Wildflower Wedding

by Becki Willis

  Brash and Madison moved among the crowd already gathered, thanking guests for coming and accepting their well wishes. As the party swelled and more people poured in, Madison suspected several slipped in without an invitation, but since there was plenty of food and drink, she saw no reason to monitor the door. As often in a small community—and particularly in their case, when so much of their lives had been publicized on national television—people assumed it was an event open to the public, and not a private celebration among family and close friends. As long as everyone remained cordial and well behaved, Madison was happy to share her special day with the entire town. She drew the line at radio audiences.

  “Is that Nigel Barrett I see?” Brash murmured in her ear as they stood in the loosely formed receiving line, awaiting the next wave of well-wishers.

  “I do believe it is. He cleans up quite nicely, doesn’t he?”

  “It’s not like the old coot can’t afford a new suit and a haircut. He just chooses to wear those worn-out overalls all the time.”

  “Because in his own words, why throw away a perfectly good pair of pants, when you can simply patch the knee and get another five years out of them?” She spoke through her teeth, smiling to an elderly couple that headed their way. “But is that Collette Erickson he’s talking to?”

  Brash extended his hand to the man who approached. “Good to see you, Merle, Verna. Thanks for coming.”

  By the time the Bishops wandered away, Nigel Barrett took their place.

  “I’m glad you were able to come, Mr. Barrett. Have you gotten a plate yet?” Madison asked as they shook hands.

  “Not yet. Wanted to stop by and give you my wedding present.”

  “I told you a gift wasn’t necessary.”

  “I know. But I figured you’d both appreciate this present over my presence.” He made a point to emphasize the words. As he handed the envelope to Brash, he nodded toward the woman he was recently speaking with. “What’s my nurse doing here?”

  “Your nurse? Oh, you must mean Collette. I had no idea you knew her!”

  “She works at the VA hospital in Waco. Does all my lab work. She’s the only one who knows how to stick a fella without reaming out his veins.”

  Brash worked the certificate free from the envelope and read over it. With a stunned expression on his face, he quickly looked up to stare at the older gentleman.

  “Mr. Barrett. I have no idea what to say. This—This is a very generous gift. Are you sure about this, sir?”

  “I gave it to you, didn’t I?” he asked gruffly. “I reckon I ain’t lost my mind just yet, even if that fool on the other side of me thinks otherwise. I’ll be damned if I give Sanchez a single percent of the rights before I kick the bucket, but you’ve always been fair to me, Brash. Treated my land with respect and took care of it better than I ever did. Even when the two of you were young, your daddies and granddaddies made sure the place was cleaned up after those dad-blamed pasture parties you kids favored. And don’t think I ain’t seen you down there recently, cleaning up behind the new crop of kids. I figure I can at least do right by you and give you the rest of the mineral rights.”

  Madison’s eyes widened in surprise. “Are you serious? You’re giving us full mineral rights to the land?”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself, missy. I’m just giving you half for now. You’ll have to wait on the other half till I keel over, just like the deed allows.”

  Brash extended his hand for a hearty handshake. “Thank you, sir. This is a very generous gift. We appreciate your generosity.”

  “Well, so far, your little bride ain’t found any of my natural relatives, and I’m not about to leave it all to the government. I hear they’re talking about leasing land again, so I figure you can start a little nest egg for your new family if they do.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to hang on to these until…well, until you release the other half?” Madison stumbled over a polite way to say, ‘until you die.’

  “Go ahead and say it. We’re all thinking it, anyway. Yeah, I could hang on to the rights till I die and just award you the full one hundred percent upon my death, but what do I need with more money? You have teenagers. You can put it to better use than I can.”

  Overcome with the crotchety old man’s generosity, Madison threw her arms around him and surprised him with a hug. “Thank you, Mr. Barrett! What a sweet and generous thing to do!”

  He muttered blubbering noises about her foolishness and making too much of a simple gesture, but she knew he was pleased. After another round of handshakes—and some unsolicited advice from Nigel about how Brash should clear out the underbrush along the fence line between them—the older man shuffled off toward the buffet line.

  “I can’t believe that just happened,” Brash murmured, tucking the envelope into his pocket for safekeeping.

  “Full mineral rights on two hundred acres of land? That’s good, right?” Madison asked, just to be certain.

  “That’s excellent. Almost unheard of these days.”

  “That was incredibly generous of him,” Madison murmured. “And very surprising! To be honest, I wasn’t sure he even liked me.” She looked over her shoulder, pleased to see that Collette had joined the old man in line and was making small talk with him.

  “What’s not to like? I, for one, am crazy over you.” Brash pulled her to him for a long, thorough kiss.

  “Okay, you two, break it up.” Blake appeared in front of them, carrying a heaping plate of crawfish.

  “That’s all you’re eating? Just crawfish?” his mother asked. That hardly sounded like her son, the walking creature she lovingly called her bottomless pit.

  “Oh, no,” the lanky teen assured her. “My first two plates were a mix of everything, the third plate was all brisket, and this one is all crawfish. I’ll base my fifth plate on whichever one I liked best.”

  “Please leave enough for our guests, son,” Brash said, only half-kidding.

  “And remember there’s cake,” Madison pitched in. “Genny made the wedding cake, so you know it’s going to be delicious.” Having studied under a pastry chef in Paris, Genny’s most magnificent specialties were cakes and pastries.

  “No offense, Mom, but I sure do miss Aunt Genny living with us and doing the cooking. Too bad she and Cutter didn’t just move into the Big House with us. There’s plenty of room.” A slight sulk infused his words.

  “No offense taken on my part, but you can’t blame them for wanting their own home. Especially after Cutter went to all the trouble of remodeling his grandparents’ old farmhouse.”

  “I guess. She could have at least left some of her recipes.” The teen wasn’t quite through pouting.

  “We both know I would have butchered them,” Madison pointed out. She was a fine cook herself, but no one quite compared to her best friend.

  “Hey, let me polish off this plate, and then let’s cut the cake. It will be a nice break before I go back for another round or two.” The tall blond made a kissing sound in the air before ambling off. “Love you bunches, Mom. You too, old man.”

  Madison shook her head. It never ceased to amaze her how much her son could eat. It took a full moment for his parting words to sink in.

  “Wait. Did he just tell you he loved you?”

  Brash’s eyes weren’t completely dry as he smiled and said in a voice gruff with emotion, “Yeah. Yeah, he did.”

  Tears sprang to Maddy’s eyes, as well. “The gifts just keep on coming, don’t they?” she said in a soft voice.

  “Sure do. And there go two more of the best presents I’ve ever received.” He nodded toward Megan and Bethani as they scurried across the floor with some of their friends, headed toward the dessert table. “When, by the way, do we get to cut our cakes?”

  He craned his head around to survey the bride’s table. A five-tiered cake took center-stage, decorated with yellow candy roses and occasional sprigs of edible wildflowers. “Is it supposed to look like that?” he asked. He sou
nded skeptical.

  “Like what?”

  “Like a skinned cat. It looks like Genny ran out of frosting and spread it too thin.”

  Madison laughed aloud. “It’s called a scraped cake, silly. And yes, it’s supposed to look like that. Besides, think of it this way. We can eat two pieces instead of one, because it doesn’t have all that frosting on it.”

  “Two things come to mind. One, I wonder if our son will leave enough for us to even have a second piece. And two, I may have to ask Genny for the leftover frosting. I can think of a better use for it than smearing it on cake.” The timbre of his deep voice fell, along with his sensual gaze. “Like over your delectable body, for instance.”

  “I would burst into flames right about now,” Madison whispered, “but I melted into a puddle when I heard you call Blake our son.”

  “For better or worse, sweetheart, and for keeps. We’re one big family now.”

  Before he could work in another kiss, someone else came up to offer congratulations, and the moment was put on hold.

  After grabbing a quick plate of their own, the happy couple made their way to the bride’s table for the formal cutting of the cake. Brash made a brief speech, thanking everyone for coming and sharing their special day with them, and Blake, Bethani, and Megan made a communal toast to their parents. After tears were sniffed away and pictures were taken, the five of them stacked one hand upon the other to clumsily slice through the first layer of cake.

  Since it was crudely cut and over-sized, Blake offered to take that piece, and deftly handed his mother a smaller, neater slice. The teen used remarkable restraint, waiting until Madison and Brash fed each other their first bites before digging into his own piece with gusto.

  As Madison encouraged guests to come up and have cake and punch, a ruckus broke out in the rear of the room. She glanced worriedly at Brash, wondering if a wedding crasher caused a scene. It was for that very reason they hadn’t issued an open invitation in the newspaper, the way many couples did.

  To her surprise, it wasn’t a wedding crasher, but two of their invited guests. She watched as Nigel Barrett stood from his chair and all but crawled down Tony Sanchez’s throat. The older man pulled the tablecloth when he moved, so Collette made a grab for his plate before it clattered to the floor. Tony stood with him, shadowing the curmudgeon with his bulky linebacker physique. The two men shouted at one another, anger slurring their words.

  But there was no mistaking their final slung insults, before nearby guests pulled them apart.

  “Over. My. Dead. Body.” Nigel’s words were clearly enunciated.

  “Then do us all a favor and kick the bucket, old man!” Tony bellowed. He shook off a friend’s restraining hold and bolted from the room, leaving an uncomfortable silence in his wake.

  “And with that,” Brash’s deep voice boomed smoothly, “I think it’s time to dance.” He nodded to the bandleader, who quickly scrambled into place. As the bridegroom held out his hand for the first dance with his bride, the opening notes of a tender love ballad floated on the air.

  They were halfway into their dance, slow and sexy and totally absorbed in one another, when another commotion broke into their private little world.

  The sounds vaguely registered in Madison’s love-hazed mind. Coughing. A stifled gag. Rustling. A dull thud. Followed, now, by gasps and a startled cry.

  Each sound broke her slowly out of the fog, until her eyes were wide and frantically searching the room, making certain the sounds hadn’t come from her children. When she located all three of them, laughing in a far corner with friends, her next thought was of her grandmother. Granny Bert and Sticker awaited their turn on the dance floor, their feet impatiently tapping out time with the song.

  As Madison continued to scan the crowd, more people became aware of the strange noises near the dance floor. Reining her focus in, Madison noticed movement at the far table behind them, in the very place the last commotion had taken place. Her first worry was that Tony had returned and taken the argument back up, but she soon saw that wasn’t the case.

  A black coat draped across the table, and Collette stood over it, pumping its lumpy form. “Help!” she squeaked. Her voice gradually increased in volume. “This—This man needs help! I think he’s choking!”

  Allen Wynn turned the coat over, revealing the crumpled form of Nigel Barrett. “He’s not choking,” Allen corrected, his deep voice carrying across the crowded room. “I think he’s dead!”

  For a single moment, time stood still. The band stopped playing mid-note. A hush fell over the huge room. A sole spurt of laughter from the far corner—where the kids hung out, ignorant of what had happened beyond them—twinkled in the air and echoed in the empty chambers of the tall, metal-clad ceiling. Someone sniffed.

  And then everything happened at once, as people leapt over chairs to rush to Nigel’s aid, and as a nervous chatter moved in a wave through the crowd, much like the childhood game of Gossip. Someone whispered the ugly truth to their neighbor, who turned and shared the shocking news with their neighbor, who gasped the words to the person next to them, and so on. Brash spurred into action, leaving his bride alone on the dance floor as, for the second time in less than three weeks, he rushed to the aid of a fallen man.

  Once again, he was too late.

  Asking guests to step back, Madison approached the table with dread. Even without Allen’s blurted words, one look at Nigel’s gray face spoke volumes. The old man was gone.

  She looked around for Collette but saw she had retreated to the shadows of a darkened corner. The all-too-familiar sequence of events had to bring back ugly memories for the new widow.

  Brash and some of the other men worked to lay Nigel’s prone body upon the table. Madison quickly snatched away plates, clearing the space for its solemn load.

  As she pulled away the plate the older man had fallen upon, she was surprised to see a half-eaten shrimp buried within a pile of chopped brisket and folded into a slice of bread. Judging from the shape of the remaining bread, she guessed that the man had taken a large bite of the shrimp-tainted meat. But that didn’t make sense. Nigel himself had told her he was allergic to shellfish.

  While everyone around her worked to lay out his lifeless body, Madison grabbed a napkin and carefully wrapped up the half-eaten fold over. She wasn’t sure of its significance, but a sixth sense told her something wasn’t right.

  No pun intended, but something here was fishy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “What a day.”

  It was late by the time they fell into bed. It was hardly the romantic return they had anticipated.

  Up until the very moment they saw Nigel Barrett’s body slumped over the table, Madison could think of nothing but returning to their bedchambers and familiarizing herself with the fine specimen of her husband’s body. She craved to feel his fingers on her skin again, to feel his quickened breath in her ear once more as they moved as one, finding the wholeness she had never known until him.

  But one look into the lifeless face of their unlikely benefactor, and thoughts such as those had frozen in time. She still felt cold, all these hours later.

  “Come here, Mrs. deCordova,” Brash said, pulling her into his arms and tucking her safely against his chest. “Not exactly what I had planned for tonight, but you’re beside me, and that’s all that matters.”

  “I still can’t believe it, Brash,” she murmured. A single fat tear slid from her cheek and landed on his bare skin. “After that wonderful gesture, gifting us the mineral rights…” She shook her head, trying to arrange the scrambled thoughts in her head. “I just can’t believe it. He was searching for his family, so he wouldn’t die alone. So he could leave behind the legacy of his family’s land. And now he’s gone, just like that.”

  “It’s sad, that’s for certain.”

  “And at our wedding reception, of all places.”

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am, inviting Tony to the wedding. I never imagined… I
thought for one day, the two of them could act like cordial adults.”

  “I can’t believe you may have to arrest your friend for murder,” Madison whispered in a sad voice.

  It held no more regret than his. “I have to at least bring him in for questioning.”

  “You’ve known Tony for how long?”

  “Almost twenty years. We were both drafted to play for the pros, right out of college. When I came home to marry Shannon and turned to coaching, I told him he had a job, if he ever gave up the game himself. Two years later, he was out. I brought him to A&M with me, and later to Baylor.” His fingers trailed absently over her arm, tracing an abstract pattern of anguish and self-imposed guilt. “I’m the one who introduced him to Nigel. I talked him into buying a hundred acres. At the time, it seemed the perfect solution for them both. I never dreamed they would work their way into this ferocious argument of theirs. Or that Nigel would end up dead because of it.”

  “You can’t blame yourself, honey. That was between the two of them and had nothing to do with you. Nigel’s gift tonight proves he never blamed you for any of this.”

  “I know that. And as the third wheel, I tried hard to remain neutral. The fact is, I could see where both of them were coming from. But as the chief of police, I should have put an end to this, long ago.”

  “There’s no law against arguing, Brash. From what I understand, until tonight, that’s all it ever was. A very long-running, heated, emotional argument. Nothing you could put a stop to.”

  “That’s the part I can’t wrap my head around,” he admitted. “Tony is my friend. Why would he wait until tonight of all nights, our wedding night, at our reception, to finally act on their decade-old feud? It just doesn’t make sense.”