tulsa in less than three hours.”
His hands lifted the veil slowly, and at last he regarded her beautiful face full of love. “My own dearest wife,” he told her softly, “I may still be a roughneck, but I do love you. Whatever happens, now I’ve got you where I can keep an eye on you.
“All right, angle,” he said, bracing himself perceptibly. “I can’t stand the suspense—what’s this big surprise you’ve got for me?”
“Well, Michael,” Lacy began, thinking of the room in Connecticut with the rainbow painted on the walls, “this time you’re really going to love it.”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1988 by Maggie Davis
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