Out of Town Bride

by Kara Lennox

  “Aren’t you carrying this fake wedding thing a bit far?”

  “I’m absolutely convinced Marvin will show up. The prospect of getting his hands on Mother’s money is just too tempting. But once he’s here, I’ll need help with the takedown.”

  “What about Mr. Muscle-Man Bodyguard?”

  Sonya’s throat went tight at the reminder. “I can’t really count on him. And even if I could, it’ll take more than one person. I need you, and more importantly, I need Heath. I’m going to ask Cindy and Luke, too.”

  “I’m in,” Brenna said. “And I’m sure Heath will want to be there, too. I’ll let you talk to Cindy, she’s right here.”

  “She is? Oh, hi, Cindy! I hate that y’all are celebrating without me.” Sonya had been invited to the annual New Year’s bash thrown by Brenna’s parents, but she’d felt obligated to attend Cissy’s party, since it was sort of in her honor.

  “We wish you were here, too,” Cindy said. Without hesitation, Cindy agreed to be in the wedding. “Will we have to wear really embarrassing, frou-frou pink dresses?”

  “Forest-green velvet monstrosities,” Sonya confirmed. “I’ll have yours Fed-Exed to you so you can have it fitted.”

  “Oh…oh, the ball is dropping. Happy New Year!”

  Sonya could hear the cheering coming from the great room in Cissy’s house, as well as over the phone. She assumed by the fumbling and strange noises that Cindy’s husband was kissing the daylights out of her, and her heart felt heavy.

  She and John-Michael could be locking lips this very minute if he weren’t such a fool. She’d been waiting, giving him time and space as Muffy had suggested, and nothing had happened.

  Muffy, however, was having better luck. She had called Jock, ostensibly to get his advice about an ailing houseplant. Surprised by her conciliatory tone, he’d wound up asking to meet her for coffee, to discuss her houseplant problem in detail. He had picked her up in his little Volvo station wagon, washed and waxed for the occasion. Afterward, they’d gone to a movie. Then he’d brought her home, walked her to the door, kissed her on the cheek, then had said something that had left Muffy giggling. Sonya had been watching out a window.

  Tonight they were at some fancy shindig at a hotel. Sonya had asked Muffy how she would handle it if the press got wind of the fact she was dating her former gardener, but Muffy had said she was sick to death of worrying about what people thought, and that was that.

  “Are you still there?” Cindy asked breathlessly.

  “If I weren’t engaged, I’d be making out with one of the cute bartenders right now,” Sonya said glumly.

  “Oh, no. You sound so sad.”

  “I just wish it was all over.”

  “Maybe by next weekend, we’ll have reason to celebrate. Picture Marvin behind bars.”

  “With a mean cellmate named Snake.”

  SONYA’S WEDDING WAS in three days. John-Michael tried not to think about it as he drove his squad car, his new partner, Greg Sandusky, in the passenger seat. The Harris County Sheriff’s Department had been only too happy to move up his start date. So now he had his crisp khaki uniform, his gun, his badge. It was everything he’d been looking forward to all these years.

  He was free of the Pattersons, and so was his father. He had his own place, which he’d been working on every evening, scrubbing and painting, trimming the overgrown shrubs, putting in new light fixtures. He had his own two-car garage for his car and his motorcycle and his tools. Once he clocked out, he was on his own time, no longer at Muffy’s or Sonya’s beck and call.

  He should have been in heaven. Instead, he was miserable. During work, he could forget about Sonya for a little while. Today, for example, he’d used his negotiating skills—honed from many, many incidents with his father—to calm a domestic disturbance before it got violent. The work was interesting and satisfying.

  But the moment John-Michael clocked out and got into his own car, all he could think about was how much he missed Sonya. He tried to tell himself it was only natural. He’d spent so much time with her, that to be suddenly without her was going to take some adjustment.

  But he knew it was more than that. He’d fallen in love with the darn woman. He imagined her everywhere, working side by side with him in the kitchen to fix dinner, cozying next to him in the evenings to read, or in bed with him, losing themselves in the mind-blowing sex he remembered way too vividly.

  But he doubted Sonya’s fantasies were in line with his. If she visualized them together at all, she probably saw him moving into the big house with her, sharing dinner every night at that football-field-size dining table, eating the delicious meals Mattie and Eric prepared, socializing with her tedious highbrow friends and enduring their disapproval.

  Much as he wanted to be with her, he couldn’t partake in that life. He wasn’t cut out to be one of the idle rich. Even if he worked, his paycheck would be superfluous, a joke. Maybe it was his foolish pride overruling his common sense, but he wasn’t going to turn into his father, forever craving something with Sonya he couldn’t have.

  He was just going to have to get over her.

  Of course, there was the wedding to endure. He’d had a brief conversation with Muffy yesterday—Sonya hadn’t wanted to talk to him. Muffy had coolly informed him that Marvin was scheduled to arrive at ten a.m. at Houston Intercontinental Airport the morning of January 8. Marvin had given Sonya the airline and flight number, arriving from Hong Kong.

  As a fully sworn law enforcement officer, John-Michael found that he had a bit more clout than he had as a bodyguard—and more resources. With the FBI’s cooperation and assistance, he’d been able to check the flight’s passenger list. Marvin’s name did not appear, though he might be traveling under one of his many aliases.

  This might be a test, John-Michael theorized. Marvin might stake out his supposed arrival gate to see what kind of greeting awaited him, whether there were any law enforcement types ready to nab him. If not, he could figure Sonya was really on the level, that she didn’t believe he had ripped her off, or had conveniently forgotten because she wanted to marry him so badly.

  John-Michael intended to watch the gate—though he would be well-hidden. Greg Sandusky had agreed to help him. The airline had been faxed Marvin’s photo and would be able to let them know ahead of time if he was on the plane, though even if they said he wasn’t, John-Michael would be there. Marvin’s disguises were pretty good.

  He felt some sense of anticipation that Marvin might finally be captured. But he hoped to have it all neatly tied up before the wedding. He didn’t think he could stand to see Sonya in that white gown again, forever the princess, so totally out of his league.

  As he turned down his street, he saw something that made him prickle with apprehension. His father’s station wagon was parked in front of his house. Had he lost his job already?

  He pulled into the garage, then walked around to the front porch, where Jock sat on the steps, chin in hand.

  “Dad?”

  Jock popped to his feet. “John-Michael. God Almighty, look at you in that uniform! If that ain’t a sight. I’m really proud of you, son. I know this is something you’ve wanted for a long time.”

  “I…um, thanks, Dad.” He shook his father’s proffered hand, then glanced at Jock’s Volvo. It was packed to the gills.

  “I’ve left Tootsie’s. I guess you figured that out.”

  “What happened?” John-Michael wasn’t sure he wanted to know. If Jock had gotten drunk and done something—

  “It’s nothing like you’re thinking. It’s just that Tootsie is as horrible as we’ve always heard she was. What a dictator! She demanded the impossible, and when I delivered, it wasn’t good enough. This past month, I’ve gained a whole new appreciation for Muffy Patterson as an employer.”

  “Did you quit?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  Well, that was a relief. No one would fault Jock for resigning as Tootsie’s gardener. Everyone knew she couldn’t keep house
hold help. “Do you think Muffy would take you back?”

  At the mention of Muffy’s name, Jock smiled, but at the same time he shook his head. “No, I’m not going back there, either. I’m a hot commodity!” he said proudly. “When I resigned, of course Tootsie got on the phone to all of her friends and complained about it. Within a half hour I had three job offers.”

  “Great, Dad! Which one are you taking?”

  “None of them,” he said, looking pleased with himself. “I’ve decided to go into business for myself. I’ll start small, doing some landscaping and garden design, and flower arrangements for parties and such. But eventually, I’d like to have my own greenhouse. I could be like that swishy guy down in Sugarland, the one Sonya got her wedding flowers from.”

  John-Michael was floored. He’d never seen his father so excited about anything. Jock knew nothing about running a business. He probably had no idea the headaches he was in for—the bookkeeping, the paperwork that went with paying employees, the taxes, billing and collecting. But John-Michael wasn’t about to rain on Jock’s parade. If he started small and learned as he went, it might just work.

  “I think that’s great, Dad. I’ll help you if I can.” He nodded toward the station wagon. “I take it you need a place to live.”

  “Just until I find my own place. I need to do some looking around, figure out the best location. A couple, maybe three weeks. I’ve got a lot of money saved.”

  “I’ll help you unload the car.”

  “SO, HOW IS IT living here?” Jock asked a couple of hours later. John-Michael was broiling them some pork chops while his father cut up carrots to zap in the microwave.

  “It’s a quiet neighborhood,” John-Michael said. “It’s not too far from where I work, and it’s near the water. So far it’s okay.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean, how does it feel, being away from the Pattersons? Is it as good as you thought it would be?”

  “In some ways, yes.”

  “Don’t you miss her?”

  John-Michael didn’t have to ask who “her” was. “Of course I do. Do you miss Muffy?”

  “Well, it’s kind of hard to miss someone when you’re seeing them every night.” Jock let this little bombshell drop just as John-Michael was transferring a pork chop from broiler to plate, and he jerked so hard in surprise that the chop flew off the fork and landed with a splat on the kitchen counter.

  “What did you say?”

  “Muffy and I are dating. It seems I misunderstood what she was trying to tell me the night everything hit the fan. She wasn’t ashamed of me. She just didn’t want to move as fast as I did.”

  “You and Muffy are dating?” John-Michael hadn’t gotten past the first sentence.

  “Moving away from the Patterson estate was the smartest thing I ever could have done. I wish I’d done it twenty years ago. Instead I let myself pine away for something I couldn’t have, drank myself into a stupor when the pain of seeing her and not being able to have her got to be too much. As if me being drunk gave her any reason to change her mind. If I had left back then, made something of myself—well, no sense looking back. But maybe I’m not too old to make something of myself now. And with the moral support of Muffy, who knows how far I’ll go?

  “You and Muffy are dating?” He wasn’t usually slow on the uptake, but this was way beyond anything he could have imagined.

  “We’re dating the way we couldn’t when we were kids. We go to the movies, out for hamburgers—well, baked chicken sandwiches in Muffy’s case, since she’s not allowed to eat hamburgers. We even played miniature golf, just about froze our tushies off!”

  John-Michael abandoned the stove and sank into a chair. He was in shock.

  “You want to know the best part?” Jock asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “She said she doesn’t care who knows about us. That anyone who faults her for dating her former gardener is a snob, and she doesn’t want to be friends with them anyway. On New Year’s Eve, we’d planned to go to one of those dreary AA bashes, but at the last minute we went to this party at a fancy hotel. Muffy said someone gave her the tickets, although I think she might have bought them because she knew it was a little beyond my budget. Anyway, we ran into a lot of her friends there, and she introduced me as her date. Some of them gave us queer looks, but some of them treated me just fine. It was amazing.”

  John-Michael thought about his father, surrounded by all that drinking, and he had to ask. “Did you stay sober?”

  “Oh, sure. Ginger ale all the way. Wasn’t even tempted. I was high on Muffy.”

  John-Michael struggled to adjust his thinking. Was it possible Jock and Muffy could make things work after all these years, overlook the monumental differences in their backgrounds and financial status?

  “I’m telling you all this not to brag,” Jock said, “but to make it clear that I was wrong before. Yes, I needed to get away from being the Patterson gardener, but I didn’t need to escape from Muffy. All I needed was to feel worthy of her. She’ll always be richer than me, more educated, more refined. But I can still be her equal. And that’s what matters.”

  “I’m happy for you, Dad. And I really hope it works out. I’ve always liked Muffy. I’ve always believed she had a good heart.”

  “And what about Sonya?”

  John-Michael’s defensive walls sprang up. “What about her?”

  “How do you feel about her?”

  “It doesn’t matter how I feel about her,” John-Michael said carefully. “She’s getting married in a couple of days.”

  “Don’t be daft. Muffy told me the wedding’s a sham to catch that unholy con artist.”

  All right, so John-Michael wasn’t going to extricate himself from this conversation with that ploy. How could he answer?

  “You don’t have to say anything, I see it in your face. You’re crazy in love with the girl. Well, I happen to know for a fact she’s crazy in love with you. I’m not supposed to say anything, but I’m not going to stand around and watch you make all the same stupid mistakes Muffy and I did. If you love her, do something about it.”

  John-Michael couldn’t say what he really wanted to—that a union between the heiress and the gardener’s son was doomed. He would be dooming Jock’s own romance, too, and he couldn’t do that, not when his father was so excited, so upbeat and optimistic.

  John-Michael asked a question instead. “What are Muffy’s feelings on the subject?”

  “Muffy wants her daughter to be happy. She spent the last ten years shopping for the perfect husband for Sonya, driving away every single man who came along because he didn’t meet her standards. Then she met Marvin, and she thought he was perfect. And look how wrong she was. She sees that now. And she has vowed to stay out of Sonya’s love life from now on.”

  “So she thinks I would be a disastrous choice for Sonya, but she’s keeping her mouth shut.”

  “On the contrary. She thinks you would make a fine son-in-law. But other than telling Sonya to follow her heart, she’s staying out of it. ’Course, that doesn’t mean I have to stay out of it.”

  So Muffy wouldn’t object. That was one obstacle out of the way. John-Michael was shocked by the direction his thoughts were taking.

  “Take a chance,” Jock said in a soft voice. “If it doesn’t work out, it’ll hurt like hell and then you’ll go on. But if you do nothing, you’ll tear your life apart with regret, condemn yourself to a purgatory of your own making—halfway between heaven and hell. Trust me, you’ll regret never trying, forever.”

  “SO YOU’RE ACTUALLY in this country?” Sonya asked, trying to sound excited. It was 8 a.m. the day of her wedding, and Marvin had called her on her cell. She’d been afraid he would pull something like this. Her dreams of seeing him apprehended at the airport when the flight from Hong Kong arrived dissipated like the steam from her coffee cup.

  Brenna, Heath, Cindy and Luke were seated at the breakfast table with her, enjoying Matilda’s buckwheat panca
kes and fresh fruit, when the phone had rung. They all went silent when they realized who was on the other end of Sonya’s call, watching her intently.

  “I’m actually at Dulles,” he said. “God, it’s good to be on American soil again. I’m going to get the first flight I can find to Houston. But the weather is a bit iffy. There was a storm last night, lots of flights backed up. But if I have to charter a plane, I’ll get there in time, I swear it.”

  “I know you will, darling. I have complete faith in you.” She almost choked on the words, then disconnected.

  “Wow,” Brenna said. “You’re a lot better at lying to Marvin than I was.”

  “No kidding,” Heath said, earning an elbow in the ribs from his fiancée for his trouble. “We need to update John-Michael. It’s pointless now to try to catch him at the airport.”

  Heath had left the FBI and started his own private investigation firm, but he had the most experience dealing with desperate criminals, so he’d been voted the leader of Operation Nab Marvin. His cell phone rang almost immediately. Sonya knew who it would be. She couldn’t watch, couldn’t listen. John-Michael would have been contacted by her cell phone company, which had her number flagged.

  Sonya got up and took her plate to the sink so no one could see her face.

  “Yes, that was Marvin,” Heath said into his phone. “I was about to call—he’s in Houston?”

  Now Sonya had to listen. Marvin was right there in their city, so close.

  “Uh-huh. Okay. We’re on it.” Heath hung up. “Marvin is downtown. John-Michael has it narrowed down to a few blocks, based on the cell tower his signal came from. There are several hotels in the area. We’re going to check them out, see if he might be staying in one of them.”

  “I want to come,” Sonya said automatically.

  “If he sees you, he’ll know the jig is up and run,” Heath said reasonably.

  “But he knows you, too,” Sonya argued. Heath had been face-to-face with Marvin in New York, before he’d slithered out of Heath’s grasp.