by Lexi Eddings
“Is Dad home?” Lacy asked.
“No,” Shirley said. “I convinced him that the estrogen level in this house would be too high for his comfort today, so he’s gone up to the senior center to call out numbers for the bingo tournament.”
“You don’t think he’ll want to see Lacy’s dress?” Heather asked.
“No. Whatever we decide on will be fine with him. My George isn’t much of a shopper.” She tactfully refrained from mentioning that he’d be more interested in seeing the price tag than the dress itself. According to Lacy, spending money was the main reason for his shopping avoidance. Not that Mr. Evans was tight, of course. He liked to say he was thrifty. Heather bet he would’ve loved the idea of Lacy wearing his mother’s gown.
“I take after Dad, so that makes two antishoppers in the family,” Lacy said with a grin. “Whip me, beat me. Don’t make me shop.”
Heather knew Lacy wasn’t allergic to spending money. She’d happily go “buying” any time, but Lacy considered “shopping” without a firm objective a waste of time. She especially hated trying on clothes, preferring to order things over the Internet and then sending them back if she didn’t like them once they arrived.
Heather couldn’t do that. Her height made trying things on absolutely essential, but that was fine with her because she really loved the hunt. Finding a new piece to add to her wardrobe was always a win. And if she could find it on sale, so much the better.
Shirley sighed. “Yes, I’m afraid the shopping gene skipped my younger daughter. But I think I’ve found a way to fix that.” She crooked her finger, signaling for them to follow. “Come with me.”
Heather and Lacy trailed Shirley into the family room, where Laura was already setting out a tray of cookies and Crystal was filling tall frosty glasses with sweet tea.
“Hey, Lacy,” Laura said, coming to give her future sister-in-law a quick hug. “Aren’t you excited about trying on all these dresses?”
“No, she’s probably not,” Crystal said. “Unless she’s shopping for a design client, Lacy’s as bad as Dad.”
“Well, that doesn’t matter because I’ve got the perfect solution to the problem,” Lacy’s mom said. She beamed at Heather, Crystal, and Laura. “The three of you wear about the same dress size as Lacy, so you’re going to be her models today.”
“But how will that work? Heath—I mean, some of us are so much taller than Lacy,” Crystal said.
Fighting the urge to slump, Heather straightened her spine. Crystal might have been able to make her feel awkward when they were kids, but not anymore.
“Doesn’t matter,” Mitzi said, as she took one of the garment bags off a rack. “A difference in height may change the hemline and maybe where the waist falls, but Lacy can still get a good idea about whether or not she likes the dress by seeing it on any of you.”
“There, it’s all settled,” Shirley said. “Lacy and I are going to sit here together like ladies of leisure, eating gingersnaps and sipping iced tea, while the three of you try on the dresses and model them for us. Then when Lacy has narrowed her choice to just a couple of gowns, she can try those few on to make her final decision.”
“Mom, you’re wonderful.” Lacy’s eyes welled with tears, and she threw her arms around her mother. “Just when I think I’ve got you figured out. Thanks so much for understanding. And for having gingersnaps.”
“I know my girls and I know they’re your favorite, honey. Just like I knew you’d hate trying on so many dresses.” Shirley hugged her back and patted Lacy’s head when she gave a little sob. “Hush, darling. This is for your day. We can’t have you stressing over it, can we?”
“No, I guess not.” Lacy dabbed at her eyes and then smiled at her mother. “This is going to be a lot more fun than I expected.”
Shirley Evans is smarter than the average mother.
She’d found a way to make Lacy feel beholden to her for coming up with this sweet compromise. If she’d asked Lacy to parade down the aisle in a barrel with suspenders just then, she’d have agreed in a heartbeat.
“OK, then. Quick like a bunny, girls.” Shirley clapped her hands three times fast. “Grab a dress, head up to my room and put it on. Then one at a time, you can make a grand entrance down the long staircase so we can see how beautiful you look.”
Heather followed Laura and Crystal up to Mrs. E’s big bedroom. At least, it would have been big if she hadn’t centered a king-sized four-poster along one wall and ringed the rest with chests of drawers and occasional tables of every stripe. On every horizontal surface there were collectible figurines or colorful glassware. The room wasn’t cluttered up to hoarder levels, but it was close.
Mitzi joined them to help with zippers and buttons. She buzzed around each of them as needed, like a honeybee tending a patch of daisies. Other than Mitzi’s soft chatter, the room felt too quiet as they disrobed and slipped into satin and taffeta.
“I enjoyed Riley’s recital the other night,” Heather said to break the ice. “Thanks for including me.”
“Ha. You know where liars go, Heather.” Crystal rolled her eyes. “Riley was a total disaster.”
“I thought she was a delight.”
“I see Michael has been coloring your perceptions of her,” Crystal said with a sigh. “I wish she was more like Ethan. Riley’s a catastrophe waiting to happen. That child will be the death of me. She’s far too much like her uncle for comfort. Oh, sorry.”
“For what?”
“Well, you two are a couple now, so . . .”
A couple of what, I’d like to know. “Mike doesn’t need me to defend him if that’s what you mean.” But it sounds like Riley does.
“Anyway, I’d hoped dance lessons would teach her something about the value of working with a group,” Crystal went on, “but as you saw, Riley dances to a different drummer.”
“She’s charming.”
“She’s a handful,” Crystal said, still refusing to accept a compliment for her daughter.
Oh, I’m so seeing therapy in that kid’s future.
“So since ballet didn’t work, I’m trying to talk Noah into signing her up for tumbling,” Crystal said as she eyed her reflection critically and adjusted her pillbox hat and veil. She looked like a Jackie O throwback from the ’60s, but Heather didn’t say anything. Lacy’s tastes were quirky enough that the style might appeal to her. “Gymnastics is a team sport, but it allows for individual participation.”
“That might work well for Riley,” Heather agreed to be agreeable. “Just be sure the gym has plenty of spotters around the trampoline. The hospital has a new pediatrician who won’t take on any patients whose parents allow them to have a backyard trampoline.”
“Well, that’s a little heavy-handed.” Laura joined the conversation for the first time.
“Dr. Stratton doesn’t think so.” Even if it was, Heather doubted Beckett Stratton would care. Like many of the doctors she worked with, the new pediatrician was afflicted with a bit of a god complex. Still, Coldwater General was lucky to have attracted the young doctor. Lots of small towns had no pediatric specialist at all. “He’s pretty adamant about a strict no-tramp policy.”
“Why is that?” Laura asked.
“I’m guessing he lost a patient or two to trampoline accidents back in Arizona. That’s where he came from.”
Laura stood still while Mitzi hooked a long row of buttons down her spine. With a sweetheart neckline and a waist that dipped in a low V in front, the gown was a Victorian confection, a froth of lace and seed pearls. The skirt was so wide it required a hooped slip beneath it.
“Well, Mom doesn’t have a trampoline, so I guess he’d take my Zoey on,” Laura said. “We don’t have a pediatrician here yet.”
“You have a daughter?” Heather said in surprise. After going to college in California, Laura had moved back in with her mom a month ago. Everyone said it was a blessing for Mary Tyler to have someone else in the house since she’d lost her husband. But somehow the fact tha
t Laura had brought her a grandchild, too, had escaped the Coldwater gossip grapevine.
Laura smiled shyly. “Zoey’s only six months old. We don’t get out much.”
Heather noticed for the first time that Laura was wearing a gold band on her left hand. She’d been about five years behind Heather in school, so she figured Laura was only twenty-four or so. “Forgive me, I didn’t know you were married. I was still thinking you’re a Tyler.”
“I still am. We got married in Vegas one weekend when Trent was on leave. After that, I was head down trying to finish up my degree, and then Zoey came along pretty quickly, and what with school and planning for a baby and everything, I never got around to filling out the forms for a legal name change.” Laura studied the oak floor before her with absorption. “Not much point now, I guess. I’m . . . I’m a widow. My husband was killed in a training accident at Camp Pendleton the week after Zoey was born.”
Heather gasped. “Oh, Laura, I had no idea.”
“You really should, you know,” Crystal said, reapplying a fresh coat of Maybelline and smacking her lips together. “Get your name changed, I mean. The last thing a child needs in a town as small as Coldwater Cove is to grow up with her mother’s maiden name. People talk.”
Heather shot a dagger glare at Crystal and then turned back to Laura. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
It was what people said when they didn’t know what to say, but in this case Heather meant every word. She couldn’t imagine a harder row to hoe than raising a child alone.
“Do you plan to stay in Coldwater Cove?” Crystal asked.
“I don’t know. It’s been a comfort to be with my mom. She’s still sort of at loose ends without Dad, even though he’s been gone for a while now. She knows what I’m going through. And she’s great help with Zoey.”
“Well, you really should finish your degree,” Crystal said. “Bates will grant transfer credits if your coursework can be shown to be comparable to ours.”
As dean of admissions of tiny Bates College, Crystal was always touting the school’s credentials, which were impeccable. Of course, most of the degrees it offered were terribly impractical. Graduates were pretty much guaranteed not to find employment in their field of study. But in a world gone mad for math and science, it could be argued that there was a crying need for liberal arts.
Heather slipped into the gown Mitzi had laid out for her. With trails of chiffon and twinkling crystals, it seemed ethereal and airy enough to be worn by a woodland nymph. The asymmetrical cut bodice was lightly boned so that the off-the-shoulder straps could be purely decorative instead of functional. The hemline was pooled in a froth at her feet, and a train of about a foot and a half floated behind her.
“This would be far too long for Lacy.”
“We can always take it up,” Mitzi said.
“That’s a pretty gown, Heather,” Laura said. “Looks like something the elves would wear in Rivendell.”
“In where?” Crystal asked.
“Rivendell. Don’t you read Tolkien?” Heather said, enjoying exposing a gap in Crystal’s knowledge.
“Tall, strong, fierce and wise, yet beautiful,” Laura said admiringly. “Tolkien’s elves were a magnificent race. You’d fit right in, Heather.”
“No pointy ears,” she said as she adjusted a circlet of silk flowers around her head and smiled at her reflection. She’d never thought of herself as beautiful, but in this dress, she almost was.
“Well, we’d better get downstairs. If we leave Lacy and Mom alone together too long, there will be blood—metaphorically speaking, of course,” Crystal said before she minced down the stairs, her posture perfectly erect, her heels clicking on the hardwood.
Laura followed her in the full-skirted Victorian, and Heather brought up the rear in the gown that made her feel more feminine than ever before in her life. She thought about slipping into her sandals.
Nuts to that. Any elf princess worth her salt would go barefoot.
Silent as a cat, she padded after the other two down the long staircase.
Chapter 25
A tux makes you sort of invisible. Putting
on a penguin suit makes you look just
like the other penguins.
—Michael Evans, who would never
be confused with a penguin
The front door to his parents’ home was ajar, so Michael went on in. He’d intended to drop in on his mom for a few minutes to see how she was feeling that morning, but he almost drove on by when he saw the driveway was full of vehicles. Then he’d recognized Heather’s car as one of them and couldn’t pass up a chance to see her.
But he almost didn’t recognize her coming down the staircase.
A goddess was descending, her bare toes peeping from beneath a frothy hemline. With her hair loose and framing her face, and in that dress that defied gravity by staying up with no visible means of support, she was so otherworldly gorgeous, he almost expected her to have wings.
There was no hint of “Stilts” in this lithe and lovely apparition. The sternly efficient Nurse Walker was gone. Instead, this Heather looked soft. Vulnerable. As if she might actually need someone like him.
Everything in him longed to shelter her. He wished he had the right to protect her from all harm.
Down, boy. She’s just independent enough to bean you for even thinking that she might need your protection.
“Careful, Michael.” She stopped on the bottom step, and put a couple of fingers under his chin. “Someone might mistake you for a codfish.”
Heather gently lifted her fingers to make him close his mouth, which he hadn’t realized was hanging open. She tried to hide her amusement and failed miserably.
“I can’t help it, Heather. You’re . . . you’re . . .”
“I’d appreciate making you speechless if your stammering didn’t sound so very surprised,” she said.
“It’s just that you look . . .”
Amazing. Beautiful. Michael wasn’t one for words, but tons of superlatives scrolled through his mind just then. The only problem was he couldn’t find one that began to be fine enough for her.
“I don’t look a bit like me, do I?” she said with a conspiratorial grin.
“No, you look entirely like you. Only . . . more so.” The fact that the dress she was wearing was a bridal gown suddenly hit him in the temple with the force of a wild pitch. “Why are you in a wedding dress?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s not a hint.”
Part of him was disappointed. Last night, when he and Jake were talking and drinking, the Marine vet had confided how crazy he was about Lacy, and how it made him stupid sometimes. Michael recognized the same reaction in himself. He knew he was a smart guy—in some ways, at least—but every time he was around Heather, he felt like a dimwit. She made him both strong and weak, confused and surprisingly clear.
Was that love?
“This dress is for Lacy,” she explained. “Crystal, Laura, and I are modeling for her. There are tons of styles for us to try on, but I have a feeling this is the one she’ll pick.”
“If she doesn’t, she’s nuts. But my sister won’t begin to look as good in it as you do.” He pulled her close and she came willingly. Their foreheads touched. Their breaths mingled, and before he knew it, he was kissing her right there at the base of the wooden staircase he used to slide down while riding on a cookie sheet.
Heather’s mouth was a much better ride, and he wouldn’t end up with splinters in his butt.
Then she worked her hands between them and pressed her palms against his chest. When he broke off their kiss, she grabbed his shoulders and turned him around.
“Now, out, Mister,” she said. “There’s nothing but chiffon and satin and silk around here this morning. It’s no place for a guy.”
“Hey! Maybe Lacy would like a man’s opinion.” The thought of seeing Heather in more silk and satin made his mouth go dry.
She shook her head. “If a woman wants a man to h
ave an opinion about her wedding dress, she’ll give it to him. Now, go. I’ll tell your mom you dropped by.”
“We’re still on for tonight, right?” He’d been looking forward to exploring the corn maze with her. Among other things . . .
A cute little wrinkle formed between her brows. “Oh, shoot. I forgot. Jane asked me to switch schedules with her. I have to work till eleven tonight.”
Mike wasn’t ready to give up on seeing her. “Perfect. The maze should be almost empty by then. I’ll come by your place around eleven fifteen.”
“Make it eleven thirty. I’ll need a shower.”
The thought of Heather all soapy and wet was even better than wrapped in silk and lace.
“Heather,” Lacy called from the family room. “What’s the holdup?”
She stood on tiptoe and gave him a smack on the cheek. “Thanks for understanding. Gotta go.”
Then she turned, lifted her hem, and trotted down the hall toward the back of the house. Her hair bounced back and forth as it had when she was “Stilts” loping down the court.
Michael released a long sigh.
He’d always watched her, always wondered about her, always been drawn to that long-legged girl. Even when he’d had to leave town and there seemed little hope he’d ever see her again, much less have a shot with her, he carried the memory of the girl he hoped she was inside him.
Now he knew her for real. She was even better than he’d let himself imagine.
And he knew, then and there, he was going to marry Heather Walker someday.
No matter what it took.
* * *
The night was brisk, the stars shivering pinpricks in the dark sky. But Michael’s hand was warm when it closed over hers. They walked hand in hand for the few blocks from her place down to the public park on the lakeshore.
“There are more people still going through the maze than I thought there’d be. I thought it shut down before this,” Heather said. “Coldwater usually turns up its toes when the news comes on at ten.”
