“I’ve thought about what you said to me last night, Bebe. If you and Aldo are old enough to make your own decisions and decide the course of your lives, I’m sure you’ll want to be in charge of every aspect of your wedding,” she said, handing Bebe the folded piece of paper.
Everyone stopped eating, even Aldo. He blinked up from his plate with a drip of syrup in one corner of his mouth. Bebe plucked the folded sheet of paper gingerly from Cydney’s fingers.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“The list Gramma George made of the decorations you visualized for the great room.”
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Go shopping.”
“Me?” Bebe squeaked.
“Take Aldo with you. It’s his wedding, too.”
“But Aldo and I are going to Silver Dollar City today.”
Cydney poured a cup of tea, added cream and sugar and didn’t answer. Georgette started to say something, then pressed her lips shut.
“Here, Gramma.” Bebe thrust the list at her.
“Herb and I are going to Eureka Springs,” she replied.
“But it’s your list!”
“And it’s your wedding,” Georgette said firmly.
Oh God. Gus gulped a slug of coffee and a deep breath. He’d volunteered to go shopping with Cydney, not spend the day alone with her in a house with sixteen beds and eight big, long, wide sofas. His imagination and his libido soared. So did a certain area of his anatomy he called Clyde. Gus hunched forward on his elbows and cleared his throat.
“Uh, Herb,” he said. “Think you can find Eureka Springs okay? Cydney and I had other plans today, but we’d be glad to tag along.”
Cydney paused with her teacup halfway to her mouth and arched an eyebrow at him. “We would?”
“Nice of you, Gus.” Herb caught Georgette’s hand and winked at him. “But we have other plans, too.”
“Just thought I’d offer.” Gus smiled gamely, then said to Georgette, “Wonderful French toast. Why don’t you dump Herb and marry me?”
“Sorry, Gus. I saw her first.” Herb grinned. “Tell you what, though. I’m told Cydney’s French toast is just as good as my Georgie-girl’s. You could always marry her.”
Cydney choked on her tea, nearly dropped the cup getting it back in the saucer and snatched her napkin over her mouth and her nose. She made a noise in her throat that sounded like she was strangling—which pretty much deflated Clyde’s spirits—scrambled off the bench and dashed for the bathroom.
“Oh my,” Herb said bewilderedly. “What did I say?”
So much for scorching kisses in the kitchen. Gus excused himself and took his bent ego for a walk.
The rain had sucked all the heat out of the air and turned his backyard into a bog. The beat-up old brown loafers he’d stepped into after his 3 A.M. shower, with jeans and his gray Mizzou T-shirt, squished through sodden leaves. He slogged up the hill to the lake through rain-dulled autumn trees. He dug a couple fistfuls of muddy rocks out of the beach and sat on the edge of the dock skipping them into the lake. He’d been at it a while when Aldo dropped down on the dock beside him.
“Uncle Gus,” he said. “You don’t like Bebe, do you?”
“I don’t like her behavior. I’m not real thrilled with yours, right now, either.”
“What did I do?”
“That con job with my truck at dinner last night. Real cute.”
“What con job? I want to take Bebe to Silver Dollar City.”
“Baloney. You want to take her to the nearest motel and jump her bones, but you couldn’t say that in front of her grandmother, could you? You figured if you asked me in private about the truck I’d put two and two together and say no.”
“I should’ve driven my own car,” Aldo grumbled.
“Why didn’t you?”
“On these roads? Ruin my brand new Jag with gravel dings?”
“The way you drive. If you’d take your foot off the gas—”
“Aw jeez, Uncle Gus. Can I do anything right?”
“I don’t know.” Gus skipped another stone. “Think you and Bebe can manage to feed and dress yourselves once you’re married?”
“Oh, that’s funny, Uncle Gus.” Aldo glared at him. “About as funny as you sticking your lip out at Bebe.”
“It was stupid and childish and I’d do it again in a minute to show Bebe how stupid and childish she looks when she does it.”
“You hurt her feelings.”
“Bebe hurt Cydney’s feelings. She sat on the steps last night crying because Bebe doesn’t want her at the wedding.”
“What d’you care? You got the hots for her?” Aldo smacked the flat of his doubled fist against his forehead. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“When I walked into the great room yesterday you had a broom in your hand. A sensible response to that much dirt, but you were drawing hearts on the filthy goddamn floor. Cydney brought the mess to my attention, which I take responsibility for because I didn’t check their work before I paid the crew. Why didn’t you tell me? Why did I have to tell you to sweep the floor?”
“I was getting to that,” Aldo said between his teeth.
“You and Bebe want to be adults when it’s convenient, Aldo, when it doesn’t cut into your play time. When it’s not convenient, you dump your responsibilities on other people.”
“You’re gonna pull my trust fund, aren’t you?”
“I don’t give a damn about the money. I care about you and your ability to take care of yourself and a wife.”
“You don’t think I can, do you?”
“Frankly? No.”
“What’ll it take to convince you?”
“If you and Bebe can pull off this wedding in a week—on your own, without any help from anyone else—then I’ll believe you’re mature enough to be on your own and take care of yourselves.”
“That’s all?” Aldo slid him a dubious look. “I don’t have to write one of those dopey Life Plans you’re so big on?”
“No. Just plan the wedding all on your own. You and Bebe. Nobody else.”
“How hard can that be?” Aldo said with a rueful snort. “Buy stuff and put up some decorations.”
“A snap.” Gus turned sideways on the dock and held out his hand. “How ‘bout it, pal? We got a deal here?”
“Yeah, Uncle Gus.” Aldo gripped his hand and gave it a firm, determined shake. “We got a deal.”
chapter
sixteen
Gus didn’t follow Aldo back to Tall Pines. He didn’t dare until he thought of a way to keep his hands off Cydney.
When his nephew disappeared into the trees, he looked at the lake and considered dunking himself. This time of year the water was about forty degrees. Surely to God that would cool him off.
If you’re gonna do it, his inner voice said, go find a big rock and give yourself a couple good whacks on the head first.
“Go away!” Gus shouted. “And leave me alone!”
The ring of his voice on the still morning air exploded a handful of ducks from a nearby clump of reeds. They veered away across the lake squawking. Gus watched them, squinting into the sun burning through the fog to keep the sick thud in his temples from splitting his skull.
He grimaced and rubbed his temples. He needed a pain pill. Maybe if he chugged three of the horse tabs the old coot doctor in Kansas City gave him with a can of beer he’d pass out for a week.
That’s what he needed, a coma to get him through this wedding. And a reality check.
Reality Number One: Cydney nearly swallowed his tongue when he’d kissed her in her kitchen Tuesday night, but she also baked macaroons in that kitchen and kept them in a teddy bear cookie jar. You don’t drag a woman like that to bed for a day of hot, wild sex. You court her. You make love to her. And then you marry her.
Reality Number Two: He didn’t want to get married—he wanted to get laid. Crude, but the truth. So far as he knew, there was only one streetwalker in Crooked
Possum. Mamie Buckles, who went door-to-door selling prickly pear jelly. Eighty if she was a day.
Reality Number Three: Cydney lived a sensible, prudent and well-planned life, a life he could admire and want to be a part of—if he wanted to get married, which he didn’t—if only it didn’t include Fletcher Parrish. Made him sound like he was thirty-five going on six, but it was the truth, this was a Reality Check and so he had to admit it.
Which still left the question—what was he going to do?
He hadn’t a clue, but he knew what he wasn’t going to do—spend the day alone at Tall Pines with Cydney. He’d take her sightseeing, maybe to Branson for lunch. There were a million motels in Branson but he’d slap an ice pack in his pants and leave his credit cards at home.
Gus levered himself to his feet, the butt of his jeans sagging from sitting on the soaked dock, and headed for the house. He was halfway up the almost-an-acre back lawn when he saw the brighter-than-daylight glare of the outside security lights wink on and heard a faint waugga-waugga wail. It was the alarm. The power must’ve come back on with a surge that triggered the system, and Aldo, who’d never figured out how to operate it, must have tried to shut it off and tripped the siren. Gus kicked off his mud-caked loafers and ran for the deck before every sheriff’s deputy in Taney County showed up in his driveway.
“It’s the switch on the left, Aldo!” he shouted when he reached the deck and yanked open the solarium doors, but the alarm blared on. “Your other left, Aldo!”
His nephew didn’t answer. Neither did Herb or Georgette or Cydney when Gus called out to them as he raced across the living room. He stubbed his right big toe going up the foyer steps, tripped but caught himself on his hands, hissing between his teeth, on the wall beneath the control panel. Every light flashed, all the switches were flipped the wrong way. Gus flipped them back but the alarm kept screaming. He cursed and wheeled up the steps to his office.
Cydney sat at his desk, barely a foot from the master switch on the alarm panel built into the wall behind her, staring at his laptop. Oh shit. Oh hell. The Grand Plan to Wreck the Wedding was still on the screen. Damn Georgette’s French toast.
Cydney looked dazed, her almond eyes huge, her face almost as white as her knit pullover. She looked up when Gus burst into the room, breathing hard, his big toe throbbing and his hair falling in his face. She stared at him for a second, then grabbed the red Ping-Pong paddle on his desk and threw it at him.
A better man would’ve stood his ground and taken the shot, but a better man wouldn’t have written the Grand Plan. Gus ducked. The paddle cracked into the door frame behind him. He jumped for the left side of the desk to reach the alarm and Cydney. She shot around the right side to avoid him. Gus shut down the system and spun after her just as she flung herself through the doorway.
“Cydney!” he shouted. “Cydney, wait, please!”
She didn’t. Gus charged after her, too fast to make the turn on the landing at the top of the stairs. He bounced off the wall and careened onto the steps, caught just a glimpse of Cydney at the bottom and heard her yank open the front door. He grabbed the banister and smiled and took his time following her. She stood in the empty driveway, her arms jammed together, an angry glare on her face, when he came out of the house wincing on his smarting toe.
“Where’s my truck?” she gritted at him between her teeth.
“I put it away last night.” Gus leaned on the roof post at the top of the porch steps and nodded at the barn-size, six-car garage built in the middle of a paved turnaround at the end of the driveway a hundred yards from the house. “When I came out to check the generator.”
“How did you—?” She broke off when Gus plucked her car keys out of his pocket and let them swing between his fingers.
He’d meant to give them back to her last night, but he’d gotten distracted; first by the cocoa-mustache on her upper lip he’d wanted to lick off in the kitchen, second by the shimmer of her hair in the moonlight glowing through the stained-glass windows in the foyer.
Cydney narrowed her eyes and thrust her right hand at him, palm-up. “Give me my keys, please.”
“No.” Gus slipped them back in his pocket and folded his arms.
She shoved her hands on her hips and her weight—all one hundred and ten pounds of it, maybe—on one foot. “I said please.”
“So did I, but you ignored me.”
“I plan to keep ignoring you.” She turned on one heel and stalked toward the garage.
“Will you wait a minute?” Gus hurried off the porch, mindful of his bare feet and the needles shed by the pines growing in the circle lawn. Those that weren’t rain-soaked and stuck to the puddled blacktop could be razor sharp. “I can explain the Grand Plan to Wreck the Wedding.”
“No you can’t!” She whipped around to face him, her voice breaking, her eyelashes glistening. “Don’t even try!”
“It seemed like a good idea when I wrote it Tuesday night. I’d just gotten home from Kansas City. I was tired, I had a headache—” Gus reached for her but she shrugged him off and wheeled toward the garage. “Where are you going? The garage is locked and I’ve got your keys.”
“Keep them.” She dropped to her heels, pried one of the muddy, white-painted rocks out of the border edging the drive and marched on. “I’ve got a spare key in a magnetic box under the left front fender.”
“I had a concussion, for God’s sake.” Gus limped after her, the throb in his jammed toe shooting up his foot into his ankle, the one he’d sprained in Cydney’s backyard. “I’d been punched in the nose, dropped on a birdbath, tripped over a damn croquet wicket and—Owl”
Gus fell against the split-rail fence edging the lawn at the sudden stab in his right foot and saw a pine needle sunk halfway into the pad of his big toe. He plucked it out, looked up and saw Cydney glaring at him.
“That doesn’t excuse what you wrote,” she said, her voice shaking with anger. “Or what you intend to do with it.”
“Intended, Cydney. As in, I no longer intend.”
“Of course you don’t intend now. I caught you,” she snapped, and wheeled toward the garage.
“Give me five minutes.” Gus pushed off the fence after her, his big toe on fire. “Just five minutes to explain this. If you don’t like what I say, I’ll give your keys back and unlock the garage.”
“No thanks.” She spun toward him, hefting the rock in her hand. “I’d rather brain you with this, but I’ll settle for breaking a window.”
She took off again, making a beeline toward the timbered side wall of the garage and the window there. It was still speckled with rain, about chest-high on him and almost over Cydney’s head. She could smash the glass but she’d never reach the window without a ladder.
“I read the Grand Plan when I went upstairs last night and realized I was playing with people’s lives. Real people’s lives, not characters I’d made up. I was going to delete the damn thing but Aldo interrupted me. I love French toast. I haven’t had it since Aunt Phoebe died. I—”
“You wrote down every word I said to you last night.” Cydney spun around, the rock clenched in her left fist, her eyes glittering. “You made Bebe ordering me to leave part of your Grand Plan. You were going to keep us at each other’s throats and use it to wreck the wedding. That’s the lowest, the sleaziest—the most selfish thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“No it isn’t,” Gus told her. “This is.”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her, muffling her protest with his mouth. She squirmed and wrenched, brought her right arm and her fist up between them. Gus caught it and stroked her knuckles with his thumb. Her fingers quivered and opened. So did her lips and her left hand, loosening her grip on the rock. It smashed onto his bare foot like a two-ton anvil, exploding stars behind his closed eyelids.
“Owl” Gus flung himself away from her, against the rough-timbered wall of the garage, his weight on his forearms and his left foot, his right one throbbing like hell.
“Now give me my keys.”
Gus opened his eyes, saw Cydney’s right palm shoved under his nose and the flash in her eyes. “You did that on purpose.”
“It was your head or your foot. Now give me my keys.”
“You know where they are. Help yourself.”
She slipped her hand into his pocket and fished. This is it, Gus thought dismally, as close as I’ll ever get to Cydney Parrish sticking her hand in my pants. He felt her fingers close on her keys and sighed.
“Well now,” drawled a deep and lazy Ozark voice. “I do believe this is the most intrestin’ stickup position I’ve seen in some time.”
Cydney whipped her chin around and blinked. Gus watched her gaze climb and her lips part. He glanced over his shoulder and nodded at Elvin Cantwell, Crooked Possum’s one and only cop.
“Morning, Sheriff Cantwell.”
“Mornin’, Gus.” The Sheriff nodded. “Mornin’, ma’am.”
Cydney just stared at him, all six feet six inches of him, all 275 pounds of him in starched tan khakis. Elvin stood with one hip cocked like John Wayne, fingers spread on the polished gun belt buckled around his waist. He had small, dark brown eyes, a headful of glossy black hair under his tipped-back Mountie hat and a toothpick stuck in his mouth.
“I said mornin’, ma’am,” he repeated, touching the brim of his hat.
Cydney didn’t say anything, just blinked at him.
“Okeydokey.” Elvin nodded to her, then at Gus. “Who might your purty little assailant be, Gus?”
“Oh, I’m not assailing Mr. Munroe, Sheriff. I’m assaulting him.” Cydney picked up the rock and showed it to him. “With this.”
“What are you doing?” Gus hissed at her, but she ignored him.
“Mmm-hmm.” Elvin nodded. “And why might that be, Miss—?”
“Cydney Parrish.” She shifted the rock to her left hand, stepped forward and shook hands with Elvin, her tiny little palm disappearing into his giant paw. “Lovely to meet you, Sheriff.”
“Pleasure for me, too, ma’am, but I need to tell you ‘fore you say any more that you got the right to keep silent, that anything you say—”
Mother of the Bride Page 15
