“Our research on that woman”— she would not say her name— “indicated that she felt very strongly about a Catholic wedding. We blocked the churches and made it clear to all Catholic priests that she was ex-communicated. What happened?”
“Someone blinked.”
Andrea turned her attention to Deronda, who would not look chagrinned even if she, herself, had been responsible for the first sin.
“We must assume your son—who is, you have to admit, one of the most determined and creative people we know—found a venue, a bishop who, for the right amount of bribe or blackmail, would conveniently ‘overlook’ the memo about Ms. Sumerall’s ex-communication until after the ceremony, when it was too late.”
“And where is this venue?”
“St. Louis Cathedral, in the French Quarter. In three weeks,” Deronda added, knowing that would be her next question. “The same weekend as the French Quarter Festival, which is a smaller version of Mardi Gras, from my best estimates. Big crowds, revelry, music, etc. I’m amazed he managed it, given the timing.”
“Book rooms—”
“I’ve tried,” one of the other assistants piped up. Squeaked, actually. Andrea didn’t bother to learn their names until they’d been there for a few years and had impressed her. Neither of these had.
She lasered the mousey blonde with a glare. “There is no try in this business. Buy someone out. Buy the hotel—I don’t care what it takes, but we’ll have rooms—the penthouse suites, of the best they have.”
“Done,” Deronda said, throwing her own glare at the other assistant, whose days were certainly numbered.
Try. Ha! Not in her world.
Deronda shooed the other two out, and once they were gone, turned to Andrea. “You know you cannot stop him if he’s that determined, Drea.”
Andrea turned her blue-eyed gaze onto Deronda, who had the audacity not to flinch.
“Then we’ll give the courts a reason.”
“Manufacture something? He’ll see through it.”
“No, I mean, find something.”
“We’ve had a PI go through her entire background. Every scrap of newsprint, every police record. She has the reputation of not lying; I’d be willing to bet that if there was anything in her past, she’d have admitted it already.”
“Deronda, a woman who claims as she does not to lie, will have secrets. Not lying isn’t the same as telling the truth. Find. Me. That. Secret. Now. If not on her, then on him.”
Deronda tried to suppress a sharp intake of breath. “He’ll hate you.”
“He already hates me. But I did not give birth to someone so astonishing, steer him through the best schools, and wait for him to get over this silly obsession with the military and enforcing the law just to give him up to some idiotic woman who blows up half of her own state. Trevor was meant for greatness. With his ruthlessness, his canniness, he could take Cormi-Co into the world market in a way that no one else can. He was meant for this. He’ll see that, once he has the reins in his hands. Now go. I’ve got phone calls to make.”
Deronda nodded, turned and paused, turning back. “I almost forgot—Izzy wanted to see you.”
“No. She helped Trevor save that stupid woman’s life; she can cool her heels for a while longer.”
“She says to tell you, once you’ve said that she can cool her heels, that she’s noticed someone in Europe buying up shares of Cormi-Co at an alarming pace. She wants to know if you want to put the anti-takeover protocol in place.”
“Are we at the threshold?”
“Izzy says we are. I’ve double-checked and agree. She needs your authorization for buy back.”
“Fine. She’s capable of dealing with that. I want you to focus on this other problem.”
Deronda nodded and left as Andrea gazed back out at the skyline over the financial district and beyond. Nothing was going to stand in the way of her putting her family back together and putting them in charge of this empire. She had sacrificed all her own aspirations, her time, her dreams, to lead when Cormi-Co took off and her husband proved abysmally incompetent in running it, except into the ground. She would not be poor. Ever. And then her husband—God save him if she ever found him—had obliterated what little family peace they had had so many years ago when he… what was his word for it? Rebelled, dear. That’s what he’d said. I have rebelled, dear, and will no longer be under your aegis. There is more to life than ledgers, and you’ve no love for anything but.
It wasn’t true, of course; Martin loved to be dramatic. Genius, certainly, and a phenomenal inventor, but always overly emotional. That’s what she had to guard against with Trevor, that propensity to let his emotions rule him. It would destroy him one day. He was much more like his father than she would care to admit and she had to protect him from that. She would protect him from that.
Starting now.
~*~
Three weeks later…
There were bagpipes blowing in the Quarter. Trevor dropped the curtain in the beautifully appointed room of this borrowed brownstone and scowled. He’d already had to deal with the extraordinary irritation of the construction noise from across the little alley in the soon-to-be-beautiful gardens undergoing renovation behind St. Louis Cathedral. He’d been able to look down into the garden from the third floor of his friend’s home situated there on Pirate’s Alley where they were dressing for the wedding. Bobbie Faye was one floor above. He knew from the angle she’d have if she looked out the window, she could make that shot and take out the pipers. It was the first thing he’d thought about as soon as he realized the bagpipe crew were setting up for an extended session, not just passing through, and it pissed him off that he couldn’t go up there and check on her. He wasn’t supposed to see the dress, yet. He was hoping he didn’t see it in jail.
“Well?” Trevor asked Riles as he slipped quietly into the room. Bernecke Riles, his best man—a sniper out of his old unit—was resoundingly loathed by Bobbie Faye, and the feelings were returned, tenfold. She called him Barnacle. He called her… well, a host of names pretty much guaranteed he was going to die young if Trevor couldn’t make them call a truce.
“Nina says Her Grand Dingbatness is armed, but it’s the little Ruger 22 you gave her—not likely to be all that accurate from the fourth floor, or she’d have probably tried it. Nina also wanted you to know that she’s blocked access to the windows with suitcases and other stuff, so if Her Idiotness makes a lunge for it, they can tackle her.”
Trevor breathed a sigh of relief. “How soon will the pipers be done?” He’d planned for nearly everything—a carriage, flowers, the reception, the crowd control. The French Quarter Festival was in full swing and, though it wasn’t quite Mardi Gras insanity, it was bad enough. Add to it the very long lines to get into the Cabildo Museum next door to see the Polish Virgin Mary icons, and it was a zoo. But pipers? Not even on his radar.
“I hate to tell you this, but they’re scheduled to make rounds… all around the cathedral… for hours.”
“They have a permit?”
“Yep.”
“For bagpipes?”
“Yep.”
Then Trevor studied the oh-so-casual-all-is-well-nothing-to-see-here nonchalance Riles had affected.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I tried to pay them off, to get them to not play during the ceremony.”
Trevor arched an eyebrow. Riles hated Bobbie Faye, and the feelings were mutual on her part. “I’m surprised you weren’t the one who organized it.”
“I would’ve if I’d have thought of it,” his best friend muttered as the pipes started up again after a very brief reprieve.
“Maybe we can double your offer.” Trevor pulled back the drapes to view the cluster of formally clad pipers clogging Pirates Alley. There had to be a dozen of them.
“Nope. Tried that. Then tripled it. And more. Seems that they’re very, very well paid.”
Trevor froze, then slowly, ever so slowly, he looked back ov
er his shoulder to Riles’ grimace. It was all he needed to confirm.
“Let me guess. Cormi-Co. Probably had them sign some sort of contract that if they failed to perform, they’d lose an astronomical amount of money.”
“With a family like yours, no wonder Her Freakishness seems nearly normal to you.”
Trevor leveled a glare at Riles and Riles threw his hands up. “Sorry. She’s the love of your life, blah blah blah. I get it. I think you’re nuts, but I get it. I still think you should’ve made her sign a pre-nup.” He took a step back from what he saw on Trevor’s face and waved his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, can I help it if she’s like the single guy’s version of Scared Straight? If they put her on posters, the entire engagement industry would tank.”
“She’s growing on you. Admit it.”
“Like mold.”
Trevor grinned; Riles was going soft. Then his cell rang and when he answered it, all he could hear on the other end was bagpipes, and then muffled bagpipes as someone entered a building, and he knew the woman was headed his way. It was going to be strange, seeing her again after all these years. He hadn’t seen her since before the last time he’d deployed.
A few minutes later, there was a knock on his door and an absolutely stunning blonde stood there, smiling her wide smile, miles of curly hair tumbling down her back past the violet gown she wore. Before he knew what words to even say, she’d thrown herself into his arms and wrapped her own around him, planting a large kiss before remembering she had on lipstick. She laughed as she leaned back and, one arm still around him, wiped off the imprint from his lips.
And just his luck, Cam had stepped into the doorway with a murderous expression.
~*~
Bobbie Faye stood in the middle of the room, bagfuckingpipes blaring out the window, a migraine of epic proportions dancing on her very last nerve. Her sister, Lori Ann, newly eloped and seven months pregnant with twins—as swollen as a dead, beached whale on a hot summer’s day—fanned herself with a Playgirl magazine, conveniently opened to Mr. April while she chattered non-stop about her hemorrhoids. Lori Ann’s six-year-old daughter and flower girl, Stacey, was covered in sticky red lollipop (and the only good news there was that they hadn’t let her put on her dress yet). Roy, her if-there’s-a-stupid-way-to-get-in-trouble-he’d-find-it brother, the middle child who had milked that position for all it was worth, was currently moping in the corner. Crying, for the love of God. Ce Ce and her best friend, Monique—who was so flushed from the booze she’d been sneaking, her freckles had practically solidified into one big splotch on her face—had Bobbie Faye standing there in her slip as they danced around her in full Voodoo Priestess ensemble. They were decorating her slip with some sort of dust that was supposed to guarantee “happily ever after” with Trevor.
“Is that all it guarantees?” Bobbie Faye shouted over the bagpipes, for perhaps the hundredth time.
“Oh, sure,” Monique said, winking heavily at Ce Ce. “Nothing else, nothing to worry about. You won’t get pregnant, or anything. Probably.”
“Ce Ce!” Bobbie Faye challenged, “I said no fertility spells!”
Ce Ce smacked Monique on the back of the head while simultaneously trying to look totally innocent. “No,” she pointed out, “you said no acorn headdresses. For fertility purposes. This is totally different.”
Nina peered in, caught that last statement and the rest of the chaos in the room and had the nerve to try to slip back out.
“Oh no you don’t,” Bobbie Faye told her best friend. “If I have to suffer, you have to suffer. That’s what Maids of Honor have to do.”
“You should’ve eloped.”
“I tried to elope. You were the idiot who agreed with Trevor that we should really have a wedding. By the way, you might want to step back out of the circle—I apparently am undergoing a fertility ritual right now.”
Nina blanched and jumped nearly five feet backward in one move, while Ce Ce and Monique continued dancing, chanting, and tossing lightly silvered power on Bobbie Faye’s slip.
“Dear God, are you nuts?” Nina asked, paling.
“It was either this or acorn headdresses.” When she caught Nina looking askance, she shrugged. “Well, she wore me down. You get turned blue, do the chicken dance in front of millions at the LSU/Bama game, you tend to just accept that your life is crazy and roll with it. Besides, her rituals never do what they’re supposed to do, so I figure this is probably the best birth control I could ever have.”
“I asked her for a birth control spell,” Lori Ann piped up, rubbing her over-grown gargantuan stomach. “Something to make sure the real stuff stuck.”
“You couldn’t have mentioned this about ten minutes ago?” Bobbie Faye asked her.
“I was going to, but she bribed me with chocolate.”
“Did not,” Ce Ce said as Bobbie Faye eyed the six Hershey bar wrappers piled up next to Lori Ann.
“Oh, this is going to end well,” Nina said, and then she frowned at Bobbie Faye. “You’re practically… calm. Who are you and what did you do with my best friend?”
Roy burst into tears in the corner before Bobbie Faye could answer, and Nina scowled.
“What the hell? Why isn’t Roy down with the guys?”
“Trevor sent a note—said the weeping was making Riles twitchy. And when Roy isn’t being a wuss, he can actually handle himself pretty well, and Trevor didn’t really want to get married in bloody clothes. So it was here or the chapel.”
“And the crying?” Nina asked in her best I know I’m going to regret this voice.
“Some girl again.”
“Running from another one? You’d think he’d learn.”
“No, this time, he was trying to get caught.”
Nina looked around as if confused. “First, you’re calm. Then you tell me your brother, who’s practically made the Guinness Book of World Records for Number of Women A Man Can Piss Off By Loving and Leaving Them and Still Be Alive has actually found someone he wanted to settle down with. There must’ve been hallucinogens in the mimosas we had this afternoon.”
“Well, never fear, he’s still Roy, capable of screwing up anything more complicated than turning right on red. Instead of just telling the poor girl, he left her and then tried real hard to piss off her dad so they’d hunt him down. Left clues everywhere as to where he could be found so they could force him into a shotgun wedding.”
“I have to maintain my reputation,” he moped from his spot in the corner of the room, and then he sunk his face in his hands, and his shoulders shook with sobs.
Nina looked back at Bobbie Faye. “Let me guess: she didn’t bite?”
“Said if you love someone, let them go. So now he’s depressed, she’s depressed, they’re both posting bad poetry about heartbreaks on Twitter and if he keeps this up, she’s going to be posting about his funeral.”
“I thought you were going to kill the bagpipers.”
“It’s going to be a bulk-rate funeral.”
“What rhymes with bedraggled?” Roy asked, wiping tears from his too-handsome-for-his-own-good face; he had that young, hip Lothario thing going for him, especially with the tux Trevor had made him wear.
“Haggled,” Lori offered from the other side of the room and Roy kept sniffling and clicking keys on his cell phone.
“Quit encouraging him,” Bobbie Faye snapped at her little sister, and Lori smiled.
“Are you kidding? As many women who’ve gone after him with a hatchet? I could sell tickets for this and make a killing. Besides, shouldn’t you be dressed by now?”
Bobbie Faye eyed the gorgeous dress hanging on a special stand provided by the owner of the house. She was afraid to touch it. She’d been afraid to touch anything in this house, really—as stunning as it was with its original Renoir paintings and Louis XIV furniture, but she was especially scared of the dress.
It had been perfect. It was still perfect, over there, safely on the hanger.
“It’s okay,” Ni
na reassured her, standing close enough so that she didn’t have to shout over the pipers. “It’s going to be fine.”
Everyone in the room groaned.
Ce Ce shook her head at Nina. “Honey, don’t you know better than to do that by now?”
Nina laughed. “Look, nobody knows we’re here, nobody cares—everyone out there”—she motioned to the Quarter—“just cares about the music over on the river, or the food. We’ll get in, she’ll get hitched, we’ll get out. Piece of cake.”
“I’m so glad I’m not standing up next to you,” Lori said. “The ceiling’s probably gonna fall in.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Nina put her arm around Bobbie Faye and leaned in close. “Look, if you’re having cold feet, you just say the word. I can get a chopper here in about ten minutes and we can leave. Trevor won’t find you until you’re ready to deal with him.”
Bobbie Faye laughed. “Man, I wish I’d known you had access to that many toys years ago. I’m fine.”
“You’ve been tearing up at the drop of a hat. I can count on one hand with three fingers tied down the number of times you’ve teared up over something.”
“Hey.” Bobbie Faye elbowed Nina a bit. “It’s a big deal. I’m a lapsed and technically ex-communicated Catholic, about to go into the oldest cathedral in the country and say my vows, because this man wants to marry me in a church so much he bribed the Pope.”
“Does the Pope know you’re going in armed?”
“We may have omitted that part.”
~*~
Cam pushed the door open, stepped into the room, right into Trevor’s space where he held the stunning blonde. The only reason he hadn’t decked Trevor was because the blonde was in the way, plastered up against the man who supposedly loved Bobbie Faye, who was going to marry her in less than an hour, and who bloody fucking hell was going to die for betraying the woman Cam had loved for most of his life. Even if they weren’t right for each other, even if he’d realized she’d been right, this bastard… Cam put his hands on the woman to move her out of the way…
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