The Family Wish (Match Made in Devon Bridal Shop Book 3)

by Danielle Blair

  Hers.

  Freesia’s jaw opened and remained. The man was forever tossing her off-balance. He left her tripping between vigilant independence and the captivity of his generosity.

  “I wanted you to have a space, all yours. A place to remember your dreams because you’ve helped me remember mine. A quiet spot when things get hard, right down the road. I know it isn’t much. I wasn’t sure you’d accept more. Nothing you create should ever be in a garage.”

  He placed the key in her hand.

  She took steps among her boxes and crates and tried to forget that her inspiration had all but abandoned her of late. Was this the way of him, the way it would always be? Generous to the fault of pushy? Aggressively considerate? He hadn’t asked. He had forced her into gratitude by already moving her things. Jay was a man unable to live the life he wanted in order to please his family; yet in her life, he pursued what he wanted with a humble intensity that made her lose herself.

  “Say something,” he urged.

  Honest, Free. Be straight up.

  She fortified herself with a deep breath. Her feelings sprinted ahead, outpaced her mouth.

  “Is everything you do a penance?” she asked. “The room in the house, naming the flower, the bikes….and this? If you’re aiming for real, Jay, this isn’t it.”

  He parted his lips to speak. Twice, nothing came. The third time, “I don’t understand.”

  “Most people don’t go through life believing everything they do is wrong, making amends for mistakes. This suffering martyr thing you have going on isn’t working for me. No one is this apologetic all the time, this nice. Especially not someone who’s obscenely wealthy.”

  “And especially not to you.” He slow-swiped a hand down his jaw, this time shaven. “Isn’t that it? You don’t want any of it because you don’t feel like you deserve it?”

  “Because I didn’t earn it.”

  “There’s no shame in accepting help.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Because the absolute last thing I was thinking about that day in the rain was my wallet,” he said. “I won’t apologize for what I have, just as you shouldn’t apologize for what you don’t, but help comes in all currency. That day, you were the richest person in the world to me.”

  Was this the way of him, the way it would always be? Her fighting for her terms, him spinning her independence with lyrical words and heartfelt sentiments?

  “You get close, I’ll push back. I’ll walk right down those stairs, stay in that house until my mother’s gone, then leave.” Her words were nothing but brittle to her ears.

  “I know.”

  “Then why do you keep trying?”

  “Because you deserve one man in your life who will tell you truths, who will ask you to stay, who believes letting go doesn’t always mean leaving.”

  She became intensely aware of her breathing, rather, her inability to draw air. A sting gathered behind her expression. He would mistake tears for gratitude or tenderness or any of a number of things they were not. She was wickedly scared. Had been for days, weeks, maybe years, with no means of release.

  “You barely know me.”

  “You stopped.” Jay’s hands opened, the gesture wide, exposed. “That’s all I need to know.”

  The release ambushed, surprised them both, her with her kicks crossing squeaky hardwood, her hand fisted against his hair because the key was clenched inside, fear quenched against his firm lips, him with his surprised mouth, an opening for her to slip her tongue inside, a key that had tumblers inside unlocking, wheels turning, lines blurring.

  He tensed, then yielded to her, slanted his kiss, drew her inside his heat—mouth, arms, generosity of soul. The silk of their tongues mingled on a sultry give and take, a new story for her to tell that she never would, an unexpected gift in an unlikely place. And when she climbed down inside her no-limits desires and had a good look around because her body had abandoned her to all things primitive, she realized it was past time to go.

  Freesia broke the kiss, panted against the spot where his single, sexy laugh line appeared, though he was far from laughing. A spicy musk lifted from his heated neck. His exhales taunted her temple until a whisper broke against her ear.

  “Tomorrow, will you say this was nothing more than a chat in an attic?”

  Possibly. But a better answer came to her. She tested how it rested against her independent streak inside, decided it was the least she could give him after nearly consuming him. She gathered up on tippy-toes and whispered against his other lobe, “More a heart-to-heart about vulnerabilities.”

  And there it was: his laugh line.

  She left the second-floor space, all but ran down the outside staircase. Kickstand up, she pedaled home, the clouds no longer whimsical like flapjacks but disheveled, indistinct.

  He would leave her. Every man left eventually—the one thing her mama had told her that contained a granule of truth—but that didn’t mean Freesia couldn’t use a little real in her artificial world. Massive estates, the love of a mother, sisters who could forget she was their father’s mistake—all of it manufactured, brief, fiction. If she cycled close to honesty, with herself, with him, she’d be okay.

  When secrets stacked and love threatened—that was what unraveled lives.

  12

  Alex

  Daddy hadn’t shown up in a long time. Since the Kingsley Ruins, back when she found out she was pregnant and wrongly believed her life was over. Alex took this as a sign of stability—she believed her father’s visits were a continuation of the puzzling they always did together, her piecing together his guidance, him trying to solve death like it was the single greatest mystery of life. Stability in the sense that she had others now to help her figure things out. Maddie. Jonah. Charlotte. Maybe even Freesia. Daddy had stayed away for a long time, but today he was with her—she felt him—as he had been the last time she found herself in the office of Clement Grant, esquire.

  She only hoped the answers she sought wouldn’t kill him all over again.

  Mr. Grant’s receptionist was his wife, Tia. Alex had timed her impromptu visit over the lunch hour, hoping to avoid unpleasantries, such as imagining Tia Grant’s face when it transformed from polite small-pond socialite to the ugly cry of a woman newly apprised of her husband’s long-standing infidelity. Of course, Alex wouldn’t be the one to tell her. The truth needed to come from someone with authority in her life. Secrets proved a powerful leverage. And in her experience, once a man believed his indiscretions had gotten away from him, he caved, confessed, often with unnecessary and painful details. She still remembered Michael’s kink and circumstance.

  Alex shuddered. And cursed internally. Tia was still at the desk.

  “I was hoping for a few minutes of Mr. Grant’s time,” said Alex.

  Tia’s smile was disconnected. “I’m sorry. He’s booked today. What is this regarding?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  Tia gave her a solid, bland expression that told Alex that the woman probably went above and beyond her duties to apprise herself of every legal brief related to townsfolk and their legal entanglements. She glanced at her appointment book. “He has an opening two weeks from Thursday. Ten o’clock.”

  Charlotte and her trailer snooping couldn’t hold that long. At the rate her sister preoccupied herself with this, she was likely to dig up gray ash from a spent cigarette and believe it to be evidence of an alien abduction. Anything to keep Mama and Daddy’s relationship on the up and up.

  “It can’t wait.” Alex scrambled for the first inroad that came to mind. “I need a prenup and my fiancé and I are getting married soon…sooner than two weeks from Thursday.”

  Her pretend timetable didn’t seem to summon Tia’s give-a-shit, so Alex pressed on.

  “Tomorrow, actually. We’re getting married tomorrow.”

  “He’s extremely busy right now.”

  “I’m sorry, could I…” Alex moved toward his inner sanctum�
�the site of the will fuckery last year when they’d learned of Freesia—and gripped the door handle, all while Tia was at her heels, throwing sanctimonious words at her like blatant and disregard and police and violation.

  The woman didn’t yet know the meaning of the word violation.

  Alex swung open the door.

  Clement looked up from the spread on his desk, the white of his eyes impressive in scope. His mouth sagged open. By his startled expression, Alex would have jumped immediately to the conclusion that his busy was something questionable, spread out like a banquet before him—smuggled trial notes from a prosecuting attorney, counterfeit bills, magazines filled with skin and wads of used tissues, maybe even a client’s clothing with her still inside them. But, over the years, Clement Grant, esquire, seemed to have traded pleasures. Strewn across his polished mahogany desk were enough take-out boxes to cater a wedding. Thai cartons, burger wrappers, grocery store bakery boxes, to-go containers from Taffy’s diner, kebob wrappers from the food cart outside the tractor supply store, and a polished-off two-liter bottle of diet cola—all of it pillaged to hell with chopsticks, sporks, knives glopped with cream gravy and bundled paper napkins stained in nuclear colors.

  It was possible that he ate his younger, handsome self that Alex remembered from childhood.

  Behind her, Tia tittered to silence.

  The only thing that would have popped the moment more was a well-timed gastrointestinal noise.

  Alex’s heart grew heavy. She rolled back her opinion of Tia. The woman had bigger issues on her marital plate than where her husband’s sausage had been. Namely, where to find it.

  Despite the awkward interlude, his expression transitioned to a genuine smile. “Ms. Leighton, to what do I owe the pleasure?” He stood and reached out to shake hands, then reconsidered in light of something that looked like barbeque sauce on his knuckles.

  “I tried to stop her,” said Tia, caustic.

  Alex unfurled her original opinion of Tia.

  “It’s fine,” his it’s more like eez on his vague Cajun accent. “I always have time for one of Elias’s girls.”

  His choice of words skimmed like a razor blade up her spine. She nearly turned inside out and sixteen ways of disturbed. After a comment like that, her interrogation would be a formality after probable cause of guilt. Ew.

  “Hey, hon, can you bring me more napkins?” he asked Tia.

  Her pallor turned plain vanilla as she closed the door behind her.

  He picked up a Styrofoam carton of biscuits on his way back to his seat and held it out for Alex. “Can I offer you something?”

  Alex’s mind sampled possible responses—eye bleach, air freshener, a sick bag. None of them would get her closer to answers. She put up a polite hand and refused with a half-hearted, “Thanks. And it’s March again. I changed my name back after the divorce.”

  “What can I do for you, Ms. March?”

  Tia barged in again, set a stack of napkins on the edge of the desk, and said, “She wants a prenup. By tomorrow.”

  Clement’s brows shot to his hairline—rather, where his Ivy-league moppy curls used to be. “Well, I guess congratulations are in order. Who’s the lucky man?”

  Alex glanced at Tia, who lingered in the door like a moth to gossip’s flame.

  To his credit, Clement gave his wife a buffet-sized grin and said, “That’ll be all, Tia. Thank you.”

  Tia took longer than brewed tea to close the door.

  “Jonah Dufort.”

  “Fine man. Best they come.”

  Alex remembered Clement bailing a young Jonah out after his one and only brush with the law, giving him the talk about pivotal moments in life. The sentiment was oddly sweet, given their history, and Alex found it shifted her ire. Jonah was a fine man. So why the hell did the thought of spending the rest of her life with him drive her to preoccupation? She had to steer the conversation to the past.

  “The best. And nothing says ‘I love you’ like the good, solid communication of assets, irrespective of emotion. Don’t you agree?”

  “Well—”

  “Take Mama and Daddy’s marriage, for instance. Don’t you think all this messiness of the past year might have been avoided if they’d had a good talk before emotions played a role?”

  Clement started to sweat. Possibly the Thai food, revisiting.

  “Of course, they married long before pre-nups were a thing, back when the sanctity of marriage had a decent shot, but I can’t help thinking Stella Irene would have come to you in her time of need to protect what she had built with Elias, all those years…eighteen, before, well, you know…”

  He shook his head as if he didn’t know.

  “Before my father’s infidelity resulted in an illegitimate child.”

  “Yes, of course.” He cleared his throat. “She never approached me regarding legal matters, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Ever the lawyer, holding fast to precision language.

  “See, that surprises me. She always spoke so highly of you. Said the sun rose on an enlightened Devon when you moved to town. What year was that?”

  Jesus, Alex. The sick bag would become imminent if she continued to lay it on this thick.

  His gaze tracked around his office. He blew out a breath on the pretense of mental calculations. “Nineteen eighty-six.”

  Alex pointed at the photo on the wall: a young attorney, a round woman in an apron, someone in a frightening chicken costume. “That was the same year you financed the chicken place, wasn’t it? What was it called?”

  “Big Auntie’s Chicken and Waffles and Soul Eatery.”

  “Thaaat’s right.” Alex nodded. “Must have been so hard trying to establish a law practice and be at the restaurant to protect your investment—deliveries, hands-on things like that.”

  “I was more a silent partner,” Clement said, then more firmly, “About the prenup—”

  “Of course. My assets will include funds from my previous employment and the divorce settlement, my portion of the home in Devon, the acreage—oh, and the trailer back near the creek. Remember that old thing? Gotta be worth something.”

  Clement glanced around his office. “I’m not familiar, no.” Maybe he saw Daddy there, standing at the window, looking out, waiting for his girl to uncover the nut—what he said was the center of every problem. Find the nut, Alex, everything around it becomes clear.

  “Mama used to go out there sometimes when I was a little girl. She smoked. Daddy never knew that about her, though I’m sure he could smell it on her when she came back, a different scent that wasn’t familiar. Guess every marriage has its secrets.” Alex leaned forward, her voice conspiratorial, almost a whisper, to enhance the impact. “She never knew I followed her.”

  He unfastened his shirt button closest to his Adam’s Apple. Alex would have understood, thought nothing of it had he selected a lower button to accommodate his belly-swell from lunch, but the loosening of his Windsor knot, the sheen on his brow, his feeble attempts to reroute the conversation, in her mind, was a signed confession.

  In that moment, Alex almost felt sorry for him. What if Mama had used him? Thought the surest way back into Daddy’s heart was lighting up a jealous streak to match the one she had regarding Camille? The letter proved she had a selfish part, way down deep. Her nut she showed few others.

  “I’ll, um, I’ll need a list of the funds you want included in your assets, where they’re located, account numbers and such.”

  “I’ll be sure and do that, Clement.”

  Had Charlotte been there, she’d have fussed on her, snapped, “Alex!” in that judgmental tone of hers that never failed to soar Alex’s mood. Meant she was getting close to things that made others uncomfortable. Alex took pleasure in those achy gaps of emotion, especially in a small town with people who had an inflated sense of authority and were too polite for their own good. For now, the sound of her father’s guffaw in the corner sufficed.

  She stood, reconsidered his
offer. “I believe I will take a biscuit.”

  It was cold and hard enough to smash a window, but it served its purpose on her way out. Alex set it on Tia’s desk.

  “Might want to ask your husband where he gets his honey. Goes bad after a time.”

  Alex’s emotional triumph was short-lived. By the time she walked back into the bridal shop, took one look at Charlotte’s expectant face and uttered, “It was him,” Alex wasn’t sure there was a victory to be had. Being right staked blame in an already cluttered landscape of moral wrongs and left her with little hope for her own relationships. If love—even a revered one between Stella Irene and Elias March—disappointed so acutely, what was the sense in trying?

  13

  Freesia

  Freesia had been as hot as the chamomile tea in her hand since the evening call from Doctor Starnes. Camille had taken to her bed, choosing not to eat a mostly empty vegetable broth, saying food no longer had taste or smell. Bedtime tea settled her, but Freesia’s hand shook the saucer, made a rapping sound as she crossed the room and took a seat in the formal dining room chair she’d moved beside the bed.

  Her mother stirred, eyes open.

  She’ll turn inward, talk less, focus more on herself. What you’ve done for her is admirable, Ms. Day, but don’t expect anything in return. She’ll take more than she can possibly give.

  “I brought your tea, Mama.” Her words were no stronger than the soggy leaves at the cup’s bottom, an attempt to drown her anger. Camille’s lies had accumulated: her bank account would satisfy her massive IRS bill; the hospital hadn’t kicked her out—she’d left by choice; she hadn’t kicked a pregnant nurse when she refused her meds; she hadn’t been diagnosed with type-2 diabetes years back; Charlotte had been unkind to her. The last lie had been particularly hard for Freesia to stomach. Fierce and protective didn’t often adhere in Freesia’s personality, but Charlotte was the Velcro that held Freesia together most days when she’d wanted to rip apart.