by Misty Simon
“What do you need? I’ll do anything I can to help.” And I truly meant it. Martha was the closet thing I’d had to a mother in fourteen years. She made my dad happy. And hopefully she’d keep him off my back and out of my hair so I could drive Ben wild. I’d give just about anything at this point for all of the above.
“Could you walk me down the aisle?” She asked the question to the carpet, but I had a feeling it was directed toward me.
Walk her down the aisle? The flower girl niece in her pretty sky blue dress was already traipsing her way along the peach-colored runner, whipping white flower petals out of her basket like she was throwing missiles at a hostile force.
Maggie would be next, then Rose, then Daisy. Then it was supposed to be me, followed by the radiant and beautiful Martha. Did I want to hang onto her arm and be that close to the center of attention? Did I want to stand next to a woman I knew looked like a vision? I resembled a step up from a mildly pleasant dream you woke from in the morning without knowing what had happened.
She squeezed my hand again; I guess I’d taken too long to answer. Maggie sailed out the door. Decision time if I wanted the use of my hand any time in the near future. This was for my dad’s happiness, right? For Martha’s happiness. For my own happiness if I wanted her to get her tushy down the aisle without any mishaps.
“Alrighty.” I sucked in a breath when her She-Ra grip released a little. “Let’s get this show on the road then. You don’t want me to dress like a man, do you?” She snickered, a good sign. “I could maybe go rip off Ben’s clothes and make him wear my dress.”
“I don’t think we have time.”
Damn. Ben without clothes made for a very interesting two-second fantasy. I pulled myself back to the here-and-now when Martha whacked me in the arm with her bouquet of roses, magnolias, daisies, and a little trailing vine to set the whole thing off. She really did want us all, and I could do worse than helping out.
With Martha clutching my hand so tightly I feared for blood loss, we took our time. My dad stood at the end of the peach runner, staring at Martha as if nothing else in the world existed. For her part, once I got her through the doorway, Martha practically dragged me down the walk to get to Stan.
I took my place next to the other girls and prayed I’d done the right thing. Maybe the locals would finally accept me, knowing I’d helped out in this way.
Yeah, I was deluding myself with that particular little fantasy, too.
And I knew it an hour later when we all showed up for the reception at the Barn, where the infamous Halloween/Harvest party had been held. That was my first experience with murder. It wasn’t my last, but I hoped, after the second one, I was done with the sleuthing business. It wore too much on my sanity, which I had precious little of anyway.
I blocked all images of my friend’s body back-stage six months ago and tried to do the circulation thing. As a circulator I wasn’t any great prize, but I’d like to state, for the record, I did try.
Every time I walked toward a new group of people, all conversation stopped, which was never a good thing in my book. I was also looking for Ben, but he didn’t appear anywhere, much less behind my shoulder to whisper all those fantastic words in my ear.
I approached Mr. Hanks and a group of his cronies. Mr. Hanks loved to come into The Masked Shoppe and buy new and (ick) exciting things like banana hammocks that I was sure got lost on his tubby body. But I wasn’t one to turn away money, and apparently Great-Aunt Gertie had not been as accepting of his need to showcase said body in fluorescent Speedos.
To each his own, I always said, unless I had to see it. In that case, all bets would be off. But Mr. Hanks had never (fortunately) asked me for my opinion on any of his purchases while they were still on his body, so that made us friends. Plus, he had helped me out and believed in me a few weeks ago when almost no one else did. I could forgive a lot under those circumstances.
For once, no conversation stopped when I got into the midst of the group.
“Ivy!” Mr. Hanks—whose first name I thought might be Herbert but couldn’t be sure—slapped me on my bare back and almost made me lose my balance in the three-inch heels I had been talked into. As far as I was concerned, they weren’t much different torture-wise than the four-inch ones the girls had wanted me to wear. However, I was saved from those after Sarah had fixed the dress hem. According to her, three-inch was fine and the dress hit at precisely the perfect spot. Amen.
“We were just talking about you,” cheeky Mr. Hanks said. Speaking of cheeks, I was glad I was standing next to him and would make sure for the rest of the night not to walk behind him so I wouldn’t see some telltale Speedo marks under his beige pants. Yuck!
“Oh, and what were you saying? Nice things I hope.” I gave him one of my best smiles and spread it around to his clump of old men.
He winked at me. “Probably the only nice things that will be said about you at this damn party, my girl. It seems you made quite an impression, walking our Martha down the aisle.”
What? “I don’t understand what you mean.” Call me dumb, but Martha had sparkled, and I was merely arm salami, not even candy.
“Well, some folks are saying you insinuated yourself into that situation so you would get all the attention. I even heard one woman say she was surprised the two of you fit down the aisle together.”
I could feel steam rising off my head. What the hell was that supposed to mean? I couched it a little differently when I said it, though. “What the fricking hell is that supposed to mean?”
“I liked your spunk from day one, my girl. She has fire,” he said to one of the men standing to his left, winking. I had no idea who the other guy was, but he was old, wrinkly, and lifted his drink to me with a wink of his own.
“But I’ll answer your question without going on about what a marvelous shop owner you are, too.” He tucked his fingers into his pockets, and I forced myself not to look down. “I guess the ladies, at least the petty, spiteful ones, which probably marks just about all of them…” He guffawed, and I restrained myself from kicking him and telling him to get on with it. “Well, the ladies seem to think you’re still trying to get quick entrance into society here and thought you’d do it by hanging on the coattails, or the dress, in this case, of our Ms. Martha, now Mrs. Martha again.” He patted my arm. I was getting kind of sick of people patting me, at this point. “I don’t cotton to a single thing any of those biddies are saying, but you know loose tongues around these parts.”
Yes, yes, I did. And I also knew that once the town had their collective small brains set on something there was no way I could change it for them, even if I took out a sky writer and a banner-sized ad saying Martha had asked me to do it.
“Thanks for letting me know, Mr. Hanks,” I said, then pretended to see someone waving to me from the other side of the cavernous room. “I have to go. If anyone says anything else, and you feel like sticking up for me, maybe you could mention that Martha asked me to do it.”
“Will do, my girl, will do. It won’t make any difference, but I sure will.”
Un-freaking-believable, I thought as I walked away from the group. So here I was, worrying that people would think I’d made Martha change her mind and not walk down the aisle and then I walk down the aisle beside her and I get accused of trying to hook onto the whole nepotism thing (good word, but I was not in the mood to enjoy it).
I spotted Ben’s spiky hair across the room and made a beeline for him. At least he wouldn’t think I’d deliberately tried to ring in on Martha’s parade. And I could get in a little sympathy at the same time. I tried to catch his eye, but he was looking down at something. No amount of mental telepathy made him sense my distress or lift his head.
I threaded my way through the crowd and was so tempted to say, Please don’t stop gossiping on my account, you big old hens. But I ignored the whispers and simply made a point of keeping my eye on the guy.
About ten feet before him, the crowd opened up and I saw what w
as holding all his attention. It wasn’t a drink, but she looked long, cool, and ready to satisfy his every thirst.
Chapter Eight
A part of me was shrieking inside as I slowed my steps and took a deep breath to quell my inner turmoil. Just because this woman looked like she wanted him for breakfast, it didn’t mean anything. It was his reaction that should concern me, and the way her hand stroked his chest—the chest that belonged to me!
“Hands off,” I growled, literally growled. It doesn’t seem like you’d be able to growl words, but let me tell you, in the right mood almost anything is possible.
“Ivy,” Ben said, reaching out his hand and obviously trying to disentangle himself from the blonde latched onto him. “I was looking all over for you.” Desperation tinged his voice, making me feel a little better. Nothing like another person’s misery to make life sweeter. Seriously.
And it was very comforting to see he wasn’t fawning over the other woman. I knew Ben had been somewhat of a playboy—okay a horn dog—before we met. He had, from last report, slept with or at least messed around with almost every woman in town that was close to his age.
That had given me pause when we first started circling each other. But he had assured me those days were long over. And I believed him. We hadn’t had any trouble in our relatively short relationship, and I certainly didn’t want things to start going downhill now.
“And who’s your friend?” I asked in my calmest, most mature voice while gripping my champagne glass stem so hard I thought it would shatter. I hadn’t seen the woman around before, but even in such a small town that didn’t mean she couldn’t live right down the street from me.
“This is Meredith. She lives in the apartment below me.” His eyes begged me for rescue as he took another step closer to me, pulling her along behind him.
I wasn’t entirely happy about the fact that this bitc...woman lived so close to Ben, but I also knew I needed to trust him. It was a fundamental part of any relationship, but it hadn’t been tested yet between us.
I found when tested I was fine. Really. Maybe tinged with a little tiny bit of a faint skin color change to match my spring green dress, but still okay. Phew! However, we would have to start making some serious changes, like a new place for Ben to live. ASAP would work nicely.
“Can I steal you away for a minute?” I tugged on Ben one more time, and Meredith’s arms popped off him like an octopus’s suction cups. Mine! I wanted to scream, but kept myself in check. He hadn’t done anything wrong; I wouldn’t blow this all out of proportion.
As soon as we were ten feet away, he brought my fingers to his lips and gave each one a gentle suck. “You are a goddess among women, Ivy. I was trying so hard to extract myself without making an enemy in my apartment building, but she wasn’t letting go.”
Thank God he explained first, without me having to ask. It made an even better case for his innocence. Not that he had done anything to make me doubt him. Oy! My head hurt with all this thinking. I had seriously lost my sexual haze of repleteness from last night. Bummer.
“You’re welcome. Let’s go find my dad. We need to get the dinner part over, then the speech part over, the dancing thing out of the way, the bouquet—and I don’t mean my sisters. Then I can get you home, get you naked, and have my wicked way with you.”
“I like your thinking. But let’s cut out everything but the naked and home part.” He cocked an eyebrow at me and I wanted to lick it.
I shook my head instead. “No, we need to stay, and I have to give Martha her Morris Family Survival Kit.”
He huffed out a breath. “All right. I guess we can stay for a little longer, but please, please, promise me the naked, sweaty part later.”
He was so cute when he was desperate. “I never said anything about sweaty.” I tugged him along behind me as he sputtered.
Walking past a group of ladies, I saw my sisters right in the thick of things, showing off pictures of their kids, laughing and having drinks served to them by their perfect husbands. God, if I didn’t love them, I’d hate them. Why was it so easy for them to slip right in with the Martha’s Pointers, when I had been trying so hard?
But then it didn’t matter because I heard silverware clinking against wine glasses and watched as my dad dipped Martha back until her head brushed the floor, giving her a kiss that nearly curled my hair.
Fascinating. Yet—yuck, my dad!
Ben seemed to take the clinking as a sign that this was his moment, too, because he caught me around the waist, planted his lips on mine, and proceeded to frazzle my nerves like never before. I knew he was potent, but this made my head spin.
The spinning stopped a second later when microphone feedback went through the entire cavernous building. And then the singing started. It wasn’t as horrible as I feared, but it still made my nerves jump in an entirely different way than previously.
“Hellllllllo, party people!” came over the loud speakers. Oh. My. God. “We’re here to send Marty and Stanny off in style before they shag like wild rabbits!” Where did they get this guy? Oh, right, directly from Marty’s family. And taking a quick gander over at Marty, it looked like steam was streaming from her ears. Her hands were crooked into claws, and even from my position across the room, I could hear her shriek. Not good. I needed to go do some damage control.
“Be right back,” I said to Ben, handing him my drink. I lifted my skirts and ran, as fast as my body would carry me, and got to Martha’s side in seconds. I placed a hand on her arm and yanked her around to look at me. “Don’t you think this would be the perfect time for toasts? Get everyone to sit down to dinner? We’ll stuff your idiot of a cousin’s mouth full of food, and maybe he’ll choke.”
The smile that spread across her face made me very happy she was not thinking about doing me in. Clapping her hands, she turned to the DJ. She gave the cut-off sign by sawing her hand across her throat and the microphone went dead in mid-squawk. Thank goodness.
“Why don’t we all sit down and get this reception on its way. I would like some time with my new husband tonight, and the way we’re going right now, I fear we might be here forever,” Martha said in the hush of the Barn.
Everyone laughed and began finding seats at the scattered round tables. I was up on the dais with the rest of the wedding party. Ben sat at the very end of the table, so I couldn’t really see him, but at least I knew he was there. I knew Bella was out there somewhere, too, but I hadn’t had time to talk to her yet.
Dad tapped the microphone someone had put into his hand and cleared his throat. “Hi, good evening.” He waved. What a cheese-meister. “Thank you all for joining in our wonderful celebration tonight and today. We really appreciate you all being here and hope you have a splendiferous time. What a great way to ring in the new year!”
Oh, good word, but I would have to look it up to make sure he wasn’t bamboozling me. Once, he’d started using “extrapolate” in a plethora of sentences, and I’d looked that up, too, because I didn’t know if that was a word or not. He could be wily that way.
“It’s wonderful to have all my new family around,” Stan continued into the microphone.
Martha murmured something about almost all the family was wonderful. I snickered.
I assumed she was talking about the wedding singer and possibly some of the older ladies I had heard talking about her getting married at her age. I thought any age was a great time to make the commitment I saw between Stan and Martha. I’d stayed silent at the time, not needing more people disappointed in me. I had enough as it was. Almost 2,995 out of the three thousand souls inhabiting Martha’s Point were enough, thank you very much.
Dad cleared his throat again. Why was he nervous? Maybe it was because he was dressed in a great tux with an unfortunate cummerbund instead of his usual Sears catalog flannel shirts and beige shorts?
Regardless, he continued. “Tonight is the beginning of things for Martha and me. It’s a blending of families, hers with mine, and it means the wo
rld to us that everyone is here. In that vein, thanks again for coming, and I hope you enjoy the entertainment tonight.”
More muttering from Martha, and I thought she said something about the entertainment being the death of a special someone, but I couldn’t say for sure.
Then Martha took the microphone, wished everyone a good evening, and handed it off to me.
Oh. My. God. I was not expected to actually speak in public, was I? Bile rose in my throat, strong and acidic.
“Um, hello, everyone,” I said, swallowing hard. Then I waved—exactly like Stan had. God, can you say idiot? “I’m so happy this is happening for my dad and Martha, and thank you all for being here.” Can you also say mynah bird? Something new, something new. Crap! “Martha is a wonderful woman and just what my dad deserves.” Ack. “I mean, um, well, anyway. Here you go, Martha, welcome to the family.” I handed her the thesaurus and dictionary I’d thought were so cute when I first bought them for her, but now seemed dumb. When would I ever learn?
But applause rose from the crowd, and Martha hugged me with tears in her eyes. “This means a lot to me, Ivy. Thank you.”
Huh. There were tears in her eyes. I had to reassure myself it was really true as I hugged her to me.
And then orchestral music started while we all wandered over to the buffet set up by another of Martha’s cousins, this woman from the next county over. I hoped she cooked better than her other cousin crooned.
****
Throughout the night, I managed to fend off some very unwanted attention from several of Martha’s cousins. One in particular made my eye twitch. The woman’s aunts should have stopped breeding long before this one was born. Ben saved me from Cousin Billy’s foul breath and wandering hands by twirling me onto the floor to slow dance to an auditorially painful rendition of “You Look Wonderful Tonight.” Horace couldn’t hit any of the notes. Didn’t anyone audition him? And was that the bandage around his neck again under his sweaty collar? Had he cut himself shaving?