“It is your fault, Bebe. This is your wedding, not mine.”
“But Gramma said I should ignore you. She said you’re in a bad mood ‘cause everybody’s getting married but you.”
“Did she?” Cydney glared at Georgette’s profile in the Cadillac’s front seat. “Well, she’s wrong. I do not feel left out.”
Ob, who are you trying to kid? her little voice asked.
Okay. So she felt left out. She’d been left out of things before, like the People magazine article. That was tough, to feel so insignificant, but feeling undesirable, knowing Angus Munroe had kissed her just to prove his point … hearing him say he thought he’d proved it perfectly while she stood there in front of him, reeling and weak-kneed from the crush of his mouth against hers … That hurt.
A lot, but it wasn’t the end of the world. Crooked Possum was the end of the world, and Tall Pines was the X marked on the map. Cydney plucked her copy off the dashboard, caught a look at her watch and realized she’d been blindly following Herb for a good ten minutes. Not bright if she wanted to find her way out of here again.
The road they were on dipped through a shady hollow at the foot of a wooded, round-topped hill. A mountain in Missouri, a big grassy hump with lots of trees on it in Colorado. The Ozarks were sloped and sleepy, friendly, nonthreatening mountains, unlike the sheer, steep Rockies that always overwhelmed Cydney.
“Whoa, Miss Parrish,” Aldo piped up. “We just passed Tall Pines.”
“We did?” Cydney stepped on the brake and looked in the mirror. All she saw was a solid wall of trees on both sides of the road, but she blew the horn at Herb and saw the Caddy’s brake lights flash. “Where?”
“I’ll hop out and show you,” Aldo said, and sprang his door open.
“High time you did something,” Cydney muttered, watching him lope up the long, curved hill they’d just come down.
Bebe turned to watch him through the rear window with a nose-in-the-air sniff at Cydney that was supposed to make her feel bad. It didn’t. Bebe could pout and Aldo could call her Miss Parrish till the cows came home, and she wouldn’t cave. She’d had enough of the two of them behaving like children. Spoiled, self-indulgent children who went cruising while she made lists and went to the spa while she designed invitations. Kids, not responsible young adults, who couldn’t keep their hands off each other in the backseat. Just like Angus Munroe said. The smug, arrogant jerk. And to think she’d defended them.
No more, Cydney vowed, as she put the Jeep in reverse and backed up the hill. Halfway through the curve she saw Aldo standing in the middle of a wide blacktop drive edged by tall pine trees. The way their shaggy boughs overhung the edge of the road, it was no wonder she and Herb had missed it.
Cydney turned into the drive and stopped to pick up Aldo and wait for Herb. She could see the first curve in the drive, the edges marked by split-rail fences and pine trees. She looped her arms over the top of the steering wheel, leaned forward and peered up the hill. Uh, make that mountain, she amended, when she realized she couldn’t see the top.
When the Cadillac turned in behind the Jeep, Cydney led the way up the drive. It was twice as wide as the road and perfectly paved. Well, that was something. If the wedding guests made it this far, which she seriously doubted. A troop of Eagle Scouts led by a Sherpa guide couldn’t find this place.
Instead of R.S.V.P. she should’ve written B.Y.O.C. at the bottom of the invitations—Bring Your Own Compass. She’d make signs, Cydney decided, and stake them along the road from here to Double Y, pithy little directives like, “Leave a Trail—You’ll Need It” and “Ignore the Buzzards Circling Overhead.”
Bebe would get her wish, all right. No way would Gwen find her way out of Tall Pines. Cydney only hoped she could find her way in.
Angus Munroe’s driveway was 3.5 miles long—Cydney clocked it on the odometer—and wound up the side of the mountain in grades that took the steep out of the climb, the trees and the split-rail fence marching alongside. At the top they fell away where the road leveled and made a circle around a grassy area with five shaggy pines in the center.
Cydney bore to the right and saw the house once the Jeep cleared the trees—a massive, split-timbered manse with a shingled roof, two stories and two wings that flared away from a deep, covered porch that ran the length of the house.
“Oh Aldo,” Bebe gushed. “It’s beautiful.”
Cydney glanced in the mirror and saw them gazing adoringly at each other, their fingers welded together in the middle of the backseat. She opened her mouth, then shut it. Let Munroe pry them apart.
She drove past the wide, timbered porch steps and parked the Jeep with its tailgate pointed toward the house. Bebe and Aldo bailed out before she switched off the engine. Without a word, just slammed the doors, clasped hands and raced toward the house.
“Well, you’re welcome,” Cydney said.
The Cadillac stopped beside the Jeep and Herb got out. So did her mother, without waiting for Herb, leaving her door hanging open a scant inch from Cydney’s. She rapped on the glass, but Georgette had already moved past the window. Cydney turned the ignition key, pressed the button to lower the glass and called, “Mother! The door!” But Georgette was out of earshot, striding briskly toward the house with Herb.
It was deja vu, just like Tuesday evening when her mother and Munroe and Bebe and Aldo trooped into her house and left her in the garage. No one had missed her. Why hadn’t she stayed there? She could be there still, forgotten in her own garage in Kansas City rather than stuck in her truck on the side of a mountain in the Ozarks. When would she learn to seize these opportunities?
“Well, hell.” Cydney lowered her window all the way, released her seat belt and crawled up on her knees to reach through the window and push the door shut.
A simple plan, but gravity was against her. The ground sloped away from the porch on this side of the drive, the Cadillac’s nose pointed downhill and the damn passenger door weighed four times as much as the Jeep. Or felt like it. Twice Cydney shoved the door. Twice it failed to catch and swung open again.
Once more, she thought, she’d try once more. If she didn’t get it this time, she’d give up and crawl over the gearshift. Cydney drew a breath, stretched out the window and reached for the door. Just as her hand closed on the top corner, she heard footsteps and saw a flicker of movement from the corner of her left eye—a tall man with broad shoulders and a lock of dark hair falling over his forehead.
“Need a hand?” Angus Munroe asked her.
chapter
twelve
Didn’t it just figure that he’d catch her doing something stupid? Cydney leaned her hands on the rolled-down window, turned her head and saw Munroe leaning against the Jeep. He wore a gray Missouri Tigers T-shirt, denim shorts and brown loafers with no socks. His arms and ankles were crossed, his long tanned legs dusted with dark hair.
Cydney hung halfway out the window, her jeans heat-stuck to her fanny, the crisp white shirt she’d started the day in, a wilted mess. He looked cool and at ease and perfectly at home—which of course he was. She was hot, exhausted and out of her element. Out of breath, too. As much from the sight of his bare muscled arms and bare muscled legs as her fight with the door—which of course she’d lost.
“If you could just close the damn car door,” she said to him.
“Whoa—profanity.” Munroe grinned, straightened off the Jeep and effortlessly flipped the door shut with one hand. “Rough day?”
“Long and hot.” She pulled her head in, rolled up the window and took her keys out of the ignition, clambered out of the Jeep and shut the door. “I got us lost. Twice, I think.”
“You should’ve let Aldo drive.”
“Aldo declined in favor of playing grope Bebe in the backseat. You were right. Maybe they’re in love—I don’t know and right now I don’t care—but my niece and your nephew are definitely, positively, without a doubt in major, roaring, unbridled lust.”
So was Cydney, jus
t looking at Angus Munroe. Good thing she was a sexually mature adult who could handle the sight of a gorgeous half-dressed man with grace and aplomb. Who the heck are Grace and Aplomb? her little voice asked, but Cydney ignored it.
She hadn’t meant to blurt all that about Bebe and Aldo. She’d meant to stay mad at Munroe, stay away from him as much as she could and still keep an eye on him. Then he’d grinned at her and her pulse jumped and she’d realized she didn’t want to be angry anymore. She wanted to hear him call her sweetheart again, even if he didn’t mean it.
“Well.” He leaned back against the Jeep and gave her a wry smile. His nose wasn’t quite as swollen and the bruises around his eyes were beginning to fade. “That must’ve been hard to say.”
“Actually, it wasn’t,” Cydney admitted. She’d just opened her mouth and it fell out. Kind of like her brain when she’d turned her head and saw him in those shorts.
“Oh, Cydney!” Georgette called from the top of the porch steps. “Bring my purse in when you bring the bags, would you?”
“What?” Cydney wheeled toward the porch, flinging up her right hand barely in time to catch the gold key ring her mother tossed her.
“The luggage. It’s in the trunk.” Georgette pointed at the Cadillac’s boxcar-size back end. “Bebe and Aldo are exhausted and Herb has a bad back.”
She waggled her fingers and went inside. Munroe scowled and pushed off the Jeep.
“Give me the keys. You are not hauling luggage.” He held his hand out and she gave him her keys and Herb’s. “Take her purse if you want, but I wouldn’t. And tell Aldo to get his exhausted butt out here.”
He moved behind the Caddy and opened the trunk. Cydney retrieved her mother’s purse, climbed the steps and crossed the porch to the front doors. A big, handsome door with stained-glass panels. She opened one and stepped inside onto a raised foyer with a pegged-pine floor. There was an enclosed staircase on her left and a huge, open living room spread out before her, a glass wall at the far end with a triple set of solarium doors framed in the center.
Another staircase, a big, wide one on the wall she faced climbed to a gallery with an archway cut in the middle and the shadow of a hallway beyond. Bookcases covered the long wall beneath the gallery with two sets of pocket doors built into them. She’d drawn the doors on the left side of the stairs Tuesday night and knew they led to the great room. They stood partway open and Cydney could hear the echo of voices, her mother’s and Bebe’s.
“Hey, kiddo.” Herb saluted her with a can of Budweiser from an oxblood leather bar stool. Aldo sat beside him, also with a Bud in hand, at a mahogany bar on the wall to Cydney’s right. “This used to be the reception desk. Pretty neat, huh?”
“Very neat.” Cydney came down the three steps from the foyer. “Aldo, your uncle wants you to help him with the luggage.”
“Sure thing,” he said, and hopped off his bar stool.
“I’ll give you a hand,” Herb said, and put down his beer.
“No, Herb. I’ll help,” Cydney said. “You rest your back.”
“Nice of you, kiddo, but I’m sure your back’s as tired as mine.” He patted her arm as he went past her with Aldo. “I got Georgie’s eight suitcases into the car. I’m sure I can get them out.”
With a bad back? Eight suitcases? What had her mother packed? Why had she lied about Herb? And why did she let him call her Georgie?
“Darling, there you are. Come and see this room!” Cydney turned her head and saw her mother sailing toward her. “It’s fabulous!”
So was the room Cydney stood in, big as a barn with a view of autumn-flamed woods through the glass wall and a stone fireplace with a hearth so huge the fire screen looked like a backstop. The pine floor gleamed where it wasn’t covered with rugs and blue leather furniture.
“Don’t stand there with your mouth open, Cydney.” Georgette took her arm and turned her around. “Come and look.”
“Here’s your purse, Mother.” She swung Georgette’s Hermes bag off her shoulder and held it out to her.
“What? Oh—thank you.” Georgette tossed the four thousand dollar leather bag on a chair. “You must see this room.”
“In a minute. I have to bring in the luggage.”
“Don’t be idiotic.” Georgette grabbed her hand and towed her across the living room. “Let the men get the bags.”
“But you told me to get the bags, Mother. You also told me Herb has a bad back, but Herb says—”
“Oh, enough about the luggage. Look at this“
Georgette reached the pocket doors, pushed them all the way open and flung Cydney ahead of her like she was a stone in a slingshot. She stumbled, straightened and stared around the great room.
“My God, Mother! It’s filthyl”
“Of course it’s filthy.” Georgette swept past her into the room. The dust on the floor was so thick Cydney could see the tracks her mother and Bebe had already made. “A man lives here.”
A rotten, devious man named Angus Munroe. As spotless and showplace perfect as the living room was, Cydney was sure he’d left the great room knee-deep in grime to dishearten and discourage them.
“Look past the dirt,” Georgette said, proving that he’d have to try a lot harder to defeat her. “Look at the dimensions, the view—”
“What view?” Cydney batted a dust mote trailing all the way from the beamed ceiling out of her face. “The window’s so dirty I can’t see it!”
“Here it is, Uncle Cyd!” Bebe popped up on the dais steps, in front of a glass wall like the one in the living room, the solarium doors behind her zebra-striped with dirt.
“Think of the possibilities.” Georgette moved ahead, sweeping her arms up and out. “An autumn garland on the mantel—” Cydney looked at the fireplace and its soot-blackened face. “Flowers in urns. Terra-cotta, I think. Baskets hung from the ceiling—”
“Not without a crane.” Cydney frowned up at the cobweb-draped beams. “And a toxic-waste cleanup crew from the EPA.”
“Must you be so negative?” Georgette spun around, her hands on her hips. “A little soap and water and elbow grease—”
“Oh no, Mother. No, no, wo.” Cydney backed away, shaking her head and her hands. “I am not cleaning this room.”
“Of course you’re not. Where do you get these ideas?”
“Tote that barge and bring in my purse,” Cydney retorted. “Carry in the luggage and lift that bale.”
“Bebe.” Georgette turned her head halfway toward the dais. “Go on with your visualization. Close your eyes and feel the room the way you want it to look for your wedding. Can you do that, dear?”
“I’ll try, Gramma.” Bebe plunked down on the dais steps and screwed her eyes shut, so tightly that her entire face puckered.
“You come with me.” Georgette crooked her finger and stalked to the far end of the room. Cydney sighed and followed. Her mother shut the pocket doors and took her by the arms. “Bebe nearly burst into tears when she saw this mess.”
“So did I. How come you’re so cheerful?”
“Paxil. And I’m not fooled by Angus Munroe and his mischief. Handsome as sin, but a real prick about this wedding.”
“Mother!” Cydney gasped, torn between shock and laughter.
“For heaven’s sake, Cydney, I’ve heard the word, and I was married to one for eighteen years. Divinely handsome, your father, but a real—”
“Right, Mother, I’ve got it,” Cydney cut her off. “What are we going to do? And don’t tell me sit on the steps and visualize.”
“That was to distract Bebe. What we’re going to do is hire professional cleaners. What we’re not going to do is say one word about this to Angus Munroe. We’re going to be gracious and serene and fawn all over him with gratitude.”
Cydney looked up at the ceiling beams. “I vote for a rope.”
“Lucky for us Bebe is marrying Aldo and not his uncle. It’s bad enough he’ll be an in-law. Impossible man.” Georgette sighed, rubbed her temples and loo
ked at Cydney. “Thank God he isn’t interested in you. Imagine the life you’d have with a man like that.”
Cydney blinked, startled and suddenly awash in her most X-rated fantasies of Angus Munroe, real hot stuff dreams that went way beyond peach roses at her first book signing. Smoldering glances over candlelit dinners, trips to Hawaii to make love on moon-washed sands, a honeymoon in Paris on red silk sheets drenched with sex and champagne. Oh yes. Cydney could imagine it. So vividly all she could do was stare at her mother.
“It leaves me speechless, too.” Georgette laid her hands on Cydney’s shoulders. “Now. I’m going to finish this silly visualization thing I started with Bebe. You distract Munroe. He upsets her terribly.”
“She doesn’t look upset.” Cydney leaned around her mother and peered at Bebe, sitting with her eyes shut, her elbows on her knees, her cheeks on her fists and her mouth slack. “She looks like she’s asleep.”
“She’s traumatized. You know how insecure she is. She’s positive Munroe hates her.” Georgette took Cydney’s elbow and propelled her toward the doors. “You keep him busy until I get her calmed down.”
“Keep him busy doing what?”
“Make him show you the house. Ooh and ahh a lot. I don’t know. Just go charm his socks off.”
“Since he isn’t wearing any, that shouldn’t take long.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Cydney, then tell him jokes. Seduce him. I don’t care. Just keep him away from Bebe.”
Georgette opened the pocket doors and pushed Cydney through them. She spun around, her mouth open to have the last word—at least once in her life—but the doors whacked shut in her face.
Cydney stared at them, closed her mouth and pressed her fingertips to the headache thudding above her eyes. She should’ve stayed in the garage. Why hadn’t she stayed in the garage?
She heard muffled voices, creaky footsteps, and moved out from under the gallery. The fifteen bedrooms Munroe said Tall Pines had must be up there, through the archway and down the hall. By the thumps and scrapes she heard, so were Munroe with Aldo and Herb and the luggage. Let her mother charm and distract him, Cydney decided. All she did was irritate and annoy him.
Mother of the Bride Page 10
