Oh God. It was him. Angus Munroe. The man nearly as famous for being a recluse as he was for his string of best-selling mysteries. Eleven and counting. Not to mention his drop-dead-gorgeous looks. Cydney should know. She had a wall full of Angus Munroe pinups in the locked room over her garage where she spent her weekends writing.
Most of the photos were years old and clipped from magazines, shots of Angus Munroe’s back and angry, over-the-shoulder, go-away glares. The prize of her collection, cut from the jacket of his latest book—the first publicity photo he’d posed for in ten years—showed him leaning against a rangy pine tree on his retreat in Crooked Possum, Missouri, deep in the heart of the Ozark Mountains. In hiking boots and tight, faded jeans, arms folded across his plaid-flanneled chest. A day’s growth of beard on his jaw, a lock of dark hair drooping over his forehead. A pulse-pounding Heathcliff scowl on his face.
“Pretty boy,” Fletcher Parrish sniffed on the phone when Cydney asked him if he’d read Munroe’s new book. “Can’t write his way out of a sentence.”
A slow smile spread across Cydney’s face. Well. Maybe this wasn’t such a rotten day after all.
“I’m hanging up now,” Aldo said loudly into the phone. “Bebe’s Uncle Cyd wants to talk to me.”
He took the receiver away from his ear, but Angus Munroe kept talking. Make that haranguing, his voice raised and angry enough that Cydney could hear him. Aldo shot her a helpless look; she gave him a that’s-okay shrug. He sighed and put the phone back to his ear. Cydney grabbed Bebe and towed her into the living room.
“Redhead,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Did you tell Grampa Fletch who Aldo’s Uncle Gus is?”
“Sure.” Bebe blinked at her. “He’s Aldo’s guardian. At least he was until yesterday, when Aldo turned twenty-one. That’s why we couldn’t get engaged until today, ‘cause his Uncle Gus is real protective—like you, Uncle Cyd—and Aldo knew he’d throw a fit.”
“Is that why you didn’t bring Aldo home before now? Why I didn’t even know you were dating someone seriously?”
“Don’t be mad, Uncle Cyd. It wasn’t because of you. It was because of Aldo’s Uncle Gus. Aldo was afraid he’d do something.”
“I’m not mad, Bebe. Did you tell Grampa Fletch that Aldo’s Uncle Gus is the same Angus Munroe who wrote Paid in Pull?”
Bebe’s eyes flew wide open. “He z’s?” she squealed.
Cydney nodded. Slowly, so Bebe wouldn’t miss it.
“Wow, Uncle Cyd!” Her niece’s voice throbbed with admiration. “How do you know all this stuff?”
“I’m psychic,” Cydney said simply. “What did you tell your mother?”
“Just what I told Gramps. That Aldo’s Uncle Gus is his guardian.”
Y-e-e-s-s! Cydney exulted. One up at last on the Dynamic Duo. She figured she deserved one after the letter to People.
She could see it now. Gwen, stunned and speechless that her “dear little dimwit”—her sister’s pet name for Bebe—had bagged the nephew of someone even more famous than she was. And Fletcher Parrish, fuming that his granddaughter was marrying into the family of the “Pretty Boy” who’d knocked him out of first place on The New York Times List. And in the middle of it all, there she’d be, little Cydney the Nobody, smiling and saying serenely, “Well of course I knew.”
Personally, her little voice said, I like “nab-nab-nab-nab-nab.”
So did Cydney. Too bad it was s-o-o-o childish.
Almost as childlike as the wide-eyed wonder on Bebe’s face as she raised her hand and watched the diamond in her engagement ring flash in the sunlight slanting through the open miniblinds on the living room windows. Where, Cydney thought, did a twenty-one-year-old kid get twelve thousand bucks for a rock the size of Gibraltar?
“I’m sorry, Miss Parrish.” Aldo appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. “Uncle Gus gets wound up sometimes. I’ll pay for the call.”
“Never mind, Aldo.” Cydney pointed at Bebe’s ring. “So long as you can pay for that, I’ll be happy.”
“Oh no problem, Miss Parrish. I’ve got a trust fund.”
“So do I!” Bebe squealed, clapping her hands delightedly under her chin. “Isn’t it amazing how much we have in common?”
“It isn’t amazing.” Aldo stepped out of the doorway and opened his arms to Bebe. “It’s kismet.”
“Oh Aldo,” she sighed, drifting toward him starry-eyed.
“Oh no.” Cydney caught her niece’s elbow and swung her around. She’d seen enough of unbridled passion and Aldo’s backside for one day. “You sit over there, Aldo.”
Cydney parked Bebe on the pillow-backed mauve sofa and Aldo on the matching love seat. And herself, for good measure, between them on the corner of the square oak coffee table.
“Start at the beginning,” she said. “Where did you meet?”
At UMKC, the University of Missouri at Kansas City, at the end of the spring semester. They’d been dating for six months, on the Q.T. because of Aldo’s overprotective Uncle Gus.
“He’s got this thing about my money,” Aldo explained. “He thinks I’m gonna piss it all off, though I keep telling him I couldn’t possibly. Do you know how fast interest compounds on fifteen million dollars, Miss Parrish?”
“Um—no,” Cydney said, and gulped.
“My parents were killed in a plane crash when I was four. That’s where the principal came from, their life insurance and the settlement from the airline. I don’t have to work, but I’ve always wanted to go to college, ‘cause I want to be an architect. I’m gonna build this really cool house for me and Bebe.”
“When exactly,” Cydney asked, “do you plan to get married?”
“I thought tomorrow at City Hall, so Uncle Gus can’t try to stop us. But Bebe wants to wait until her mother gets back from Russia.”
Gwen was due home in a week. That was awful damn quick.
“What’s the rush?” Cydney asked Bebe.
“Just once,” she said, “I’d like my mother to be here for something special, and you know how she is, Uncle Cyd.”
Her niece’s chin quavered and her eyes filled with tears. So did Cydney’s, sympathetically, remembering Bebe’s first prom, the day she made cheerleader, her first C in English, her high school graduation. Cydney had been there to pin on corsages, take pictures and give hugs, but not Gwen.
“I want to pick Mother up at the airport and take her straight to the church,” Bebe said. “If I don’t, some magazine editor will call and she’ll be gone again.”
“Oh, fine then,” Cydney said facetiously. “For a second there I thought you wanted to get married on the runway.”
“I don’t think they’d let us, do you?”
“No, Bebe,” Cydney said gently. “The FAA has rules against weddings on runways.”
“Oh,” she said disappointedly.
Sadly, Bebe wasn’t kidding. About getting married on a runway or about how quick Gwen could—and probably would—be gone again.
“Call Gramma George,” Cydney told Bebe. “Don’t tell her anything, just invite her to supper.”
“You said you’d call her.”
“I want to talk to Aldo alone, Bebe.”
“Oh. Okay,” she said happily, and headed for the kitchen.
“Your Uncle Gus,” Cydney said to Aldo, “is Angus Munroe the mystery writer, isn’t he?”
“Yes, Miss Parrish. Have you read any of his books?”
“One or two,” Cydney lied.
She owned them all in hardcover, kept them in a glass-fronted bookcase in her room over the garage. She kept several copies of the paperback editions in the house for reading. Over and over, studying his style, soaking up his voice. She’d memorized whole passages of Dead Soup, his first book and his first best-seller.
“Read them all, Miss Parrish. He writes about this private detective named Max Stone. If you know Max Stone, you know my Uncle Gus. Max doesn’t trust people, especially women, and neither does my Uncle Gus
. He’s a really good-looking guy, see, and women crawl all over him. He thinks it’s because he’s a famous writer and has lots of money. I tell him it’s because of his face but he doesn’t believe me. I’m just a kid and I don’t know squat.”
“That’s very perceptive of you, Aldo.” If he was telling the truth, and Cydney felt that Aldo was—from his perspective, anyway.
“Uncle Gus was only twenty-five when he hit it big. All the publicity and hype and women drooling all over him at book signings really got to him. That’s why he moved us to the Ozarks. Believe me, Miss Parrish, nobody can find Crooked Possum or my Uncle Gus unless he wants them to.”
“Is that so?” Cydney fanned the flush creeping up her neck with the TV Guide she’d snatched off the table.
Because she’d tried to find it herself, Cydney knew Crooked Possum wasn’t on any Missouri road map. She’d spent hours looking for it last summer while she was in Branson—the nearest point of civilization as well as the upstart Mecca of country music—shooting a photo spread for a travel magazine. She’d wandered over hill and dale and never found the place, but she’d gotten some breathtaking shots of soaring ridges and shady hollows she’d sold for a nice chunk of change to a calendar company.
“Since you’re twenty-one now, I don’t see how your uncle can stop you and Bebe from getting married,” Cydney said. “Especially if he never sets foot out of the Ozarks.”
“This just might bring him out,” Aldo said worriedly. “And Uncle Gus can be damn hard to get along with when he makes up his mind to be difficult.”
“Don’t worry, Aldo,” Cydney said firmly. “So can I.”
Oh please, her little voice said. You have trouble making up the bed.
“Uncle Cyd!” Bebe let out a shriek and came pelting out of the kitchen. “Guess what, Uncle Cyd! Guess what?” She was jumping up and down, her braid bouncing and her eyes shining. “Gramma George is getting married, too!”
chapter
three
Nothing could have surprised Cydney more. Except hearing, maybe, that her mother planned to butch her perfectly coiffed champagne-blond hair, dye it pink, pierce her nose and join a metal band. Which didn’t sound like a bad idea.
By the time supper was over, a melt-on-your-fork pot roast provided by Georgette and her Crock-Pot, Cydney was beginning to consider it. Or maybe a Tibetan nunnery. Anything to escape the oohing and ahhing Bebe and Georgette were doing over the latest issue of Bride magazine.
She could hear them in the living room while she loaded the dishwasher, wiped the counters, the refrigerator door— Gosh, where did all those fingerprints come from?—the canisters, the bread box, the microwave. She polished the ceramic-tile tabletop and had just started on the range hood when the brides came trooping into the kitchen with Aldo.
“Coffee break,” Georgette said, nudging Cydney aside to put the stainless steel kettle on the electric burner.
“I’m going to take Aldo back to his apartment,” Bebe said, snuggling under the arm he’d draped over her shoulders.
“Do you have a roommate, Aldo?” Cydney asked.
“Uh, no,” he said, flushing to the roots of his hair.
Cydney ignored Bebe’s muttered “You should’ve said yes,” and handed her the pencil and notepad she kept by the telephone. “Phone number and address. If you aren’t home by eleven, I’m calling. If you aren’t home by eleven-thirty—”
“I know.” Bebe finished writing and handed the pad back to Cydney. “You’ll be knocking at the front door.”
“My Uncle Gus will love you, Miss Parrish.” Aldo grinned at her over his shoulder as Bebe tugged him out of the kitchen and into the dining room, where a pair of French doors led outside onto the patio. “Don’t worry. Bebe will be home on time. She has classes in the morning and so do I.”
“I’ll be home late tomorrow, Uncle Cyd.” Bebe opened the right-hand door and turned to face her. “We’re picking up Aldo’scar.”
“Is it being repaired?”
“Nope,” Aldo said. “It’s my birthday present to me. A Jaguar XJ8.”
“How nice.” Cydney had no idea what a Jag went for, but with Bebe’s ring she figured Aldo must’ve put a huge dent in his trust fund. “By the way, Aldo. Happy birthday.”
“Thanks, Uncle Cyd.” He grinned as Bebe tugged him out of the house. “I’ll make sure Bebe’s home on time.”
The door clicked shut behind them and Cydney frowned. Maybe Angus Munroe was right to be worried. She trailed Bebe and Aldo to the French doors and flipped the wall switch that turned on the outside lights—the carriage lamps on the patio wall, the yard light in the middle of the lawn, and the security flood on the detached two-car garage.
This time yesterday it had been dusk, now it was dark. The maple tree’s fiery leaves looked as dull and brown as the brick walls of the house and the garage, as faded and lifeless as Cydney felt watching Bebe and Aldo splash through them.
“Aldo seems like a very responsible young man,” Georgette said over the shriek of the kettle, but Cydney didn’t answer.
She stood at the French doors with her arms folded and tears pricking her eyes as the garage door went up and Bebe’s red Mustang backed down the driveway. As soon as Gwen got home from Russia, Bebe would be married and gone. Cydney was happy for her—she truly was—but she couldn’t help wondering what she was supposed to do with the empty room in her house and the hole in her life. Get a cat?
She waited to make sure Bebe remembered to push the remote to shut the garage door, then turned into the kitchen and sighed. So did the kettle as her mother took it off the burner and made her coffee.
Cydney drank tea, but she kept instant decaf for Georgette. In a silver caddy with a spoon clipped to the side that her mother had given her to put on the Lazy Susan in the middle of the kitchen table because the coffee jar sitting there looked s-o-o-o tacky. Cydney didn’t think so, but Cydney hadn’t said so. She’d said thank you and polished the damn thing every month or so, so it wouldn’t tarnish.
“You were a little heavy-handed with Bebe, don’t you think?” Georgette stirred Sweet ‘N Low into her coffee and glanced at Cydney. “She’s nineteen years old and engaged to be married.”
“So I should suspend the rules?”
“A girl only gets engaged once.”
Oh really? Cydney wanted to snap. This is your second engagement and Gwen’s fifth. Which had nothing to do with the fact that Cydney had never even been asked to go steady. Nothing at all.
“Even more reason,” she said, shuddering at the memory of Bebe and Aldo tangled in the bedsheets, “to enforce the rules.”
“I can see my face in the countertop.” Georgette turned away from the gleaming butcher block. “Would you like me to don my white glove? Or would you rather tell me what’s bothering you?”
“Truthfully,” Cydney said bluntly, “I don’t believe for two seconds that you actually intend to marry Herb Baker.”
“But of course I do.” Georgette carried her cup and saucer and cloth napkin—she broke out in hives at the mere thought of paper ones—to the table and sat down. “In a candlelight ceremony on December twenty-fourth at eight P.M. Just as I wrote in the engagement announcement I’m going to fax to your father as soon as I get home.”
“I rest my case.” Cydney gave a triumphant smile and sat down across the table from her mother. “You’re still trying to make Dad jealous.”
Georgette’s eyebrow arched again. “I also plan to fax it to the society editor at the Star for inclusion in this Sunday’s column.”
“Considering the time difference between Kansas City and Cannes,” Cydney went on, unconvinced, “your fax will be the first thing Dad sees when he walks into his office tomorrow.”
“Of course it will be. I planned it that way.”
“Hoping, of course, to ruin his day.”
“On the contrary. I’m sure it will make his day.” Georgette sipped her coffee and smiled. “No more alimony.”
&nbs
p; “So that’s your story and you’re sticking to it?”
“It’s the way things are, Cydney.” Georgette reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I know the divorce was difficult for you, but you’re a grown woman now. It’s time you realize your father isn’t coming home to us.”
“I know that, Mother.” Cydney jerked her hand away. “You’re the one who’s been saying for the last eighteen years that someday Fletch will get tired of all those voluptuous young bodies and come crawling back to you. You’re the one who cross-stitched it on a sampler.”
“It’s not a sampler, it was a pillowcase. It was part of my Coping with Divorce therapy and I threw it away ages ago.”
“I should hope so, Mother. I’m sure it was threadbare.”
“So is my patience, Cydney. That’s why I said yes on Sunday when Herb asked me again to marry him. I’m not getting any younger.”
“You’re only fifty-eight,” Cydney said, trying to be encouraging. “I’ll bet you don’t even have spider veins.”
“Of course I don’t. I exercise to keep my metabolism up and my circulation going.”
Cydney belonged to a gym but rarely had time to go. She hadn’t had time for much of anything since Bebe had moved in with her five years ago, when Georgette’s book, Etiquette for All Occasions, came out and her column really started to take off.
“If you could keep Bebe for just a while,” her mother had cajoled. “Until I get all these damn TV shows and book signings out of my hair.”
Of course Cydney said yes. She loved Bebe, and her niece spent most weekends with her anyway, so Georgette would have time to write. A fourteen-year-old, Cydney soon discovered, took a lot of time. So did a fifteen-year-old, a sixteen-year-old and so on.
Cydney didn’t have time for the gym, but Georgette had time to exercise two hours a day, beginning with a morning jog and laps in the indoor pool Fletcher Parrish’s alimony paid for. In the afternoon she dictated her column to her secretary while she did the Stairmaster with nary a huff or a puff.
In the last five years, Georgette had published two updates to Etiquette for All Occasions, while Cydney’s book was unfinished. Georgette still had time for TV appearances and book signings. Cydney didn’t have time to wind her watch. She had spider veins and her mother didn’t.
Mother of the Bride Page 2
