Chose the Wrong Guy, Gave Him the Wrong Finger

by Beth Harbison

  “Dottie,” I began.

  She met my eyes. “Trust me, you need this. You need to face your demons and move on.”

  “I already did.”

  She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  I took a steadying breath and reached for the bowl. “At least let me take that into the kitchen for you, it’s crazy for you to try and carry that while you’re hobbling around with a crutch.”

  “Not a problem,” she insisted. “I’ve got to learn to fend for myself, don’t I?”

  Oh, she could fend for herself very well, thank you.

  It was the rest of us who had something to learn.

  “You go on into the parlor, missy. I’ll meet you in there for the measurements and a nice little sip of something, how’s that?”

  “Fine.” I think I sounded sulky. I was afraid I did. But this was really not what I’d signed up for. First, I hadn’t wanted to come back here at all. These were not memories I had to revisit. These were not demons I had to fight. This was not my life anymore.

  And I was going to tell her that. As soon as she came into the parlor, I was going to tell her, like a grown-up person (which I obviously was, but sure didn’t feel like!), that I was uncomfortable with this whole thing and I just wanted to do what I’d come to do and go back to work, and I’d apologize for the inconvenience if she’d been planning on me for dinner, but I thought it would be best for everyone involved if I just went on my way.

  I was thinking all of that with absolute conviction as I entered the parlor and beheld the completely unchanged arrangement of mahogany and chintz. I wouldn’t have realized it until I heard it but even the loud ticking of the mantel clock was familiar, and the framed display of old pistols on the wall, like something from the Wild West. Assuming you didn’t look too closely at the date of the Sunday Post on the desk, this was exactly the same as it had been ten years ago. It was like walking into an old oil painting by an unknown artist.

  “I didn’t think you’d come.”

  This time there was no doubt as to whose voice I was hearing. There wasn’t even any need for thought, my body just reacted. A Scud missile, crashing through the roof and exploding in the middle of our table couldn’t have sent a bigger jolt of adrenaline through me.

  So obviously I wasn’t going to get away with my escape plan. It was time to face the music, even if it was an old song that made me cry every time.

  I turned to face him and heard myself say his name. “Burke.”

  So many emotions rushed through me. Anger and happiness and hate and lust. I don’t want to say love. I didn’t love what that man did to me. I couldn’t love a man who had done that to me. Or, at least, I couldn’t keep loving a man who had done that to me.

  I’d buried that deep inside a long time ago.

  So it was crazy that I should have to remind myself of that now. But looking at him … well, like I said, it wasn’t only the anger that came back to me.

  It wasn’t that he looked exactly the same. There’s a difference between twenty-three and thirty-three for everyone. But of course I would have known him anywhere. If anything, he was hotter now, and that was some feat, given that, at least to the outside world, that had always been his thing—he was gorgeous. A very, very good-looking man.

  His hair was the same gleaming dark of the ebony bookshelves that lined the back wall, and framed his face in the same unruly waves he’d had since he was a kid on the playground at school. Though it was shorter than it was when he was younger, it was the kind of hair that couldn’t really be tamed. His eyes were exactly the same. Sweet. I know that word doesn’t connote “hot,” but, trust me, given the granite strength of the rest of his features, it worked.

  But it was his mouth that always got to me the most—impossible to describe, really, except something about the curve of it was nothing short of adorable when he smiled, yet was as sensuous as any sultry movie star photo.

  It’s not everyone who can pull off cute and hot.

  “I didn’t think you’d fall for Dottie’s trick.”

  I shrugged, making an effort to seem casual. Like my heart wasn’t pounding out of my chest. “Hook, line, and sinker.”

  “Old Quinn was more suspicious of people.”

  My chest tightened. “There was certainly a point at which that became true.”

  He gave a single nod.

  “Anyway, you haven’t even met the real Quinn.”

  He tilted his head and assessed me. “No, I guess I haven’t. Or I never knew her. Depending how you look at it.” He looked me over with those blue eyes, almost detached but with just the smallest hint of a heat I recognized deep in his expression.

  Suddenly I was very aware I was still going commando.

  And I really wished I weren’t.

  “You know, I really don’t want to do this,” I said, a sharper edge to my voice than I would have wished. It gave too much away. He’d know I felt things, and I didn’t want him to know that. “You and I don’t need to have a contentious exchange here. We don’t need to have an exchange of any sort. I’m just here to help your grandmother. I’ll do what I need to do and go, okay?”

  He splayed his arms, a pantomime of concession that he clearly didn’t mean at all. “Absolutely. I’m not here to stop you.” Could I read the edge to his voice as emotion, as I feared he’d read the same in me? Or was he just impatient with me? I couldn’t say. I knew the boy, once. I didn’t know the man.

  “Good heavens, there is tension in here you could cut with a dull butter knife.” Dottie hobbled in, her face knit into an expression of fret. “Burke, are you giving Quinn trouble?”

  He smiled at her and, wow, what that did to my insides. That beautiful, rakish smile. He could have charmed anyone.

  Maybe even me.

  I wasn’t going to let that happen.

  “Of course not, Dottie,” he said.

  Her brow dropped. “Well, you’d best not be. Run along and wash your hands for supper. Quinn and I have some lady business to do in here alone and then we’ll meet you in the dining room.”

  He gave a nod, glanced at me as he passed, and said, “Yes, ma’am, Grandmama, ma’am,” in a singsongy voice. He’d always been playful with her, and even though part of me wanted to punch him in the face, another part was touched at how cute he always was and apparently always would be with her.

  “Find your brother and have him do the same,” she called after him, her brow still furrowed as she watched him leave.

  “Yes, ma’am” came from the hall, like he was still singing the same song.

  She looked at me. “Forget the Eskimos, he could sell ice right on back to God, couldn’t he?”

  Yes, ma’am.

  “I’m sure he’d try, if he thought it would benefit him.” Ooh. That was too snotty. So I added, “Or those he loved. It’s very nice that he and Frank are here to get you ready for your new life.”

  She nodded. “I’m so very lucky to have them.”

  “They were always lucky to have you too, Dottie. What with their mother being gone so much and all.” Their mother hadn’t only been gone “so much,” she’d been gone virtually all the time. After their father died when they were young—something Dottie had always blamed their mother, Adrienne, for on some level—she had spent most of her time gallivanting with various D-list foreign royalty. Dottie’s contention was that she wanted to officially become the princess she always thought she should be—this was still in Princess Diana’s heyday—but instead she ended up basically disappearing into foreign skies.

  I’d always wondered if the truth was something closer to heartbreak than detachment, but I didn’t know the woman—whom I’d heard was on her own pseudo-spiritual journey through the best hotels in the Far East—so I guess I was really only hoping the mother of these boys I’d loved hadn’t been heartless enough to simply jump ship on them.

  Whatever the reasons, Burke and Frank had been lucky to be raised by the
ir grandparents from an early age. It was sad when their grandfather died, but thank goodness that hadn’t sent them back to their mother. They stayed with Dottie alone from the ages of seventeen and eighteen on, which meant they were basically raised by then but had to take on the more manly role of “protector” earlier than most.

  I had to admire them for it, albeit somewhat reluctantly at times.

  “Don’t even mention that woman.” Dottie made a show of shuddering. “I hope she never darkens my door again.”

  “Guess she’s not invited to the wedding, huh?” I gave a laugh, then immediately regretted making light of it. This was a big issue in the family. Huge.

  “Heavens, no.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. “We want this to be the happiest day of your life.” I thought of her first husband. Suddenly everything I was saying sounded wrong. “Or one of them!”

  That seemed to do. “Amen!”

  “So let’s get started.” I got my bag and took out some of the cuts of fabric I’d started for her dress and held them up to her, making marks. It only took a few minutes, but it was important.

  But for those few minutes, I was going to have to endure the rest of whatever this evening was to bring.

  Chapter 10

  Dinner was a catastrophe, of course.

  I was seated right between Burke and Frank.

  Of course.

  No one sat on the opposite side of the table. Just like a sitcom, only on a sitcom it’s done for filming purposes and you don’t usually notice that everyone is sitting on one side of the table in a row, like three weird children in time-out together, but in this case there only seemed to be one possible explanation.

  Dottie was trying to get one of us, or all of us, to “confront your demons and move on.” Having heard her state, more than once, that this was her big philosophy in life, it wasn’t impossible to imagine that was what she had in mind, though it was hard to imagine how she might have thought this could possibly go well.

  There had to be easier ways to throw us all into the deep end.

  In fact, taking us all out on a boat and literally throwing us all into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean would have been easier than this torture of weird silences and seemingly loud sipping. We all had ice water, and there were wineglasses at each of our places as well, along with red and white wine on the table.

  Burke had half a beer, the label torn halfway off, though I recognized it as the same brand he drank all those years ago.

  “So do you all know each other?” Lyle asked, looking bright-eyed and seemingly guileless in our direction. His handsome face was the very picture of innocence. It had been about five minutes since I’d met him, but something about him made me feel like I already knew him. Not that there was a lot to know, it seemed, but then again he might have figured the same about me, idly asking how Burke and I knew each other.

  I thought at first I had to have misheard him. Did we know each other? He didn’t know all about his fiancé’s diabolical plan to heal us? Was that even possible?

  Frank reached for the bottle of red wine, possibly because it was closest to him—he’d hated wine last time I’d seen him—and filled his wineglass, then raised it to me as an offering, but I shook my head, thinking of the drive home and how I hoped it would come very, very soon.

  A silent moment passed and, as is always the case, my politeness kicked in and I filled it. “Yes, we’ve all known each other for a while,” I said, nodding and looking at my empty plate, suddenly wishing it were filled with something—anything—I could shove into my mouth and point to as an excuse for not being able to answer anything else.

  “How?” he asked, looking—I swear this is true—genuinely interested, as if he had no clue.

  Was he an actor? That had been my first thought when I’d seen his picture, that he looked like a cheap old TV actor. Maybe this was part of Dottie’s plan. To have him play dumb to get us to talk.

  But she wasn’t even paying attention to him at the moment, she was issuing instructions to one of her staff members, I guess a maid, in hushed tones.

  “We met in high school,” I said.

  “Were you high school sweethearts?” Lyle persisted. “Not all three of you, of course, that would be odd. But did you date either of these handsome guys, Quinn?”

  “I—I—” I was drowning. This was awful. How could he be asking such pointed questions if he didn’t damn well know the answers?

  Frank shot a look at his brother. It was a look I recognized, his exasperation that Burke wasn’t doing what Frank thought he should be doing. “I’m sure Burke can explain it best.”

  I felt, rather than saw, Burke’s hostility shoot over my head and back at Frank. Then he said, “Quinn and I used to be engaged—”

  “Is that right?” Lyle asked, and he looked so completely surprised that I honestly don’t think even Robert De Niro could have done a more convincing job. “You two?” He swished his index finger at Burke and me and raised a questioning brow.

  “That’s right,” Dottie said.

  “A long time ago,” I said weakly.

  “We made it all the way to the altar,” Burke said, then gave a dry, humorless spike of laughter. “Well, I made it all the way to the altar. Quinn got a little hung up outside with Frank.”

  “Hey, wasn’t my fault,” Frank said. “You’re the one who messed up there.”

  “Everything would have been fine if you hadn’t stepped in.”

  “I don’t think—” I began.

  But I got run over by Frank, whose anger pulsated across me toward Burke, even though his voice remained even. “Sure, if Quinn had wanted to live a lie. Call me crazy, but I thought maybe she should make this huge life decision based on the truth.”

  “Your version of it.”

  “Facts, Burke. There were no versions.”

  “Stop it, both of you!” I said.

  Lyle’s smile didn’t dim, but something in his eyes did. “I don’t follow. What happened? Did you get married?”

  Burke shook his head. “She ended up missing the wedding altogether.”

  My face grew hot.

  “That’s not quite an accurate characterization,” Frank said sharply. He wasn’t about to back down. “Is it, Burke?” It was strangely protective and even more strange that I liked it. I was too old to need a boy to protect me, and it wasn’t a particularly proud moment, but I liked it anyway. Maybe that was because Burke made me feel so vulnerable.

  “I don’t know, brother, that’s how I remember it.” Burke took a generous swig of his beer and set it down hard on the table, making Dottie jump slightly. “I never did get a straight story about what happened out there. How many versions of that story are there?”

  Two that I knew of. My truth and my obfuscation.

  “I notice you didn’t come to find out at the time,” Frank returned hard.

  “I didn’t know where you were. I was waiting for my bride at the altar, which was where we had originally agreed to meet at that particular time.” He shifted his narrowed eyes to me, only for a second, then back to Frank. “Though I was definitely expecting to see my best man”—he let the words die in the air for a split second—“in there too.”

  I shrank in my seat. Did you ever see that episode of The Flintstones where every time Fred gets embarrassed he literally shrinks until he’s, like, two inches tall? That’s how I felt. Like a tiny cartoon Fred Flintstone, between two angry giant cartoon men having an overblown cartoon conversation.

  Meanwhile, Dottie just watched right along with Lyle, not offering a word to the conversation. She’d thrown a match on the gasoline and now was just letting it flame. Though, to be fair, how much could she say? Despite the fact that everyone’s tone seemed civil and no one made a physical move, there was a certain violence in the air that no sane person would want to get into the middle of.

  “I think it’s Quinn who never got the straight story,” Frank countered blithely, lifting his wine to his
lips. He wasn’t easily rattled. “At least not the whole one. Wasn’t that the problem, Quinn?”

  I wished I’d gotten wine. God knew the water wasn’t doing squat to ease my nerves.

  “It was so long ago.…” I looked at Lyle. Despite the fact that he’d started all of this—wittingly or unwittingly—he was the only focus I was comfortable with at this moment. Suddenly he, this stranger, was my only driftwood in the water.

  “I think the problem,” Burke said, “was that she listened to a bunch of b.s. from someone with ulterior motives and instead of talking to me, she hauled her ass out of there vowing to, if I’m not mistaken, cut my balls off if I ever tried to contact her again in what she prayed would be my painfully short life.” He looked back at me. “Have I got that wording right?”

  I cleared my throat. “That does sound familiar, but—”

  At that moment, thank goodness, the swinging door from the kitchen opened, and I allowed myself to be interrupted by the maid Dottie had been talking to earlier, who entered the room along with a whip-thin man of perhaps forty-five or so, who looked like an old movie caricature of The Butler. Each held a silver platter.

  They came directly to me first and stood on either side of me, lifting the lids of their respective platters to reveal the kind of gorgeous gourmet food normally reserved for a special occasion at a AAA four-diamond restaurant.

  It was a weird dichotomy that Dottie did things this way. She was so relaxed and easy to be around, yet dinner service was always so elegant. I’d asked Burke about it once, years ago, and he said it was because this had been the one tradition Dottie’s mom had apparently instilled in her before she passed away when Dottie was still a teenager, and it was the way Joss had liked things once they got married. Ever since then, Dottie had maintained it, even under the most seemingly absurd circumstances.

  “Filet mignon with sauce béarnaise or demi-glace reduction with port wine,” the maid said to me, indicating the choices.

  “I— either. I’ll just— béarnaise,” I concluded lamely. I couldn’t ask her to decide. That wasn’t done in surroundings like this. At Ruby Tuesday, yes, maybe I could have let the waiter choose which sauce he thought I’d like for my boneless Buffalo tenders, but in Middleburg’s finest homes, a guest was expected to behave and be treated like (or almost like) the lady of the manor.