The Bride Next Door

by Hope Ramsay

  She stalked out of the cold dining room and into the warm June evening, but her skin seemed impervious to the heat. She didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. She’d certainly taken a sledgehammer to Matt Lyndon’s calm approach to seduction. Nothing like talking about babies with a man who believed that sex was invented for his own personal gratification.

  And yet she couldn’t shake the disappointment. Not because he’d refused to be a sperm donor. Of course he’d say no to that. She hadn’t suggested it seriously. But some small part of her, the stupid romantic part, had hoped for a different reaction. Although what that might have been remained nebulous in her mind.

  She’d been utterly unreasonable with him. But then again, he’d taken a bet that was completely reprehensible and slightly misogynistic. So they were even.

  She headed down Liberty Avenue toward the town parking lot, where she’d left her car, a route that took her past Secondhand Prose, her friend Melissa’s used bookstore. Courtney hadn’t seen Melissa in two or three weeks, which was a depressing thought. All her married friends had other interests now. Hell, all her married friends were having babies. But not Melissa. Melissa had kittens.

  Courtney stopped in her tracks and turned toward the bookstore’s front window. A large cat tree dominated the display case. Until last autumn, the tree had been the domain of Dickens, an eighteen-year-old cat in need of a personality transplant. Dickens had followed his longtime feline companion, Hugo, across the rainbow bridge right before Thanksgiving—an event that had depressed Melissa for months because Dickens had been the last of her grandmother’s cats to pass.

  Melissa had avoided adopting any new cats until a couple of months ago, when Mary Caputo, one of her grandmother’s friends and a volunteer down at the Jefferson County Animal Shelter, had shamelessly guilted Melissa into fostering three orphaned kittens.

  Melissa had bottle-fed Athos, Aramis, and Porthos every three hours for weeks on end. The feline babies had kept Melissa from joining Courtney and Arwen on open mic nights at the Jaybird. For a while, Courtney and Arwen had resented the little darlings who had become stand-ins for the baby Jeff and Melissa had not yet gotten around to making.

  The kittens were ten weeks old now and tumbled and pounced on each other. They were the epitome of adorable, and the sign taped to the inside of the window said they were free to a good home.

  Courtney stood on the hot sidewalk watching as one of the gray and white kitties jumped from the lower shelf of the cat tree onto his littermates. That one—she had no idea whether it was Athos, Aramis, or Porthos—had lots of personality and a feisty attitude. She could almost see him coming to live in her apartment.

  Wait. No. She did not want a cat. She yearned for a husband and a baby and a family, but of course that was impossible. She needed to quit before that kitten wormed its way into her heart.

  She’d just pulled herself away from the abundant cuteness when the store’s front door opened and Melissa came out onto the sidewalk wearing her favorite To Kill a Mockingbird T-shirt.

  “Hey, I saw you looking at Aramis. Wanna take him home?”

  Courtney felt superglued to the sidewalk as her brain started coming up with all the reasons why a cat might actually be better than a baby. She resisted, and while she battled, she noticed something odd about Melissa’s shirt.

  The sleeves looked a little tight under the arms, and it stretched across her front like it might bust a seam any minute. Melissa had owned that T-shirt for at least five years and wore it every week. It was old and faded and unlikely to shrink at this late date. So if the shirt was the same size, then…

  Oh crap.

  “You’re pregnant,” Courtney said. Her words were not a question.

  Melissa smiled and nodded.

  Matt slept poorly on Thursday night, so he was in a grumpy mood when he arrived downstairs in his parents’ kitchen the next morning. Mom had once again insisted on making him scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast. When would she catch on to the fact that he wasn’t much of a breakfast eater?

  “Are you okay?” she asked as he helped himself to the cup of coffee she’d poured.

  “I’m fine. Why?”

  She turned her back on him. “Oh, nothing. It’s just that you came home so early last night.”

  Damn. Most people had parents who worried when they got in late. His parents not so much. It was embarrassing to have his mother so concerned about him because he’d come home from a date at 7:30 p.m. It reminded him of his high school days—a time that held zero nostalgia for him.

  Matt had most definitely not been the big man on campus in his younger days. He’d had to compete with his older brother and cousins. His cousin Andrew, the Boy Scout, had chaired the debate club when Matt was a freshman. His brother Daniel, the bad boy, had starred as Nathan Detroit in the school’s production of Guys and Dolls when Matt was a sophomore. His cousin Edward, the foreign-policy nerd, had chaired the school’s Model UN team when Matt was a junior. Even his cousin Amy, who hadn’t excelled academically, had outshined him in high school by virtue of her impeccable fashion sense.

  What had come naturally to his family had required years of hard work for Matthew to master. Having Mom hovering over him now, shooting him pitying looks, did nothing to assuage the toxic stew of emotions that churned in his mind and unsettled his stomach, compliments of Courtney Wallace.

  What the hell was she up to? Was she crazy? Desperate? Messing with him? Cruel and self-centered like Allison? Or had she been joking? He needed to know, but a sleepless night hadn’t answered any of his questions. If she’d been joking, the joke had fallen flat.

  But then again, Matt probably deserved an off-color joke. He should never have taken Brandon’s bet.

  Well, either way, he was finished chasing Courtney. A wise man would pay Brandon his one hundred dollars, walk away, and never look back.

  “You know, honey,” Mom said, breaking into his thoughts, “you can talk to me about stuff. I know how hard your father is on you sometimes, and—”

  “I’m okay. Really.”

  She gave him a skeptical look.

  He needed to cut this cord. Now. Or she’d drive him insane. “Mom, you know how much I appreciate that you and Dad have let me stay here the last few weeks, but I think I need to find a place of my own.”

  “Hallelujah,” she said, her eyes lighting up. “I thought the day would never come.”

  What the hell? “You’re okay with that?”

  “Of course I am. In fact, let me help you find a place. I’ll call your Uncle Jamie’s real estate person and get you a list of apartments. Would that be okay?”

  He ground his teeth. Would she never stop holding his hand? “You know, Mom, I can probably find a place on my—”

  “It’s no problem. Let me do the first search, weed out the unacceptable ones, and then you can look at options.”

  He begrudgingly agreed to this plan, mostly because she wouldn’t take no for an answer. And then he finished his coffee and made a beeline to the office before she could start planning other parts of his life.

  Twenty minutes after he’d arrived at work, Arwen strolled into his office, made herself comfortable in his single side chair, and asked, “So, how was your date last night? To be honest, I was impressed that you asked her out to a nice restaurant.”

  He leaned forward on his elbows. “Did she send you here to ask that question?”

  Arwen straightened in her chair, clearly surprised. “Of course not. I’m here for our pre-meeting before Leslie Heath arrives.”

  “Oh yeah. I forgot. Well, if you want to know how it went, ask her.” He practically snarled the words.

  Arwen studied him intently for a long moment with a stare that penetrated him, and not in a good way. A slow smile curved her lips. “She scored points last night, didn’t she? God, she’s good.”

  He frowned. “Good at what? Being outrageous? Man bashing?”

  “What did she do?”

  �
�I’m not going to discuss it,” he said, shooting the words like bullets. He paused a moment, leaning back in his chair, reconsidering. “It was Ryan who told her about the bet, wasn't it?” he asked.

  “You and Brandon need to be careful when you shoot the breeze at the Jaybird. Juni is always listening, and so is Ryan. Juni is the biggest gossip in Shenandoah Falls, and when it comes to Courtney, Ryan is definitely overprotective.”

  “Overprotective how? Are they together?”

  Arwen shrugged. “You need to ask Courtney that question.”

  “You don’t know?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think they’re together. But sometimes I think Courtney might be willing to settle for Ryan or something. They’re friends. Now, can we change the subject, please?”

  “Okay, but you’re the one who asked about the date.” He smiled.

  She nodded. “Point taken. But we need to focus. Leslie is going to be here in ten minutes, and we have nothing useful to tell her.”

  That was the indisputable truth.

  The landlord, facing fines he couldn’t afford to pay, had sold Dogwood Estates to GB Ventures LLC, an Arlington, Virginia, company that had been building single-family housing developments all over the county. The tenants would probably receive eviction notices before the summer was out. Everything LL&K had done for the tenants had come to absolutely nothing.

  Worse than nothing. Instead of getting the complex cleaned up, the tenants would be losing their homes.

  “You know,” Matt said, “that old guy, Sid, was right. Maybe we shouldn’t have gone to the county and urged them to rattle the landlord’s cage. It backfired on those people.”

  “You may be right. But if we’d done nothing, those people would continue to live in housing that’s not safe.”

  “I know. But here’s the thing. Which is worse? Living in a low-rent apartment in need of repair or being evicted and unable to find alternative living arrangements? I feel like we ought to help those people find new homes.”

  “You know, Matt, the first rule of doing pro bono work is not to get emotionally involved. Trust me on this. These cases can break your heart.”

  “What if we sued the county?”

  Arwen’s frown appeared right on schedule. “On what grounds?”

  He shrugged, winging it. “I don’t know. Unconstitutional taking of property?”

  She snorted a laugh. “You’re insane. How did the county unconstitutionally take anyone’s property?”

  He leaned back in his chair and stroked his chin for a moment. “It’s a big stretch, but maybe we could argue that by imposing fines on Scott Anderson that he couldn’t possibly pay, the county essentially took his land away. Will the new owner have to pay the fines?”

  Arwen blinked. “I don’t know. I assume GB Ventures won’t have to pay any fines since they’ll be tearing down the apartments. But that’s just a guess.”

  “Can you find out?”

  Arwen nodded. “Okay, I’ll take a look, but I think you’re crazy.” She gave him a big, genuine smile. “But it’s a good kind of insanity.”

  Chapter Six

  Courtney’s phone rang early on Monday morning, pulling her out of a deep sleep. She rose on one elbow and checked the caller ID. It was Lisa Brigs, Dr. Lamborn’s nurse practitioner and one of Courtney’s work colleagues back in the day when she’d been a nurse. She accepted the call.

  “Hey. What’s up?”

  “Sid Miller’s in the hospital,” Lisa said. “He went to the emergency room with chest pains last night. It looks like he needs bypass surgery, but he’s being stubborn. I thought maybe you could visit him, help change his mind.”

  Damn him. Courtney regarded Sid like family. It hurt that he hadn’t called her. “I’m on it. And Lisa, thanks for calling.”

  Half an hour later, Courtney marched into Sid’s hospital room, ready to read him the riot act, only to find him lying in his hospital bed with his eyes closed, looking frail and slightly gray. Her heart twisted in her chest, and she swallowed the ball of emotion that clogged her throat. She couldn’t lose Sid, not after she’d lost Mom and Dad. Not after she and Sid had lost Barbara last year, following a long, expensive battle with cancer.

  “When were you going to tell me about these chest pains?” she asked in a hushed voice as she gripped the bed’s railing.

  Sid cracked one bright blue eye. “Go away.” His eyelid shut.

  “No. And what’s this I hear about you telling Dr. Lamborn that you don’t want the bypass operation?”

  Sid said nothing, but Courtney could tell he wasn’t asleep. She pulled up the chair and settled into it. “I’ve got all day to wait. I don’t work on Mondays.”

  “What’s the point?” Sid rolled his head toward Courtney and opened his eyes.

  “What do you mean, what’s the point?”

  “I mean that I’m ready to go.”

  Courtney’s heart slammed against her ribs. “No. You’re still young. You have a lot of life left. I won’t let you give up.”

  “Courtney, girl, I love your grit,” he said on a long, tired breath. “But I ain’t got much to look forward to. Medicare will pay eighty percent for this operation, but where am I gonna get the rest of the money? Besides, Barbara’s gone. Your mom and dad are gone. The hardware store is gone. And pretty soon the rat hole apartment building I’m living in will be sold right from under my ass. Where will I go then?”

  “Sid, we’ll find the money for this operation. And we’ll find someplace for you to live. As for the rest of your life, haven’t I told you dozens of times that I could get you a part-time job working for Dusty McNeil’s guide service? He’s about to open Shenandoah River Guides, and he needs guys like you who know the fishing in the Shenandoah and Potomac watersheds. Wouldn’t you love to have a job that got you out on the river as a guide?”

  “I won’t take no charity.”

  Courtney tried not to roll her eyes in frustration. She and Sid had been through this many times before. Sid’s interest in life had disappeared with Barbara’s death, and it was pointless to argue him out of his depression and grief.

  So she changed the subject. “Arwen told me about the tenants association’s battle with your landlord, but I didn’t think you were being evicted.”

  Sid looked away and shook his head. “We haven’t been. Yet. But Leslie got a boatload of bad legal advice from Lyndon, Lyndon & Kopp that blew right up in her face. Honestly, that useless law firm sent two of those Lyndon boys out, and neither one of them knew their asses from holes in the ground.”

  Suddenly intrigued, Courtney asked, “Oh? What did they do?”

  “Well, the first feller—Andrew—thought he could negotiate with the landlord. Ha, that’s a laugh! Scott Anderson is an SOB. He wasn’t ever going to negotiate. And then they sent his brother or cousin or whatever—Matthew.” He shook his head. “What an idiot. That boy thought Anderson would jump right to it and fix the place up when the county fined him.”

  Arwen had mentioned the fact that Sid had argued with Matt, but she didn’t quite understand what Sid was so upset about. It seemed totally reasonable to think that something good might come as a result of county intervention.

  “Why shouldn’t Matt have been happy about that?” she asked.

  Sid rolled his head and gave her a hard, probing stare. “You know Matthew Lyndon?”

  Damn it all, why did her face get hot? “I’ve met him.”

  “Honey, by the pink in your cheeks, you’ve done more than meet him. I figure you’re a grown woman, so I’m not going to give you a lecture.”

  “You know, Sid, I am a grown woman, and when you get to be my age and you’re still living alone, you start to think about throwing caution to the wind.”

  “Girl, I just don’t understand it. You’re a smart, capable woman with a pretty nice figure. I think maybe sometimes you’re a little too picky when it comes to fellers.”

  “Sid, let me ask you something. When you ask
ed Barbara to marry you, were you settling? Or was she Ms. Right?”

  His eyes lit up, and a dreamy smile softened his thin lips. “I fell in love with Barbara the first time I saw her—you know that.”

  She nodded. She’d heard the story many times, about how Sid and Dad had gone out to dinner and serendipitously met Barbara and Mom. If her parents and Sid were to be believed, love at first sight had simultaneously occurred for both of them. She idly wondered if anyone fell in love at first sight anymore.

  “You hang in there, girl. You’ll find a nice feller one day.”

  Time to get back to the main subject. “Yes, Sid, I will. And when that happens, I expect you to dance at my wedding. So, you listen to me,” she said in her best take-charge, wedding-planner voice. “I’m going to go down to the nurses’ station and get the consent forms, and you’re going to sign them. I don’t want to lose you, Sid.”

  “But where am I going to live?” His voice sounded strained. Clearly his living situation was a big worry, but she didn’t quite understand why he thought he’d be losing his apartment. It sounded as if LL&K was doing everything they could to get the landlord to clean up the place.

  She didn’t want to argue with him though. So she patted his shoulder. “Look, while you’re recovering, you’re going to move into my spare bedroom. Okay? I’m a nurse. I’ll take good care of you.”

  “I can’t do that. What if your feller comes along? You’ll need privacy.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. And frankly, it’s highly unlikely ever to happen. By the way, are you allergic to cats?”

  Courtney spent most of the day at the Winchester Medical Center, making sure Sid signed his consent papers and talking with his doctors. She got back home in the late afternoon and planned to spend some quality time with Aramis, her new kitten. But the moment she walked into the apartment, the cat scrambled under the bed and behaved as if Courtney were a depraved cat killer.

  The cat’s rejection was the last straw. She refused to let a tiny kitten push her over the edge into a crying jag. So she put down a can of gourmet cat food, checked the litter box and water dish, and then headed off to the Jaybird Café. If Aramis wanted alone time, she was happy to give it to him.