by Polly Becks
“Well, that’s good, ’cause a bathrobe would be embarrassing,” Sloane decreed like a style maven.
“Miss Sullivan, will you be our teacher again next year?” asked Elisa, backing up and plopping herself in Lucy’s lap.
Lucy kissed the top of her head of beautiful, almost-black hair.
“No, honey,” she said, checking her makeup in the mirror again and discovering she had dotted her teeth with lipstick. “I’m moving away with Prince Charming.”
“What? Why?” Grace asked, her bottom lip suddenly quivering.
“He’s finished with the dam project,” Lucy explained.
“Miss Sullivan,” said Sarah, “let’s keep our talk nice, please.”
Lucy laughed out loud. “You remember that from last year?”
“Yes,” Sarah said, looking at her crown of daisies in the mirror and straightening it. “It’s about the only thing I do remember.”
Lucy took note, but didn’t say anything in response.
“Anyway, he spent the last year fixing the dam, building the new one, and helping design the buildings and houses that got lost in the flood or the fire, like the school and Pancake Heaven. He has other jobs to do for the Army, and we need to go where his work is,” she continued, touching up her eye shadow with her pinky.
“Where will you live?” asked Elisa.
“In a castle,” Sloane retorted. “Duh.”
“I’m sure it will be a castle to us,” Lucy said, pulling one of Sloane’s curls straight and tucking it into her crown. “OK, time to get into the dress.”
As the little girls danced in excitement, Kelly and Lucy went to the closet, a rustic Adirondack rough-hewn mahogany room with, in contrast, satin-covered hangers, and pulled out the dress.
While the flower girls oooohed and ahhhhhed and worked themselves into a frenzy, Kelly helped her into it, a classic style, sleeveless with a dropped waist that accentuated her slim figure and the curves Ace was so fond of. It was made of blush satin, and picked up all the pink tones in her otherwise-alabaster skin. The skirt was wide and simple with a sweep train.
The result received high ratings from all six judges.
“All right,” Lucy said once she was turned out properly, “let’s head for the limo.”
“Where’s your bouquet?” Sloane demanded as they each picked up their basket of flower petals. “You can’t be a bride without a bouquet. It’s embarrassing.”
“Well, actually, Sloane, I don’t have a bouquet,” Lucy said. “But I do have a flower.”
She picked up the long-stemmed red rose, around which was wrapped her grandmother’s rosary.
“Let’s go.”
AT THE TOP of Tree Hill Park, at the approach of dusk, stood three men beneath what had once been a grand Northern Red Oak, now a smooth, black form, without leaf or twig, but massive and beautiful nonetheless. The stains of fire had been washed gently away by the rain that had fallen since the night it had died. A long, horizontal arm stretched out as it always had when it was covered in leaves, a place where children climbed still.
Father Charlie looked down the hill to where the torches had all been set up to light the way of what would shortly be the new married couple.
“Here she comes,” he said to the young man who stood, attired in the dress uniform of the United States Army, a smile on his face that competed with the stars for brightness.
Ace glanced around at the people standing a little farther down the hill, still encircling the tree. His best man, Jordan Nguyen, his longtime friend and bunkmate in the Guard, was grinning almost as widely as he was, happy to have been asked, and thrilled to be there. His mother and sister had traveled in from Colorado and were beaming at him. Mrs. Cox and the other teachers had formed a group, whispering excitedly.
As the bells of the carillon at Our Mother of Sorrows began to play the hymn of vespers, evening time, a procession of gorgeous little girls in white dresses and floral crowns began to ascend the hill, wiggling excitedly but staying mostly in step and time. Behind them, Kelly Moran followed, her dress a deep rose-red.
“It’s going to be a blessed life for you both from now on,” said Father Charlie, watching the bride begin to ascend the hill on the arm of Mr. Grimes. “The two of you have gone through more heartache in your time together than most people suffer in a lifetime.”
“Exactly,” Ace said, jockeying to get a better view. “All the bad is behind us now. What could be worse that what we’ve already vanquished?”
Then his power of speech was taken away from him by the sight of his bride.
Later, he would admit that he remembered little of the ceremony other than the sight of the beautiful woman standing next to him, pledging their love as so many other lovers had done in the past.
“We wrote our own vows, so it’s not like I didn’t know what I was agreeing to,” he told her on their wedding night, soaking in the two-person tub in their honeymoon suite. “But the picture of you in my memory, standing beneath the tree, will be the last thing I see before my eyes when I die.”
Lucy had just smiled, leaned forward in the soapy water, and kissed him.
But for now, when their ceremony was complete, their union pledged, and they were finally husband and wife, a few dramatic whispers had issued forth from the peanut gallery.
“Miss Sullivan?” Lucy recognized Sloane’s voice, followed by Corinne’s, correcting her.
“She’s Mrs. Evans now. Didn’t you listen?”
“Mrs. Evans? Mrs. Evans?”
As the assembly of guests chuckled, Lucy had turned around and smiled down at her students, the children she had walked through water to save.
“Yes, ladies?”
“Since you just married Prince Charming, are you gonna live happy ever after now?”
Lucy laughed. “Yes. Yes, I am. Very happily ever after.”
Father Charlie and Mr. Grimes had shepherded the guests down the hill, leaving the couple alone beneath the tree in the last rays of the setting sun.
Ace let his hand come to rest on his new wife’s cheek.
“I have one more thing I would like to do beneath Obergrande, before we head off to the reception,” he said, his eyes gleaming.
Lucy inhaled. “All right. What?”
“I’d like to start a tradition.” He got down on one knee and placed his hands on her hips.
Lucy stared at him. “What are you doing?”
“Shhhh,” Ace said. “Just listen—‘Mrs. Evans, I want to thank you for marrying me. It’s the greatest honor I will ever have bestowed on me.’ ”
The new Mrs. Evans laughed. “This is the tradition, passed on to a new generation?”
“Yes.”
“And those are the exact words your father said to your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Do you always have to kneel?”
“No, just tonight.”
She looked at him in amusement. “Why tonight?”
Ace leaned forward and kissed her abdomen.
“I wanted our boys to hear it from the very beginning—even if we don’t start on them any time soon.”
Tears welled in Lucy’s eyes. She pulled Ace to a stand and put her arms around his neck, then rested her nose against his.
“Copy that,” she whispered.
~ End ~
About the Author
Polly Becks is a professional writer and has taught Spanish at the high school level for more than 25 years. She attended the State University of New York, where she met and fell in love with her husband of over 30 years.
She has a love/hate relationship with cats.
For more information, go to www.pollybecks.com and www.facebook.com/PollyBecks.
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Other books in the EXTRAORDINARY DAYS series
The first four books of this spectacular new series are being released each month from January 5, 2015, to April 1, 2015. Get yours now!
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Book 1: No Ordinary Day
The free download of the book that started it all.
Available Now!
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The Extraordinary Days series [set in present day]
Book 2: MONDAY’S CHILD: Fair of Face
Where has supermodel Briony, the one-named wonder of the fashion world, disappeared to? That’s what style magazine maven Katherine Bruce desperately wants to know—and she’s manipulated Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and war correspondent Erik Bryson into chasing that story down. A serious writer, he’s resentful about being stuck with the fluffy task—and utterly unprepared for what he discovers.
Preorder/Purchase NOW at:
http://www.pollybecks.com/coming-soon/mondays-child-fair-of-face/
Available: Monday, February 2, 2015
Your purchase of Monday’s Child: Fair of Face benefits The American Cancer Society.
[See next section for a free sample of MONDAY’S CHILD: Fair of Face]
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Book 3: TUESDAY’S CHILD: Full of Grace
Grace Fuller, the youth pastor in her father’s church, is guarding several painful secrets that threaten her future. Will she find a happily-ever-after with Steve, the confident, handsome assistant pastor with whom she’s vying for her dream job, or will the mysterious bad-boy biker who has just come to town, darkly guarding his own painful past, steal her from her chosen path?
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Available: Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Your purchase of TUESDAY’S CHILD: Full of Grace benefits Tuesday’s Children, a non-profit organization founded to promote long-term healing in all those directly impacted by the events of September 11, 2001.
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Book 4: WEDNESDAY’S CHILD: Full of Woe
Life in the fast lane has never been an easy place for twitchy high-society event planner Sloane Wallace, a woman born to privilege and pristine family lineage. But when a freak snowstorm and auto mishap leaves her stranded in the freezing mountains in her designer heels, a burly mountain man, unimpressed with her pedigree, shows up in time to save her couture-covered backside—and completely mess up her world.
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Available: Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Your purchase of Wednesday’s Child: Full of Woe benefits Wednesday’s Child: Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, Finding Forever Families for Children in Foster Care
PREVIEW
Monday’s Child: Fair of Face
Publication Date: Monday, February 2, 2015
Fair of Face
Polly Becks
Book 2 in the EXTRAORDINARY DAYS series
© 2015 by Polly Becks
Published by GMLT Joseph, Inc., LLC
All rights reserved
Your purchase of this e-book provides a direct cash donation to
THE AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY
for cancer research and programs for those affected, those at risk,
and those who may one day be affected
For more information about The American Cancer Society, go to:
www.cancer.org
Chapter 1
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DAY 1
Madison Avenue, New York City
THE STREET TRAFFIC was whining behind him, making Erik Bryson’s head hurt just slightly less than the sight in front of him did.
He was staring up at the Sesqui-Centurion building, a ten-story Arts-and-Crafts-style monstrosity, home of the offices of In-2-It magazine, the third most influential fashion periodical in the world.
Erik was looking at his personal vision of hell.
Bryson, a stringer for the New York Times, had been convinced when he got the text from his boss earlier that morning ordering him to come here that the message had been misdirected. Surely a man whose entire adult life had been spent doing investigative journalism in war zones and the twin cesspools of corporate corruption and international politics could not possibly have business here, the frou-frou capital of the world.
And yet here he was, being greeted by a beautiful Latina in a trim red suit who ushered him into the building of his nightmares.
“You know, I believe you invited me here,” Bryson protested at the security screening facility, where a uniformed African-American guard was silently holding out a hand, demanding to check his camera case and cell phone.
“Not me, sir,” said the guard as Bryson grudgingly handed his equipment over. “That would be Ms. Bruce, and you can take it up with her when you get upstairs. I’m just doing my job.”
“I hear ya,” Bryson muttered. “So am I.”
Another young woman, this one a winsome blonde in a stylish black suit, looked up from her desk across from the security table.
“Excuse me,” she said, rising and making her way across the lobby, “but are you Erik Bryson?”
Erik turned away from the security guard. “Who’s asking?”
The woman blushed. “My name’s Zoe. I’m a big fan of your work.”
One of Bryson’s eyebrows rose suspiciously. “Really?”
She nodded. “Postcards from Zabul, series one through three,” she said. “Brilliant stuff. The photos are utterly haunting.”
Erik’s second eyebrow joined the first at his hairline.
“Oh—sorry, I’m a journalism student,” she hurried to add.
“I see. Well, thanks. Glad you liked the series.”
A grumbling cough came from behind him. The security guard was holding his camera case and phone out to him, looking unimpressed. Erik quickly took them back and nodded goodbye to Zoe as the woman in the red suit escorted him past the security checkpoint into a lobby where the In-2-It name was boldly emblazoned on an ebony wall, the only thing in the place that wasn’t off-white. He followed her to the elevators and sighed miserably as she punched the button for the penthouse. The car arrived silently, and they stepped inside.
“Why am I here?” he asked the young woman, who stared straight ahead at the elevator door as it closed in front of them.
“Why are any of us here?” she answered, not turning her head. “Ms. Bruce wants you to be here. So you are.”
The door opened onto a lobby so full of spectacularly arched windows that Erik had to shade his eyes. Those eyes were intensely Norwegian blue, the color of glacial ice, staring out from beneath a crown of soft black curls that needed a trim. The sun blazing through the glass stung them. He mumbled an inaudible curse and followed the red suit out into the sunny penthouse lobby.
He was ushered almost immediately into the corner office.
There, sitting behind a surprisingly simple wooden desk in an opulent chair was a middle-aged woman of elegant bearing, her coal-black hair tied back in a chignon at her neck. Bryson, had he been asked, would not have had a clue what the word chignon meant.
But he did recognize Katherine Bruce, the world-famous fashion publishing magnate, without hesitation.
“Sit,” she commanded as he approached her desk.
“I’m sorry,” Erik mumbled. “I believe there has been a mistake—”
“You’re Erik Bryson, by way of the Times?”
“Yes.”
“Then there’s no mistake. Sit.”
Awkwardly, Erik sat down on the severe, high-backed swivel chair in front of the simple desk. “Next, are you going to tell me to roll over?”
The woman smiled slightly. “Wrong command. I want you to fetch.”
“Excuse me?”
Katherine Bruce picked up a crisp sheet of photographic paper and dropped it on his side of the desk in front of him.
“Briony. I want you to bring me Briony.”
For
the first time since he had entered the Sesqui-Centurion, Erik did not need a fashion-speak dictionary.
The face in the color photo staring back at him was one he had known since high school, when he secretly kept a folded magazine cover with a close-up of it under his bed.
The international supermodel Briony, the one-named goddess of magazine covers.
The face of the enormously successful fragrance Doce Cherio, and of its similarly successful high-end cosmetic line.
And the body that most of the top designers in the fashion world used to display their designs.
For a long moment Bryson stared at the face in the photo: the smoldering gray eyes on either side of a thin, smooth nose, the sensuous mouth with a top lip shaped like a long bow, the rest of it curling into a famously crooked smile that seemed at once humorous and sad, as if hiding a secret. Luminous skin that covered perfect cheekbones, glowing with light. Erik shook his head and looked at the publisher once more.
“Why do you want me to fetch her? Can’t you send a limousine for her? I drive a crummy old Corolla that gets parked on the street in Brooklyn.”
“No, I can’t—we don’t know where she is.”
“Can’t you just call Doce Cheiro and ask where she is?”
Katherine Bruce shook her head. “They just launched a contest to find the new face of Doce Cheiro.”
Erik took a deep breath, then exhaled. “What happened to the old one?”
“No one knows. Briony has disappeared.”
“Have you contacted her management?”
“Daily.”
“What do they say?”
“That she’s retired, and they have no other comment.”
Erik exhaled again, this time with a little more annoyance.
“Well, that’s your answer, then,” he said testily. “She’s retired. End of story. Thanks for a fun morning. I’ll be going now.” He began to rise.
“Sit,” said Katherine Bruce again in a voice that sounded like it came from a military commander. “That is most certainly not the end of the story.”
Erik was struggling to keep from exploding. “What in the world do you want from me? I’m an investigative journalist—my specialties are political corruption and war zones. I cannot imagine something I’m less qualified to cover—and less interested in—than high fashion.”
