Mother of the Bride

by Lynn Michaels

  “Thanks.” She sighed. “I feel better.”

  “Glad to hear it, ‘cause you’re gonna look like hell in the morning.” Cydney laughed and he looked affronted. “I always do,” he said, and she laughed harder, rocking back into the curve of his left arm as he looped it around her and smiled. “You don’t really want to leave, do you?”

  “No. But Bebe doesn’t want me here and it’s her wedding.”

  “It’s Aldo’s wedding, too, and this is my house. Bebe has no authority to kick anybody out of Tall Pines. If you’re determined to go, I’ll carry your suitcase out to your truck, but I’d like you to stay.”

  Cydney tipped her head back and looked at his face, the curve of his jaw etched in silver by the moon. “Really?”

  “Really.” He nodded. “Your mother scares the hell out of me.”

  She laughed and leaned her head against his shoulder. Just for a second, to see what it would feel like. It felt … wonderful. The warmth of his skin, the smooth tone of muscle beneath. He leaned his chin on her head and breathed into her damp hair, lacing a shiver down her back.

  “Can I bring a guest to the wedding?”

  Cydney’s heart seized. You fool, she told herself, you idiot. Of course he already has somebody.

  “Well, yes,” she said, shooting straight up beside him and out from under his arm. “Certainly you can bring a guest.”

  “Then how’d you like to be my date for the wedding?”

  Cydney turned sideways on the step to face him. He winked. Her throat swelled with tears and she bit her lip. Gus caught her hand and gave it a firm yet gentle squeeze.

  “Bebe can’t do a thing about it. This is my house and I’ll invite who I please. The worst she can do is stick out her lip and risk falling over it on her way up the aisle. You can leave and come back for the ceremony, but I’d be damned if I’d let her run me off.”

  “You’re right. I’ll stay. And I’d love to be your date for the wedding.” Cydney squeezed his hand and smiled at him. “Thank you, Gus. I think you’re the nicest man I’ve ever met.”

  “Gee, thanks.” He grinned at her. “I’ve waited all my life to hear that from a woman.”

  chapter

  fifteen

  Even critics who didn’t especially like mysteries admired Angus Munroe’s way with a plot, his “uncanny knack for moving characters through complex and emotionally charged scenarios.”

  That was fiction. This was real life. The Parrish clan had been here less than twenty-four hours and already the plot outline Gus had written, titled Grand Plan to Wreck the Wedding, was so far off track he wasn’t sure he could get it back. Or that he wanted to.

  This had seemed like such a great idea in Kansas City. He’d been sure Cydney Parrish would lose her appeal out of context, but he was wrong. She’d looked so damn cute yesterday, stuck in her Jeep in his driveway, a pissed-off little pixie with a smudge of gravel dust on her nose. He’d wanted to rub it off with a kiss. He hadn’t, but he’d wanted to, and that was the Grand Plan’s first wobble on the rails.

  Gus stood at the big window in his office with Artie’s ancient and dinged-up Louisville Slugger resting on his shoulder, the one he’d grabbed when Cydney tripped the alarm. He’d taught Aldo how to play baseball with this bat. It was way too short for both of them now, but it worked for hitting stones into the lake. Gus usually did his best thinking with Artie’s bat in his hands, but not this morning. His brain felt as thick as the fog he could see curling off the lake.

  If he’d been thinking yesterday he would’ve said yes when Cydney asked him if he’d paid to have the dirt from the rest of the house dumped in the great room. What a perfect opportunity to throw a monkey wrench in the wedding plans. A simple yes, and the Parrish clan would’ve gone straight back to Kansas City in a huff, but he’d just stood there, lost in a fantasy of Cydney naked and up to her nipples in bubbles in his hot tub. Gus turned the bat in his hands by its tape-wrapped grip and thought about whacking himself in the head with it.

  How did she come up with stuff like paying to have dirt dumped in the great room? How come he couldn’t?

  ‘Cause men are from Mars, Munroe, his inner voice said. And women are from Venus. Although Cydney Parrish could be from Pluto.

  “Yippee. You’re back,” Gus said to his AWOL muse. Or his conscience, or whatever the hell it was. “You can stay, but no bad-mouthing the woman I’m in lust with.”

  He wished it were only lust he felt for Cydney. He’d tried bed-hopping in college but it just wasn’t in his nature. He had to like a woman before he could sleep with her and he liked Cydney. He liked her a lot. He liked her humor, her honesty and her sincerity. He liked the almond shape and color of her eyes and her pert little nose … the glimpse of cleavage she’d innocently given him when she’d leaned back into the curve of his arm on the stairs.

  He didn’t like petite women, but he thought Cydney was adorable. He didn’t like blondes, either, but her silver-blond curls had felt like silk and smelled like lilacs when he’d laid his chin on her head. He wanted to do that again real soon. He wanted to do all kinds of things to her, starting with carrying her upstairs to his bed.

  It wasn’t in his nature to plot and scheme, either. In fiction, yes—in real life, no. But he’d come upstairs by flashlight after Cydney went to bed, patting himself on the back for being so damn smart. The electricity was still off, but he’d written the Grand Plan to Wreck the Wedding on his laptop Tuesday night when he got home from Kansas City. He’d forgotten to buy gas for the generator, but he always kept the batteries for the laptop charged. He nudged the PC’s monitor aside to make room on his desk, fired up the laptop at 1:32 A.M., opened the file named GRAND PLAN and sat down to update it.

  What a stroke of genius to ask Cydney to be his date for the wedding. Of course she said yes. He’d known she’d say yes. He worked Bebe ordering Cydney to leave into the Plan and added notes on how to make the best use of it. He’d smiled and hummed while he typed, the last of the storm rumbling away into the predawn darkness.

  When he’d paused to think, leaning back in his chair with his glasses and his fingers laced together on the top of his head, his mind drifted to how soft and sweet Cydney felt tucked in the curve of his arm. If the revised Plan held together, he could have the wedding in shambles by the end of the weekend and Cydney in his bed. He remembered her hiccups and smiled, then her tears, and that’s when it hit him— the utter rottenness of what he was doing.

  He’d damn near broken his neck jumping out of his chair and backpedaling away from the laptop. He’d stared at the screen, appalled at what he’d written. Who in hell did he think he was, playing with people’s emotions, jerking them around by their heartstrings like marionettes?

  He’d paced his office, telling himself the Grand Plan was designed to serve the greater good, to save Aldo from making the biggest mistake of his young life. It was his duty. Artie had trusted him, counted on Gus to look out for Aldo. Made sense till he ventured back to the laptop and had another look at the Grand Plan. It didn’t read like he was trying to serve Aldo’s best interests—it read like he was trying to serve his own.

  All right, he’d decided. He’d write another plan. A new Life Plan for Angus Munroe. He sat down and opened a new document, poised his fingers over the keys and hit a solid brick wall of writer’s block. He’d stared at the screen, unable to type so much as a comma, the cursor blinking at him till the headache he woke up with in the hospital Tuesday morning came roaring back into his temples.

  He’d shut down the laptop, took a shower and shaved, but it hadn’t helped. It was almost 8 A.M. now and he was tired and hungry. His neck, his shoulders and his head ached. He’d napped a little in his reading chair by the window, but he hadn’t been to bed. He couldn’t face sleeping with such a selfish sonofabitch.

  He wanted to blame his behavior on the concussion, but he’d been in full possession of his stinking, miserable faculties when he’d written the Grand Plan. Which
was not to say that he knew what he was doing, because he didn’t. Cydney nailed that right on the head.

  Since Aldo’s call on Monday he’d done nothing but react. First to the news that he was getting married, second to the leveler that he was marrying Fletcher Parrish’s granddaughter. Gus had gone ballistic, and then he’d gone on the defensive, circling the wagons, closing ranks to protect the thing that meant the most to him in the world, his family.

  The problem was that Aldo wanted a family of his own. He was entitled. So was Gus, but he’d lost his. He could’ve married and started another one, but he didn’t want another family, he wanted the one he’d lost. He didn’t think of himself as a man who lived in the past, but that’s what he’d been doing. He’d convinced himself that so long as he had Aldo he still had Artie and Beth and his parents and Aunt Phoebe, or little pieces of them, anyway.

  Aldo smiled just like Artie and laughed just like Beth. He had his mother’s hair and eyes, his father’s nose and chin. Sometimes he was scatterbrained like Beth, but he had a mind for math like Artie, and Aunt Phoebe’s gentle heart. Gus didn’t see much of his parents in Aldo, but he told him stories about his grandparents and he kept pictures of them and Artie and Beth and Aunt Phoebe on the piano in the R&R room.

  So you won’t forget them, he’d told Aldo. Gus called the photo array the Family Gallery. Aldo called it the Family Shrine. He’d asked Gus after Aunt Phoebe died why the photographs on the piano were the only things in the house Gus ever dusted.

  Didn’t have to be Freud to figure that one out. All these years he’d been trying to keep his family alive. Gus thought he’d accepted their loss, but apparently he hadn’t. He’d barely gotten over losing his parents in a car wreck when the plane crash took Artie and Beth. He’d cried buckets. He and Aunt Phoebe cried a river between them, but maybe it took more than tears.

  Maybe it took dismantling the shrine, tucking the pictures away in albums on a closet shelf. He could do that when he moved the piano, but what would he put in their place? What would he put in Aldo’s place? Just thinking about it made his palms sweat. He wiped them one at a time on the thighs of his jeans, wrapped his hands around Artie’s Louisville Slugger and thought he should probably put it away, too. It was a baseball bat, not a holy relic. He should save it for Aldo’s son.

  Now that was a scary thought, perpetuating the gene pool that produced Bebe Parrish. The more Gus saw of her the more certain he was that Aldo was making a colossal mistake. But it was Aldo’s to make and Aldo’s to pay for. No matter how nuts it drove Gus to think about having to put up with Bebe until the divorce. Or God forbid, the rest of his life.

  The proper way to handle this was to tell Aldo point-blank how he felt. It was dirty pool to hold Artie’s will over his head and plot and scheme behind his back, which meant the Grand Plan had to go. So did his plan to woo Cydney. He couldn’t say no cohabitation to Aldo and then sleep with the bride’s aunt. Well, he could. It was his house and he and Cydney were adults, but it was the old do-what-I-say-not-what-I-do thing, which he’d always tried to avoid.

  And besides the scorching kiss they’d shared in her kitchen, Gus had no real proof that Cydney wanted to be wooed. She thought he was the nicest man she’d ever met. A far cry from, “Oooh, you stud, take me to bed.” She’d think Jack the Ripper was the nicest man she’d ever met if he asked her to be his date for the wedding.

  She wouldn’t think he was Mr. Nice Guy if she saw the Grand Plan. Or if she knew he’d asked her to be his date just so he could keep her close to his bed. Well, not just, but mostly. Two more excellent reasons to hit the delete key. Gus turned toward the laptop and stopped. He still had Artie’s bat on his shoulder. He took it off, held it in his hands and rubbed his thumb across the fly-ball dents.

  Put it away, Munroe, his little voice said, and Gus did, in the closet next to the credenza, planting a kiss on the barrel before he stood the bat in the back corner, shut the door and drew a breath of stale, stuffy air.

  The power and the air-conditioning had been off for almost ten hours. Gus opened the small windows flanking the big one overlooking the lake, inhaled cool, rain-freshened air and turned toward his desk. He sat down, opened the laptop and turned it on, brought up the Grand Plan to Wreck the Wedding and took one last look at it. Damn shame to delete it, really. It was some of his best work.

  “Hey, Uncle Gus!” He nearly jumped out of his chair at Aldo’s voice and the bang of his fist on the office door. “You up yet?”

  “I’m awake. C’mon in.”

  Aldo opened the door and stuck his head past it. “Gramma George is making French toast. How many slices?”

  Good ol’ Georgette. Still trying to bribe him with food into seeing the wedding the Parrish way. All the tempting meals in the world wouldn’t change his opinion of Bebe and this marriage, but what was the harm in letting her try? It wasn’t plotting and scheming. But it wasn’t honest, either. He’d be better off with the Chee-tos and Gatorade he had stashed in the credenza for breakfast.

  “Tell her thank you, Aldo, but I—”

  “Hal-loo-ooo! Angus?” Georgette called up the stairs behind Aldo. “Powdered sugar or just butter and syrup? Blueberry or maple?”

  Blueberry was Gus’ favorite. He thought about Chee-tos and caved.

  “I’ll have the works, please, with blueberry syrup,” he called back to Georgette. “Be right down.”

  “Cool,” Aldo said, and shut the door.

  Bravo, Munroe, his inner voice said. That’s living your convictions.

  “Oh shut up.” Gus pushed out of his chair and made for the door.

  He hadn’t smelled French toast in Tall Pines since Aunt Phoebe died, but the aroma—butter-fried bread drenched in egg and milk with a splash of vanilla and a pinch of nutmeg— filled his nose halfway down the stairs and made his mouth water. He hadn’t laid eyes on his aunt’s orange press in five years, either, but he saw it when he pushed through the door behind the bar, sitting on the island between Aldo and Bebe, dripping orange pulp.

  “Hey, Uncle Gus.” Aldo grinned cheerfully and handed him a glass of fresh-squeezed juice.

  “Ready in a jiff, Angus.” Georgette, her cheeks pink from the steam cloud rolling off the gas range, waved a spatula at him. “Bebe, dear. Check the syrup and make sure it’s warm enough.”

  “Yes, Gramma.” She rolled her eyes and dragged herself toward the stove and a small saucepan simmering on a back burner.

  “Bebe’s not a morning person,” Aldo whispered to him.

  “She doesn’t seem to be much of an afternoon or evening person, either,” Gus whispered back, and drank his orange juice.

  Aldo frowned at him.

  “Just my opinion.” Gus gave him the glass and made for the bay window to help Herb open the pine table so he could put in the leaf.

  “Morning, Herb,” he said, taking hold of one end of the table. “Let me give you a hand.”

  “Thanks, Gus. Morning to you, too.” Herb pulled his end open and seated the leaf in the gap. “Okay. Give her a shove.”

  They pushed the table together and tucked it back into the bay of the fogged-up window behind the bench. Gus opened the small side windows and the back door to let the heat out and turned around. He saw Aunt Phoebe’s old stovetop coffeepot steaming on a trivet on the counter beside a pot of tea, but no sign of Cydney.

  “Where’s Cydney?” he asked Herb.

  “Don’t know. Haven’t seen her yet this morning.”

  “Oh, she left,” Bebe said offhandedly from the island.

  Georgette switched off the flame under the cast-iron skillet and wheeled away from the stove. “What do you mean, she left?”

  “I mean she left.” Bebe shrugged and licked orange juice off her fingers. “About eleven-thirty last night.”

  “No, I didn’t.” Cydney marched into the kitchen from the hallway in jeans, a white knit pullover—and fire in her eyes.

  Bebe spun toward her. “You said you were leaving.” />
  “No. You said I was leaving. I decided to stay. Morning, Mother. Morning, Herb.” Cydney picked up a set of ribbed green place mats Gus had never seen before, plates from Aunt Phoebe’s set of everyday white stoneware that were stacked on the end of the island and brought them to the table. “Good morning, Gus.”

  “Morning, Cydney.” He smiled at her and she smiled back.

  She looked like hell. Her eyes were puffy from crying and her silver curls were a mess of tight, frizzy links. Looked like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket. And still Gus wanted to hug her.

  “If I were cups,” she said to him, “where would I be?”

  “I’ll get them.” Gus paused on his way to the dish cabinet, spread his hands on the island and leaned toward Bebe. “I asked Cydney to stay. I need a date for the wedding and she agreed to accompany me. She’ll be sitting on Aldo’s side of the room with me. Any objections?”

  “N-n-no,” Bebe stammered, red-faced.

  “Good.” Gus looked her straight in the eye. “Subject closed.”

  Bebe stuck her lip out. It was childish as hell, but Gus stuck his lip out right back at her. Her eyes flew wide open.

  “Breakfast is served,” Georgette announced, lifting a steaming platter heaped with French toast off the counter.

  Gus carried mugs and the coffee to the table and went back for the teapot. Cydney was already seated on the bench with Herb, catty-corner from Bebe and Aldo. Gus took the chair at the other end next to Cydney and set the teapot in front of her.

  “Thank you,” she said, and picked up her napkin, green cloth to match the mats. She spread it in her lap and laid a folded sheet of paper on top. She kept glancing at it and touching it. Gus had no idea what it was or what Cydney intended to do with it, until she finished her French toast, laid the paper on the edge of the table and wiped her mouth. Then she shifted on the bench to look at her niece.