Colorado Billionaires Boxed Set (The Wedding Wager, The Wedding Hazard, The Wedding Venture)

by Regina Duke

  Karla said, “Ew, get a room.” She was wearing black shorts and a black tank top, but her face, arms and legs were showing a very unvampirelike tan.

  Keegan had sun streaks in his brown hair, and he was growing almost as fast as the pups. His second grade jeans were now two inches above his ankles.

  “Mom says we have to go shopping for school clothes today,” he said. “But we can get ice cream when we’re done!”

  Kevin and Megan looked at Karla. She shrugged. “Vampires have to eat.”

  Kevin grinned. “I take it you’re okay with the idea of going to school in Colorado?”

  Karla tried to look glum. “I’ll have to spread the vampire message to my new classmates, but I guess it’ll be okay. Mom says I should go incognito, you know, dress like my prey for the first few weeks. Sounds like a good plan.”

  Krystal called from the parlor. “Kids! Come on, Glenda’s ready to go!”

  “It’s so nice of your mother to help Krystal like this,” said Kevin.

  “Are you kidding? She’s thrilled! Mom said she could never repay your family for steering dad to his own little church in Eagle’s Toe.”

  “Did the board really limit him to one hellfire sermon a month?”

  Megan nodded. “And they decided at last night’s board meeting that they’re going to invite motivational speakers at least once a month. So dad can be semi-retired, and mom can stay close by. And that is really perfect.”

  Kevin smiled. “I know you missed her terribly while they were in Guatemala. I’m so busy with ranch business now, I’m glad you have company during the day.”

  “And it will come in very handy around April Fool’s Day, as well.”

  “April Fool’s Day?” Kevin looked puzzled.

  Cookie quizzically looked over her shoulder. Then her eyes got big and she started counting on her fingers. With a whoop, she gave Megan a big hug.

  “What?” asked Kevin. “What?!”

  “How about a wager?” asked Cookie, grabbing her hot pad and taking a cookie sheet out of the oven. “I’ll bet you an oven full of chocolate chip cookies that he doesn’t figure it out before the nine months are up. Megan? Megan?”

  She turned around, cookies in hand, but Megan couldn’t answer.

  Kevin had wrapped her up in a celebratory kiss.

  *Thank you for taking the time to read The Wedding Wager. If you enjoyed this novel, please take a moment to leave a review at your favorite online retailer. Contact the author at www.ReginaDuke.com.*

  THE WEDDING HAZARD

  by

  Regina Duke

  The Wedding Hazard

  Copyright © 2013 Linda White

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from Regina Duke.

  Published by Regina Duke

  United States of America

  Electronic Edition: September, 2013

  Digital ISBN 978-0-9858482-2-4

  This book is a work of fiction and all characters exist solely in the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any references to places, events or locales are used in a fictitious manner.

  CHAPTER ONE

  1:30 p.m., Sunday, October 28

  The old house looked different without the police cars out front and the ambulance that took her mother away fifteen years ago. The brown wood exterior seemed dull and lifeless without the red, white and blue flashing lights bouncing off the white-framed windows. Ashley Clair pulled to the curb on Bondy Lane in front of the house had haunted her dreams since her ninth birthday.

  That was the day she learned daddy could cry. She hid upstairs in her room with her hands over her ears to keep from hearing the awful sounds Donald Clair made while he banged around downstairs, setting chairs upright, sweeping broken glass, and cleaning up after her mother’s psychotic rage.

  Back then she didn’t know what the word psychotic meant. She just knew it was bad.

  Daddy came upstairs at last and tried to explain that mommy was sick and would have to stay in the hospital until she was well. Then he told her to gather her favorite things so they could go on vacation for a little while.

  She hadn’t been back since.

  She was parked at the foot of the garden stairs that led to the porch. She closed her eyes and remembered the last time she’d run up those granite slabs coming home from school. The brown house had loomed above her, rising like a dark phantom over its stone foundation. The stairs rose forever up to the top of the mountain, and her happy day at school faded with every step she took, until she reached the big porch and tried to open the squeaky screen door without making a sound. Her mother had very sensitive ears.

  In the safety of her car, fifteen years later, she opened her eyes and peered up at the old house. The mountain was no more than a hill, and there were only a dozen stone steps from the street up to the porch. Funny how much larger things had looked back then.

  She frowned. It was more than that, though. Something was off. She couldn’t put her finger on it. She knew her mother was still living in the house. She’d found her parents’ correspondence while she was cleaning out her father’s things.

  She considered it terribly unfair that her father was the one to die in the hospital, while her mother had emerged after a few months to return to her home and outlive her husband. Ex-husband. Ashley had found the divorce papers as well.

  She tried to pinpoint what made her think something was different. The ivy and the clusters of daisies and cone flowers were as unruly as she remembered. There was no lawn around the house. The hill and the stones made that impossible. The trunks of the aspen trees still leaned toward the house, as if trying to hide it from the road. No, it was something else.

  She had come to tell her mother that Donald Clair was dead. She was filled with a thousand questions. Why had her father let Ashley believe that her mother had dropped off the face of the Earth? He’d gone out of his way to make sure Ashley’s early letters did not get mailed. She found them in his desk drawer, secured with an elastic band. The sight of her own childish script had been a shock, one of many. For over a year, she’d written to her mother every week, and when she received no answer, she cried herself to sleep at night. No wonder there were no replies. Her father had never mailed the letters.

  The second sheaf of rubber banded letters was an even bigger shock. Letters from her mother to her father. She read every one of them, and it was clear from their content that he had responded. She asked questions about Ashley, about her school, her friends, her plans for the future. She sometimes talked about her therapist, and in the last dozen or so letters, she talked about a man named Spinoza. Agnew Spinoza. In a letter dated a year ago, she said they’d gotten married.

  There were only three letters after that, and they were very different from the ones before her marriage. One read, “So nice to be remembered by old friends.” Nothing else. Another said, “Enjoyed the Christmas card. Sorry you’re not well.” Her father must have told her about his cancer.

  And the last one was the strangest of all. “Must not write again. I am a married woman.”

  Ashley could forgive her father for shielding her from her mother. Clearly, those last letters demonstrated that she was still not completely healthy. And yet she couldn’t help but wonder how her life might have been different if her mother had shared it with her.

  Deep in her heart, she knew that was the real reason she’d come. She wanted to face the woman. She wanted to know if she could still see “mommy” in her eyes. Or was that a fantasy she’d invented for herself, the memory of a loving mother, the kind the other kids all seemed to have? Or would the woman still terrify her? She’d come to find out.

  Ashley took a deep breath and turned off the engine. No point sitting in the car. She got out and straightened her tailored gray tweed jacket and her pink silk tee. They served
to dress up her jeans and Nikes a bit. She wanted to look nice, but didn’t want to look desperate to impress.

  She tsked at herself. Why was she worried about her mother’s opinion?

  She closed the car door and looked up at the house again. Still something not right.

  She hadn’t found a phone number anywhere, so she couldn’t call ahead. No matter. Why give Mrs. Julie Spinoza a chance to refuse to see her? She climbed the stone steps.

  As a child, they had seemed so high, so steep. She smiled at the reality as her long, athletic legs were tempted to take them two at a time.

  She was on the porch. That’s when she realized what was off about the house.

  Ashley could not remember a time when all the windows were not curtained and shaded against the outside world. Her mother was paranoid, constantly worried that people were watching her. She never opened the curtains, and when her father wasn’t home, all the shades were drawn as well. When Ashley came home from school, she always felt like she was entering a cave. Only her upstairs bedroom was open to the light, because she refused to close the curtains, no matter what her mother did.

  She shuddered. That was a dark memory, and it was heading in a darker direction. She couldn’t quite remember. Maybe it was better that way.

  But that was why the house looked odd.

  The windows stared curtainless onto the street below.

  Ashley rapped on the door. No answer. She pressed the doorbell, and was not surprised when no bell rang within. Her mother had hated the doorbell and deliberately sabotaged it. She knocked again, louder. Nothing. She stepped to the nearest window and peered into the living room. The furniture had not changed in fifteen years. It was still sitting in the same spots, too. No sign of the house’s inhabitants. No one peeking around the kitchen door to see who might be calling.

  Ashley let out the breath she didn’t know she was holding. In frustration, she took hold of the doorknob and shook it. Then she remembered she had her father’s key ring. There were two keys on it that didn’t fit anything in their apartment. She dug through her purse. There it was, attached to the braided leather loop he’d used for a key chain.

  Her fingers trembled as she slipped one of the keys into the lock. It wouldn’t turn.

  “Darn it.” But wait. There was a deadbolt. She slipped the key into the deadbolt. It turned easily.

  Heart pounding, Ashley tried the second key on the doorknob, and it also turned. The door opened silently inward.

  Ashley paused. She poked her head inside and called out, “Hello? Mrs. Spinoza? Are you home?”

  No answer. Nothing. Not even a clock ticking.

  Emboldened, Ashley entered.

  “Mrs. Spinoza? Are you home? Julie Spinoza?”

  No response.

  Ashley relaxed a bit and pushed the door closed.

  The living room was sparsely furnished, a worn cloth sofa against the back wall, a threadbare chair in the left corner. No television. Through the wide arch to her right was the dining room. The table was heavy maple and the matching chairs were from a different era. She frowned. Something more than missing window curtains was different, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She moved down the short central hallway, past the bathroom door, and peeked into what had been her parents’ bedroom.

  This room had changed more than the others. The walls were a different color. That gave her pause. Maybe she’d just entered a stranger’s house. But the keys still fit the locks, after fifteen years. A new owner would change the locks, right?

  The tall chest of drawers in the corner looked very familiar. It still bore the gouges in the side where her mother practiced wielding a kitchen knife.

  “Self defense practice,” she barked as tiny six-year-old Ashley huddled next to the wall by the bed. “When you turn seven, mommy will get you your own knife, okay?”

  Ashley nodded eagerly. Even at that age, she knew never to disagree.

  All grown up now, Ashley kneaded her arms and shuddered. Her father’s decision to keep her separate from her mother made more sense with every returning memory.

  This was definitely the same chest of drawers. She pulled the top one open gingerly. Empty. She tried the next one. Empty. All five drawers were empty.

  She looked in the closet. Old shoes sat on the floor, and a haphazard collection of men’s and women’s clothing hung there. But the rack was only a third full, and it was not a big closet. A man and woman sharing would certainly fill it up.

  A vacation? That was possible. She turned to leave and spotted the display case. Her breath caught. Her mother’s only treasures were housed on those narrow shelves. More than once dinner waited until Julie had finished dusting the colorful miniature porcelains. They were all women, tiny little women, with perfect hair and outfits from different ages. Victorian, flapper, Depression, World War II, all there. Twenty-four perfect little figures, so tempting to a child. Ashley flinched at the memory of the spanking she got for playing with them. Especially the flapper. She frowned at the collection. There were only twenty-three. The flapper was missing. Her disappointment escaped as a tiny moan. Of all the figurines, why did the flapper have to be missing? These figures proved that her mother still lived there. If the missing clothing meant she’d left, she went in a hurry, and most likely against her will. This collection was more important to her than Ashley had ever been.

  She left the bedroom and peeked into the small bath. Once again, she marveled at how tiny the place was, a box with four corner rooms and a bath tucked between the living room and the bedroom behind it. She moved through the living room into the dining room. Wall decorations were still there, but no photographs. She went through the smaller archway into the kitchen at the back.

  That was when she knew no one was living in the house. There were no dirty dishes, no coffee pot on the counter, no rumpled dish cloth hanging from the fridge handle. She glanced up. The kitchen light was on. She started to flip it off, but froze before her fingers reached the switch when she spotted the dark stain on the linoleum. She wasn’t sure what it was, but her imagination ran wild. Combined with her mother’s self-defense practice, the ominous stain rattled her composure.

  Only one last room to check. Upstairs. But wait. Where were the stairs?

  She went back into the dining room. For the first nine years of her life, there had been a rickety staircase everyone had to walk under to get to the hall and the bathroom. Now it was gone.

  “Calm down, girl.” She said it out loud, just to hear a human voice. “Think like a grown up. When is a staircase not a staircase?” She looked up at the ceiling and felt a small flush of triumph when she saw the short knotted rope hanging from a metal loop. She reached up and pulled the rope.

  The hidden attic stairs creaked but descended slowly until the base of the stairs settled on the bare wood floor. As a child, she never suspected that it was anything other than a permanent staircase. She’d never seen it up.

  “How did I ever tramp up and down this thing? No wonder my parents never came into my room.” She turned partly sideways to fit her adult frame more comfortably on the stairs and climbed. There was a lightbulb with a long string at the top, but when she pulled it, the dusty string snapped loose. She stood on the tiny landing and opened the narrow door to her old bedroom.

  Northern light filled the room. Dust danced in the draft from the open door. Her tiny bed was just as she’d left it years before. When her mother got out of the mental hospital, she must have closed the room up and left it exactly as it was.

  Ashley waited for a few minutes, but no feeling overwhelmed her. No sadness swamped her at the sight of her tiny room. She could see now that the slanted ceiling was not the castle tower she used to pretend it was. It was only the roof. The room had been pieced together with old wood and white paint, and a shower curtain had been hung to separate her bedroom from her closet. The curtain was yellowed now and curling up at the bottom, but it was decorated with ponies and teddy bears and kittens. S
he remembered watching her dad hang it up for her. She must have moved in here when she outgrew her crib. Or maybe even that was stashed upstairs, out of sight, so her mother could deny she existed.

  “Okay, stop it.” She shook herself. “This is stupid. I don’t even care if I find her or not.” She turned to leave, but something caught her eye. What was it? Everything was just as she had left it.

  No.

  Resting against her pillow was the flapper figurine.

  Her mother must have put it there. But why? Some sense of remorse after emerging from treatment? Did she actually miss her little girl?

  Ashley moved to the bed, careful not to bump her head. She picked up the figurine. The feelings that refused to come earlier now threatened to overwhelm her. This was the one she would sneak off the shelf to live out the fantasies she could never experience. It had dark hair, just like her, and dark eyes, with a perfect pink moue of a mouth. It wore a simple red sheath dress with fringe painted at the bottom and her tiny shoes were also red. Ashley’s history in this miserable house was bound to this tiny figurine.

  She felt something on the bottom and turned it over. The figurine was hollow, and someone had folded a paper and stuffed it up inside.

  Ashley tilted her head to one side and pulled the paper out. She unfolded it. The paper felt fresh. Not fifteen years old, that was certain. She drew a breath when she saw her mother’s distinct scrawl.

  Her heart leaped as she read the words.

  “Witness protection. Run!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Thor Garrison groaned as he pulled the barbell chest high, then gave a shout as he muscled it over his head. He grinned with satisfaction.

  “Yeah, baby!”

  A moment later, the grin faded as the weight began to tip.

  “Uh-oh. Up, up, up. Oh crap.” He barely got his feet out of the way as he lost control of the barbell. It landed with a thud on the exercise mat in his office.

  Thor stood staring at his reflection in the long mirror. His lightly tanned arms looked even stronger now than they’d been when he was a fireman. His blond hair would need cutting in a week or so. The tips were beginning to show unruly curl.