Third Time's the Bride!

by Merline Lovelace

  “Me, too.” Laughing, Dawn brushed off that minor inconvenience. “The really amazing thing is that I never imagined we’d ever make it to Rome, much less to the Trevi Fountain.” Her hand tightened on the friend she’d shared so many dreams with. “Do you know what I wished that day, when we were all there at the fountain?”

  “According to legend, you didn’t have to make a wish. Just throwing the coin ensured you’ll return to Rome someday.”

  “Well, I wanted that, too. But mostly I wanted a few more days or weeks with Tommy. Okay,” she admitted when Callie shot her a knowing look. “Tommy and his dad. Now...” Her eyes misting, she gulped. “Now I have a chance at forever. I’m starting to believe that wish might really come true.”

  “It will,” Callie said fiercely. “This time, it will.”

  * * *

  The following Friday afternoon, Dawn repeated that mantra to herself over and over as she waited for her mother’s flight. Unfortunately, it was delayed by weather out of Hartford. As a result, they barely made it to the hotel in time for the rehearsal dinner.

  The blessedly efficient LauraBeth had blocked rooms at the five-star Ritz-Carlton for out-of-town guests. She’d also reserved one of the hotel’s private dining rooms for the rehearsal dinner. Dawn had tried to wiggle out of this pesky tradition. The wedding ceremony would be too simple, she insisted, and the venue too informal to require one.

  She caved, however, when LauraBeth pointed out that it might be a good idea for Brian and Tommy and his parents to meet her family before the actual ceremony itself. As a protective shield, Dawn had added Kate, Travis, Callie, Carlo and Joe Russo to the guest list.

  Even with her friends’ lively presence, the cocktail hour before dinner turned her inside out. Time hadn’t eliminated her parents’ animosity. They coated their barbs with sugary smiles, but every exchange knotted Dawn’s stomach a little tighter. Her three brothers were older and had escaped before the home environment became completely toxic. Still, Aaron, the closest to her in age, had been exposed to enough of the poison to exert a valiant effort to act as a buffer.

  “Hey, Mom. Did you know Travis hung up his air force uniform? He’s now working with Brian?”

  “Yes, Dawn told me.”

  With her coppery hair only a few shades lighter than her daughter’s, everyone could see Maureen McGill had passed both her coloring and her stubborn chin to her children. The similarities stopped there, though. Her features were stamped with an unhappiness that showed in her face as she sent Kate a sardonic glance.

  “I was so glad to hear your husband was willing to make some sacrifices to keep your marriage together. Not many are, as I can...”

  “Try these, Mom.” Grabbing a crab cake from a nearby tray, Aaron shoved it at her. “They’re wonderful.”

  Her father was on the other side of the room, talking to Brian’s parents. Not far enough away, unfortunately, to miss his ex-wife’s comment or refrain from rising to the bait.

  “More husbands might be willing to make the sacrifice, if their marriage was worth saving.”

  Cringing inside, Dawn wondered again why in God’s name she’d agreed to this gathering. How had she imagined a smaller, more intimate setting might convince her parents to call a truce? She was about to tell them both to forget about attending the ceremony tomorrow when Carlo di Lorenzo stepped into the breach.

  “Dawn, you break my heart by marrying Brian.”

  His dark eyes were merry above his luxuriant black mustache as he bowed over her hand with exaggerated charm. Having spent several evenings in his company in Italy, she wasn’t surprised when he tipped her hand at the last moment and planted a warm kiss on the inside of her wrist.

  The man had done his best to convince her to jet off with him while they were in Italy. Or at least join him for a merry romp at one of his villas. She had to admit she’d been tempted. The playboy prince stood a half a head shorter than she did and sported a shiny bald spot at the back of his head, but his teeth gleamed beneath his handlebar mustache and centuries of aristocratic charm oozed from every pore.

  “The only way to save me from despair,” he informed her mournfully, “is to introduce me to your so-beautiful mother.”

  “Of course,” Dawn said drily. “Mom, this is Carlo di Lorenzo, Prince of Lombard and Marino. Carlo, my mother, Maureen.”

  His smile caressed the older woman’s face.

  “I see where your daughter gets her beautiful eyes, Signora McGill. They enchanted me from the moment we met in Venice. Now that Dawn breaks my heart by refusing to run away with me, you must help it mend, yes? Come to Rome, and I will show you the city as few people ever see it.”

  Maureen McGill was no more proof against that charm than any of the supermodels and starlets Carlo had romanced over the years. Flustered and flattered, she shot her ex-husband a triumphant look and let Carlo claim her full attention.

  “Thank God,” Dawn muttered, her knuckles white around the stem of her champagne flute.

  Brian eased it gently from her hand and bent to murmur in her ear. “We can ditch this crowd, jump on a jet and be in Vegas in two hours.”

  She considered it. Seriously considered it. But the mere fact that he’d made the offer loosened her knots and kicked in the stubborn streak she’d inherited from her mother.

  “I would take you up on that in a heartbeat, but you’ve got a puppy to pick up tomorrow, remember? And I want our friends to help us celebrate in the afternoon.”

  The wedding was scheduled for 4:00 p.m. Dawn could make it until then. She would make it until then.

  “Your call,” Brian said, brushing his lips across her cheek. “If you change your mind, just say the word.”

  The kiss, the soft promise and another glass of champagne soothed the jagged edges from Dawn’s nerves. The toast Brian offered when they sat down to dinner brought her joy in the occasion flooding back.

  He nodded to his son, who scrambled to his feet. A beaming Tommy joined his dad in raising their water glasses.

  “To our bright, shining Dawn,” Brian said with a look that wrapped twice around her heart. “She rolls back our night. And...?”

  Keyed to his line, Tommy tipped his glass and sloshed most of the water onto the table before finishing happily.

  “’N fills us with sunshine ’n smiles ’n stuff.”

  * * *

  “Great dinner,” Kate drawled some hours later.

  She and Callie and Dawn were ensconced in one of the Ritz’s luxurious suites, indulging in what had become their pre-wedding-night tradition. One that harked back to ancient times, when a prospective groom might kidnap his bride and hold her for a full cycle of the moon—an early, preemptive version of the “honeymoon”—to make sure she wasn’t carrying another man’s seed. To prevent that dire happening, a vigilant father would often lock his daughter in a fortified towers or dark, dank cell until delivering her to the church the next day.

  This particular tower offered a bird’s-eye view of the Washington Monument just across the Potomac. Floodlights illuminated the column’s gleaming marble, and its red eye winked at the ink-black sky.

  “Doesn’t hold a candle to your last rehearsal dinner, though.” Grinning, Kate dunked a strawberry into her nonalcoholic sparkling cider. “Now that was a night to forget!”

  “I wish I could,” Dawn retorted, shuddering. “I asked myself a half dozen times tonight why I was putting us through all this hoopla again.”

  As always, Callie was the voice of calm reason. “Because you love Brian and Tommy and you want us all to share in the celebration of that love.”

  “That’s what I told Brian when he suggested we jump a plane and head for Vegas.”

  “Like Callie and I would let you ditch us,” Kate huffed.

  “I told him that, too.”

/>   “I thought he understood we’re a matched set.”

  “If he doesn’t by now,” Dawn said, relaxing for the first time since she’d picked her mother up at the airport, “he will after tomorrow.”

  “Hmm.” Still a little indignant, Kate demolished her berry. “Speaking of tomorrow, what time do you want me at the house to help you and Callie set things up?”

  “Come anytime, but we don’t have to worry about setting up. LauraBeth is orchestrating everything.”

  “Lordawmighty, that woman’s amazing. Can’t you divorce your mom and adopt her instead?”

  “I wish!”

  * * *

  By eleven the following morning, Dawn had repeated that fervent wish at least a half dozen times. She should’ve expected her mother to jump in a taxi and arrive at the gatehouse hours before the afternoon ceremony.

  The caterer was busy arranging white folding chairs in the garden. The florist and his assistant had transformed the gazebo into a leafy autumn bower and stood ready to attach small bouquets of fall flowers to the end row chairs when they were set. When Dawn opened the door to her mother, however, Maureen marched in and barely glanced through the open French doors at the crews working under the bright October sun. Her brows were straight-lined in a scowl that started a small knot of tension at the base of Dawn’s skull.

  “You won’t believe what your father just did!”

  Her furious glance shot from her daughter to Callie and back again. When neither commented, she slammed her purse onto the counter. She was wearing the mother-of-the-bride dress she’d purchased for Dawn’s last wedding. The two-piece, sea-foam green flattered her still-slender figure and would have brought out the color of her eyes if they hadn’t been narrowed to mere slits.

  “He had the nerve—the nerve!—to call my room and tell me I made a fool of myself last night drooling over the prince.”

  Dawn winced, and Callie stepped in instinctively to redirect her mother’s venom, as she and Kate had done so many times in the past.

  “You didn’t drool, Mrs. McGill. Carlo’s a delightful, sophisticated man of the world. Of course you would enjoy his company. Dawn and Kate and I do, too.”

  “Exactly.” With an angry sniff, she fluffed her sleek bob. “And if he wants me to jet off to the south of France with him, why should anyone care but he and I and...”

  “Mommm,” Dawn groaned. “Making outrageous offers to attractive women is as natural to Carlo as breathing. He wanted to carry me off to Marrakech. Still wants to carry me off to Marrakech.”

  Her mother glommed on to the first part of the comment and ignored the last. “You think I’m still attractive?”

  “Of course you are. When you’re not scowling,” she added under her breath.

  “Hmm. The prince must be at least ten years younger than I am. Do you think he really...?”

  “Mommm!”

  “All right, all right!” She cast a critical eye over the other two. “Why are you both just lazing around? And where’s Kate? I can’t believe she’s not here yet. You three always do each other’s hair and makeup before your weddings.”

  She made it sound like a tradition forged over a dozen years and an equal number of nuptials. Which, Dawn conceded as tension knotted at the base of her skull, it almost was.

  “Kate’ll be here soon,” she said stiffly.

  The intercom buzzed at that moment. Dawn pressed the talk button with the same feeling as a prizefighter against the ropes.

  “Dad ’n me are making cheese samwiches,” Tommy reported eagerly. “He says he’s not really ’sposed to see the bride before the wedding, but I told him you ’n Callie were probably hungry. Do you wanna have lunch with us?”

  Dawn grabbed at the diversion with both hands. “Yes! My mom’s here, too. We’ll all come over.”

  “’Kay. Then Dad’s gotta run to do some errand. He won’t tell me what it is. He says it’s important, though.”

  * * *

  Dawn came within a breath of abandoning her mother to Callie and Tommy and making the run out to Woodburn with Brian to pick up the pup. She resisted the impulse, although it took considerable effort. She kept a bright smile pinned to her face but the tension at the back of her neck took on the low, throbbing resonance of a kettledrum.

  Callie did her best to divert both Tommy’s eager questions about his role in the ceremony and Maureen’s critical assessment of everything from the caterer’s buffet layout and Dawn’s little wisp of a hat.

  The kettledrum booming now, Dawn pulled Callie aside. “We bought a doggie bed, puppy chow, a leash and collar and a bucket full of toys. They’re stashed at the house down the street.”

  Brian had made the arrangements with the parents of Addy and Tommy’s friend Cindy. The plan was for the Carutherses to keep the pup until after the ceremony, when Dawn and Brian would present Tommy with their wedding gift.

  “But we forgot a grooming brush. Wheatens require regular grooming. I’m going to run out and pick one up.”

  “Now?”

  “There’s a pet shop in the mall. I’ll zip over and back.”

  “Why don’t I go?” Callie offered. “Kate should be here any minute. And the photographer. We want to do some informal ‘before’ shots, remember?”

  Dawn swiped her palms down her jeans and shot a glance at her mother, now busily directing a change to the buffet table. “I just need to get out for a few moments.”

  “Dawn...”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  She shoved the small leather case containing her license and credit cards in the back pocket of her jeans, snatched up the keys to her Mustang and fled the scene.

  Chapter Twelve

  The gatehouse doorbell rang just moments after Dawn departed the premises. When Callie answered, Kate marched in with a garment bag draped over one arm and a tight expression on her face.

  “I saw a red Mustang whiz around the corner as I drove up. Please tell me that wasn’t Dawn at the wheel.”

  “I wish I could.”

  “Oh, God!”

  “It’s okay. Really.” She ushered Kate inside and tried hard for cool and confident. “She just went to get a grooming brush.”

  “Huh?”

  “For the dog,” Callie clarified after a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure Tommy wasn’t within hearing range. “Dawn says the pup needs to be brushed regularly, but they forgot to get a grooming brush. So she’s making quick run to the pet store.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  Her nerves fraying, Callie fired back, “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  “For pity’s sake, why did you let her go alone?”

  “She didn’t want company, although I—”

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  The peevish question had Kate rolling her eyes.

  “Say no more,” she muttered. “I get the picture.”

  Maureen appeared in the foyer, scowling. “Where’s Dawn? I can’t imagine why she insists this LauraBeth person walks on water. You should see the cake the caterers just brought in. It’s a one-layer sheet cake, for pity’s sake, decorated with nothing but two interwoven rings.”

  Kate took a breath and stepped into the line of fire. “Those are the rings Dawn and Brian picked out for each other, Mrs. McGill. That’s all they wanted on the cake.”

  “Maybe so,” Maureen sniffed, “but I must say a man who hobnobs with royalty might have chosen something a little more elegant for his bride. Especially if he makes as much as Wikipedia say he does.”

  “I repeat,” Kate said with exaggerated patience, “those are the rings Dawn and Brian picked out. She told us they’re copies of an ancient Roman design. Since she and Brian met in Italy. The design holds special significance for them.�
��

  “I suppose.” Maureen flapped an impatient hand. “Where is she?”

  “She had to run a last-minute errand.”

  The older woman stared at them, her color draining. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again on a low groan. “Oh, no.”

  “She’ll be right back.” Callie infused the statement with all the assurance she could muster. “She just had to—”

  “Call her!” Maureen said urgently. “Tell her the caterers need her. No, wait! Tell her Tommy’s feeling sick. He thinks he’s going to throw up and is crying for her.”

  “I can’t lie like that,” Callie protested as she retrieved her cell phone.

  “It won’t be a lie. I’ll stick my finger down his throat if I have to.”

  Callie and Kate gaped at her.

  “Oh, get over yourselves,” Dawn’s loving mother huffed. “You want her to go through with this one as much as I do.”

  “But last night...”

  “You said...”

  “I know what I said.” Her mouth twisted. “I’ll admit I’m not the best advertisement for marriage...”

  “You got that right,” Kate agreed savagely.

  Those cat’s eyes narrowed, but Maureen bit back the sharp retort hovering on her lips and glanced over her shoulder at the boy happily directing the placement of a towering ice sculpture.

  “Brian and Tommy are exactly what Dawn needs,” she said after a long moment. “They’ll give her the kind of home and family I wish... Well...” She sniffed and finished fiercely, “I’ll stick my finger down my own throat if that’ll bring her home.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Kate commented as she hit a speed-dial button on her cell phone.

  A few seconds later, the rousing finale to Rossini’s William Tell Overture galloped through the air. The three women followed the Lone Ranger’s theme song to the kitchen, where they found Dawn’s iPhone buzzing and skittering across the counter.

  “Great,” Kate ground out. “She forgot her phone.”