But Bubba mercifully turned his attention back to his grill, anyway. “So, about that party of Miz Templeton’s,” he said, sounding faintly diffident—which was so entirely out of character for Bubba that it succeeded in penetrating Tabby’s misery.
“What about it?”
“She invited me. Sent me one of her fancy invitations and everything.” He pulled something from his pocket and tossed it toward her.
She wasn’t quick enough to catch it. Kneeling down, she picked up the ivory square from the floor and unfolded it. “Fancier than a wedding invitation,” she murmured, waving the engraved card between her fingers.
He made a face, deftly assembling the hamburgers and plating them alongside steaming-hot French fries before setting them on the pass-through. “Order up,” he yelled, then looked back at Tabby. “I didn’t expect her to invite me.”
“Why wouldn’t she? You’ve been cooking for her for a while now. Do you want to go?”
He glanced at the orders lined up in front of him and dumped more thin-sliced potatoes into the fryer. “If I don’t, she might not ask me to cook for her anymore when Montrose is off. And the money’s good.”
“I doubt she’d do that.”
He looked skeptical. “I don’t know, Tabby. She’s kind of a crazy old lady.”
“So go, if you’re worried about it. You can rent a tux in Braden, I’m sure. What’s the problem?”
He cracked two eggs with one hand over the grill and pitched the shells in the trash without having to look. “Invitation says me and a guest.”
For the first time all day, Tabby felt faintly amused. “So you get to take a date. That’s hardly a problem, Bubba. People all over this town are curious to see inside that mansion she’s built.”
He let out a disgusted grunt. “I don’t wanna find a date. Some girl who’ll want a second date.”
“God forbid,” she murmured drily.
“I was thinking maybe you’d go with me.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Me?”
“Well, you wouldn’t be expecting anything dumb from me, like flowers ’n’ stuff. And you’d fit in there better than the ladies I know down at Jojo’s.”
Jojo’s was a dive bar on the other end of town. “Thanks, I think.”
“So? Party’s Saturday night.”
Even though she’d just been counting her blessings that she hadn’t received an invitation, she smiled at him. “Sure, Bubba. Why not? I’m curious to see inside her mansion, too.” At least there was no need to worry about any romantic complications. The man was like a rough-edged, well-meaning uncle.
And maybe, just maybe, it would give her an opportunity to think about something other than Justin.
When the lunch rush abated, she walked home, leaving Paulette to close up the restaurant. It started snowing before she got there, and by the time she’d changed into warmer clothes and liberated Beastie from the kennel cage Justin had procured, the ground was covered in a solid layer of white. This was a source of curiosity to Beastie, who approached the whole matter with obvious wariness before she found a squatworthy corner of the yard. But once she’d done her business, the mystery of the white stuff became a sudden playground, and it took Tabby quite some time before she was able to corral the mischievous pup and go inside.
She called her mom for wardrobe guidance for the Templeton party while she stood guard over the dog wolfing down puppy kibble and water. “Bubba’s invitation said black tie. That’s fancier than the fund-raiser was, and I had a heck of a time finding a dress for that. What’s Mrs. Templeton thinking, anyway? This is Weaver. We don’t do black tie.”
Jolie laughed. “My encounters with Vivian Templeton make me believe that she expects Weaver to adjust to her rather than the other way around. I’m just glad that your father and I had an honest reason to decline the invitation we received, since he needs to be in Cheyenne this weekend. I know she only sent the invitation because I did her gown. From what I’ve heard, it’s mostly family members she’s inviting.”
The Clays and the Templetons. That included Justin.
Tabby pushed aside the troublesome thought. “Bubba figures he needs to go in order to stay in her good graces,” she told her mother. “I wonder if I could just rent a gown somewhere.”
“Tabby! You’re not going to rent a gown.”
“What? Anything else seems silly when I’ll only be wearing it a few hours. Bubba only needs me as his plus one. I’m hardly out to impress anyone.” Especially Justin. If he was going to be there. Which he probably wouldn’t be, anyway.
She pinched the bridge of her nose in a vain attempt to stanch her mental nonsense.
“And I’ve heard there are places that rent gowns,” she continued. “Same as guys rent tuxedos. You don’t think anything about that.”
“There’s nothing wrong with renting a gown if you need to,” Jolie said. “But I’m a seamstress, for heaven’s sake. With a daughter who has never needed a formal gown. Not even for her high school prom.”
“I didn’t go to prom.” She’d stayed home, hiding her misery beneath an I-don’t-care-about-stupid-dances attitude because Justin had taken Collette.
“My point exactly,” Jolie said. “Come to the house this afternoon. We’ll work up a design before dinner.”
“What about Vivian’s gown?”
“Already finished. See you soon.” Without waiting for Tabby to offer another argument, her mother ended the call.
Tabby hung up her phone and looked down at Beastie. The puppy was lying across the toes of her boots, evidently tuckered after romping in the snow and filling her stomach. “You’re lucky,” Tabby said to the dog. “You never need to worry about this sort of thing.”
The dog’s ears didn’t even twitch. She just continued snoring softly.
“Well, at least you’re not chewing up anything,” Tabby said.
It wasn’t much. But it was something.
* * *
Justin stared at the nearly indecipherable note taped to his front door. Obviously Tabby’s handwriting. Aside from the word Beastie, there was little that he could make out in the rest of the sentence.
He crumpled the note and went inside. He knew she wasn’t home. He didn’t put it past her not to answer the door if he knocked, but her car was gone.
He stepped around the empty kennel cage and threw himself down on the couch, not bothering to remove his jacket, and closed his eyes. He had less than a month left before he needed to present the finished report to Charles, but he still had twice that many days’ worth of materials to get through.
Didn’t help that every time he tried to concentrate on the work, he kept thinking about Tabby.
At this rate, he should have just stayed in Boston.
He’d have been equally unproductive, but at least he wouldn’t have gotten tangled up with her like he had.
His cell phone vibrated, and he pulled it out of his pocket, wearily focusing on the display. It was his mother.
He hesitated for a moment, then swore softly and answered. “Hey, Mom.”
“What is going on with you and Tabby?”
He sat up straighter. “What? Nothing.”
“Then why have I been hearing all day about some fight the two of you had at Ruby’s?”
God help him. “It wasn’t a fight.”
“I don’t know what to make of all this, honey. First that business about being engaged to Gillian. Now all this with Tabby.”
“There’s no all this!” He pushed to his feet and paced around the kennel cage, because evidently he couldn’t lie to his mother when he was seated.
“She’s like a daughter to me, Justin. I won’t tolerate any dissension between the two of you, any more than I would between you and your brother.”
If
only it were that easy. “There’s no dissension.”
“See that there isn’t,” she said crisply. “I don’t want to be countering gossip about you long after you’ve returned to Boston, and you know that’s what I’ll be doing if people around town don’t find something more interesting to speculate about.”
“There’s no dissension,” he repeated.
“Fine.” Her tone warmed a little. “Why don’t you come out for dinner tonight?”
“I can’t.” That, at least, was the truth. “I’ve got too much work to do.” He’d only come home long enough to see to the dog.
Who wasn’t even there.
He heard his mother sigh. “Well, make sure you eat something,” she said. “I know how you can get when you’re involved in a project. And make sure you carve out at least a few hours Saturday evening.”
“What’s going on Saturday evening?”
“Vivian Templeton’s Christmas party. I told you about it the last time we talked.”
“Right.” He’d gotten the invitation. Tossed it somewhere. “I don’t even know the lady. Why is it you want me to go?”
“Because, regardless of what your grandfather wants us to think, it’s the polite thing to do. She’s just dropped a ton of money on the hospital. The woman is family whether Squire wants to admit it or not, and we’re going to act like it.”
Justin still didn’t think his presence would matter to Vivian Templeton one way or another. But it obviously mattered to his mother. And he didn’t need to be at cross-purposes with yet another female. “I can spare a few hours.”
“You’ll need a tux.”
He managed not to swear out loud. Tuxedos in Weaver were about the most outlandish thing that he could imagine. “Fine.”
“Justin—”
“I’ll have a tux,” he assured her, containing his impatience with an effort. “You get the same promise from Erik?”
“Erik is Izzy’s problem,” Hope said. “But I’m sure she’ll succeed.”
No doubt. His brother would turn cartwheels in a tutu for his wife, particularly now that she was pregnant with their child.
Justin’s phone vibrated in his hand, alerting him to another call. “Got another call, Mom. If I don’t see you before then, I’ll see you Saturday.”
“All right. I love you, honey.”
“You, too.” More interested in getting off the hook with her while he was still in her good graces than anything else, he switched calls. “Yes?”
“Justin, my boy! Charles here. How is the report coming?”
Justin grimaced. Sometimes you were the bug. Sometimes you were the windshield. These days, he was feeling like he was both. “It’s coming, Charles.”
“I don’t have to remind you what it’ll mean to the company if you get it completed on time.”
“I know.” He opened the door and looked out at the falling snow. He’d forgotten that it could actually be a pretty sight. But what really caught his attention was the car pulling into the driveway.
Tabby’s car.
“Can I ask you a favor, Charles?”
“As long as it doesn’t cost me a few more million dollars.”
“Can you send someone over to my apartment? Someone other than Gillian. Strangely enough, I need to have a tux shipped here by Saturday.”
“My secretary can take care of it.”
“Thanks. If there’s nothing else you needed, I’ve got a report to get back to.”
“That’s what I like to hear, my boy. Exactly what I like to hear.”
Justin ended the call, pocketing the phone as he stepped off the porch and headed toward Tabby’s vehicle. The moment she opened the car door, the puppy escaped, racing toward him so fast she practically tripped over her own long ears.
He scooped her up, and she licked his face a few times before scrabbling at him to be let back down again. The second he did so, she was off like a bolt toward Tabby, who was already on her porch, unlocking the door.
He followed the dog, hoping to make it before Tabby could close the door in his face.
And he would have, too. If his shoe hadn’t landed in a pile of dog poop, sending him sliding in the slick snow.
He landed flat on his back, the breath slamming out of him as he stared up at the flecks of white coming down at him from the solid gray sky.
Perfect. Just perfect.
“Oh, my goodness.” Mrs. Wachowski opened her door and peered out at him lying half in and half out of the bushes lining the front of her unit. “I saw you through my window. Are you hurt?”
He coughed. “Besides my pride?” He winced when Beastie pounced on his chest. “I’ll survive.” He sat up and eyed Tabby’s door. Which was now closed.
Probably locked again. At least against him.
“Ever have one of those days, Mrs. Wachowski?”
“Sure.” She left her porch and bent over beside him, tucking her frail hand beneath his arm. He didn’t need her assistance as he got to his feet, but he couldn’t help appreciating her effort. “Then I finally retired from teaching history to hooligans like you and that Rasmussen boy, and they stopped.” She dashed her hands over his shoulders, brushing away the clinging snow. “There you are. Right as rain. You’re certain you’re not hurt anywhere?”
He glanced at Tabby’s closed door again. “Once I deal with the mess I’m in, I’ll be fine.”
She wrinkled her nose, obviously thinking he meant the dark smear on his shoe. “Fortunately, messes clean up.” She patted his shoulder and returned to her door, going inside.
Justin exhaled and scraped his sole against the edge of the sidewalk as well as he could. Then he continued to Tabby’s door and knocked.
The porch light flicked on, and she answered so immediately he wondered if she’d seen his ignominious tumble. “We need to talk.”
“Not really.” She brushed past him, pulling the door closed again. “I’m on my way out.”
“You just got back.”
“So?”
“Where are you going now?”
She lifted her eyebrows and headed toward her car. “I don’t believe that’s any of your business, actually.”
“Got a call from my mother because she heard we’d been fighting at the diner. She’s concerned about...dissension.”
She stopped and looked back at him. “There’s no dissension.”
He rubbed the puppy’s silky head where she’d tucked it under his chin. “That’s what I told her.”
“So we’re both liars,” he heard her mutter. “I knew this would happen.”
He closed the distance between them. It was getting darker by the second. “There’s an easy solution.”
She gave him a disbelieving look. “Easy.”
He continued, speaking over her. “Have an adult conversation with me for once about what’s going on.”
“We had sex,” she said tightly. “And it was a mistake. That’s what’s going on.”
“I don’t think sex was a mistake. I think most everything that’s happened since we had sex has been a mistake.”
She looked away, dashing a snowflake off her face. “I feel like we’re in the middle of a fishbowl,” she muttered. “Mrs. Wachowski’s watching us through her front window.”
“And Mr. Rowe’s pretending to sweep snow off his front porch while he looks this way. We are in a fishbowl. That doesn’t change anything. We had sex, Tabby. I wasn’t doing you some damn sort of favor. We kissed, and that’s all she wrote. I thought you were right there with me, but I guess I was wrong.”
Her gaze flicked up to his. She moistened her lips. “You weren’t wrong,” she said almost inaudibly.
Only the knowledge that they were being watched kept him from reaching for her. “Then wha
t’s the problem?”
“Besides not wanting to upset either one of our families? I don’t want to get used to something that’s not going to last.”
He opened his mouth to argue the point but couldn’t.
And her expression said she knew it. “You’re going to finish your work soon and go back to Boston. And I’m going to be here.”
“Come with me.”
He didn’t know where the words had come from, but they were out there now. And she was staring at him as if he’d suggested she move to Mars. “Go with you! What are you—”
“You can paint there,” he said over her words. “Just as easily as you can paint here.”
She blinked, going quiet for a moment. “Painting is my hobby,” she finally said.
“One you’re earning money doing.”
“Yes. But I still enjoy it because it is a hobby. If I had to paint for my living?” She shook her head.
“Then don’t paint!” Something was slipping through his fingers, and he wasn’t even sure what it was. “Do something else. Anything else that you want to do. You can live with me. Or...or find a place of your own.” That wasn’t at all what he wanted, but if he just got her out there, he could sway her.
His gut tightened. He was pretty sure he could.
Her head tilted slightly, and her dark hair slid over her shoulder. She reached out and brushed her fingertips over Beastie’s sleeping head. “I am doing what I want to do, Justin. I don’t stay in Weaver because I’m afraid to go out into the big bad world. I stay because this is my home. Because every...everything I love is here. You used to understand that. I thought you did, anyway.”
“If this is still about what happened four years ago—”
“It’s not. What you want out of life has always been different than what I want out of life. When we were kids it didn’t matter. But we’re not kids anymore. I’m not the kind of girl who can do the friends-with-benefits thing. That might be fine for someone else, but it’s just not in my genetic makeup, I guess. I still believe sex should mean more than that. And now that we’ve gone there—” she waved her hand “—I don’t know how to get back to just being friends again. Either I get mad. Or you get mad. And someone inevitably notices. You’re going to be here for another few weeks, so if only for the sake of a little sanity and keeping our families from getting needlessly upset, I think it would be best if we keep our distance from each other. At least when we have a choice about it.”
The BFF Bride Page 14
