The Wedding Diaries

by Linda Francis Lee

  Forcing herself to concentrate on something besides Max, she walked through the next door she came to, only to find herself in the master bedroom. The massive bed, the piles of pillows, the billowing drapery like a woman’s sheer nightgown.

  Vivi stopped abruptly, her breath catching at what suddenly seemed like an inevitable progress toward this room.

  Sharply she turned back. When she did, he was there. Her pulse leaped, her senses shattering with awareness. She felt as if in this disjointed moment she could drown in the tilt of his lips or the startling blue of his eyes.

  “What do you think?” he asked quietly.

  Her gaze drifted to his lips. “About what?”

  “The house.”

  A second passed. “The house! Of course.” She laughed too loud, then jerked away, looking out the window. “It’s nice. Fine. But I was thinking more along the lines of something smaller. Something less . . . perfect. Something I could fix up. I’m really good at fixing things.” She groaned. “Though I don’t think that is exactly what Grady had in mind.”

  “Grady?”

  Vivi blinked. “Oh, yes! Grady. The man I’m going to marry.” She experienced a moment of virtuous relief when her fiancé settled between them.

  “You’re engaged.”

  “Yes!” She nearly broke out in a righteous dance.

  Silence, then, “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you,” she gushed. “He proposed in June. He’s a wonderful man. You might know him. Grady Pence.”

  “Can’t say that I do.”

  “He’s great.”

  Then why was she noticing this other man if Grady was so perfect for her?

  The thought leaped out at her, surprising and uncomfortable.

  “Maybe I should show Grady this house after all. Beautiful and perfect can be good.” She glanced around the bedroom, thought of the bathrooms with their brass fixtures and a living room with a raised seating area in front of windows with heavy curtains, like a stage carved into granite. She smiled, forgetting herself. “It would be a great place to have fun, play games. A place to pretend.”

  Max’s gaze bore into her, and she was sure he was going to lean forward and run his fingers along her skin.

  Run, she told herself. Move away. Leave the house. She looked at his mouth instead.

  “If I were your fiancé,” he said, “I wouldn’t be interested in playing games. I would play for real, for keeps.”

  The high-ceilinged room grew still and airless. Vivi couldn’t say how they had gotten to this place, how a man she had never met before could fill her with such longing. And doubts.

  But she was given no chance to find answers when Max stepped away.

  “We better start back. I’m sure Racine will have more for you to see tomorrow.”

  Then he walked out of the bedroom, leaving her alone. Making it possible to breathe.

  Good.

  Relief washed over her. She didn’t want this man. Her life was with Grady. They had made plans, had dreams.

  She was going to be a bride on Christmas Eve, and fantasies about this man weren’t going to ruin it.

  Chapter Two

  Vivi sat in a pink and lavender shoe salon in the Sunland Park Mall the following afternoon. She refused to give another thought to Max Landry. She wouldn’t think about his sculpted good looks, or the dark hair that was just longer than would be considered standard for an executive of his importance. She turned her mind away from his broad shoulders. His blue eyes were off limits. And she absolutely, positively would not think about how his world had seemed to stop when he turned around and saw her through the glass.

  Last night she had dreamed about him. She had tossed and turned, feeling hot and restless and invisibly hinged to a stranger whose eyes made her knees fuse and her breath catch.

  This morning she had woken up feeling out of sorts. She wanted to talk to someone, but her mother was still in India. Postcards arrived intermittently with instructions regarding the wedding, as if it were perfectly normal for the mother of the bride to make plans for her only child’s marriage by international mail.

  Then there was her father, who had suddenly left town with little more than a quick good-bye and no information as to where he was going. That was the way he always traveled, usually with some woman half his age, in his never-ending journey to find his spent youth—or as her mother had explained it in terse, sneering words that didn’t match her newfound aura of tranquillity, he had gone off to find the newest plaything to add to his long string of wives.

  Not that Vivi had ever been able to talk to her parents. But she might have attempted to talk around the subject of this unsettling attraction to Max Landry because quite frankly, who else was there? Growing up, she had been raised by a series of nannies, had attended private girls’ academies, then was shipped off to finishing school in Switzerland, before returning to Texas, where she earned a degree in art history.

  “Stand out from the crowd, Vivi,” Isabelle Stansfield was fond of saying. “Don’t follow the pack.”

  By virtue of being the eccentric Jennings Stansfield’s only child and heir, not to mention having been raised under the enlightened tutelage of Isabelle LeBuc Stansfield, Vivi was automatically different from any other woman she ever met. Hard to follow the sort of female that didn’t exist in any followable number.

  As a result, instead of calling up a favorite girlfriend and lamenting on the phone about what had nearly transpired with none other than Maxwell Bowden Landry, bachelor extraordinaire, Vivi did what she always did when she was upset. That afternoon she went shopping.

  Turning her ankle just so, she looked in the shoe salon mirror and considered the shimmering white silk satin high heel. It was perfect.

  For as long as she could remember, Vivi had dreamed of being a Christmas bride, dressed in a flowing white gown with a bouquet of red roses. Christmas holly and candles lining the aisle. Bridesmaids dressed in elegant cranberry satin. Scads of red poinsettias cascading down the steps, and boughs of evergreens gracing the altar and pews.

  And now her dreams were coming true. Everything was planned. Dates set, deposits made. The only thing she hadn’t been able to find was the shoes. Now even that problem was solved.

  “I’ll take them.”

  The saleswoman smiled. “The minute they came in, I knew they were perfect for you.”

  Vivi touched her hand. “Thank you for thinking of me, Helen.”

  The woman blushed. “Of course I would. You know how much I appreciate you paying for my Libby’s home-coming dress.”

  Vivi felt embarrassment rush to her cheeks, uncomfortable with the thanks. Buying a teenage girl a dress wasn’t any sort of great deed. “It was sweet of you to let me be a part of it.”

  Again and again, Vivi found herself paying for someone’s dress or sending women who were trying to start new lives for makeovers at Velda’s Salon. She had even paid a woman’s lawyer fees when her ex-husband had tried to take away their children.

  According to her father, this was her worse transgression, what he called her very bad habit of throwing herself into other people’s problems. It drove him insane. “Stop trying to fix everything,” he had demanded more than once. But how could she sit by when someone needed help?

  As Vivi went to the register, handing over a credit card, she made a mental note to check on Bethany and her girls.

  Seconds ticked by while Helen processed the charge. Then seconds more, and a line started to form. The sales woman glanced at her, hurriedly swiped the card again, then waited, staring at the machine, as people in line started to grumble. It wasn’t until Helen picked up the phone and dialed that Vivi grew concerned.

  “Is there a problem?” she asked.

  “Ah, well—” But Helen cut herself off and turned away, talking into the receiver. When she turned back, she grimaced. “Do you have another card? This one’s been rejected.”

  By now everyone in line was listening.

&nbs
p; “What?” Vivi said, confused.

  “You must be over your limit.”

  Vivi stared, trying to understand. “Please try it again.”

  “I’m sorry, really—just give me something else.”

  With her brow furrowed, Vivi pulled out another card. “Here you go,” she said with a calm smile, though inside her heart was starting to pound with sheer, unadulterated embarrassment. “Clearly there’s been a mistake.”

  Within seconds, Helen handed that one back to her as well. “This one doesn’t work either,” she said uncomfortably.

  Vivi heard the murmurs from the line of women behind her. When she glanced back, they looked away. Mortified, she tried to laugh. “Could you hold the shoes for me? I’ll be right back.”

  She left the department and went to a cash machine in the mall. But when she tried to withdraw money, her request was denied.

  Vivi stared at the screen, embarrassment forgotten as her heart began to pound in earnest. When asked if she’d like to continue, she asked for a balance.

  Stunned, she stared at the very large, very negative figure that sprang up on the screen. This couldn’t be happening.

  Pressing a few more keys, she requested the balance of her savings account and nearly crumpled onto the floor when it came up empty.

  Her heart hammered as she walked as calmly as she could back into the store, then out the other side to the parking lot. After fumbling with the keys, she slipped into her red convertible, pulled out her cell phone, and dialed the bank. But it was after hours. The bank was closed, and the automated teller did little to shed light on what had happened to her money—other than she no longer had any.

  With her mind spinning, next she dialed the 800 numbers listed on the credit cards’ backs—and confirmed that not only was she over her limit, but her payment checks had been returned for insufficient funds.

  Vivi stared blankly, trying to comprehend. A feeling of panic rushed through her. She had never bounced a check in her life. And there was no reason for her checking and savings accounts to be empty. It had to be a mistake.

  With both her parents unreachable and fifteen long hours before the bank reopened in the morning, she clutched the steering wheel and drove down the undulating hills to her fiancé’s office.

  Grady Pence was twenty-eight and on the partner track at Martin, Melby, and Mathers, one of the most prestigious law firms in town. Vivi had met Grady a year ago at an art exhibit. They had talked about a new local painter whose bold colors were vibrant and alive. Then they had gone for coffee. Grady was the first person she had ever met who hadn’t asked about her father. They started dating, and four months ago, Grady got down on one knee and proposed.

  Racing to her fiancé’s office building, Vivi’s bracelets jangled on her wrist as she used her blinker again and again to change lanes. It was after six when she arrived, but he always worked late. The door to Martin, Melby, and Mathers was unlocked when she got there. Pushing through, she called out but didn’t get an answer.

  Her high heels were soundless on the carpeted hallway. When she came around the corner, she stopped. Grady sat at the small table with the new associate they had hired a month ago. Documents were spread out in front of them, cups of coffee at their elbows. They were laughing, leaning close.

  It was innocent enough, two colleagues sharing a joke. But Grady rarely laughed. And this associate was a woman who touched his arm possessively, as if she had done it many times before.

  Vivi’s first instinct was to turn and flee. Which was ridiculous.

  “Hey,” Vivi said sweetly instead.

  The lawyers swiveled to face her.

  “Vivi!” Grady said loudly.

  “Hello,” the woman offered, clearing her throat.

  Grady didn’t move when Vivi entered the room. When his brain finally kicked in and he stood, he banged into the table, making their coffee slosh.

  Vivi came up to the table but he didn’t offer her a seat. She wasn’t sure why she did it, but something inside her that beat hard and wild made her pull out a chair and sit down anyway.

  “Ah, Vivi, you know Sharon, don’t you?”

  Sharon was short and petite, with blond hair pulled back into a severe bun at the back of her head. Her suit was a circumspect navy, appropriate for a law office. The two women couldn’t have been more different. Yet underneath all that severity was a lush figure and a skirt hemmed just long enough to be acceptable but short enough to turn men’s heads.

  “Working on an important case?” Vivi asked brightly, determined not to be intimidated by this extremely smart and successful woman sitting in front of her.

  Grady picked up his tortoiseshell glasses and put them on, then ran his hand awkwardly through his sandy blond hair. “Yes, Vivi, a very important case, with a lot to get done.”

  “Maybe I could help,” she offered.

  “Vivi, please, we’re really busy,” Grady began, clearing his throat.

  The woman turned to Vivi. “It’s a difficult case,” she explained with a fake grin, then patted Vivi’s hand in a way that was both condescending and maddening. “Things like land grants and unclear property lines. Boring subjects that would put you to sleep.”

  It hadn’t seemed too boring a second ago.

  “It has to be done by morning,” Sharon added with a coy smile for Grady. “But I can finish it up myself.” She stood, gathering files.

  “Sharon,” Grady said.

  The woman lawyer looked at him. “You don’t mind if I present the contracts to Leland Mathers in the morning, do you?”

  Awkwardness fled, and Grady’s features went tight. “This is my case, Sharon. I hardly think—”

  “No, no,” Vivi said, feeling ridiculous. “I just need a second, Grady, then I’ll be out of your way. Perhaps you could see me out?”

  If she could just talk to him for a minute, see him look into her eyes, she was sure she could tamp down the feeling that everything she had worked for was falling apart. First her behavior in the weather tower, then the debacle with her credit cards, and now this.

  “What’s up?” he asked, as he walked her to the front foyer.

  Vivi hesitated, looking into his eyes. Standing there with her parents out of town and that woman only a few offices away, she felt the all too familiar feeling of loneliness. For years she had wanted someone to talk to, someone she could share her concerns with. She had believed she had found that in Grady. “Are we okay?”

  Grady sighed, then leaned forward with one of his kind smiles and kissed her on the forehead. “Of course we’re okay.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “I’m sure. Now, what do you want to talk about?”

  She started to say she’d had a problem today—buying a pair of shoes. But before she said the words, she realized how it would sound. Frivolous and irresponsible, certainly not the kind of issues that a woman like Sharon Willis must deal with on a day-to-day basis.

  “It’s nothing,” she said finally.

  “Then go on home and flip through wedding magazines so I can finish up. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  She wanted to feel the reassuring pressure of his lips on hers. If he would just put his arms around her, she was certain everything would go back to how it was before. But when she would have leaned into him, he moved away, directing her out of the offices of Martin, Melby, and Mathers. And no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t ignore the sound of the bolt sliding home as he locked the door behind her.

  Chapter Three

  “I’ll have another, please. And, oh well, while you’re at it, you might as well double the cocktail part.”

  Max heard the voice the second he walked into Bobby’s Place and immediately knew who it was before he saw her.

  The sweet, twangy sound of western music dipped and swayed through the brass-accented and football-memorabilia-filled expanse as Max found Vivienne Stansfield sitting at the bar. The sight of everything from her dark hair that shimmered in d
im overhead light to her stiletto-heeled legs crossed delicately at the ankles ran along his senses. Yet again, she was a contrast. Provocative mixed with demure. Elegance tangling with sultry.

  Yesterday, when his assistant had told him that an important client had been stood up by one of his agents, he had said to bring the customer to his office and he would take care of things. He had planned to explain why it was worthwhile to wait until Racine returned. He was even willing to placate the client with the offer of another agent if the person really had to see the property that day. But he couldn’t have been more surprised when it turned out to be Vivienne Stansfield.

  When he had seen her across the office, he had known instantly who she was. His reaction to her had been hot and intense, the desire to pull her close and touch her. He had nearly hung up on the attorney general of Texas, who had personally called about a land deal Max was handling.

  But the molasses-slow heat was followed quickly by much the same feeling he had now. None of it good. Vivienne Stansfield was a spoiled rich girl who was beautiful and knew it.

  She had grown up on the west side of town on a prestigious estate in the Upper Valley, he on the south side in a rough ghetto of dirt roads and no running water. She was rich. He was poor. Or he had been.

  Since those days, he had worked hard, earning every penny he had made. He was proud of what he had accomplished. But it was more than wealth he had achieved. He sat on bank boards and planning committees. There wasn’t a business leader or government official in Texas who didn’t ask for his advice. Max Landry had come a long way from the wrong side of town.

  Over the years, his friends and acquaintances had suggested he ask out the woman that everyone in El Paso liked to talk about. He had always said no thanks.

  But something had shifted inside him when he saw her yesterday afternoon. All good sense had fled.

  He still couldn’t believe how he had reacted at the sight of her. His body had grown hard, heat rushing through him. His notorious self-control had felt like a thick hemp rope slipping through his grasp.