by Leslie Caine
My mood brightened as I entered the elegant foyer that I’d designed for Audrey more than three years ago, when I first moved to Crestview. I had lived in a bedroom of this fabulous old house rent-free, in exchange for redesigning the interior, until six months ago when I moved into Steve’s house.
I felt a pang as I heard Audrey’s voice. Judging from her: “Higher, lower, no higher…” she was vacillating as she tried to identify the ideal height for the chandelier to a workman in the dining room. I was so lucky to have Audrey Munroe in my life. She had become my de facto mother and my dearest friend. My own adoptive mother had passed away, and my adoptive father had deserted us when I was in first grade.
Even so, as I entered the dining room, I was unwilling to spare her the challenge of eyeballing the best height for the light fixture, which I was able to determine at a glance. “Hi, Audrey.”
A former ballerina with the New York City Ballet, she did a partial pirouette as she whirled around to face me. “Erin, there you are. Miguel, this is Erin,” she said to the workman who was struggling to connect the links of the heavy Swarovski crystal chandelier.
He and I exchanged greetings.
“Could I have a word with you in the front room?” I asked her.
“Oh, feel free to speak openly. I already warned everyone here that I’d tricked you, so they’re expecting you to put me in my place.”
“You changed tomorrow night’s party location without telling me.”
“True. I apologize, Erin. You have so many things on your plate. I didn’t want you to lift a finger for party planning, which you would have wound up doing, had you known it was happening right here. Furthermore, we had to do many of the preparations today instead of tomorrow. So I figured that a full day and a half to adjust to the idea would be sufficient.”
“Therefore, you’ve deceived me weeks ago and never told me that you shifted locations.”
She looked at me quizzically. “I…think that point has already been established. But, yes. I knew you were going to be peeved, so I procrastinated. But in my defense, you know full well that I live for celebrations like this. You’re planning your wedding. Steve is planning the rehearsal dinner. I’ve been cut out of the loop entirely, yet we agreed that I was allowed to give you this party as my gift to you. Holding it in my home with five-star-restaurant-caliber food is friendlier and more comfortable. Plus, it’s much easier than having guests haul their gifts to a restaurant and our having to haul them back here afterward.”
“We weren’t going to have ‘presents.’ We stated on the original invitations that ‘your presence would be our present.’”
“Oh, Erin, dear, nobody honors that,” she said with a chuckle. “When you have a wedding ‘shower’ it means to ‘shower’ you with gifts. Those invitations were just going to confuse everyone.”
“But you wasted all of our original invitations,” I countered, “and you’d already pledged to go along with me on our having a gift-free wedding shower, in exchange for my taking your advice not to have guests donate to our favorite charities, in lieu of wedding gifts.”
She snorted. “Discarding a lousy idea doesn’t count as a compromise.”
“It wasn’t a lousy idea.”
“Charity donations zap everyone’s fun. And wedding guests consider their gifts to essentially be a reimbursement for the considerable expense of the reception.”
“But our plan would have benefitted needy organizations. Steve and I don’t need anything, and we wanted to make our gift to each other to be the wedding reception of our dreams.”
“Charity donations in lieu of wedding gifts is appropriate choice for your second or third marriage. Just not your first.”
“I have no intention of ever having a second marriage.”
“Nobody ever does. Outside of Hollywood.” She gave me a once-over. “I guess I might as well tell you this now while you’re already angry with me. Two weeks ago, I registered you for wedding gifts at the Paprika, with Steve’s blessing. I know you wanted to choose that less-pricey department store, but Paprika needs your business more than a national chain does. Furthermore, Paprika needs to be supporting your business. Steve agreed with me that it makes good business sense.”
She’d consulted with Steve about this? And he hadn’t told me? The doorbell chimed. Audrey headed toward the door, leaving me to ponder why I was being left out of the loop at my own wedding.
“Does this look okay?” the workman on the stepladder asked me.
I shook my head. “It’s too high, Miguel. Count five links down from the ceiling, and five up from the chandelier. Hook those two links together.” Knowing Audrey, she’d promptly run to answer the door precisely because she knew I’d advise him in her stead.
“Speak of the devil,” Audrey called out from the front room, without opening the door. “It’s Steve.” She strode past me, after winking at Miguel. “You can let him in, and you two can sort things out while I go busy myself with some noisy gardening in the back yard.”
“Steve and I are not going to argue,” I called after her. For one thing, Audrey, not Steve, had been driving the locomotive that shifted our party from the restaurant to her house. I opened the door. What a gorgeous man! This was the second reason I was so confident that we wouldn’t argue; my heart always melted at the sight of him. And the best part was that, the way his gaze locked into mine, I knew he felt the same way about me.
We gave each other a quick kiss as he stepped through the door. This was the tail end of September. The weather was hot and muggy by Colorado standards, which translated to “pleasant” by upstate New York standards, where I’d grown up.
“I missed you today,” Steve said, grinning at me. “And every night for the last three weeks.”
“I’ve missed you, too. Which doesn’t get you off the hook completely. I just found out about tomorrow night’s party. I would have appreciated a heads-up or two. You also should have told me about the registry at Paprika, and that Audrey’s now hosting our wedding shower.”
“Yeah, my bad. Sorry. I should have kept you up to date.” Steve got that distant look in his eyes that I’d been seeing too often this past month; he was worried about something that he was hesitant to share with me. “Parsley and Sage will be lucky to open in a month, let alone in two weeks. No way could we have a party there tomorrow night. And Audrey insisted that she be the one to tell you, because it was her idea in the first place.”
“I found out from Aunt Bea, not Audrey, and I assumed Audrey was the mastermind. In any case, it’s pretty shoddy communication between us.”
“I’m sorry, Gilbert.” Calling me by my last name was an endearment, and I still felt the magnetic pull of him. “We did agree to give Audrey free rein with the shower, and she made some excellent points about our registering for gifts. When she gave me the list of what you’d like at Paprika, I assumed she’d run the change in plans past you. Especially because I agreed with every single selection on the list.”
I shook my head in dismay; Steve was describing quintessential Audrey-like behavior. “She made up the registry list without ever mentioning it. Now I know why she kept insisting I go with her on her various window-shopping expeditions there.”
“Huh. Well, it’s nice to know that Audrey’s been keeping you company, while I’ve been forced to ignore you. I’ve been running around like a chicken with its head chopped off for the last two months.”
“Hmm. That reminds me. She asked if I liked a particular cleaver while we were there, and I said yes. That probably made it onto our registry.”
“I don’t think I saw it on the list…but we did get a wedding gift today that looked suspiciously like a hatchet.”
I laughed.
His eyes sparkled in merriment for a moment, but then his tension returned. “You and I haven’t had any time for a personal conversation this entire month.” He grimaced. “We need to talk.”
His words instantly set my insecurities ablaze. “Okay,�
�� I said forcing my voice to sound breezy. I led the way into Audrey’s front room and promptly sat on my favorite chair—a Chippendale with a cross-stitched floral pattern that my mother had created.
Steve didn’t close the door behind us, which was a good sign; we could still hear the workers’ voices in the kitchen, so this impending conversation couldn’t be about anything earthshattering.
He raked his hand through his dark brown hair. He had an errant lock, which hung down on his forehead and was sexy as hell. “Drew’s whole business is in jeopardy.” His voice was rife with concern. He stood in front of the honey-colored loveseat. “Turns out, he got screwed-over by the former manager at his Napa restaurant. The guy embezzled something like twenty thousand. So, naturally, Drew’s checks to his subcontractors have bounced. He’s got way too much money invested in opening this new restaurant here to throw in the towel. The whole thing is a train wreck.”
Only then did Steve sit down. Meanwhile, my pulse had been rising with Steve’s every statement. This was precisely what I had feared would happen from the first time Steve excitedly told me about Drew’s expansion of his restaurant business to Colorado. We typically required our customers to pay a percentage upfront to cover our expenses. Against my objections, Steve had waved this policy.
“You can’t let Sullivan and Gilbert Designs get tangled up in Drew’s debt,” I stated. “You’re going to have to quit working for him until he can afford to pay you, Steve.”
He grimaced and took an uneven breath. “I realize that’s what I should do, but I just can’t leave him high and dry like this.”
“You’re going to have to force yourself, Steve. I know you credit him with saving your life, but—”
“I don’t just credit him. He did save my life. After I dared him to join me out there on a ledge. I don’t want to leave him on a financial cliff now.”
“What choice do you have? You know better than anyone how easy it is to take your own business from the black to the red.”
“That’s what you got out of what I just told you? That I’m going to put us in financial ruin?”
“No, Steve! That’s not at all what I meant.” I hesitated. In truth, my remark had been intended to remind him that he’d been down this road before and knew better than to travel it a second time. A year or two before we’d met, Sullivan Designs had almost been bankrupted by a con artist who’d lured him into forming a partnership with her. Steve had already admitted to me that Drew had never offered to help him back when he was on the verge of financial collapse. “How would you have handled this if he were any other client?”
He rose and began to pace. “Doesn’t matter. He isn’t. He’s my friend.”
“Which is why business and friendships shouldn’t be mixed.”
“I don’t need an ‘I told you so,’ Erin. I’m already aware I’ve screwed up everything.”
“Not everything,” I replied, my heart softening as I studied the strain on his handsome features. I stood up and crossed the room toward him, feeling awkward, but unable to remain seated. He was now staring out the window. The slant of sunlight on his white shirt through the lovely paned glass gave me the image of him as the romantic hero in a historical novel. “You’re still my favorite man in the entire universe. Furthermore, in spite of the economy, Sullivan and Gilbert Designs has steadily gained new clients. So…we can probably afford to do some pro bono work, at least, for Drew.”
Sullivan didn’t reply, merely raked his hand through his hair once again, which instantly put me back on edge. That gesture of his was often a poker-player’s tell that he was holding back something.
“You’re not…also loaning Drew money, are you?”
“Not a substantial amount, no. But I spotted him five hundred to pay the plumber. Before you get all critical, bear in mind that I’m trying to help my life-long friend get out of a jam. Which he’s gotten into through no fault of his own.”
If he’s telling you the truth about his dishonest ex-manager, that is. I chose to bite my tongue. “Just remember, Steve, you’re already doing a lot for him. He’s living here for free for six weeks in our guest room, and he’s got the best designer in Colorado working for nothing.”
“Second best,” he said, giving me a wink.
“You mean behind me?” I said, sincerely delighted and surprised.
He chuckled and hugged me, whirling me around in his arms, our minor discord forgotten. “What?!” he asked in mocked horror. “Did you think I’m marrying you just because you’re so amazing and so beautiful? And because I love you more than anything in the world? No way! My evil intentions are to exploit your talent!”
“Wow! You really know how to flatter me!”
“Only because you’re so deserving of compliments, Gilbert.”
“So are you, Sullivan. I’m constantly learning more about design from working with you.” He smiled at me with so much love in his eyes, my own eyes misted. He kissed me, then held me tightly against his chest. Our bodies fit together perfectly. We were made for each other.
I hesitated, torn. If I kept my mouth shut, maybe things would work themselves out with Drew. Or maybe they’d get even worse, and I’d get so upset that I would erupt in another week or two. Perhaps right before our wedding. The adage: “A stitch in time saves nine” popped into my head. “I really wish I could leave the subject of Drew alone. But…Steve, I’m worried that you’re failing to see him as the man that he is today. As opposed to the boy you loved throughout your childhood. Have you double-checked his story about the embezzler?”
Steve released me from his grasp. “Talk about a buzzkill,” he grumbled.
“I know. I’m sorry. I just…need to be upfront with you about my doubts about your friend. It’s next to impossible to ignore your personal history and see who an old friend truly is today.”
“Why would I want to?”
“That’s just it. You obviously don’t want to. But when it comes to mixing friends and money…you should. Today Aunt Bea told me that Drew was—”
“Aunt Bea has never liked him,” Steve interrupted. “The woman’s a racist!”
I held his gaze, unwilling to dismiss her opinions that easily. “You’d told me that Drew hasn’t always been kind to Aunt Bea.”
“Yeah, but that was only the one time. When she caught him in the act of making fun of her weight. And we’re talking about something that occurred twenty-some years ago. At any rate, yesterday I talked to Lucas LeBlanc, Drew’s chef. He backed up Drew’s story of the embezzler. So, yeah, I checked it out.”
By taking the word of Drew’s employee. How dependable does Steve think that is? I closed my eyes for a moment, rather than continue to meet his icy glare. This was not a well-timed conversation. We should have thoroughly sorted out the what-ifs back when Drew first told Steve about his new restaurant and offered him the major design job. We’d discussed the challenges of business partners marrying; we knew that balancing work life and personal life would be difficult at times. Still. I wasn’t prepared for these issues to arise right before our wedding, and for our having been placed on this high wire by Steve’s best man.
Our gazes locked once again. His remained smoldering, and not in a good way. “We disagree about this one, particular client,” I said quietly.
“Exactly. And we agreed back when we merged our businesses that the project leader makes the ultimate decision. Which means me.”
“Erin? Steve?” Audrey called. “I need your opinions on seating options for the back yard.”
Steve turned.
I grabbed his arm. “Make decisions with your head, darling, not your heart.”
“I will,” he snapped. “I’m not Drew’s…or anyone else’s…fool.”
He didn’t exactly jerk his arm free from my grasp, but he strode out the doorway without a glance back.
Chapter 3
The next day, things felt slightly strained and awkward between us when Steve and I met at the office of our wedding
planner, Fitz Parker. We had hired Fitz upon getting a glowing recommendation from Michelle, Steve’s youngest sister, who’d gotten married about three years ago.
Despite his Anglo-Saxon name, Fitz appeared to be of Italian descent—olive complexion, black hair, and broad features. He had some of the affectations of being gay, but I’d caught him ogling a couple of women surreptitiously. His occasional effeminate mannerisms and figures of speech struck me as just as big of a put-on as the purple velvet vest that he was currently wearing. My theory was that he felt that sexual ambiguity made both the bride and groom less intimidated by his virile physique.
“Audrey absolutely forbade me to give her a helping hand with planning tonight’s bash,” Fitz was telling me, “even after I told her I’d do it gratis.”
“She loves planning parties,” I explained.
“Well, so do I, darling,” he replied with a flick of his wrist. “Plus, you’ve hired me to perform that function for you.”
“Are you still coming tonight?” I asked.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he replied.
“Good,” Steve said. He was a man of few words today.
Someone rapped on the door, then immediately opened it. Drew Benson walked in, a self-pleased grin on his chiseled, African-American features. He was a muscular, athletic man with a clean-shaven head.
“Hi, folks,” he said.
“Hi, Drew,” I replied, confused by his dropping by uninvited. “Did you think we were sampling wedding cakes today?” Truth be told, I was annoyed at his intrusion. He was spending much more time with Steve than I was, and this was the one and only hour that Steve had carved out of his workday to spend with me on our wedding plans.
Drew chuckled. “No, I realized I had to reveal my surprise gift right this minute, or it’d be too late.” He gestured at someone in the doorway. “Come in, Lucas.”
In stepped a short, heavyset balding man, his sandy-colored hair in a comb-over that looked foolish compared to Drew and his macho shaved head. Lucas also had a pencil-thin mustache that had gone out of style with David Niven. “Here I am,” he said with a hint of a French accent, “at your service. It’s my pleasure, as well as Monsieur Benson’s, to ensure the bride and groom that they will have the best of weddings.”
