A Christmas Bride

by Hope Ramsay

  “When I hear the words ‘advisory committee,’ I know my checkbook’s going to be involved somehow. I guess it’s official. You’re running for Congress, huh?”

  David nodded. “Yeah, I am. But I’m sure you didn’t swing by this morning just to tell me you wanted to be on my advisory committee.”

  “Well, if you want to know, I’m here about the wedding. I need your help with it.”

  “What?”

  Jeff dropped his leg so he could lean forward in an aggressive posture. “Neither Melissa nor I like the idea of turning our wedding into some kind of big, political gala. I’m not running for Congress, and I don’t see why we have to accommodate your career at our wedding.”

  “Oh boy,” Heather muttered. “You really don’t know how it works, do you?”

  “How what works?” Jeff turned toward Heather.

  “How the family works. Every event is an opportunity for political maneuvering. Sometimes it’s a campaign. Sometimes it’s Dad trying to work a compromise on a piece of legislation. Don’t underestimate how much of what happens in Washington occurs at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and intimate dinner parties. In fact, if more legislators socialized at events like that, there’d be a whole lot less gridlock in Washington.”

  “Well, this is not Washington, and none of that is going to happen at my wedding. I’d like to do this the nice way, by talking things through and coming together with a compromise.”

  “What do you want?” David asked.

  “I want you to tell your mother to back off and let Melissa plan her own wedding.”

  “Mother isn’t the only one planning this wedding,” Heather said in a sharp, angry tone. “Your mother is also involved.”

  “I’ll deal with my mother. She’ll see reason. Aunt Pam is the problem. I need to make her understand that we are not ever going to agree to a guest list with three hundred people, half of whom are there because you guys want to hit them up for campaign contributions.”

  “The invitations are going out tomorrow or the next day,” Heather said. “The venue has been booked. The dresses have been bought. Everything has been planned down to the smallest detail. If this was a problem, you should have raised your concerns way earlier.”

  “Melissa did raise her concerns, and Aunt Pam brushed them aside the way she always does when she gets on a roll.” Jeff’s voice rose in volume. “So I would be obliged if you would tell your mother not to send those invitations. If she does, it will be a huge embarrassment. Melissa and I are now working on alternate wedding plans.”

  “Oh my God, please don’t say you’re going to elope,” Heather said. “That could cause a major family meltdown.”

  “Eloping is not out of the question at this point, especially if Melissa can’t have the wedding she wants.”

  “What on earth does she want that she’s not getting?” David asked, stepping in before Heather and Jeff came to blows. “I gather the reception is going to be at the Plaza Hotel, and no expense has been spared on anything. If she wants something more, then she’s spoiled.”

  “Spoiled? Melissa?” Jeff’s face turned red. “I don’t think so. She’s no more spoiled than your wife was. Last night—”

  “Keep Shelly out of it. She’s not relevant—”

  “I’m sorry, David, but Shelly is actually very relevant to the conversation. Melissa went out with her girlfriends last night and evidently met up with a woman who was a bridesmaid at your wedding. Someone named Willow, who told Melissa a bunch of horror stories all about how Shelly—”

  “Horror stories? About my wedding? What are you talking about? My wedding was a lovely affair. Shelly looked beautiful in her dress. I’ll never forget the moment I saw her coming down the aisle. There wasn’t anything horrible about my wedding.” David touched his wedding ring. He would remember that day forever, especially when she slipped his wedding ring on his finger after he made his vows. That vow meant everything to him, even now after her death. He missed her, body and soul.

  “I’m sorry, David, that was unartfully said,” Jeff said. “I’m not saying that you and Shelly had a bad marriage. I’m saying that there were issues with the wedding. And I’m not surprised that you are unaware of them. Let’s face it; we’re guys. We don’t care about weddings. But Melissa cares a lot. When she heard how Shelly cried the night before her wedding, it had a huge impact. Melissa came back from her night out with the girls determined to either elope or plan a small wedding here in Shenandoah Falls.”

  “My wife did not cry over our wedding. That’s a lie.” David’s chest tightened, and it was all he could do not to jump up and punch Jeff in the face. Shelly had been beautiful and radiant and happy on her wedding day. That was a memory he held sacred.

  “Um,” Heather said, “she sort of did cry, David.”

  “What? Impossible. She was so happy that day.”

  “I think she was happy on the day of the wedding. But the night before, she and Willow Petersen got sloppy drunk, and both of them ended up bawling. Shelly kept saying that she was homesick and how much she regretted the fact that you weren’t having your wedding at her parents’ inn.”

  David stared at his sister while anger and regret churned in his stomach. How dare Willow Petersen tell stories like this around town. How dare she.

  “Look, David,” Jeff said, “I didn’t come here to pick a fight or to upset you. I came here for help. And you know darn well it’s not easy for me to ask help from the Lyndon side of the family. I need Aunt Pam to back off. And I need one other favor.”

  “What?” David spat the word.

  “Melissa is planning a wedding here in town. We’d have the ceremony at Grace Presbyterian on December nineteenth, but there isn’t any place in town to have the reception. All the acceptable places have been booked, even the tasting room at Bella Vista Vineyards. So Melissa thought that it would be nice to have the reception at Eagle Hill Manor.”

  “What? No. The inn is closed for business.”

  “You don’t have to reopen the inn to host our reception. You could just host the reception there. It would solve a big problem. Otherwise we’d have to have the reception in Winchester or in some hotel in Tysons Corner, and Melissa doesn’t want to do that.”

  “Sorry. The inn is going on the market this week or next. And quite honestly, it needs repairs. It’s not an acceptable place for a wedding reception.”

  “I’d be happy to pay for the repairs,” Jeff said. “And that might even improve the selling price. Come on, David, work with me here.”

  “You’re asking the impossible. If you want my advice, I suggest you save yourself a lot of trouble and elope.”

  Heather almost gasped. “David, you don’t mean that.”

  “I do.” He stood up, the anger still churning in his gut, his throat so constricted he could hardly breathe. “Now, if you don’t mind, Heather and I have work to do.”

  Jeff stood too. “Okay, I’ll tell Melissa precisely what your views are on this subject.”

  David met his cousin’s stare. “You do that.”

  * * *

  Serenity Farm, where Willow had grown up, sat on twenty acres of land west of the Shenandoah River. The one-hundred-year-old farmhouse had plenty of character, if you called scraped, creaky floors, an avocado-green kitchen, and a wraparound porch with a few missing balusters charming.

  It was a far cry from the sleek, modern apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where Willow had been living up until a week ago. Moving back to the second-story dormer bedroom had seriously maimed Willow’s self-confidence.

  Even though her current situation was the direct result of doing the right thing, her fall from grace would have been easier to take if she hadn’t been so blindly in love with Corbin. He’d been her lover and her friend and her mentor. She’d even believed that one day she might become his wife.

  But once she’d discovered the cover-up, the only way to keep Corbin would have been to shut her mouth and pretend nothing had ha
ppened. She couldn’t do that.

  So here she was earning her keep by shoveling alpaca poop in the old barn.

  Thankfully there were only two alpacas—Bogey and Bacall—the breeding pair that in five years’ time had yet to conceive any babies.

  When she finished her early-morning chores, she headed back to the farmhouse, where she found Mom in the dining room that served as her office. Willow couldn’t remember a time when the dining table hadn’t been piled high with papers relating to Linda’s various business interests. In addition to owning the Jaybird Café, Mom also provided wool to several spinners in the area and produced herbal soaps that were sold at gift shops from Alexandria to Winchester.

  Linda Petersen looked as if she’d stepped right out of the 1960s. She was wearing a blue tie-dye T-shirt and a pair of jeans with holes in both knees. Her gray hair spilled out of the ponytail holder at the top of her head in a mess of unruly curls, while a pair of long feather earrings brushed her shoulders.

  “Hey, Will,” she said as Willow poked her head into the dining room after pouring herself a mug of coffee from the big urn in the kitchen. “You got some free time? I could use some help.”

  “What are you doing?” Willow asked after taking a big gulp of the strong brew her mother made. Thank God coffee was on the approved list for vegans.

  “I’m painting signs,” Mom said.

  Of course she was. Painting protest signs was what Mom did when she wasn’t tending livestock or making soap or booking musical acts for the Jaybird.

  “What corporation are you protesting today?” Willow asked.

  “They want to open up a Holy Cow restaurant downtown.”

  “Mom, I know you’re a militant vegan, but the rest of the human race likes hamburgers. And Holy Cow’s burgers are made with one-hundred-percent kosher beef. They only use animals that are humanely treated.”

  “Humanely? They still slaughter them.” Mom put the finishing touches on her sign. It read, KEEP THE COW OUT OF OUR TOWN.

  Mom scrunched up her face before speaking again. “What do you think about ‘There’s nothing holy about Cow’?” She paused, then shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. That one will offend people who are Hindus. How about, ‘Stop the unholy Cow alliance’ instead?”

  Willow refrained from pointing out that the population of Hindus in Jefferson County was likely to be minuscule. Instead she said, “What’s the beef?”

  Mom chuckled. “This has nothing to do with my choice to go meat-free. This is about zoning.”

  “Zoning?”

  “Yup. We need to convince the Town Council to approve a zoning change that will keep chain stores from opening on Liberty Avenue. They’re having a meeting today at two o’clock, and I’ve organized a protest. I need four or five signs for my volunteers to wave around.”

  “What’s wrong with chain stores?”

  Mom shook her head and glanced heavenward before she gave Willow one of her you’re-hopeless looks. “I know you never saw a huge corporation you didn’t love, but seriously, we have a problem here. Developers are slapping up tract houses everywhere, and we’re becoming a bedroom suburb of both Winchester and DC. The local merchants are being priced out of their Liberty Avenue storefronts, and the big chain stores are moving in. How would you feel if Gracie’s Diner had to move out and some fast-food joint like Holy Cow moved in?”

  Willow hated to admit it, but Mom had a pretty good argument this time. She loved Gracie’s place almost as much as she loved the Jaybird, which was immune to the escalating rents because Mom had wisely purchased the building thirty-two years ago. Mom might be a throwback to the counterculture, but when it came to business, she was no pushover.

  “So you want to help?” Mom asked again.

  “Okay.” It wasn’t as if Willow had anything else on her agenda for the day, except finding a notary public for some legal papers her attorney needed her to sign.

  Mom looked up with a startled expression. “Really?”

  Willow shrugged. “Sure.”

  “You want to help us picket the zoning board meeting?”

  Mom’s tone was so hopeful that Willow hated to disappoint. But painting signs was one thing; showing up at a protest was quite another. Restero’s PR machine was working overtime, creating the impression that Willow was a perpetual troublemaker. It would be better to stay far, far away from any of Mom’s various causes.

  “I’m the last person you want on the picket line,” Willow said as she picked up a paintbrush.

  “Why? Because you’ve gotten a reputation for standing up to big corporations? Baby girl, I’ve never been prouder of you than I am right now. You’re my hero.”

  Willow didn’t feel like a hero. Restero had yet to admit any wrongdoing. And discovering that she’d been taken in by Corbin had left her unsure about herself. How could she have given her heart to a man with no conscience at all, and why had she stayed with him for so long, refusing to see the truth?

  “Yeah, well, I’ll be a hero when the government decides to bring Restero to justice for Medicare fraud. Until then, I’m exactly what the Restero PR department says I am—a money-grubbing troublemaker with anger-management issues, which is only to be expected because I’m the bastard child of the notorious Lucas Kuhn, the late, great lead singer for Twisted Fusion.”

  Mom put her paintbrush on the can of paint. “Are we going to have that argument again?”

  “It’s not an argument. It’s the truth. And even though my parentage is irrelevant to the fraud Restero committed, Corbin and his hatchet men have decided that their best defense is to challenge my credibility. And what better way to suggest I’m nuts than by telling the world that my mother was a groupie without morals and my dad was a druggie rocker who killed himself? God, Mom, I’m so sorry I ever told Corbin about Dad.”

  Tears gathered in Mom’s eyes. “Baby girl, none of this is your fault. If Lucas were alive today, he would be just as proud of you as I am.”

  Through the years, Mom had insisted that the legendary Lucas Kuhn had intended to marry her. And given the fact that Kuhn’s heirs had reached a monetary settlement with her, maybe it was true. But it could just as easily have been a payoff for Mom keeping her mouth shut about Willow.

  Either way, the money from Kuhn’s estate had allowed Mom to buy the Jaybird and Serenity Farm. So in a way Willow’s father had provided for her, which was more than Juni’s father had ever done. Of course, no one knew who had fathered Juni, and Mom had never volunteered that information. It was entirely possible that she didn’t know the answer to that question. Mom had always been a big fan of free love.

  “Let’s change the subject, okay?” Willow said. “I understand your point of view about Holy Cow, but I’m not going to help you protest. I need to get some papers notarized, and then I need to start my job search.” Willow kneeled in front of a piece of poster board and dipped her brush in the bright red paint.

  “Why do you want to work for the man?” Mom asked as she went back to painting.

  “What do you mean? I need a job.”

  “No, you don’t need a job. You need an income. There’s a big difference. I’ve supported myself most of my life, and I never did it working for anyone but myself.”

  Willow turned to stare at her mother. Why had Willow never seen this truth? Mom may not have gone to Wharton, but she’d been an entrepreneur all her life.

  “You think I should start a business?”

  “Yeah, I do. Isn’t that why you went to grad school? To learn how to do that sort of stuff?”

  “You and Juni have been talking, haven’t you?”

  “Maybe.” Mom stepped back to admire her handiwork. The letters on her sign were kind of crooked, but they made their point. Mom spoke again without making eye contact. “Don’t let Corbin defeat you, baby girl. You’re stronger than he is. And besides, I taught both of my girls how to stand up for themselves. Neither of you needs a man in your life.”

  Willow agreed with
that. The one man she’d allowed herself to love had destroyed her. She wasn’t going there again.

  “What do you think about ‘Down with the Cow’?” Willow asked, her paintbrush poised.

  “Go for it, babe.”

  Willow started painting the slogan all the while thinking that what she really wanted was a huge sign that said DOWN WITH RESTERO AND ITS DICK OF A CEO, CORBIN MARTINSON.

  Chapter 4

  Right after lunch, Mom went off to protest at the zoning hearing, and Willow drove herself to town intent on finding a notary public for her legal papers. She parked in the lot near the courthouse square, which was ringed with an assortment of county government offices and law firms. The biggest of these was a historic brick building in the Georgian style that sat back from South Third Street in a vest-pocket park dominated by a couple of hundred-year-old oaks. The trees were bare now, but in the summer they would provide a lot of shade for government workers who wanted to spend their lunch hour picnicking on the lawn.

  A group of workers was busy decorating the building’s facade. Pine roping had been wrapped around the two columns that held up the old-fashioned portico, and mixed-green wreaths with red bows were being hung on the oak doors. The decorations weren’t particularly splashy or glittery like the ones that graced the lobby of Restero’s New York headquarters building every year.

  But they were pretty. And the contrast between this beautiful greenery and the tinsel that was annually draped all over New York startled Willow. She’d lived for so many years in the hustle and bustle of New York City that she’d come to expect glitz and glitter. And yet now that she was back in Shenandoah Falls, she didn’t miss any of that shiny Christmas hype. She found herself smiling, the holiday spirit infusing her mood.

  She was almost to the building’s front doors when David Lyndon came hurtling through them, almost knocking one of the workmen off his ladder. He didn’t stop to say he was sorry. He just marched up to Willow with a frown on his forehead that looked like a thundercloud ready to storm. He wasn’t wearing a suit jacket or an overcoat, just a pale blue dress shirt and a red-and-blue-striped tie. He managed to look both formal and formidable in spite of their absence. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.