The Wedding Dress

by Lucy Kevin

“Oh no, I’m sure you’ve seen those,” Anne said. The secretive hint to her smile indicated she wasn’t about to spoil the surprise by telling him until they got to where they were going.

  She led him into a small park, along garden paths hemmed in by greenery on both sides so that it felt like a space cut off from the rest of the world, even though they were still just a little way from the restaurant.

  “Have you spotted them yet?” she asked.

  “Spotted what?”

  Gareth looked around, glancing over flowers and shrubs, a tree or two and not much else. What did Anne want him to look at? He tried looking again, more carefully this time, slowing down as his eyes scanned the space around him.

  Finally, he saw something unexpected.

  Plants were flowing up out of old sneakers, high heels, men’s dress shoes, even a few tall boots. They were bedding plants, mostly, but a few larger specimens poked up out of open-backed shoes that let their roots spread more.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Anne said.

  It should have looked like just random littering. It should have looked too odd to be beautiful. It should have been pure chaos.

  Yet, Gareth had to admit that the flowers made the shoe garden a riot of colors, while the shoes in between blended with those colors. It was strange but also very beautiful indeed. He found himself smiling as he looked around the place. At the thought that someone could have done this.

  “Who put all this together?”

  “People just come along and plant shoes.”

  “But that should be chaos,” he told her when he couldn’t make sense of it.

  Anne smiled. “I suppose so, but fortunately, it seems to work anyway.”

  She led the way around another bend in the path to a spot where there were trays of bedding plants along with soil. Gareth could guess what she intended.

  “Oh no. No way.”

  “Everyone should do it at least once.” She took off her own shoes without hesitating. They were beautiful heels that matched the dress she was wearing. Gareth guessed that she’d either customized them herself or made the dress to fit the shoes.

  “You’re really going to plant a flower in those shoes?”

  “Of course. Come on, try it. You won’t regret it.”

  He thought he might, given how much the shoes he was wearing had cost, yet Gareth found himself bending down to untie them and pick out a plant.

  Anne planted hers beside his. “There,” she said. “Doesn’t that feel good?”

  It did. Better than he’d have thought. And as they padded out of the park together, Anne in her bare feet and Gareth in his black dress socks, in that moment he felt like he could tell her anything.

  But he really didn’t want to talk about the case just then. Which really left only one other thing…

  “Do you remember before, when I mentioned leaving the precinct?”

  “Yes. From your tone of voice, I was wondering if something happened to make you want to leave.”

  “My partner, Brian, met a woman. He fell in love with her.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a reason to leave your job.”

  “It wasn’t.” Gareth kept walking. “Except she had a kid, and the kid was in trouble. He’d made the kind of friends who didn’t think twice about having him transport drugs for them. Brian looked the other way.” No, Gareth thought, he had to tell her the full truth. “Actually, it was worse than that. He ‘lost’ some evidence.”

  “He did that just because he loved someone?”

  “Yes, but it was also illegal. In the end, even though I knew the right thing to do was turn him in, I couldn’t. So I left the force instead.”

  Anne paused, looking up into his eyes. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I need you to know how important the law is to me. How I can’t just ignore it, even if I want to.”

  “Because you want to do the right thing,” Anne said, reaching up to touch his face.

  “Because I have to do the right thing. It isn’t just my job; it’s who I am.”

  “And what’s the right thing to do now?” she whispered.

  “I should go,” he whispered back, “but I can’t.”

  And then he kissed her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Anne melted into Gareth’s kiss, and when they finally pulled apart, she stared at him breathlessly. She knew Gareth was a man who believed in doing things the “right” way, but who’d have thought that extended to his kissing?

  Because his kiss had been more than right.

  It had been perfect.

  “You realize it’s going to be a long walk back to my car without any shoes?” Gareth said, but even though he was clearly conflicted over his feelings for her, he said it with a smile.

  Anne’s heart leapt at his grin when he usually seemed so very serious, like the world wasn’t something to be enjoyed.

  “I didn’t think we were in a hurry, are we?” she asked.

  “No,” Gareth said slowly, “I guess we’re not.”

  Anne liked the fact that he was making time for her.

  She liked the fact that he held her hand as they walked, while rubbing the pad of his thumb against the inside of her palm in unconsciously sensuous circles. And she liked the way he looked at the city around them as if he was seeing it for the first time but still kept looking back at her. Oh yes, she most definitely liked him.

  She might even, she thought with a giddy little inner twirl of her heart, be starting to fall in love with him.

  “When we get back to the restaurant,” she suggested, “how about we go back in for some food? I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.”

  “That’s because we never got around to ordering or eating lunch.”

  “I couldn’t wait another second to show you around,” she pointed out, laughing. “I think it was worth it, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely.”

  When they got back to the restaurant and finally ordered, she was so incredibly tempted to reach over the table, pull Gareth forward, and kiss him again.

  Only, she wanted to savor the moment. And build up slowly to what she hoped would come next.

  Their physical attraction was key, of course, but she wanted to get to know everything about him so that they could build a connection that was deeply emotional as well.

  “Did you always want to be a detective?”

  “Actually, I wanted to be a football player when I was a little kid,” Gareth replied with a laugh. “But after the second time I broke my nose, I nixed that idea.”

  “And that’s when you decided to become a cop?”

  He shook his head, his expression serious again. “My father was an honest man. He’s the one who taught me how important it is to obey the rules. He was strict, but he was a good man. Always.” Gareth’s mouth tightened. “One day, his employer claimed that he’d been stealing from them. My father didn’t do it, and there was never any real proof, but they went ahead and fired him anyway. That made life…hard for us for a while.”

  “Oh, Gareth, I’m sorry. That sounds horrible.”

  “It was,” he agreed, “until a police detective who was on the case started digging deeper. He said the facts didn’t quite seem to line up, and he couldn’t sleep at night if an innocent man with a young family had been penalized for something he hadn’t done.”

  “Did the detective prove your father was innocent?”

  Gareth nodded, finally smiling again. “He did. Now, it’s your turn. Tell me about your favorite dress you’ve designed over the years.”

  He listened with surprisingly strong interest while she talked about the differences between velvet and silk, what it was like working with different clients, and how it felt to look at a bride on her wedding day and feel the pride and wonder of being a part of one of the most important days of the woman’s life.

  “Do we want to stay for dessert?”

  The only thing Anne wanted for dessert right then was him, bu
t she didn’t say that. She couldn’t say that. Not when she didn’t want to rush things.

  “I should probably be getting back home. Did I tell you I have an upcoming photo shoot with San Francisco magazine for my wedding dresses?”

  “You have something that important to get ready for and you still spent half the day planting shoes with me in the shoe garden?”

  “Anything to keep you from having to wear a black trench coat and hover in dark alleyways following bad guys,” she teased.

  Gareth laughed. “I think we can safely say that going to the shoe garden with you was more fun than that. A lot more fun.”

  After he drove her home, when he walked with her to her door, Anne knew how easy—and how wonderful—it would be if he came inside with her. She could pretend that she was just inviting Gareth in for coffee.

  Or…she could be far more direct than that by just grabbing him and kissing him.

  Except, as she stood on her doorstep, even though the pulsing attraction between them was stronger than ever, she instinctively knew it would be better to take things slower. To let them build naturally.

  Yes, she could invite Gareth in and have a wonderful night with him…but she wanted so much more than one wonderful night.

  It was the same with the dresses she designed and sewed. She could throw some fabric together and produce something wearable in an afternoon, but it wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be perfect.

  And it certainly wouldn’t be enough to represent what lay between two people in the most important moment of their lives.

  “Thank you for today,” she said. “I had a really good time.”

  Gareth leaned forward, and for a moment, she thought that he might kiss her again. She wondered how long her resolve would last if he did. Probably not that long.

  He simply touched his lips gently to her cheek. “Good-bye, Anne.”

  How many other men, she thought as she watched him drive away, had she known who were capable of being such perfect gentlemen?

  How many men had she met who were capable of being so perfect in any way?

  Anne half closed her eyes, smiling to herself, wondering if things could possibly get any better.

  It turned out that they could, because when Anne headed inside and picked her mother’s wedding dress up again, what had seemed so tricky earlier in the day flew beneath her fingers, her needle moving deftly to re-stitch the decorative edging of the gown.

  Anne had always known that you couldn’t rush making things the way they were meant to be. It was just a question of giving them the care and attention they needed until they were ready.

  She flashed back to the kiss she and Gareth had shared in the park, and then to how easy he was to talk to, how wonderful it was just to be near him, and what a perfect gentleman he’d been.

  Yes, she thought with a smile as she worked, it had ended up being a very good day.

  Practically perfect.

  Chapter Twelve

  Gareth arrived at the office early the next morning. His afternoon with Anne had invigorated him. She had such a passion for life that she made him want to be a better man. She’d also gotten him thinking about his business…specifically why he was working as a private investigator. His reasons for becoming a cop had been so clear and he wanted that kind of clarity again.

  Margaret was at a dentist appointment with her youngest child, so when the phone rang in her office, he picked up. “Cavendish Investigations.”

  “Gareth.” He recognized Richard Wells’s voice immediately. “We need to talk.”

  “What can I do for you, Richard?”

  “You can get some of the DNA of that Farleigh woman.”

  Gareth had known this was coming, hadn’t he? Still, he carefully confirmed, “Jasmine wants to get a DNA test to prove shared paternity?”

  “Exactly, and the easiest way to do that is to persuade the Farleigh woman to provide DNA. It’s simple, conclusive, and should put a stop to the nonsense that went on at the mediation.”

  Gareth took several slow deep breaths to deal with the quick rise of anger that came from hearing the disdain in Richard’s voice when he spoke about Anne.

  “You do realize it won’t be easy to get her to go along with this test, don’t you?”

  “From what we could see between the two of you outside the mediation room, it looks like you’ve gotten to know her pretty well.” Gareth’s fists curled at the suggestive sneer in the lawyer’s voice. “That should help when it comes to persuading her.”

  “You want me to talk her into doing the test?”

  “It’s what I’m paying you for.”

  “And if Anne won’t agree to do it?”

  “You talked her into going to the mediation, didn’t you?” Richard snapped. “I’m sure if you point out to her that the alternative is having her father’s body exhumed so that we can take a DNA sample from that, she’ll be more amenable to giving you a sample.”

  Gareth had seen and heard some unpleasant things in his time as a cop, but this was pretty damn high up the list. “You’d actually do that?”

  “In a heartbeat. Though it would be easier if you could just ‘find’ a sample. I don’t care how you do it,” Richard said. “Just get it done.”

  He hung up, leaving Gareth standing there holding the phone.

  “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” Margaret said as she came in through the front door. “What’s wrong?” When he didn’t answer right away, she said, “I’d rather not have to guess like I do with my teenagers.”

  “Richard wants me to force Anne into giving a DNA sample.”

  She frowned. “That’s not uncommon in a case like this. What’s the problem, Gareth?”

  The problem was that people didn’t go in for DNA tests in legal cases unless they were already pretty certain of the outcome.

  “This will destroy her, Margaret.”

  Margaret reached out to put a hand on his arm. “And that won’t be your fault.”

  “You honestly don’t think it will be my fault if I push Anne into the test that proves her father cheated on her mother and destroys everything she ever thought about her family?”

  “No,” Margaret insisted. “It won’t. It will be her father’s fault for cheating. You have a job to do. All you can do is try to make it as easy as possible. So far, I’d say you’ve been a lot kinder to Anne Farleigh than anyone else would have been.”

  Gareth shook his head. “The point is that it’s me dragging her into it.”

  Margaret sighed theatrically. “Working for a PI with a conscience is tough going. At this rate, my kids are never going to get their way paid through college.” She paused and gave him a small smile. “But I knew exactly who you were when I went with you, Gareth. You’re one of the best men I’ve ever known. And you need to do what’s right.”

  Gareth didn’t pause before picking up the phone again.

  “Gareth?” Richard Wells said. “You’ve managed to set it up already?”

  “No,” Gareth said.

  “So you’ve come to me with more problems? I don’t have the time to sit and hold your hand while you do your job.”

  “Actually, this is about my job.” Gareth didn’t hesitate. “I quit, Richard.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not doing any more work on this case for you.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line for a second or two. “This is a joke, right? You made the mistake of getting too close to Anne Farleigh, and now you can’t do your job anymore.”

  “Then it’s just as well that I’m quitting, isn’t it?” Gareth said. “I’m done, Richard.”

  “You’re done all right,” Richard replied. “Don’t think you’re getting any more work from my firm. Or from any of our clients. Oh, and you’d better not go running to Anne Farleigh to blab what you know.”

  “I don’t work for you anymore, Richard,” Gareth pointed out.

  “You signed a nondisclosure clause when
you agreed to do this job, or did you forget that part? Look it over, and you’ll see what it will cost you if you breathe one word of this to Anne Farleigh.”

  “A minute ago, you wanted me to talk her into the DNA test.”

  “And it will still get done,” Richard said. “But now I’m thinking that if we time it right, she might just fold completely.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Oh yes, I can,” Richard said. “It’s you who can’t save her. You can talk to her all you like, but if you tell her anything you were told in confidence—”

  Gareth hung up the phone with a loud bang.

  “Looks like I’ll have to put off buying that private island for a while, won’t I?” Margaret said softly. And yet, her expression told him just how proud she was of him, despite the fact that they were going to have to find several new cases, and fast.

  “Sorry,” Gareth said. “But I need to go—”

  Margaret put a hand on his arm. “I know exactly what you’re going to do. Just promise me you won’t do anything that will get you thrown out of that nice apartment of yours. With all of my kids making messes all over the house, I don’t have room for you to move in too.”

  Gareth headed first for Anne’s house, but when she wasn’t there, he knew where he’d find her. She was in the Rose Chalet’s main hall talking to a woman Gareth didn’t recognize, and there was a recording device sitting on the table between them.

  For the briefest of moments, Gareth feared that Richard had somehow managed to get someone down there to force a deposition out of Anne, and he started forward. Then he realized they were talking about dresses. Thank God.

  “I don’t pay too much attention to what the trends are,” Anne was saying. “Instead, I try to figure out exactly what’s right for the individual client and her wedding. Too often, people wear dresses that are beautiful, and they’re the right style for the season, but they aren’t right for them.”

  “And do you only use specific materials?” the reporter asked. “Some designers are very careful about where they source things these days.”

  “I use whatever looks right, wherever I can find it,” Anne said with a smile. “For Felicity’s dress, for example, I had the perfect fabric in a storage box at home.”