by Jane Graves
John turned, and his mouth fell open.
“It’s pink,” she said. “My favorite color. And it was on sale. Seven-ninety-nine. Hell of a bargain.”
He stared at her for a good ten seconds, his mouth slowly closing again.
“Beautiful,” he murmured.
“You said before you thought it was ugly.”
“I’m not talking about the nightgown. Come here.”
Feeling a shiver of delight, Darcy walked across the living room, and John pulled her onto his lap. He slid his hand beneath the feathers and stroked her thigh, leaning in to kiss her neck. Then he stopped suddenly, his hand tightening against her leg.
“Wait a minute. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“What’s that?”
He winced a little, as if he was afraid to say the words. “Who was the first man to walk on the moon?”
Darcy drew back. “You don’t know?”
“Of course I know. Do you?”
“Sure. Neil Armstrong.”
He let out a long sigh. “Thank God.”
“What has that got to do with—”
“Never mind.”
But as he pulled her down for another kiss, Pepé jumped up on the sofa and stuck his nose under John’s arm.
“What’s the matter, Killer? Is your mom getting all the attention?”
John scooped him up and plopped him into Darcy’s lap. Darcy lay her head on John’s shoulder, stroking Pepé’s ears and sighing with contentment.
“I read a romance novel once where the heroine fell in love with a man with no money,” she said.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. She threw away her inheritance to marry him, only to find out he was a prince in disguise who had millions of dollars.”
“Hmm. Lucky woman.”
“Uh . . . I don’t suppose . . .”
“Nope.”
Darcy sighed dramatically. “Well, I guess this means I have to settle for love instead of money.”
She smiled furtively and snuggled closer to John, unable to believe she’d gotten halfway through life before she finally figured out that this was what life was all about.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jane Graves began writing stories at the age of five, and she hasn’t stopped since. She’s a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, where she earned a B.A. in Journalism in the Professional Writing program. The author of fifteen novels, Jane is a six-time finalist for Romance Writers of America’s Rita Award, the industry’s highest honor, and is the recipient of two National Readers’ Choice Awards, the Booksellers’ Best Award, and the Golden Quill. She lives in Texas with her daughter and her husband of twenty-five years.
You can visit Jane’s website at www.janegraves.com, or write to her at [email protected]. She’d love to hear from you!
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Tall Tales and Wedding Veils
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Chapter 1
They were the ugliest bridesmaid dresses Heather Montgomery had ever seen, and she’d seen her share of them. When you had a family that could fill Texas Stadium, somebody was always getting married, and it was family law that cousins asked cousins to be bridesmaids, even if it meant blood relatives had to stand in line behind five of the bride’s sorority sisters.
This time around it was Heather’s cousin Regina tying the knot, and she’d chosen these dresses for one reason only: her high-priced wedding planner had convinced her they were the height of fashion. To Heather they simply looked ridiculous.
“Regina!” squealed Bridesmaid Number One, as she fanned out one of the six petticoated, pouffy-sleeved, waist-hugging creations. “They’re fabulous!”
Two and Three voiced similar opinions, while Four and Five stroked the satin reverently, making breathy little noises of approval. Heather had given up trying to remember five names all ending in “i”—Cami, Taci, Tami, whatever—and which blond woman belonged to each one. In the end, she’d simply assigned them numbers according to hair length.
In the wake of all the oohs and ahhs, Heather traded furtive eye-rolls with her mother. Barbara Montgomery had come along on this dress-fitting excursion, even though she didn’t particularly like her sister or her niece. She was there because family weddings always stirred things up, and if she stayed in the thick of things she was sure to be around when the pandemonium began. The whole family thrived on chaos in a way that boggled Heather’s mind. Given her own preference for a calm, tidy, organized life, sometimes she wondered if the stork had taken a wrong turn twenty-nine years ago and dumped her down the wrong chimney.
“Oh, yes,” Barbara said. “The dresses are simply adorable. Don’t you think they’re adorable, Heather?”
Was Heather the only one who heard the sarcasm oozing through her mother’s voice?
“Yes,” she said, sounding almost as Stepford-like as her mother. “Adorable.”
“Of course they’re adorable,” Aunt Bev said, as she fluffed the skirt on Three’s dress. “They’re by Jorge.”
“Well, pink must be Jorge’s signature color,” Heather said. “I mean, look at how much of it he used here.”
“They’re not pink,” Regina said, with a toss of her head that sent a shudder through the mountain of lace attached to it. “They’re salmon. It’s all the rage this season.” She fluttered her hands. “Go ahead, girls. Try them on.”
Heather grabbed her dress, went to a dressing room, and stuffed herself into it. The sleeves drooped to her elbows, at least six inches of hem dragged the ground, and it fit so snugly around her waist that breathing was a chore.
She pulled back the curtain. One through Five had morphed into gushy, grinning quintuplets with perfectly toned abs that didn’t make the slightest bulges in the waistlines of their perfectly hideous dresses. It was like watching models on a Parisian runway wearing ridiculous clothes, yet for some reason, nobody laughed.
The seamstress smiled as she surveyed the perfect members of the wedding party. Then she zeroed in on Heather.
“Hmm,” she said, running her hand over the waist of Heather’s dress and shaking her head. “It’s a little tight.”
Heather sighed. “I told Regina to get a fourteen, just in case. I knew it would have to be taken in, but—”
“A fourteen?” Regina said, blinking innocently. “I’m sorry, Heather. I swore you said size twelve.”
There wasn’t a damned thing wrong with Regina’s hearing. It was just Regina’s way of coercing her cousin into a smaller size so she wouldn’t have five women walking down the aisle who were pencil-thin followed by one who looked like a gum eraser. So what if Heather wouldn’t be able to breathe? As long as enough oxygen went to her brain that she stayed upright during the ceremony, that was all that mattered to Regina.
“I can let it out a little,” the seamstress said. “But only a little. There’s not much seam allowance.”
“Can’t you order the fourteen?” Heather asked.
“Too short notice.”
“The wedding’s not for a month,” Regina said. “I’m sure you can drop a size by then.”
Drop a size in a month? When she hadn’t been able to drop a size in the past ten years?
“Try the Hollywood Watermelon Diet,” Four said with a vacuous smile. “I once lost six pounds in a weekend on that one.”
Great. Not only did Heather have to be in a wedding she was going to hate, she was going to have to starve herself for the privilege. As the seamstress knelt down to mark the hem of her dress, Heather wondered how many celery sticks she’d have to eat in the next month so she wouldn’t look like ten pounds of potatoes in a five-pound sack.
“So, Heather,” Aunt Bev said. “Are you seeing anyone right now?”
The eternal question. One whose answer never seemed to change. “No, Aunt Bev. Nob
ody right now.”
“What a shame. But don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll meet Mr. Right very soon.”
The subtext was so thick Heather could barely wade through it, and all of it was directed squarely at her mother. My Regina’s getting married and your Heather isn’t even dating anyone.
“Actually, Heather is concentrating on her career right now,” Barbara said. “A lot of young women are waiting until their thirties to marry.”
“Is that what all the women’s magazines are saying?” Aunt Bev said, looking befuddled. “If so, I’m afraid I wouldn’t know about it. It’s all I can do to get through every issue of Modern Bride.”
“What they’re saying,” Barbara said, “is that some women choose to be successful in their own right before settling down and getting married.”
“And I think Heather is very smart to do that,” Aunt Bev said with an indulgent little smile. “That way if the worst happens and she doesn’t find a man, at least she won’t be struggling for the rest of her life to put food on the table.”
Heather had long since learned to let Aunt Bev’s comments roll right past her. Her mother hadn’t. Heather could almost feel her mother’s brain working, trying to manufacture a comeback, but when it came to sheer bitchiness, she couldn’t hold a candle to Aunt Bev.
Heather took off her dress and put on her clothes again. As the seamstress marked the other bridesmaids’ hems for alteration, Heather sat down on the bench next to her mother.
“Don’t listen to Aunt Bev,” Barbara muttered under her breath. “She’s just jealous that you have a fabulous career while Regina barely made it out of college.”
Truthfully, there was a limit to the fabulousness of a career as a CPA, if it even counted for anything in the first place where her family was concerned. Career women weren’t put on the same pedestal as those who chose matrimony and the mommy track. What was valued the most was the ability to wed, procreate, raise progeny to adulthood, maintain a clean house, and sustain enough of a relationship with your husband that he didn’t leave you for his secretary.
“Why don’t I just tell Regina I don’t want to be in the wedding?” Heather whispered. “She doesn’t want me there in the first place. If I backed out, it would make both of us happy.”
“No. If Regina asked, you have to do it.”
“Angela told her no. Why can’t I?”
“Angela is with the Peace Corps in Uganda.”
“So that’s all I have to do to get out of this? Live in squalor in a foreign country?”
“You’re being unreasonable.”
“What about Carol? She said no, too.”
“You know Carol is having trouble getting her meds straightened out. God only knows how she’d behave the day of the wedding.”
“So if I pop a few Prozac, I’ll become ineligible, too?”
“As if anybody would actually think you’re unbalanced?”
True. Everybody in her family had a reputation for something. Heather’s was being sane.
“If you come up with some story now,” her mother went on, “everybody will think you’re jealous of Regina because she’s getting married and you’re not.”
Heather started to say she didn’t care what her family thought, but she knew her mother did. In front of Aunt Bev, she portrayed her daughter as a high-flying career woman who couldn’t be bothered with something as mundane as marriage. But Heather knew the truth. Her mother didn’t want to say, meet my daughter, the CPA. She wanted to say, “Meet my daughter, her handsome husband, and her four lovely children,” preferably within earshot of Aunt Bev.
Fifteen minutes later, after the fittings were over and they’d suffered through a lecture from Regina on the jewelry they were expected to wear for the wedding, Heather and her mother left the bridal shop. As soon as the door closed behind them, her mother rolled her eyes.
“Could you believe those dresses?” she said. “My sister may have money, but she has no taste. None whatsoever. But it doesn’t matter. You still looked beautiful in that dress, no matter how horrible it was.”
Beautiful? No. Heather was nothing if not a realist. She wasn’t beautiful. But that didn’t stop her mother from continually professing it, as if repetition would make it come true. As Heather was growing up, she could only imagine how her mother must have watched and waited for her ugly duckling to blossom into a swan. Instead, Heather had ended up somewhere between a chicken and a cockatiel. She had a headful of corkscrew curls the color of a paper sack that were impossible to tame, a bump on the bridge of her nose she kept swearing she was going to have fixed, and a body polite people called “curvy.” In the past ten years, she’d lost approximately fifty pounds. If only it hadn’t been the same five pounds ten times, she might actually have gained a foothold on being thin.
On the positive side, she had clear skin, blue eyes everyone commented on, and nice white teeth that had never needed braces or fillings. But she’d always felt as if the bad outweighed the good, and if attention from men was any indication, she wasn’t the only one who thought so.
They stopped beside Heather’s car. “You are going on the bridesmaids’ trip tomorrow, aren’t you?” her mother asked.
Heather groaned inwardly. A weekend jaunt to Las Vegas with Regina and her five picture-perfect friends? She couldn’t wait.
“Yeah, Mom. I’m going.”
“Good. Aunt Bev and Uncle Gene are footing the bill. Take advantage of it.” She gave Heather a quick hug. “Do you want to have dinner with your father and me tonight?”
“No, I’m meeting Alison for a quick drink at McMillan’s and then heading home. I need to get ready to go tomorrow. I’ll see you when I get back from Vegas.”
“You have a good time, now,” her mother said, then shrugged nonchalantly. “And who knows? Maybe you’ll meet a nice man.”
There it was again. Heather could say she was going to a gay pride parade, and her mother would still say, maybe you’ll meet a nice man.
Heather hated to burst her mother’s bubble, but for her this trip was going to consist of going to a few nice restaurants, sitting by the pool, catching up on her reading, and watching a lot of men watching five blond bridesmaids instead of watching her.
There was nothing like sitting on a barstool at McMillan’s to put Tony McCaffrey in a good mood. He loved everything about the place—the antique bar with the inset mirrors, the big screen TVs, the polished oak tables, the clacking of pool balls, the beat of the music, the hum of the crowd. When he went to heaven, he imagined God would welcome him inside the Pearly Gates and then escort him to a bar and grill just like this one. Somebody would hand him a beer and a pool cue and surround him with a host of tall, leggy women with halos of blond hair whose only desire was to keep him company in paradise.
As soon as he bought this place, he wouldn’t have to die to go to heaven.
Jodie slid his usual Sam Adams in front of him, then folded her arms on the bar and tossed him a sexy smile. She’d started working there about a month ago, and she was just his kind of woman—quick with a beer, out for a good time, and very nice to look at. Someday soon he intended to do more than just look.
“You’re sure seem to be in a good mood today,” she said. “What’s up?”
He smiled and took a sip of his beer, which tasted even better than usual. “Can’t say just yet. But trust me, sweetheart. This is going to be a red-letter day.”
She grinned. “Can’t wait to hear all about it.”
Tony wished he could spill the news, but he wasn’t going to open his mouth until the deal was final. The only person he’d told about his plans was his boss, John Stark. John ran Lone Star Repossessions, where Tony had worked as an auto repossession agent for the past few years. It was a good fit for his skills and personality. He kept his own hours, the money was good, and when dangerous deadbeats tried to cause trouble, he generally managed to talk his way out of the situation with a smile and a little bit of Texas good-ol’-boy charm. But
when this bar came up for sale, he realized he was destined for bigger things. For once he’d be running his own show rather than being part of someone else’s.
John told him he was sorry to see his best employee leave, but he admired the fact that Tony wanted to go into business for himself. Then he’d pulled a bottle of Scotch out of his desk drawer, poured each of them a drink, and toasted Tony’s future success.
God, that had felt good.
“Got some champagne in the back,” Jodie said. “Is it going to be one of those evenings?”
Tony grinned. “How about you toss a couple of bottles in the fridge? I’ll let you know when it’s time to pop the corks.”
“You got it.”
As Jodie headed for the kitchen, Tony turned on his barstool and looked out over the room. Even though the crowd was a little light at five o’clock, he knew it would pick up considerably in the next hour. Right now, two guys were drinking beer and playing pool. A young couple was deep in conversation at a table near the door. And Tracy had just sashayed over to set a couple of martinis in front of two women who sat in a booth against the wall.
The women weren’t exactly his type—a little too ordinary looking—but any people who came through the door with money in their pockets looking for a good time were going to be his new favorite customers. He intended to become Mr. Hospitality, courting every one of them with great food, drink specials, and a big, welcoming smile. A neighborhood bar was all about making people feel right at home, and that was exactly what he intended to do.
“Hey, Tony. Let’s talk.”
At the sound of the gravelly voice behind him, Tony turned to see Frank slide into a booth near the bar, his belly bumping the table as he maneuvered his way in. Over the years, he’d consumed mass quantities of the food and alcohol his establishment sold, leaving him with a physique that made him a cardiologist’s dream patient. He grabbed a Marlboro from his front shirt pocket and lit it with a flick of his Bic. If heart disease didn’t eventually get him, lung cancer would, which was probably why he was selling the place. Best to head for retirement now while he was still alive to enjoy it.