Roxie resisted the command. The silk robe suddenly felt like a brown paper sack. Nope. Not this game. She began to bounce on her feet instead. Toe, heel. Toe, heel. An old habit, one of the few she’d retained from years of ballet.
“Have you been gaining weight, Roxanna?” Marabella asked, stricken with horror at the prospect.
Yes, she’d gained weight. She’d worked to put back some of the twenty pounds she’d lost following Richard and Cassandra’s betrayal. “I’ve gained a few pounds,” she admitted.
“Oh,” Marabella said, disappointment a well-hewed knife. “Oh, dear. You were looking so well. Just as you did in New York. Don’t you remember how well you looked then?”
You mean when I was unhealthy, Mother? When I was a slave to bulimia and your diet pills? Her mother’s obsession with weight had landed Roxie in the emergency room. Sadly, she wasn’t the last of Marabella Honeycutt’s daughters to have her stomach pumped. “Let’s move on,” she pleaded. “Is there a reason you stopped by?”
Marabella continued to eye her for a moment more before she remembered. “It was for Cassandra. The dress. Have you finished all the dresses? Georgiana’s wedding is only three weeks away...”
“The wedding is four weeks from Saturday,” Roxie corrected, struggling to adopt a reasonable tone amid mounting inner tension. “And the gowns will be done by Monday. Just measure Cassandra yourself. She can call me.”
“I’m not a tailor like you. I could be doing it wrong.”
“It’s pretty straightforward.”
“I think my measuring tape’s wrong.”
Roxie moaned. To laugh? To scream? To scream with laughter? “Just measure again. If the numbers are off, I’ll take the dress out.”
“I’ll have her come by the shop. You can measure her there. Don’t allow that assistant of yours to do it. It was him who measured me for the Mardi Gras ball. I’ve never had a thirty-three-inch waist in my life. He is European. Maybe he’s still on that metric system.”
Give me strength, Roxie pleaded. She heard a thud behind the basement door and cleared her throat. “Thank you for stopping by, Mother. I’m glad you got to see the house.”
“Why is there a television in the middle of your living room?” Marabella asked in bewilderment as Roxie ushered her toward the foyer. “Don’t you think this one’s a little excessive?”
“Hmm,” Roxie said in answer.
“You should rethink the housing situation. Really, there’s nothing wrong with the French Colonial. If we must, we’ll have someone come in and cleanse the place. That’s apparently a thing now. Something to do with chakras...?”
“I’ll think about it,” Roxie lied as they reached the door. Marabella took her time putting on her gloves and Chanel sunglasses. They kissed each other, once on each cheek, and said goodbye. Roxie locked the door behind her. She heard another thump and went quickly back to the basement door. No sooner had she opened it than Byron stumbled out.
“I’m sorry,” she said instantly.
“What just happened here?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said again, shutting the door behind him. “She doesn’t know I’m living with someone like you, and I didn’t have time to arrange the fainting couch.”
“What’s ‘someone like me?’” he asked.
“You know,” she said. When he only scowled at her, she waved a hand to indicate his physique. “A man. Another man who’s...” Tall? Dark? Toned? Attractive? Flipping gorgeous. Much more than any card-carrying member of the male species had a right to be. Hello, Mother. This is Byron, my sexy man-friend who lives next door. I’ve seen him naked. But I don’t think about it. Absolutely do not think about it. Tee-hee.
She trailed off when he sniffed and dabbed at his nose. “What’re you... Are you bleeding?”
“Apparently,” he groaned, turning partially away from her when he saw the blood on his knuckles.
“Why are you bleeding?” she asked, distressed. She bent at the waist, trying to get a look up his nostrils.
“I don’t know,” he replied, droll. “Maybe my schnoz got in the way of that door you slammed.”
“It hit you in the face?” she asked.
“I’m trying to think if it was before or after it knocked me down the stairs...”
“Oh, my God.” She grabbed him by the hand and marched him forcefully into the kitchen. Pulling out a chair, she nudged him back again. “Sit. I’ll get you something.”
“Amaretto on the rocks,” he said, sprawling into the spindly Queen Anne. It creaked beneath him and looked miniaturized. “Double tall.”
“Would you like a cherry?” When he only eyed her, she sighed and went to the sink. Did she mention hating that they weren’t friends anymore?
“So,” he said as she filled a washcloth with ice cubes and balled it up tight. “Roxanna.”
She stopped. The muscles in her stomach tightened in defense even as his voice stretched the long a in the middle of her given name like a favorite chord in a song. “Don’t,” she said in simple warning as she went back to him. Encouraged by the slight grin on his face, she pressed the balled-up ice gently to his nose. “Atticus.”
His shoulders moved on a silent laugh as he tipped his head back. He winced but only slightly.
She stood over him in silence for several moments before he spoke again. “It’s a family name.”
“How about the nose?” she asked. “Does that run in the family, too?”
He chuckled. Quietly, but out loud.
The sound was a relief. When genuine, his laugh trebled over the surface, like a rock skipping on water, leaving ripples behind. She welcomed the rings, licking her lips to keep the relief from curving them too widely. “Truce?” she whispered.
The stolid lines fell upon his features and his gaze turned thoughtful as he scanned hers. “She’s wrong.”
“Who?”
“Your mother.”
“Oh.” Sighing, she asked, “What about?”
“Everything, now that you mention it.”
“You still don’t think I should give Richard another chance,” she assumed.
“I don’t like the guy,” he said, pulling the ice away from his nose. He took it from her to wipe some of the mess on the edge of the cloth. “But I’m not the one who was married to him.”
“No, you aren’t.”
He frowned. “It was what she said about your weight.”
Again, the muscles in her stomach knotted. Her voice dropped back. “What about it?”
“It looks good on you.”
The ice was dripping through the cloth. She didn’t look at him as she took it away. “I know. But she’s my mother.”
“She’s a Hun.” At her shocked glance, he raised his brows. “She is.”
“No,” Roxie said. “She’s just a silly woman who likes to micromanage everything and everyone. Especially her children.”
“Do you let her?”
“Not anymore.”
“Good.” His mouth moved warmly again and, this time, his eyes smiled up at her, as well. “I still think she’s a Hun.”
Roxie considered. “If your mother was a Hun, wouldn’t you defend her?”
“Yes,” Byron answered in a ready way that spoke volumes about his feelings toward Vera.
Lifting her thumb, she grazed the pad over the space above his top lip, wiping away the last watery smear of blood. There was a dip there, pronounced and perfect. “You love them very much, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said again.
“I envy you,” she realized. She felt the entrenched line work its way between her eyes. “I envy you your family.” When he only looked at her, she realized that her thumb had lingered above his lip. She pulled it away quickly and busied herself
wrapping up the ice once more to keep it from dripping across the floor. She carried it back to the sink. “Feel better?”
There was a long pause. The Queen Anne whined as he pushed to his feet. “I need to get Giselle home.”
“Does she turn into a pumpkin,” Roxie asked, “or is Project Runway on tonight?”
“Hardy-har-har.”
“Byron,” she called to him. He paused in the arch leading into the den. She smiled when he glanced back over his shoulder. “Can we call it a truce?”
He returned a half smile. It looked stilted, but nonetheless he said, “We’re all right, duchess.” Tapping his balled-up fist against the wall, he moved away from her.
CHAPTER FIVE
“THERE’S A WOMAN living in my house.” Byron glanced up from the caramel cube he’d been unwrapping from cellophane. “Sorry. Your house.” He held the cube out.
Diminutive and wise-eyed, Athena Papadakis took the caramel between her fingers. Her nails were shiny and kempt, her gold rings and bangles on display even here in the retirement village where she’d decided to live out the rest of her days. Her skin was white, nearly translucent, giving way to capillaries. Veins pushed up from underneath in blue-ridged chains.
Those channels of blood looked vibrant and coursing, like the woman herself. It was the outer layer that was beginning to fray. A life force like Athena’s was too much for the outside to contain, anyway, Byron mused, watching her press one of her beloved caramels between thin, papery lips. She regarded him and his conundrum through exotic dark eyes. “Is she pretty?”
Byron chuckled, stuffing a caramel into his mouth and reaching for another. “I should’ve known you’d ask.”
“Well. Is she?”
“On a scale of one to ten,” he asked, “or one to Athena?”
Those dark irises warmed over his charm. She tutted at him and reached over to the small table between the needlepoint chairs for the blue-and-white teacup with its Greek key motif. He beat her to it, bringing it up to her lips. Her hands followed his. She sipped, waved the cup away and waited as he set it back down to rest in its saucer. “How are her hips? Not too narrow?”
Byron hissed. He pointedly took a drink from his own cup. He liked tea one way and that was sweet and ice-cold in the summer. Since always, though, Athena had made it warm and herbal and, even as a boy, he’d drunk it without exception. Running his tongue over his teeth, he propped his elbow on the arm of the chair and canted his head against his hand. “Athena, Athena.”
She chuckled. The sound was a deep, satisfactory rumble. She reached out again, patting his knee. “The minute I stop teasing the men in this family is the minute I’m dead.” She let out another laugh but it died in a blaze of chest-deep coughing. Byron shifted toward her as she shook with it, her posture caving.
“I’m all right,” she said. Hoarse, she took a drink from the teacup when again he offered it, sipping to sooth her throat. “Get back to the girl,” she said, waving off any concern for herself. “Will you stop beating around the bush and marry this one already? I’m getting old, nephew. I’d like to see you settled again before my time.”
“She’s just a neighbor,” he told her.
“Let me tell you something, Byron Atticus,” Athena said. “Your name may be Strong but you’re Maragos to the bone. Strong-willed, thick-skinned. And this ‘just a neighbor’ lady has dug her a place beneath it.”
“Has not.”
That deep chuckle galled the truth at him. “You play pretend and tell yourself it’s irritation that put her there. It was the same with Ari when I first came over.”
He lifted his cup again to sip, frowning at her over the rim. Athena was his great-aunt on his father’s side. She’d traveled over with her sister, Byron’s grandmother, to enter into prearranged matrimony with a man she’d never met.
Byron’s grandmother Fillipa had married a Swiss émigré by the name of Nils Strong and moved to the suburbs of Atlanta while Athena traveled to the Eastern Shore to marry a Greek expat, Ari Papadakis. While Fillipa and Nils’s relationship had proved just as lasting as Athena and Ari’s, theirs wasn’t near the love affair that the latter turned out to be. “He told me he fell in love with you on sight,” Byron recalled. “The liar.”
“He did not lie,” Athena asserted, lifting a finger. “Ari did love me, from the first time we met. But he didn’t want a wife. It was his family, you see. His family forced him into marriage, just as mine forced me to come to America and marry him. We weren’t pleased with the arrangement, but we pleased each other. It just took some time for him to admit as much. He tried to make me and himself believe that I was little more than a burden to him. In close quarters, it didn’t take long for the tension to drain and for the love to shine through.”
Byron lifted his brows knowingly. “Yeah. I think the house is proof of that.”
Remembrance and tender affection lifted the corners of Athena’s mouth in a wavering smile. “Yes,” she whispered. “He did build me a good house.”
Ari had built his Athena a masterpiece, and Byron couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t still irritated that the Victorian was another twelve months out of his reach. “Why me?” When Athena blinked her way out of a bittersweet reverie, Byron added, “Why give me the house? ’Cilla and Vivi love it every bit as much as I do.”
“Priscilla has her own home,” Athena reminded him. “She takes pride in it and her family, as she should. And you know as well as I do that Vivienne and her man will never be able to stay here when they know there is suffering elsewhere. They will live where they are called. Do you remember how you used to stare at the walls? You always had this look of wonderment. I knew they would be yours somewhere down the road. Ari knew, too.”
He unwrapped a caramel and passed it to her.
Athena chewed it thoughtfully in the meaningful, companionable silence that followed. “So you won’t marry her?”
Laughter bolted out of him. He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers and let it roll through him. “I love you,” he said. The words and the sentiment behind them came easily to him. “God help me but I love you.”
“He’s laying it on thick,” said Grim’s baritone as he entered Athena’s room. He carried with him a bouquet of fresh tulips.
“What are you doing here?” Byron asked in mock wariness.
“Trying to edge you out as the favorite man,” Grim pointed out. He knelt next to Athena’s chair and laid the flowers on her lap. “Hello, beautiful.”
Athena beamed. “Hello, Tobias. How are my odds looking?”
Grim pulled a small notebook from the breast pocket of his sports coat. He flipped the cover back and wet his fingertips as he thumbed through the pages. Finally, he found what he was looking for. “You’re sitting pretty. Everybody’s betting the baby’s a boy, including Byron. So far only you, Con and ’Cilla think it’s a girl. If you’re right, you’ll have a nice new roll for your cash jar.”
“You’re wrong this time, Athena,” Byron wagered. “Grim here’s got five brothers back in Arkansas. Odds are it’s a boy.”
“Never bet against Athena,” Priscilla warned as she entered the room a step behind her enlarged belly. “Sorry. Potty break.” She leaned over and kissed Athena on the temple. “How are you today, Auntie?”
“Crowded,” Byron muttered, pushing up from the chair.
As Byron guided her to the seat, Priscilla threw him a look that was identical to the one their mother gave him when he was being less than generous. “You can’t have her all to yourself.”
“With the rest of you lurking, certainly not,” Byron said as he went to stand at Athena’s shoulder. Bending at the waist, he touched her arm and muttered in private fashion, “You let me know if these kids bother you.” He jerked his thumb toward the door. “We’ll kick them right out.”
“Nonstop,” Priscilla replied, shifting Athena’s palm around slowly until she found the right spot. “She’s been battering away at my ribs there. The way she kicks... I think she’s going to be a soccer star.” Both women smiled when something happened on the other side of the belly. Athena began to murmur a blessing in Greek, the hand rubbing now in small, maternal circles. When she was done, the hand lifted to Priscilla’s cheek, doting. “You look so beautiful. Tobias, isn’t your wife oraia?”
“She’s a regular Sofia Loren,” Grim said, his attention seized on Priscilla’s face. “If it’s a girl, she might give her great-great auntie a run for her money.”
Athena chuckled once more. “Where’s my Vivienne? Why hasn’t she come to see me?”
“She flies in tomorrow,” Priscilla said, lifting what was left of Byron’s tea. She tipped it to her mouth and drained it.
“Don’t count on seeing her much once she does come home,” Byron advised. “The watchman on the door has her picture. He won’t let her in.”
Grim nodded agreement. “Yeah, once the baby of the family gets here, none of the rest of us have a chance.”
“The baby might be coming home,” Priscilla noted. She patted her belly. “But this one’s going to edge her out in a month.”
“Children, children,” Athena cooed. “Tell me about the wedding. The arrangements are coming along?”
Priscilla eyed Byron over Athena’s head. “I need to talk to you about that.”
“Me?” Byron asked. The thought of joining the mad torrent of wedding preparations made him more than a little ill. His mother and sister were sticklers for perfection. Vivienne’s nuptials were turning out to be a breeding ground for their detailed obsessiveness. “Why me?”
“Donatella quit,” Priscilla said, setting the cup back in the saucer with a clipped rattle.
“She quit?” Byron asked. “She can’t just quit. She’s the wedding planner.”
Wooing the Wedding Planner Page 9
