The Wedding Diaries

by Linda Francis Lee

  But before Vivi could drive off, a cocky teenage boy leaned his head in and said, “Hey.”

  Nicki’s eyes went wide and she sat up straight. But when she started to say something to the guy, he looked right past her to Vivi.

  “Cool car.”

  Vivi looked back and forth between the two. “Thank you. Your name is?”

  “Brandon. But my friends call me Boomer.”

  Ah, the infamous senior that Max had warned her about. From the look of rapture on Nicki’s face, Vivi knew Max hadn’t exaggerated.

  “Hey, Brandon,” Nicki said shyly.

  “Uh, hey.” He looked back at Vivi, his cocky teenage smile turning sexy, and said, “Who are you?”

  Vivi felt the moment Nicki deflated. Gone was the sneer. Gone was the sarcasm. Gone, even, was that moment of insecurity.

  “Can we go?” Nicki asked with sharp, truncated syllables.

  Vivi wanted to wring Brandon Bonner’s neck. “Sure.”

  Vivi accelerated, practically taking Brandon “Boomer” Bonner’s head off, and turned left into traffic, ignoring the honks.

  “Brandon Bonner,” Lila mused, leaning forward between the bucket seats, “is nothing but trouble. I mean really, how can a guy with a name like Boomer be such a girl magnet?” Lila sighed wearily. “They say all he has to do is look at a girl a certain way and off come her panties.”

  Vivi almost wrecked the car.

  Lila didn’t notice. “He has a brother who is nicer. Steve. But he’s the A-plus all-American type that doesn’t get the girls nearly as steamed up.”

  Vivi had to consciously close her mouth, then looked at Nicki, then at Lila in the rearview mirror. “Yes, well.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry I was late. Hopefully that just gave you a few extra minutes to spend with your friends.”

  Lila sat back. “I don’t have a lot of friends.”

  For half a second, Nicki’s hard expression softened. “You’ll find some, kid.”

  The moment lingered in the car, the sharp edges of the day wearing off. Vivi took it in, savored the unexpected bond between the two sisters. How bad could things be if they shared that kind of love?

  They didn’t say another word until they pulled up to the Sunland Park Mall.

  Once inside, Vivi tried to muster some excitement for shopping, which was odd, since she loved to shop. But generally it didn’t come after a day of errands and general housekeeping. Her legs actually pulsed from so much running around.

  The threesome went from store to store, finding virtually nothing, agreeing on even less. Clearly they had different tastes. No surprise there.

  Then, finally, Vivi found something that she and Nicki might actually agree on. She turned with a flourish, whipped out a deep blue pair of velvet bell bottoms, and said, “Voilà!”

  But Nicki was gone.

  Lila stood holding a multicolored sweater up in front of a mirror, but Nicki was nowhere to be seen.

  “Lila, where’s your sister?”

  The girl’s eyes went wide. “Nicki?”

  Trying to remain calm, they searched the entire store with no luck. After that, they branched out into the mall. But there was no glimpse of Nicki.

  They had her paged on the public address system. They asked the security guard to search as well. But not a sign.

  “How can I have lost a teenager?” Vivi cried, her cool long gone, alarm in full force.

  “You know,” Lila began, “I bet she’s at this place in the parking lot of the mall.”

  “Raiders? Number eleven on Max’s list of don’ts?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Vivi moaned, raced out of the mall, then scrambled across the tarmac in her high heels, Lila following along in her wake.

  They saw Nicki the minute they walked in the door.

  “Wow,” Lila said. “What a dump.”

  Nicki must have heard them, because she turned around, her blue eyes going wide. But then her features hardened when several of the older boys she was with whistled at the sight of Vivi.

  “Who’s the babe?” one asked.

  “Damn, is she sweet,” commented another.

  Vivi muttered about insensitive men when Nicki wheeled out the door. Vivi and Lila followed, blinking into the harsh afternoon sun. When their eyes adjusted, they saw Nicki leaning back against a roughhewn column, one Dr. Martens boot crooked behind her against the wood, a cigarette in her hand.

  “You can’t smoke!” Vivi blurted.

  The small group the girl stood with jerked around. Nicki groaned, threw down the tobacco, ground it out with a furious stamp, then started away from the building.

  Clicking after her, Vivi came up beside her. Vivi grabbed her arm. “Nicki, please.”

  “I hate you!” she bit out.

  “Okay, fine. I get that. But hating me is beside the point. I can’t allow you to smoke or go to Raiders.”

  “My friends are there.”

  “I don’t think those kids are your friends.”

  “You don’t know the first thing about me or my friends.”

  “Maybe I don’t, but I do know that your brother doesn’t want you at Raiders. Of course I’m happy to bring it up with him to see if he’ll reconsider.”

  That got Nicki’s attention.

  Praying the girl would follow, Vivi headed back across the parking lot. Lila caught up, and when Vivi glanced to the side, she sent up silent thanks that Nicki was there too—scowling, angry, and unhappy, but there.

  Nicki muttered, “My brother doesn’t care where I go or what I do.”

  “Clearly you haven’t seen his list.”

  “So what. Tell him, see if I care. He’ll ground me, take away my allowance, then go on his merry way.”

  Vivi’s response cut off when she made a wrong step and broke the heel of her favorite mules. But that was the least of her problems when she saw her bright red convertible hooked to the back end of a tow truck.

  “Oh, my gosh!” was all Vivi managed to say.

  “Wow,” Nicki breathed.

  Thank goodness Lila was there. “Excuse me, sir.”

  A short, balding man popped out from underneath the car, brushed off his pants, and smiled.

  “Howdy there, ma’am.”

  Snatching up her broken heel, Vivi regained her wits and marched forward, holding herself with importance despite a limp. “What are you doing with my car?”

  The man grimaced. “Sorry, but it’s my job to repossess this here vehicle.” He flipped a lever, and the thick black straps pulled tight before the front wheels of the car lifted off the ground.

  Lila looked on with wide-eyed astonishment. Even Nicki appeared surprised.

  “But you can’t do that,” Vivi insisted. “It’s my car.”

  “Tell that to the bank that carries the loan. You must not have made payments in a real long time if they’re repossessing it.”

  “A loan for the car?”

  Her father had told her it was hers. Bought and paid for as a graduation gift. Why would he lie?

  “Sorry,” the man said one last time, before he hopped into the truck and pulled her auto away.

  The three females stared.

  “Wow,” Lila breathed.

  “Man,” Nicki added.

  “Dear Lord,” Vivi whispered. “What am I going to do now?”

  Chapter Ten

  “You what?”

  His voice reverberated through the executive offices of MBL Holdings, and several of his vice presidents turned to stare.

  “Now, Max, calm down,” Vivienne said to him over the phone. “It’s not as bad as it sounds.”

  Drawing a deep breath, Max sat back in his leather chair and stared at the mountains without seeing them. What had ever possessed him to give Vivienne Stansfield a job?

  But he knew. He had fallen for the memory of a little girl. And Lila’s unexpected smile.

  The second he had stepped into the kitchen doorway and seen his all too serious little
sister tip over and look at Vivienne’s crazy shoes under the table, then announce she thought the new nanny was fun, had sealed his fate. God, how his heart had jarred to see her act like the girl she was. And Vivienne Stansfield had been the one to make it happen.

  “Start from the beginning,” he said with resigned patience into the phone.

  “Well, you see, we were at the mall, buying winter clothes, just as you instructed. Granted, we hadn’t found anything yet, at least nothing that—”

  “Forget the clothes. What happened to your car?”

  “Ah, yes. That. It’s gone. So we need a ride.”

  “Gone as in broken down?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Gone as in stolen?”

  “Heavens, who knew there were so many options for gone?”

  “Vivi,” he warned.

  He could all but hear her wince over the phone line and he knew he wasn’t going to like her answer.

  “Gone as in towed,” she explained.

  “Your car was towed?” His jaw ticked and he felt an unfamiliar pulse banging at his temples. The woman was going to give him a stroke. “What did you do, park in a No Parking zone? A handicap spot? In front of a fire hydrant?”

  “That is completely unfair. I would never park anywhere other than a clearly marked space,” she stated defensively. Then she hesitated again, before she whispered into the receiver. “However, based on my recent, most unfortunate run of bad luck in the money department—”

  He couldn’t believe he actually snorted.

  “—I’m guessing it’s another one of those pesky little payment problems,” she finished.

  “Hell,” he swore. “Where are you now?”

  “Outside of the mall, standing at the door to Dillards. The security guard who circles the property is starting to look at us funny. We really could use a ride.”

  “Don’t move. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  He slammed down the phone, grabbed up his sports coat, and headed for the door. “Hattie, I’ve got to take care of something.”

  “But, sir, you have a five o’clock meeting with a prospective client.”

  He muttered yet another oath under his breath. He had never cancelled an appointment in his life—until Vivienne Stansfield walked through his door.

  “Reschedule. The girls are stranded and I have to get them.”

  “How did that happen?” Hattie asked.

  “Don’t ask.”

  It took him less than ten minutes to get there as he shot between the rugged desert mountains that framed Mesa Street. He saw them immediately when he pulled into the parking lot outside the department store. Nicki wore all that damned black, Lila in her ragtag assortment of rainbow colors, and Vivienne. How had Lila described her in the note he had gotten that morning?

  The beautifully wonderful Barbie doll nanny.

  He couldn’t disagree. Long legs, short skirt, jangle of bracelets, and those damned pink lips that did crazy things to his head. He almost smiled at the thought, until he remembered that the woman had turned his well-ordered world upside down—all in less than twenty-four hours under his roof.

  At the curb, his sisters and Vivienne stood frozen, staring at him. He must have looked as murderous as he felt since each one of them grimaced before Vivienne raised her hand in a quick, cartoonlike wave. He didn’t wave back.

  Reluctantly, they came toward the car, Lila nudging up her glasses, Nicki scowling, Vivienne smoothing her hair. She was also holding one of her shoes.

  When the girls climbed into the backseat, Vivienne waited one long second, then slid reluctantly into the front.

  “Hello!” she said with forced cheer.

  He could see the guilt just below the surface. Then he glanced at Nicki. She looked guilty, too, though he couldn’t imagine why, since despite her run-ins with principals and teachers, he doubted his sister had anything to do with a towed car.

  “What’s wrong with your shoe?” he asked Vivienne.

  “Oh, this?” She held it up. “I broke a heel walking across the parking lot.”

  It wasn’t until they were heading toward the exit and Nicki hurriedly glanced away from Raiders that Max knew something else had happened.

  He eyed Nicki in the rearview mirror, then glanced over at Vivienne as he stopped at the light in front of the teen hangout. “What were you doing walking around the parking lot?”

  Vivienne got very still.

  Lila gasped.

  When Nicki scrunched down in the seat even farther, he noticed that Vivienne glanced at the teen, her brow furrowing, before she returned her attention to him.

  “There’s a lot of parking lot between the car and the mall,” she explained.

  “You weren’t for some reason walking back and forth between the mall and Raiders, were you?”

  “Raiders? Why would I want to go to a place like that? Oh, look. The light’s green.”

  To prove the point, someone honked.

  “Saved by the horn,” Lila supplied under her breath.

  After one long, contemplative glower, Max drove them home. The minute he pulled into the driveway, Lila and Nicki leaped out of the car. Vivienne did the same.

  “Not you,” he said to the nanny.

  Nicki sneered, then leaned close to Vivienne. “Don’t think that your not telling on me is going to make me like you any more.”

  Vivi knew Max couldn’t have heard, but he knew enough to call out, “That’s enough from you.”

  Nicki instantly got angrier.

  “Go inside and stay there,” he commanded. “You are in charge of Lila until I return. Vivienne and I are going to figure out her finances.”

  That took Vivi’s mind off the teenager fast enough.

  Vivi waved his comment away. “Now, really, Max, that isn’t necessary.”

  “If your car was towed, I’m guessing it is.”

  It didn’t take more than a minute or two to get to the Sutton Place complex. Using her keys at the front door, Vivi went straight to the kitchen and tossed her shoes in the trash. When she returned, she found Max walking around her father’s living room, seeing the few things she had added to make herself feel at home.

  Suddenly she felt awkward, exposed. Grady had rarely come over, and was generally in a hurry to be somewhere else when he did. With her father out of town, his condominium had become a place where she could be herself, and as Max walked around, she suddenly saw the place through someone else’s eyes.

  A pen with a puff of feathers on the end next to a stack of bright pink stationery with “Vivi” scrawled across the top. The cherry red pillows thrown over the surprisingly sterile furniture.

  Her eyes narrowed as she remembered that the place was rented. Could the furniture be rented as well?

  Where did the lies end and the truth begin?

  Her father had always been the richest man in town. The king of El Paso. Why would he rent? Why would he take her money?

  Her head throbbed with questions she didn’t know how to answer.

  Max stopped in front of a shelf of photos and noticed one with her holding a trophy.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  She stared at the picture until she felt an ease seep through her. Foolishly she had pulled out her favorite photos and lined them on the bookshelf. “First runner-up for the Miss Teen Homemaker of America contest.”

  Max looked as if he had swallowed the small gold-plated trophy of a woman in an apron.

  “I know, it’s hard to believe,” she conceded. “My mother was in her militant feminist stage and was appalled that I had entered much less come close to winning. But I was really good at it. We had to sew a dress, plan a menu, and make a dessert.” Given her new job, she was inclined to regret that Home Economics 1A hadn’t taught much beyond cooking and sewing. She could have used a lesson or two in the basics of home maintenance.

  She shot him a pleased smile. “I should have won first place.”

  “Why didn’
t you?”

  Her smile turned wry. “The judges said I got carried away.”

  He raised a brow, a hint of humor surfacing. “You?”

  “Funny. I prefer to think that I took artistic license.”

  His glance ran the length of her fluttery clothes. “With the dress you had to make?”

  “No, the dessert.” She cringed. “I had just seen an old Titanic movie, and before I knew it I had shaped my baked Alaska into an iceberg.”

  He laughed out loud, looking at her as if seeing her for the first time. When his laughter trailed off, he shook his head and moved on to the next framed photograph.

  Her heart stilled when he picked up her very favorite. She had been eleven, horrible-looking in braces and barrettes. Smiling, arms extended as she displayed a row of Christmas gifts spilling out of boxes and wrapping paper.

  Max studied the photograph, a slow, crooked smile curving his lips.

  “My awkward phase,” she admitted. “But it was a great Christmas.” She felt the poignancy of that year return as if it had been only yesterday. Both her mother and her father had been in town, and they’d had a “family” dinner together even though they were already divorced.

  Just the three of them, like a real family during the holidays, no new stepmother to take her father away.

  “Is that a flowered push-up bra?” Max asked, then peered closer. “And a doll?”

  “Yes.” She smiled indulgently. “My father wasn’t sure what an eleven-year-old was supposed to want. I was living with my mother then, and I rarely saw him.”

  Max turned to look at her, his brow furrowed. “Didn’t you always live with your mother?”

  Vivi adjusted the tangle of bracelets on her arm, making sure each of them lined up. “I did for a few years, until my mother started traveling more than usual. It only made sense that I should live with my father after that.”

  He studied her much as he had studied the surroundings, and her awkwardness grew.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “Nothing. I didn’t know that your mother left you like that.”

  “My mother did not leave me. She was finding herself. There’s a big difference.”

  “Not to a kid,” he offered with a wealth of kindness.

  She felt something rise up in her. Confusion? Sadness? Gratitude that someone understood?