The Accidental Bridegroom

by Ann Major

  Thankfully that terrible time had passed. Armi had cleverly persuaded Cathy to come out of seclusion to dazzle Maurice. Cathy was once more the fabled family’s darling, and Rafe Steele and the profound unhappiness the allure of his bronzed biceps had caused them were ancient history.

  Or so Cathy thought as she stood in her bedroom, nervously twisting Maurice’s huge ring round and round on her slender finger while she stared at her suitcases and contemplated her brilliant marriage and her difficult child, who her mother said reminded her of Cathy at the same age, with an uneasy emotion curiously akin to dread.

  Her stomach tightened. What she had to do tonight was to try again to explain to Sadie that in less than two weeks she would have a wonderful new father, that she would be leaving this village where she’d grown up so happily, that she would be leaving her friends and her beloved Pita and Juanito forever, that her new home would be across a big ocean in a big castle in France, where they would all live happily ever after.

  Sadie, who was whimsical and highly imaginative and rather stubborn—that was an indulgent mother putting her little darling’s stormy tantrums and cold-eyed sulks that could last for days mildly—hadn’t exactly taken to the elegant Maurice Dumont on the two occasions he’d come to Mexico expressly to win her favor.

  Indeed, with a pious air, Sadie had insisted on giving all the gorgeous stuffed animals he’d brought her to the poor village children; she’d pouted and then pretended to sneeze, turning her cheek away every time he’d tried to kiss it, saying she was afraid he’d get a sniffle; she’d refused to stay in any room where he happened to be; and Cathy still couldn’t let herself remember the family of wiggling iguanas Sadie had stuffed into Maurice’s suitcase after she’d found her mother and Maurice kissing and been shown the huge engagement ring and told about the wedding in which she would be a flower girl.

  Sadie, who loved pageants and costumes of all varieties, had refused to be a flower girl, and she had threatened to do something absolutely horrid if Cathy forced her to come to the wedding. So, tonight Cathy was troubled about how exactly she would convince Sadie that they were all going to be so frightfully happy in their fairy-tale castle, when she herself—

  Enough! Enough procrastinating. If she wasn’t going to pack all the party dresses her mother had stipulated on her long list of what she was to bring, she’d better deal with Sadie.

  Cathy went over to the balcony door and shuddered at the sight of the black mountain looming against a glowing sky. The mountain reminded her as nothing else could of how impossible it was to control Sadie. The soaring peaks that looked so impregnable were dangerously riddled with ancient silver mines, and Sadie, who was fascinated by them because she imagined ghosts lived in them, had been strictly forbidden to go near them.

  A golden moon was rising in a darkening sky. But Cathy barely noticed. She was thinking of the crumbling tunnels that snaked like a maze for miles deep into the mountain—in fact, all the way to the other side. She was remembering with horror the July afternoon when Sadie and Juanito had vanished and all that could be found of them was one of Sadie’s red polka dot ribbons by the entrance of a tunnel. For two terrifying days Cathy had nearly gone out of her mind while the villagers searched the tunnels and shafts. Then Sadie and Juanito had cheerfully emerged on the other side of the mountain with a bag full of food and candles, saying the adventure would have been grand if it hadn’t been for the bats.

  Cathy looked across her own red-tiled roofs and the high walls dripping with ivy that surrounded her lovely house and patios to the humbler corrugated roof of Pita’s bright blue house across the narrow alley. Sadie was playing on Pita’s patio.

  In the morning, Cathy would be leaving the village. If she didn’t make Sadie listen to her tonight, there wouldn’t be another chance. At this very moment, her wedding guests, family and friends were flying in from all parts of the world and congregating at her parents’ second home, their world-famous hacienda, Casa Tejas, in the valley at the base of the mountain to celebrate her marriage.

  Her mother had planned endless parties and dances for the next two weeks, and the groom himself would be arriving in less than a week. That was when Cathy planned to sneak Maurice back to the village to see Sadie. Thus, Cathy had to find a way to convince Sadie to at least treat him politely.

  As Cathy silently walked outside and descended the stairs that wound down to her walled courtyard, a mariachi band in the plaza began to play the one love song she would have paid them anything not to play.

  Her luminous dark eyes widened. Her sweet face tensed. The wonderful, damnable music sent a bittersweet pang through her. For once, long ago, Rafe had stood under another balcony and serenaded her with that song.

  She’d already been madly in love with him. How thrilled she had been by the slow, curling grin that had lit his lean dark features. He’d been dressed up like Elvis that night, in his awful biker’s jacket, and he had sung her favorite song pretending he was a Mexican Elvis, perfectly mimicking the great star’s husky baritone in heavily accented gringo-Spanish. Then he’d sung “Love me Tender” and stripped a long red silk scarf from around his neck and tossed it to her before he’d kissed her.

  Cathy sank against an ivy-covered column. Her hand fluttered to the golden heart-shaped locket Rafe had given her, which she told herself she wore only for Sadie’s sake.

  The column was cold against her flushed skin, but all she felt was a hot current of dark and undeniable passion for the man who had used her.

  Dear God. Her fingers shook as she fumbled with the locket, taking the key out and pressing it against her left breast before slowly putting it back.

  Rafe had been nothing more than a paid bodyguard who’d wanted to get laid and make a fast buck or two if he could.

  She’d been happier thinking he was a thief.

  But what he’d been above all else was a liar.

  She’d grown up rich and protected by paid companions. She’d been so starved for real love that she’d been an easy conquest for him. All he’d wanted was to use her for sex, so he could negotiate a bigger payoff from Armi.

  He hadn’t been the first to pretend he cared when all he was after was money. Her best friend in high school had sold a story about her to a newspaper that specialized in sensational stories about celebrities. It was just that Rafe had so convincingly acted the part he’d played, Cathy had really trusted him.

  Her hand fell to her side. Slowly she began twisting Maurice’s diamond, squeezing her hand into it so tightly it cut into her palm.

  Would she never be free of Rafe Steele?

  Sadie, Cathy thought desperately. She had to find Sadie.

  Only Sadie was a force dynamic enough to dispel her fear of Rafe’s ghost.

  *

  “Mommy! Mommy!” Sadie shrieked from inside Pita’s house, jumping up at the first faint groan of the loose board on the sagging porch.

  A heavy clay pot shattered against the dirt floor inside.

  “Ouch! Pita! Se cayó!” It fell!

  “No te preocupes, Gordita.” Do not worry, little fatty.

  Pita’s kindly voice sounded far away, as if it came from the kitchen, and Cathy, who wanted to talk to her daughter alone, decided to let Pita worry about whatever was broken.

  Stick-thin and hyperactive at six, Sadie had acquired the nickname Gordita when she had been a fat, placid baby, a brief time cut short when she pulled herself up at seven months and began toddling. Pita and Cathy regarded that idyll with their little Gordita as the lull before the storm.

  Cathy heard racing footsteps—Sadie never walked. Then the door was flung open so hard it banged twice against the crumbling cinder-block wall. And the dynamo, a skinny hoyden in a witch hat and trailing black gown stuck together with pins, stood bobbing up and down on her tiptoes. The elf smiled engagingly up at Cathy. “Come see what we’re making!”

  Sadie, who adored make-believe, especially costumes, was carrying a basket of marigolds.

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nbsp; Marigolds—

  Cempasuchil flowers the Indians called these dazzling blossoms, which were reputed by the superstitious to have the power to attract the spirits of the dead.

  Indeed, the plump, fluffy marigolds gave off a powerful aromatic scent. Indeed, they did seem to glow with a special light.

  Cathy felt a twinge of alarm as she realized that the approaching holiday everyone in the village was preparing for would occur the very day she planned to bring Maurice to see her daughter.

  “Sadie, would you please come outside—”

  Instead of obeying her mother, Sadie mashed her hat down and spun around faster than a dervish, sending pins and marigolds flying everywhere.

  “Stop! Stop! You’re making a mess,” Cathy said, her smile indulgent. Catching herself, she forced herself to be sterner. “You’re going to make yourself sick! You’re losing all your marigolds!”

  Sadie stopped instantly, but only because of the marigolds and because she was too dizzy to continue. “I wanted you to see how big and fat the skirt is,” the child said. “Pita made it for me for Halloween and for El Día de los Muertos, too.”

  Cathy’s second twinge of alarm was much stronger. Her faint, motherly smile tightened at the thought of the pagan festival. The Day of the Dead was a magical, two-day Mexican holiday that began every first of November, and turned their normally quiet village into a madhouse. The holiday was considered a sacred time, when departed spirits were welcomed back to earth by the faithful to drink and eat and visit their families.

  “Pita made the costume out of one of Lupe’s old black witch dresses, so that makes it specially magic—like the marigolds—’cause Lupe was a real witch!”

  Another sharper twinge struck in the center of Cathy’s chest as she reconsidered the basket of marigolds and their magic powers to attract the good spirits back to their families’ homes.

  Lupe Sanchez, Pita’s famous mother, had been dead ten years. Cathy remembered her as a withered old crone filled with self-importance due to her reputation as the most celebrated witch and curandera—spell caster—in the state of Jalisco. The old witch had laid a terrible guilt trip on Pita for not gaining an equally grand name in the same “profession.”

  Not that Cathy believed that stern old Lupe had really been a witch, and the last thing Cathy desired was for Sadie’s head to be filled with such foolishness. But, no matter how Cathy begged Pita not to talk about witches or her mother, Pita and everyone else in the village believed too deeply in Lupe’s powers not to pass on to Sadie a few of their favorite stories about Pita’s notorious mother.

  “Come outside, darling,” Cathy insisted more sharply.

  Sadie bounced backward. “No! I’m helping Pita build her altar so that Lupe can come back and eat tamales and green salsa!”

  This was too much!

  “There are no such things as witches! I don’t care what Pita says, ghosts don’t really come back! And they certainly don’t eat tamales and salsa!”

  “They do too! Pita always says so!”

  Sadie’s blue eyes blazed in that stubborn, willful way Rafe’s used to…which unsettled Cathy. Because suddenly her daughter reminded her too much of Rafe’s fury on that terrible last afternoon, when he’d saved Armi’s life and she’d found out he was her bodyguard. Indeed, the striking resemblance the blond pixie bore to her odious father upset Cathy so much, she began to shake.

  “Pita doesn’t say ghosts eat exactly! She says they just suck all the good stuff out of the food—” Sadie pursed her lips and made a horrid slurping sound, just like she did when she inhaled long strings of gooey spaghetti. “Like that!”

  The vision of a wizened, black-shawled Lupe slurping spaghetti was too horrifyingly absurd to consider.

  Suddenly, Cathy was glad she was getting married. Sadie had reached the age where she needed more than dear superstitious Pita or the street-smart orphan Juanito could provide. Sadie needed a father to discipline her, as well as the wonderful advantages a man like Maurice could give her.

  As Maurice’s adopted daughter, she would be expected to conduct herself as a well-bred young lady. She would attend the finest French schools. Cathy imagined sweet, friendly children and loving teachers, sharing and learning together in sunlit classrooms.

  Fortunately, this dazzling moment of maternal fantasy was not marred by the memory of her own dreadful experiences at a highly reputed Swiss boarding school. Fortunately, the memory of spending long lonely hours in solitary confinement for the slightest infraction of Madame Bremond’s cruel rules was buried too deeply for her to recall on such short notice. But Cathy, who had also been a skinny, pixie-like child, had been too lively to endure such a rigid environment happily. She had spent those miserable hours when she’d been isolated from the others writing her glamorous mother letter after letter, begging her to come and take her away because everybody spoke French and despised her and thought her too common to play with because she was an American. And her beautiful, partying mother had been briefly amused by the passion in those letters, saying lightly to a friend over an expensive Parisian lunch, “She will adjust.”

  But Cathy’s mother had been wrong. Cathy made friends with the janitor’s son and was expelled for sneaking off to play with him.

  Now Cathy was brightening at the prospect of her daughter’s grand future and was in no mood to dwell on the fact that she had never been able to fit into high society or make friends with anyone who seemed phony.

  When Sadie made an even louder slurping sound and was about to make another, Cathy took her firmly by the hand and led her toward the hand-carved chairs on the porch.

  “Darling, those are perfectly marvelous ghost sounds. But I really don’t care to argue about whether ghosts eat or suck their food because, I—I have the most wonderful news.”

  At Cathy’s coaxing motherly smile, Sadie scowled and yanked her hand loose.

  Cathy sat down with seeming casualness and pulled Sadie’s smaller chair closer to her own. “Here. Why don’t you sit here beside me—”

  Instead of obeying, Sadie marched to the end of the porch and squatted grumpily on the floor like her Indian friend Juanito and began to tear the petals off a puffy marigold. “I’ve got some good news, too,” the little girl whispered sullenly, letting the petals fall into the basket.

  As Sadie ripped at the flowers, Cathy’s stomach tightened. Did the child have some special radar that made her sense her mother was about to try to discuss Maurice again?

  “I wish you would stop doing that!” Cathy blurted out.

  Sadie’s fingers tore the flowers with even greater vengeance. “Pita needs these petals to make a path from the cemetery to show Lupe the way home.”

  Cathy swallowed and decided on a less direct approach. “Why…why don’t you tell me your news first, darling?”

  Sadie’s fingers paused over a half-shredded flower. Her pixie features grew still. For once she didn’t rush. After a long time, she finally began in a small strangled tone, “Pita says…that if I ask Lupe…maybe Lupe will make a spell…and bring my real daddy this year when she comes.”

  Sadie’s wistful voice seemed to die away. Which was just as well, because Cathy couldn’t have borne another word. Almost never did she speak to Sadie about Rafe, but the sorrow in Sadie’s voice was caught at her heart.

  “No!” Cathy cried fiercely, springing up and rushing to Sadie. Cathy sank to her knees. “Oh, my poor little darling—I can’t bear for you to go on thinking, to go on hoping—”

  Very gently Cathy pulled her child into her arms, and as she did, the pointy witch hat fell off.

  Tenderly Cathy smoothed the stray golden tangles out of her little girl’s baby-fine hair. “My precious Gordita, he won’t ever come.”

  Sadie was very still. “How do you know?”

  “I—I just know.”

  They clung to each other, sharing the deep dark silence of the night. Then the wind caught the witch hat, and it began to roll away.

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nbsp; Sadie cried, “My hat!” and wriggled free to get it.

  Sadie’s hands were quick and jerky as she mashed it back on her head, no longer caring that she was crumpling it.

  “Sadie, please, believe me. He can’t ever—”

  Sadie’s ice blue eyes seemed to look through her. “Mommy, why did God make my daddy die?”

  The pinched pixie face underneath the tall black hat blurred.

  Cathy would have done anything to spare her child such anguish, but how could she, when she had caused it?

  “Sadie, I don’t really know why any of the things that have happened… happened. That’s just…life.”

  “Then tell me about how my daddy was so big and tall,” she pleaded softly. “About how he was a Texan and he talked like this, ‘How-d-y, ma’am.’” Charmingly she drew out the cliché words with a dramatic, childish flourish. Sadie was immensely talented when it came to languages and copying accents. She could mimic Maurice to a T, and not in a good way.

  “You must have been watching some cowboy Westerns,” Cathy said.

  “I reckon I—I—I have been, ma’am.”

  Cathy almost smiled. “The drawl is a bit overdone. And Rafe never said howdy or called me ma’am.”

  No, he had called her Slim. Not that he’d meant the huskily purred nickname—rolling off his drawling tongue as sexily and slowly as liquid velvet—as an insult.

  “And he wore a great big cowboy hat and boots?”

  “The night I met him, he was wearing black leather and riding a motorcycle.”

  “That’s even better.”