By the time the British racing green coupe skidded sideways into the overlook, there were three inches of snow on the ground and the flakes were the size of saucers. The Jag’s wheels spun as Gus pulled up beside the Jeep, lowered his window and turned on the dome light. Cydney lowered hers and winced at his puffy red nose.
“You okay?” He called over the howl in the wind.
“Yes. Just cold.”
“The roads are absolute shit. Aldo and Bebe took off in my pickup before the snow started, to catch a movie. I’m going to leave the Jag in Branson and ride back to Tall Pines with you. That okay?”
“Absolutely.”
“Follow me.”
Cydney did, the Jeep’s transmission in four-wheel drive and her heart in her mouth watching the Jag slide down the mountain ahead of her. It was pitch-black and snowing like crazy, the flakes the size of dinner plates and piling up fast. She kept the wipers on high and the defroster blasting to keep the windshield clear.
Highway 76 was deserted. So were all the parking lots they passed, except those surrounding motels. Red neon NO VACANCY signs flickered through the snow. When Gus turned into a Chinese All-U-Can-Eat buffet, the Jag spun in a circle. He straightened it out, parked it, hopped out and waved and ducked into the restaurant.
He’s going to yell at me, Cydney thought. All the way to Tall Pines, like I did to him yesterday. She deserved it, but she couldn’t face it trapped in her truck with no place to slink off to and cry. If she let him drive, maybe the snow would distract him until they reached Tall Pines. She could hide in her bedroom and make him yell at her through the locked door. It was the chicken way out, but Cydney took it, shoved the gearshift into park and climbed over the console into the passenger seat.
When Gus came out of the restaurant carrying two white bags, she lowered her window and waved him toward the driver’s side. He squinted at her through the wind-driven snow, slipped and slid around the Jeep, opened the door and hiked himself in behind the wheel.
“Whew, it’s cold.” He slammed the door, shivered and passed her the two white bags. “Hope you like beef and broccoli.”
Cydney tasted snow on her tongue, hot steamed rice and wok-fried meat. Her mouth watered and her heart ached looking at Gus, his cold-flushed face and his broad, snow-peppered, navy suede-clad shoulders.
“I love beef and broccoli,” Cydney said. And I love you, heaven help me, she thought, as she bent over to tuck the bags between her feet.
This close up, his nose looked more red than it was swollen— maybe from the cold—and there was a scrape across the bridge.
“I’m sorry I slammed the door on your nose. Does it hurt?”
“Only when I laugh.” He reached between his knees to release the seat, pushed it back to make room for his legs and gave her a rueful smile. “I’m sorry I didn’t lock your bedroom door.”
The defroster was blowing full tilt, melting the snow on the thatch of hair that was always falling over his forehead. Cydney raised her hand to brush it away, half expecting him to cross his index fingers and shout, “Back!” But he bent his head so she could reach him.
“Me, too,” she sighed wistfully, just as the dome light winked off.
The red and yellow restaurant marquee glowed through the windshield, its neon glare softened by the snow piling up on the glass. Gus caught her wrist, raised just his eyes and looked at her.
“Does that mean you won’t slug me if I kiss you?”
“It means I might slug you if you don’t.”
He made a noise in his throat, clamped his mouth over hers and lifted her over the console into his lap. All in one swift, strong scoop, spreading her legs over his without breaking the kiss, his lips cold but his mouth hot.
Hot enough to send her Angus Munroe fantasies up in flames. It didn’t get any realer than the hard curve of his jaw and the deep, dizzying throb she felt behind the zipper of his jeans. Cydney clutched his shoulders, broke the kiss and gasped a breath.
“I’ve been like this all day,” Gus said, gripping her hips. “Hard as a rock and ready to explode.”
Cydney touched his stop-your-heart handsome face, the one she’d dreamed about and pinned pictures of to her corkboard. He rubbed his jaw against her palm, letting her feel the scrape of his beard.
“The rear seat folds down. And there’s a blanket in the back.”
“Don’t tempt me.” Gus slid his hands inside her sweater and touched her breasts, his cold fingers scurrying a chill up her back. “I want you but not in the parking lot of a Chinese restaurant. I want you in my bed, naked and screaming.”
“Ohhh,” Cydney said weakly. She’d never screamed, not once, in any of her Angus Munroe fantasies. “How fast can we get to Tall Pines?”
“Hang on and we’ll find out.” He lifted her over the console, started to draw away, then locked his mouth over hers again and bent her back in the passenger seat. When he raised his head, his eyes were dark and smoky. “Your mother called just before you did. She and Herb are stuck in eight inches of snow in Eureka Springs. Aldo and Bebe are staying the night in Branson again.”
“Then we’ll be all alone at Tall Pines.” Thank you, fairy godmother, Cydney thought. “And alone isn’t sneaking.”
“Mark our place. I’d better drive while I still want to.”
He gave her a quick kiss and straightened behind the wheel. Cydney thought she should sit up, but her bones had turned to goo. The imprint of Gus’ mouth tingled on her lips. She watched him hook his seat belt and switch on the wipers, put the Jeep in reverse, stretch his arm across the back of her seat and glance down at her.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Oh—fine. Just afraid to move for fear I’ll slide off on the floor.”
He pulled her up and nuzzled her ear, the gnaw of his whiskers shooting shivers everywhere. “Honey, you ain’t seennothin’ yet.”
Cydney wrinkled her nose at him and scraped a fingertip across his prickly chin. “Promises, promises.”
“I’m the FedEx of love, baby.” He caught her finger in his teeth and swirled his tongue around it. “I deliver.”
She laughed, pulled his head down and gently kissed his nose.
“I will never slam another door in your face. I won’t hit you, pick up so much as a pebble, threaten you with a birdbath or come after you with a croquet wicket.”
“Sounds like a deal. I’ll cancel the fitting on my body cast.”
Cydney laughed again. He grinned and kissed her. She caught his bottom lip and sucked. The groan he made vibrated through every cell in her body. When she closed her teeth and nibbled, he crushed her to him, digging the gearshift into her ribs and making her head spin. Her cell phone—the one she’d tossed into the seat and forgotten—chirped beneath her right hip, startling her so badly she jumped and bit him.
“Ow!” Gus howled, clapping a hand over his mouth.
“Oh wo!” Cydney reached between the seats, grabbed a handful of Kleenex from the box in the back and thrust them “At last,” Gwen said furiously, the connection crackling with static. “I’ve been calling and calling. Where have you been?”
“Shopping.” Cydney never turned on her cell phone in a mall. She was one of maybe six people on the planet who thought it was the pinnacle of rude to stroll through a department store with a cell phone clamped to her ear. “Where are you?”
“In Moscow, wrapping things up. I called that Scrawny Pines place to talk to Mother—”
“Tall Pines, Gwen.” Cydney watched Gus peel the tissue off his lip. It was spotted with blood and she winced. “It’s Tall Pines.”
“Some jerk answered and said Mother and Bebe were out. He told me you were asleep and hung up on me. When I called back no one answered. I think the jerk disconnected the phone.”
“I doubt that, Gwen.” Gus righted the mirror, put the Jeep in gear and steered it out of the icy parking lot onto snow-packed Highway 76. Cydney tucked the phone against her shoulder while she clipped her seat bel
t. “We’re having a blizzard here.”
“Good. Maybe it’ll snow for a week and this wedding will be postponed. Newsweek called. They want me in Africa to shoot—”
“I’ll shoot you,” Cydney threatened. “We’re twisting ourselves into knots to arrange this wedding around your schedule.”
“Oh relax.” Gwen’s laugh crackled with static. “It’s a joke.”
“Very funny. Was there something you wanted?”
“Yes. Do you have your tripod with you?”
“Of course I do.”
“Good. I lost mine and I need one to take the wedding pictures.”
“You’re the mother of the bride, Gwen. You’re supposed to be in the pictures, not taking them.”
“So the shots I’m supposed to be in I’ll let you take.”
“Gee, thanks, but I’d planned to take all the pictures.” Cydney figured it would give her something to do besides wash glasses.
“Vogue has asked for a couple of candid shots of Bebe’s wedding. Photos taken by Gwen Parrish, not her nobody kid sister.”
“I am not a nobody, Gwen.”
“This is Vogue, Cydney.”
“This is my life, Gwen. My chance at Vogue.”
Her chance to be somebody besides Fletch and Georgette Parrish’s other daughter. And her chance, Cydney realized, to get even with Gwen for a lifetime of I’m-so-superior barbs. It was perfect.
“Oh, all right.” Cydney gave an exaggerated, aggrieved sigh. “Since it’s Vogue I guess you can take the wedding pictures.
“Oh—one more thing. I talked to Dad and he said to tell you—”
A huge burst of static popped and broke the connection. Cydney shut the phone off and gave it a jaunty flip over her shoulder into the backseat. She could see it now. A soft-focus shot of Bebe in her veil and gorilla mask. Orange icicle lights and cobwebs draped in the background. Jack-o’-lanterns artfully arranged on the train of her gown.
And the name Gwen Parrish in the photo credit line.
Snow swirled across Highway 76 in a white haze, the wind behind it so fierce it howled and bounced the traffic light suspended above the intersection just ahead like a yo-yo on the end of the string. Cydney had to lean forward and peer over the dash to see that the light was red, just as Gus eased on the brake and glanced at her.
“Why were you and your sister arguing about who’s going to take the wedding pictures?”
“Oh we weren’t arguing,” Cydney explained cheerfully. “Gwen was just putting me in my place. Vogue wants to run a couple of Bebe’s wedding pictures. Shots taken by Gwen Parrish, not her nobody kid sister.”
“So stop acting like her nobody kid sister.” The light changed and Gus gave the Jeep gas enough to churn its way through the intersection. “Stop competing. Throw your camera away and finish your book.”
“Oh I plan to.” Cydney rubbed her hands together. With glee and to warm them up. “Just as soon as this wedding is over with.”
“Don’t lose your momentum. You wrote four chapters last night. Not that I recommend marathon stretches but—”
“You snooped!” Cydney flung herself sideways in the seat, almost choking herself on the shoulder harness. “You read what I wrote!”
“I did not.” Gus made a right off Highway 76. Onto a street, Cydney assumed, though the snow was so deep it obliterated the curbs. He steered the Jeep up a long, drifted hill and glanced at her. “I bumped the ottoman when I picked up your cup of tea and knocked your laptop off screen save.”
Cydney tried to recall what she’d written. Angus Munroe, my idol, the man of my dreams. Had she written that or just meant to and forgot? She couldn’t remember.
“If you didn’t read them, how do you know I wrote four chapters?”
“We use the same software, Cydney. It said ‘Chapter 4’ in the top task bar.”
“Oh. Well,” she said. But what else did it say? Had she written anything incriminating? Anything like, “Angus Munroe, the man I’ve been in love with from afar for the last ten years”? “Even so. What I wrote was personal and private and you shouldn’t have read it.”
“That works both ways, you know.” Gus eased the Jeep through a glassy curve, stripped of snow at the top of the hill by the wind. In the rearview mirror, Cydney saw Branson falling away behind them in a foggy, snow-shrouded blur. “You shouldn’t have read the Grand Plan to Wreck the Wedding, either.”
“Well, I certainly didn’t intend to,” she said with a sniff. “I bumped your laptop while I was trying to shut off the alarm and there it was.”
“Yeah, there it was.” Gus shot her a frown. “Personal, private stuff I wrote, but you read it anyway, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.” Cydney squirmed. She’d wondered when this would occur to him. “And you’re right. I shouldn’t have.”
“Damn straight you shouldn’t have, but I didn’t get all huffy and indignant when you invaded my privacy.”
“I did not invade your privacy. Not intentionally, anyway.”
“I didn’t invade yours, period. You’re the snoop and the coward.”
“Coward?” Cydney blinked at him. “How’d I get to be a coward?”
“You caved in to your big-shot big sister. You should’ve stuck to your guns about photographing the wedding.”
“Gwen is an AK-47, Gus. I am a peashooter.”
“Only when you’re up against somebody named Parrish. Me,” he said, flicking his fingers off his chest, “you rip into like anUzi.”
“Well, just you wait. Every little peashooter has her day.”
“What are you gonna do? Trade up to a pop gun?” He cocked a snide eyebrow at her, then sighed and forked a hand through his hair. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Oh no. Feel free.” Cydney gave an airy wave. “I’m a pushover.”
“You don’t have to be a pushover.”
“Maybe I want to be.” She flung herself around to glare at him, this time tugging the harness away from her throat so she didn’t garrote herself. “Maybe I enjoy letting my family trample me into the ground.”
“Aw, jeez.” Gus let his hand fall back on the wheel with a disgusted slap. “I’m sorry I said anything.”
“You should be. You don’t know the first thing about my family.”
“I know they’re all loony and we can’t have a conversation about them without you turning it into an argument.”
“You’re about to become a part of this loony family, buster.”
“Only till the divorce, honey.”
“Oh you wish. I hope you’re around to watch Bebe and Aldo celebrate their seventy-fifth wedding anniversary.” Cydney gave him an evil smile. “At Tall Pines.”
“Over my dead body,” Gus growled, his eyes narrowing.
“Keep it up and I’ll see what I can do about that.”
“With what? Your little peashooter?”
“No! The biggest damn rock I can find in Taney County!”
“Whoa—profanity. I’m really scared now.”
That’s when it turned ugly. He shouted at her, and why not? She’d screeched at him. Cydney had never screeched at anybody in her life but she couldn’t seem to stop screeching at Gus. Of course her family was loony. Wasn’t everybody’s? Sure they used her, but he didn’t have to say so. He didn’t have to make it crystal clear that she was a chump and he knew it. He didn’t have to call her a coward.
So she called him a jerk. A rude, insensitive jerk. He called her mother Lucretia Borgia and her father a pompous ass. Cydney said Aldo was a few clowns shy of a circus and Gus said Bebe was living proof that evolution can work in reverse.
“As for your sister—” He sucked a breath to keep the veins in his neck from bulging. “She’s got bigger balls than I do.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Cydney snapped furiously.
He scowled at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to see your balls.�
��
“I wish to hell you’d decided that before I got us into this mess.”
“What mess?”
“Take a look, honey.”
He flashed on the brights and Cydney’s breath caught as the headlights shot ahead. Wide and dazzling bright on the wind-driven snow swirling across the road in hubcap deep drifts that buried fences and hedgerows. Only the trees overhanging the road marked the dark, narrow edge. Most of them still had their leaves and sagged dangerously low under the weight of the wet, heavy snow.
“Yikes,” she breathed. “Can we make it to Tall Pines?” Cydney thought the slow, grinding c-r-r-a-a-a-c-k she heard was Gus gnashing his teeth at her, until she glanced at him and saw him twisting in his seat to look out the back window. She turned around, too, just as an old, suckered elm keeled over into the road, uprooted by the weight of the snow on its fully leafed-out crown. It landed with a muffled whump, like a drawbridge falling over a moat, completely blocking the road behind the Jeep and showering the back end with snow.
“That’s that,” Gus said grimly. “There’s no turning back now.”
chapter
twenty-one
No turning back from what? This butt-deep-in-snow spot in the road or this stupid, ridiculous argument? Everything Gus said to her was true, but she’d be damned if she’d apologize. She had not started the argument. She’d stood up for herself and her loony family.
Hate to interrupt while you’re on a roll, her little voice said. But calling yourself a pushover and a peashooter ain’t exactly standing tall.
“Oh shut up, you big-mouth know-it-all,” Cydney blurted, and winced as Gus swung around and glowered at her.
“Five minutes ago I was a rude, insensitive jerk.” He draped his left arm over the steering wheel and flipped his fingers at her. “Now I’m a big-mouth know-it-all. Am I moving up on your shit list or down?”
“I wasn’t talking to you.” Why not? Cydney didn’t care if it made her sound loony. “I was talking to this little voice I have that pipes up in my head every once in a while.”
“Well, at least you weren’t talking to pictures of me.”
“It’s a lot easier to talk to your picture than it is to talk to you.”
Mother of the Bride Page 21
