“Cydney, we aren’t sneaking. We’re adults and this is my house.”
“And it’s your rule.” She looked up at him, an itsy-bitsy-teeny-tiny pair of white bikinis and a lace bra in her hands that made his mouth water. “If Bebe and Aldo can’t sleep together without marriage then neither can we. And no, I don’t want to marry you. Make love with you, yes. Marry you, no way in hell.”
She snatched up her white sneakers and darted into the bathroom. The door shut like a slap and Gus sprang after her. The lock clicked and he spread his hands on both sides of the door, so aroused and frustrated he wanted to bash his head against it.
“What does that mean—‘no way in hell’?”
“Keep your voice down,” she hissed through the door. “It means I don’t want to marry you.”
“Not that I’ve asked you, but why not?”
She opened the door, tugging the cowl neck of her sweater into place. “Do you want to marry me?”
“No offense, but no. I don’t want to marry anyone.”
“Then stop huffing and puffing.”
“I’m not puffing,” Gus shot back indignantly. “Huffing, maybe—”
She rolled her eyes and shut the door. He grabbed the knob just as the lock clicked and froze it in his hand.
“All right, Cydney.” Gus sighed. “Just tell me what I said wrong.”
“You didn’t say anything wrong.” She opened the door, fully dressed, finger-combing her silver-blond curls into place. “You and I are sexually mature adults. We can enjoy lust and not confuse it with love.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“It should.” Cydney ducked under his arm and headed across the bedroom. “You said it to me in my kitchen Tuesday night.”
Ouch. Did it sound that stupid when he’d said it? He turned around in the bathroom doorway just as Cydney unlocked and opened the bedroom door and looked back at him.
“And yes,” she said, as if she’d read his mind. “It sounded every bit as dopey when you said it. Give me five minutes.”
She slipped into the hallway and shut the door. Gus wiped a hand over his mouth, snatched his robe off the floor and shrugged it on, so strung up on testosterone that his hands shook.
You said it, Munroe, his inner voice reminded him. You don’t drag a woman who bakes macaroons and keeps them in a teddy bear cookie jar to bed for a day of hot, wild sex. You court her, you make love to her and then you marry her.
“Oh shut up,” Gus snarled, and stalked out of Cydney’s bedroom.
He took the back stairs through the dining room and into the kitchen. The swinging door behind the bar was closed. He could hear Bebe’s voice but couldn’t make out what she was saying. He tucked the front of his robe together, knotted the belt and eased the door open.
Cydney sat on the blue leather sofa by the gallery stairs. Bebe stood in front of her amid a pile of shopping bags, winding orange and black crepe-paper streamers around her aunt’s shoulders. Gus could see three-quarters of Bebe’s happy smile and all of the shell-shocked expression on Cydney’s face.
“Won’t this be fun, Uncle Cyd? A Halloween wedding!” Bebe gave the crepe paper a last flip over her shoulders and snatched up a shopping bag. “Aldo and I found all this neat stuff on sale in a party store in Springfield and thought, how cool. We can bob for apples after we cut the cake! And the best part, the absolute most fun is this. Ta-da!”
Bebe pulled a rubber gorilla mask out of the bag, put it on and threw her arms out wide. “A masquerade reception!”
Cydney just stared at her. Yesterday Gus would’ve danced a jig of joy. Today he didn’t know what to do but feel for Cydney.
“You’re not saying anything, Uncle Cyd.” Bebe’s arms wilted at her sides. “You hate it, don’t you?”
“Uh—no.” Cydney blinked, coming out of her stupor. “I’m just—um—wondering if a gorilla mask will go with your dress.”
“Everything goes with pearls, Uncle Cyd. Gramma says so, and I bought lots of different masks. One for each guest.” Bebe pulled out another one, took off the gorilla and tugged on a horrid rubber face with horns and warts. “How ‘bout this one?”
“Eeeuu.” Cydney wrinkled her nose. “What is that?”
“An ogre. I thought it would be perfect for Aldo’s Uncle Gus.”
“Little twit,” Gus muttered, and pushed through the door.
Cydney frowned at him. Probably because he was still in his bathrobe. Bebe turned around, saw him and ripped off the mask. The front doors banged open and Aldo came down the steps staggering under the weight of a huge orange pumpkin.
“Hey, Uncle Gus. Gimme a hand, would you?” He panted. “I’ve got a hundred and twenty-five of these things.”
Gus wrestled the pumpkin away from Aldo and grunted. The damn thing weighed forty pounds if it weighed an ounce. “What in hell are you going to do with a hundred and twenty-five pumpkins?”
“Carve them into jack-o’-lanterns.” Aldo grinned. “They’re the focal point of Bebe’s decorating scheme.”
“Just picture it, Mr. Munroe!” Bebe gushed excitedly. “The jack-o’-lanterns lit with candles. Streamers draped from the ceiling beams with fake cobwebs and orange icicle lights. And look at these!” She pulled a string of lights out of a bag, little orange pumpkins interspersed with black and white skulls. “Won’t the great room look cool?”
“Very cool,” Gus agreed, hefting the pumpkin onto the bar. “But your guests might think they’re at a Halloween party, not a wedding.”
“That’s the whole idea.” Bebe gave him a you-moron-you look. “It’ll be the most different wedding anyone has ever attended.”
“Different is good, Bebe,” Cydney said, getting to her feet. “But this is your big day. Are you sure you want to share the limelight with a hundred and twenty-five pumpkins?”
Bebe whirled to face her. “You hate it.”
“Not at all. Sounds like great fun to me, but I’m not sure what Gramma George will think.”
“I don’t care what Gramma thinks.” Bebe stuck her lip out. “This is my wedding. Mine and Aldo’s, and yesterday morning Mr. Munroe told Aldo we had to plan it all by ourselves, so that’s what we did.”
Cydney blinked and swung an accusing glare on him. Oh shit. What he’d said to Aldo by the lake—that’s what Bebe meant.
“Wait a minute, Bebe,” he said quickly. “I think Aldo misunderstood. That’s not what I said.”
“Yeah, it is, Uncle Gus.” Aldo slouched up beside him with his hands in his back pockets. “That’s exactly what you said.”
Cydney’s eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared.
“You asked what it would take to prove to me that you and Bebe are old enough to get married,” Gus countered swiftly. “I said that if you could pull the wedding off in a week without any help from anyone else I’d believe you’re old enough to take care of yourselves. I did not say you had to do it all on your own.”
“Yes, you did,” Aldo insisted. “You said, ‘We got a deal here, pal?’ I said yes and we shook on it.”
“I should have known.” Cydney sucked a breath between her teeth. “The whole time you were making up to me you had this little contingency plan in place.”
“This is not a plan, Cydney. This is a misunderstanding.”
“Did you or did you not say to Aldo, ‘We got a plan here, pal?’ “
“I did, yes, but that’s not what I—”
“I’ve heard enough,” she cut him off, and spun toward the stairs.
“Cydney, wait!” Gus called, bounding up the steps behind her.
She beat him to the gallery by two strides and bolted down the hall. Gus had to run to catch her. When he reached for her arm she spun around and stepped on his unbandaged broken toe.
“Yow!” He grabbed his foot and fell against the wall.
“I warned you. I told you if you did one more thing to screw up this wedding—”
“I’m not an idiot, Cydney. I confessed the Grand Plan
to your mother. You can’t possibly believe I did this on purpose.”
“I don’t know what I believe.” She ruffled a shaky hand through her hair, tears clinging to her eyelashes. “Just when I think I can trust you, I turn around and it looks like you’re up to no good again.”
“I admit I dared Aldo.” Gus pushed off the wall, his toe throbbing. “But I did it after breakfast, before I swore off plotting and scheming.”
“You told me you gave up the Grand Plan before breakfast. You said you meant to delete it then, but you dared Aldo after breakfast.”
“Aldo and Bebe can’t plan their way out of a paper bag. That’s the point I was trying to make—which they proved by buying gorilla masks and a hundred and twenty-five pumpkins—and I was angry. Bebe was hateful to you when you came into the kitchen.”
“I see.” She jammed her arms together. “You were defending me.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Gus agreed swiftly. “I was defending you.”
“So I’d sleep with you.”
“Yes. I mean no. I mean—”
“Go away,” she said disgustedly, and spun toward her room.
“C’mon, Cydney.” Gus hobbled after her. “Gimme a chance.”
“I gave you a chance yesterday.” She turned around in her bedroom doorway. “And today you’re lying to me again.”
“I’m telling the truth and I’m trying to explain,” Gus said, taking a step toward her. “If you’d just listen—”
She back-stepped into the room and slammed the door. He plowed into it, saw stars and staggered backwards, stumbled and fell flat on his ass in his own hallway, his hands cupped over his throbbing nose.
Cydney opened the door and looked at him. “Are you all right?”
Gus lowered his hands and gingerly worked his nose up and down and from side to side. “I think so.”
“You’re bleeding,” she said, nonplussed. “Go get an ice bag.”
Then she shut the door and locked it.
chapter
twenty
So far, Cydney thought dismally, her acquaintance with Angus Munroe read like an episode of ER. He’d suffered a concussion, a cracked nose, a sprained ankle and a broken toe all more or less at her hands, and still he wanted to sleep with her.
Well, he’d wanted to until she slammed the door in his face. He might not now, but she hadn’t hung around to find out. She’d dashed a note, grabbed her purse and her keys and ran for the Jeep while he was in the kitchen with Aldo and Bebe, letting them pack his nose in ice.
It wasn’t in Cydney’s nature to run, but she didn’t know what else to do but disappear before her mother came back and strung her up in the great room by the orange icicle lights for giving the shopping list to Bebe. The only good thing about that scenario was they wouldn’t have to cut her down— they could just leave her swinging from the ceiling beams as part of the decorations.
She remembered most of Gus’ directions and found her way to Branson with only a half-dozen or so wrong turns. She filled the Jeep with gas and ran it through an automatic car wash to scrub the bug splats off the headlights. Then she went shopping. In all the hubbub of designing and mailing the invitations, she’d forgotten to pack something to wear to the wedding.
She found a mall built around a brick courtyard and spent the morning looking for a dress that would go with the paper bag she planned to wear over her head if Georgette couldn’t talk Bebe out of a Halloween wedding. She wasn’t hungry, but bought a cheeseburger and hot chocolate for lunch and took them outside to the courtyard where red-gold Bradford pear trees grew inside protective wrought-iron collars.
It was chilly enough to raise gooseflesh, even with the black wool blazer she’d grabbed out of her suitcase and tugged over her sweater, but she plunked down anyway at a black mesh table. The cheeseburger tasted funny, but Cydney ate it. She’d blown her chance to make love with Gus, so who cared if she caught pneumonia or ptomaine?
The stiff breeze chasing dead leaves around her feet reminded her of the maple tree in her backyard and the wicket. That damned croquet wicket, the doomed beginning to this whole debacle.
She shouldn’t have run out of Gus’ house. She should’ve followed her instincts and never set foot in it. Why had she slammed the door in his face? Wasn’t dropping a rock on his foot and smacking him upside the head when he’d tried to kiss her enough? How was she going to face him? What was she going to say to him when she got back to Tall Pines?
Maybe you won’t have to say anything, her little voice suggested. If your mother finds out he dared Aldo and Bebe to plan the wedding, she might string him up by the orange icicle lights.
Cydney made a face and gave up on the cheeseburger. More than likely, Gus had given up on her. She’d gone way beyond overreacting to what he’d said to Aldo. She realized that now and she wasn’t angry anymore—well, not much—but she was mightily confused.
Thursday night Gus thought she was the nicest person he’d ever met. Yesterday morning he’d suggested they be lovers. What step had she missed in that evolution? And why did it seem so suspicious?
Was it her insecurities that made her think he must be up to something because he couldn’t possibly just want her? Boy, that didn’t paint a happy picture of her inner landscape.
“It’s too good to be true,” Cydney said out loud. “That’s what’s wrong with it. That’s what makes it suspect.”
She simply wasn’t used to too good to be true. She was used to Wendell Pickering being the best offer she’d had since the last time Gwen held a press conference to tell the world she was getting married.
Cydney sighed and finished her hot chocolate, stuffed the half-eaten cheeseburger in her empty cup, threw it away and headed for the Jeep. The map she’d picked up at the gas station said there were two factory outlet malls five miles off Highway 76, the main drag parking lot through town. Five miles and twenty minutes in gridlock, but she got there, found a sale on sweaters and shoes and a lovely peach-colored satin suit with a tea-length skirt that would go nicely with her paper bag.
It was pushing four when Cydney left the mall. The sky had turned gray with low-slung clouds. The wind was so strong it blew her across the parking lot and so cold it made her nose run. She turned the Jeep’s heater on, blew her nose and headed back to Highway 76.
As she inched along in traffic, past the motels, music halls and strip malls crowding both sides of the road, she bent her arm on the door, spread her fingers on her temple and yawned. She felt achy from being up half the night and a headache from lack of sleep pulsed behind her eyes. Snapshots of Gus flickered through her mind, the lush hair on his chest, the long, gorgeous length of him in those purple silk boxers.
In her dreams he was kind, thoughtful and considerate. In person he was rude, arrogant and selfish. That was the problem—her stupid fantasies. She’d expected perfection and Gus wasn’t perfect. He was human. Of course he seemed rude and arrogant and selfish. Of course he kept disappointing her. He’d keep on disappointing her until she snapped out of her dream world and accepted him as is, like a used car with no warranty. If it has tires or testicles, Gwen had told her once, it’s going to give you trouble.
Cydney was tired of dreams. She wanted reality, wanted to feel Gus in her arms again, the sheer male weight of him on top of her. It wasn’t all of her dream. He didn’t want to marry anyone, so there’d be no “I love you,” and no Rhett Butler sweep up the stairs, but part of a dream was better than none, wasn’t it?
You sure about that? her little voice asked.
“No,” Cydney admitted mournfully. “I’m not sure about anything.”
She thought she remembered where Gus told her to turn to take the shortcut, but an hour later she was lost. Well, wasn’t this the perfect end to the perfect day? She’d found her way out of Tall Pines but couldn’t find her way out of Branson. Cydney pulled into a scenic overlook cut into the side of a tree-covered, autumn-flamed mountain and spread the map over the steering wheel.
Tall Pines lay west of Branson. That much she knew. What she didn’t know was how she’d ended up here, on the east side of town with the sun slicing through the overcast to set in a tangerine blaze across the windshield. The wind buffeted the Jeep on its springs and seeped past the doors, cold enough to make her shiver. Three times she’d tried to get out of town going west and ended up making a giant loop. She didn’t see much point trying again and reached for her cell phone.
Cydney dialed her mother and got the out of area recording. Bebe’s cell phone dumped her into voice mail. She left a message—noting the time, 5:20—and sat huddled in the Jeep, running the engine every few minutes to keep warm. At six o’clock it started to snow, a swirl of tiny flakes skittering across the windshield. At 6:10 Cydney’s nose started to run again. She gave up and dialed the number at Tall Pines Gus had faxed to her mother and Georgette had insisted she program into her phone before they’d left Kansas City.
He answered on the second ring with a curt, “Hello?”
Cydney opened her mouth, ready to admit defeat and ask for directions. Then Gus snapped, “Hel-lo?” and the memory of him sitting on the side of her bed in his purple silk boxers, wagging his eyebrows and saying, “Lust will find a way,” seared through her heart. She punched end and tossed the phone into the passenger seat.
“If lust can find a way,” she said grimly, “so can I.”
As she started the engine and reached for the gearshift, her cell phone rang. At last, she thought, Bebe, and snatched it up. “Hello?”
“Why did you call and hang up?” It was Gus. “Where are you?”
Damn Caller I.D. “I have absolutely no idea where I am. Someplace east of Branson, parked in a scenic overlook.”
“Stay put. I’ll come and find you.”
“No, don’t. Just tell me—”
The connection went dead. Cydney redialed but the line just rang and rang. Terrific. She sighed, turned on the heater and folded her arms to wait. The longer she waited the bigger the snowflakes got—dime-size, quarter-size—and the more she worried about Gus. The Jeep had four-wheel drive. His Jaguar looked like a skateboard.
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