The Last Bride (DiCarlo Brides #6)

by Heather Tullis

  “Plenty. But that’s enough for now. You ready to go home?” he asked Jonquil. “I’m beat.”

  “Sure.” He knew she was stupid and now he was ready to take her home. “We should cart Angela with us.”

  They were in the car, Angela passed out in the back, pulling out of the driveway when he asked her, “So I missed most of the conversation. Why didn’t you graduate?”

  “I couldn’t hack it, okay? School is lame and I didn’t need a degree, so I quit.”

  His thumbs beat on the steering wheel, keeping time to the music for several seconds. “You couldn’t hack it? Right, because you quit every time things get tough.”

  “I do. I’m lame and a wimp.” She faced the window, willing herself not to cry when everything seemed piled in her psyche at the moment. “And stupid most of the time.”

  “Give me a break. You’re not stupid. Not ever and you’re not even a little bit of a wimp.”

  She stared in the darkness, but saw nothing.

  “You think not finishing school makes you stupid?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t make me smart.”

  He swerved into a side road and pulled to a stop against the curb. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You were smart enough to know that school wasn’t your thing, that you had other skills that you could focus on. That you could learn on your own or under your boss or whatever and live your own life.”

  “Says the man with an actual degree.”

  “I hated every minute of those classes. I was the idiot because I wanted my dad to be happy, to be proud of me, so I stuck it out. But he never was, he just wanted a carbon copy of himself. I wasted years before I was smart enough to figure out that falling in line was never going to make me happy. Or him. I was always trying to be the good son, so I did what he expected. I wish I’d figured that out sooner and done what I wanted.”

  “But you didn’t quit because you couldn’t handle it. You quit because you hated it.”

  He shot her a look of disbelief. “You didn’t quit because it was hard, Jonquil. Admit it. You quit because you didn’t love it. Because it wasn’t important enough to you. I’ve seen you drag yourself on a twisted ankle for miles, not giving up, not stopping no matter how miserable you were. You’re not a quitter. And you’re sure as hell not stupid.”

  But it wouldn’t be enough to keep him around when he had enough of her, would it? “Thanks.” She didn’t believe a word he said. He was just being nice before he kicked her to the curb.

  He swore and pounded a fist on the steering wheel, then steered them back onto the road. “I swear I don’t get women. You want to be strong and independent and do your own thing, but then when you change course from the one everyone else put in front of you—proving you’re strong and independent—you beat yourselves up for not fitting their mold.”

  “I guess we’re just a mystery.”

  “It’s stupid. Why do that to yourself?”

  “Says the man who just told me I’m not stupid and apparently tied himself in knots trying to please his father.” When Jonquil finished speaking she shut her mouth and eyes before she said anything worse. It was bad enough as it was.

  They drove in silence for a long moment and then he stopped his car.

  She opened her eyes to see her house. What a lousy ending to a nearly perfect day.

  “Let’s get her inside,” he said.

  They each took one shoulder. Angela was completely out of it.

  “She’s going to have the worst hangover tomorrow,” Jonquil said, not feeling as sympathetic as she normally would.

  “Next time I’ll send her to the kids’ table for pop,” Gage said. “We taking her up to her room?”

  Jonquil eyed the sofa. “No. Let’s put her down there. The sofa’s really comfortable.”

  They settled her on the sofa and Jonquil pulled off Angela’s shoes, covering her with one of the blankets they kept in a basket under one of the end tables.

  “So, you probably have to be up early,” she said, turning back to Gage. “The mountain bike festival will keep you hopping for the next few days.”

  “Yes, but it’ll be fine.” He threaded their fingers together and tugged her toward the door.

  “You need me to walk you to your car?” she asked, wondering if he wasn’t done telling her how stupid she was.

  He stopped and stared at her. “You brought stuff to spend the night at my place, didn’t you?”

  She blinked. “You still want me to go home with you? I thought you were going to leave me here. That you changed your mind.”

  His brows lifted. “Why? Because we had a dust-up in the car? One I still don’t understand? Apparently we have some issues to work through. It’s hard to do that if we’re apart or with other people coming in and out.” He tugged her hand toward the door and she acquiesced.

  “What do you want from me?” Jonquil asked when they were nearly to his house.

  Gage didn’t respond until he parked in his garage. “I really don’t know.”

  “You don’t? Then maybe you should take me back home instead. Where no one is wondering what they’re doing with someone like me. They’re my sisters, they have to love me. You don’t.”

  Gage turned to her. “Come in, please, so we can talk?”

  “I thought you were the king of action instead of talk.” She pushed out of the car.

  He hurried around the nose of the car and got to the door to the house first, opening it for her. “I don’t get what’s going on.”

  She passed him. “Okay, let me lay it out for you.” Jonquil stopped just inside the kitchen, her heart breaking. “What’s up with us? We’re not just friends anymore. I don’t sleep with my friends. But what are we? You said we have something special, but what does that mean, really? What are we?”

  Gage paused and looked a little scared at the change in topics. “We’re us.”

  “Nice. Brilliant. But is this going anywhere?”

  “Going where?” he asked. His eyes were wide, a little scared as he watched her.

  Could he really be that clueless? She shook her head, disgusted with all of it. “Just take me home, Gage. If you don’t know the answer to that question, if you weren’t expecting me to bring this up eventually, we really shouldn’t be wasting our time together.”

  “What do you mean?” Panic filled his face and he grabbed her hand. “Are you breaking up with me? Why? Because I can’t understand girl talk?”

  Jonquil stood there in the kitchen of a fabulous house that she’d grown to adore. With the man she loved more than anything and she didn’t know what to think. What other option did she have, and why had she thought she could put off the inevitable forever?

  “I love you, Gage. I’ve loved you for a long time. I can’t do this if you aren’t invested in us, if you think this is just two people enjoying themselves before they move on to something more.”

  His mouth moved, but he didn’t speak at first. “What? You what?”

  “I love you. Idiot. I want to be with you, to marry you and stay here and have a few babies and raise them surrounded by my sisters and your friends in the town where you grew up. But I can’t wonder anymore if you’re going to get sick of me and walk away, so I’m telling you. You need to figure out what you want and let me know. Soon.”

  Gage still appeared to be trying to decide how to deal with her pronouncement when Natalie came around the corner from the living room. “That’s very sweet.”

  “Wait, what are you doing here?” Gage asked Natalie, but he snagged onto Jonquil’s arm before she could move back to the garage to climb in the car.

  “I came to talk to you about the house.” She put her hands on her hips. “I refuse to sell.”

  “Well, since I’m the executor, that’s too bad. I get to decide and since you can’t afford to buy the house and maintain it on your own, it’s going to be sold.”

  Natalie frowned. “I’d really hoped your brush with death would have changed your mind, bu
t since it didn’t.” She lifted the hand she’d been holding at her side and pointed a gun at him. “I know you carry. I want you to take it out and set it down. Now. Or I’ll hurt her. And you wouldn’t want me to hurt the woman who’s crazy enough to think you’re the love of her life, would you?”

  Natalie stood in the doorway, holding the gun, making Jonquil’s heart pound and her eyes grow wide from fear. “Natalie, what’s this about?” she asked, not understanding and more than a little terrified. How could this be happening to them again so soon? And why from Natalie?

  “What does it look like? I’m sick and tired of things never working out the way I want them to. It’s time that all changed, so guess what, brother, you’ve been telling me to take charge of my life. And now I am. Your gun. Put it on the floor by the door.”

  “What do you want?” Gage asked, even as he pulled his spare gun from the holster and put it on the floor as directed. The cops still had his Glock in evidence.

  “Go into the living room.” Natalie gestured for them to pass her as a couple of neighbors down the block set off smaller fireworks. “I want what’s coming to me. All these years you’ve been a burr in my side, always Dad’s favorite, always currying favor with Mom. You got the running of the estate, you were chosen to oversee Mom’s needs. Not me. What was wrong with picking me? I was the one who was there for her every day, but she didn’t care.”

  Jonquil listened, scared as she passed Natalie, but Gage did not looked away from his sister. Jonquil stopped in the living room.

  Gage held up a calming hand, palm out. “You don’t even want to work part time, why would you want to take over the estate? You hated college. You didn’t even like to take care of Mom when she wasn’t feeling well.”

  “You think I don’t miss her, don’t wish that she were here all of the time?” Natalie pounded her free hand on her chest, true unhappiness in her face. “To think that it could have been different. That it was my fault that she’s gone. And now you want to take away the house too.”

  “Natalie, you can’t blame yourself that those men hurt your mom,” Jonquil soothed. “You couldn’t have known anything like that would happen.”

  “Yeah, I couldn’t have known the blow would be so hard. That it would kill her.” This was nearly muttered under her breath. “I told you to go in there, Gage. Don’t come closer to me.”

  He paused in his slow shift closer to her. “Sorry. Please, explain why you’re doing this. You don’t need to hurt Jonquil. Let her go.”

  Jonquil focused on what Natalie had said. Had she been behind her mom’s injury? Had she hurt her mom? She felt almost lightheaded at the thought and glanced at Gage. He didn’t show any of the shock she was feeling. Had he missed the comment?

  Natalie snorted. “How big of a fool do you think I am? You’ve spent more time with her than with your grieving sister since Mom died. You probably spent more time with those stupid friends of yours, too. You didn’t think about me, about how I’m grieving. That I might need you, did you?”

  Jonquil moved slowly away from Natalie, letting Gage worry about the gun for now. She was looking for something else. Something more.

  “You didn’t want me there,” Gage pointed out. “I called and you ignored my calls. I left messages and you didn’t return them.”

  Jonquil decided to try reasoning with Natalie again. “It’s hard to lose someone you love, especially a family member. I miss my dad so much, I can hardly believe he’s been gone more than a year. And my stepdad is sick. Really sick. I don’t know how much longer he’s going to be around. It’s heartbreaking and overwhelming. I’m sorry you had to go through that in addition to being abducted.”

  Natalie laughed a little crazily, glee in her eyes. “You have no idea, do you? Not even a clue. I was afraid that someone would have figured it out by now, but you really have no idea.”

  Jonquil sick at the thought that she’d been right—Natalie had been behind everything. She’d faked the abduction, at least. What about the overdose at the hospital?

  “Yes, you get it now, don’t you?” she asked Jonquil, nodding. “I always knew you were smarter than most of them. I wasn’t abducted. It was a scam. I needed the cash to pay back my loan sharks and they helped me a little with the ruse. Along with a new friend. Too bad you already killed him.”

  A moment of taut silence beat between them while they took that in. “Wait. If you weren’t abducted, what happened to Mom?” Gage asked.

  Gage couldn’t believe his ears. How could his sister have done that to him? “Why, why would you pretend to be abducted? Do you know what Mom and I went through? And who hurt her? Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to come up with the cash, and how miserable it was sitting beside Mom’s bed while you were out plotting? She nearly died before they could operate.”

  “I needed the money, Gage. You wouldn’t help me. Mom always helped me out, but she put her foot down this time and said no. No, to me. I was desperate. What did you expect me to do?”

  “Find a way to be an adult for a change and pay your own bills,” Gage said.

  Natalie’s eyed narrowed. “You really want to die, don’t you?”

  His head was reeling, his heart pounded and he couldn’t make the things she was saying make sense. How could it be true? “Did you hurt Mom or was it James Scott?”

  “I didn’t mean that to happen,” Natalie said, her lips pursed. “It was an accident. She got in the way.”

  “She got in the way?” He couldn’t believe the casual way she’d said it.

  “What do you care, you refused to move back home. She begged you to. I begged you to after she died, so I wouldn’t have to be alone, but you stayed here. In this gesture to bachelor life.” She waved her free arm to indicate the house. “You can’t possibly be comfortable here,” Natalie said to Jonquil.

  “Actually, I find it very comfortable. It’s a great house, lots of space, terrific lines. Your brother did a fantastic job designing it. It could use a woman’s touch in a few places, mind, but it’s lovely. Perfect for the area. I bet your brother could design a place for you that would be perfect for wherever you wanted to live. What would be better? He knows you so well.”

  Gage focused on her words for just a second. She loved his house, thought it was beautiful?

  “What are you going to do to us?” Jonquil asked.

  “Well, apparently the only way I can save the house is to have my brother out of the way so I can make decisions. I thought I’d start there.”

  Gage’s stomach tied up and his heart hurt. How could this be his sister? He thought she was selfish and lazy, but this? How could she have been behind so much badness? “You must be really disappointed that James missed me on the hike.”

  Natalie frowned. “Yes. He promised to kill you.”

  “Wait.” Jonquil looked pale and scared. “You were behind that too?”

  “I promised him that I’d sell him the ski resort for cheap if he got rid of you. He was only too happy. With some incentives.” Her lips curved as if in happy memory and shrugged. “I guess you were the better shot.”

  “I’m not proud of it, except that it means Jonquil stayed safe.”

  “Yes. Isn’t it odd that you keep practically living in each other’s pockets and yet when I suggested it, you said you wouldn’t marry her.”

  He was on overload, needing time to process everything but there wasn’t any. “Don’t take that out of context. And I would never use someone like that just so you could have your way.”

  Her empty hand clenched in a fist and her eyebrows came together in the middle. “Big mistake.”

  Jonquil felt like she’d taken a blow to the stomach. She knew how he felt about marriage, that he wasn’t interested in the long term, but it still hurt to hear it from Natalie. He’d been talking to his sister about how he wouldn’t marry her? Did she have some specific defect she wasn’t aware of?

  She pushed the hurt away and focused again on her surroundings. She
knew Gage’s house pretty well by now—the knives in the drawer, the baseballs in the mudroom cupboard, her backpack. She turned and stared at her backpack. It was still sitting in the corner next to the sofa where they’d set it after coming in from the hospital after their hike. It had rope, a pen knife and pepper spray.

  Pepper spray wasn’t ideal—it would spread around the room, not just hit Natalie, so they would all be affected, but if Gage had any warning at all, maybe he could take advantage of it?

  The backpack was too far away to do any good right now. But maybe… “Natalie, do you mind if I sit down? It’s been a long day. Have you ever been in Gage’s balloon? He took me up this morning. It was amazing.”

  “No, I don’t like heights.”

  “That’s too bad. Everything is so beautiful from up there. We floated right over the hotel—it was incredible to see everything from that angle—my dad’s dream come true. I bet your dad had a lot of dreams for you guys too.”

  “Yes, but Gage broke his heart—or he would have, buying that ski resort instead of becoming a working architect. Do you have any idea how much it cost to put him through school when he was never going to use it? They could have spent that money on me instead. I needed things, you know.”

  Jonquil quelled her thoughts of irritation about Natalie’s one-track mind and stayed focused on the gun, even as she eased into the closest end of the sofa. “I’m sure it was hard having to share your parents with him—share their attention and love, share the space. I have three younger siblings. It was not always fun.”

  “Do they hate you the way I hate him? Their golden boy?” Natalie asked. She didn’t take her eyes off of Gage.

  “I was not their golden boy,” Gage protested. “Dad was never pleased with anything I did and Mom complained all of the time, even if I dropped everything for her.” Gage’s brows furrowed.

  “She talked about how successful you were all of the time,” Natalie said. “And Dad never stopped going on about how well you were doing in school and how smart you were and how you could do anything if you wanted to. And then he died and you wasted everything and bought the resort instead. He would have wept for the waste you’ve made of your life.”