by Nancy Warren
“If it wasn’t for Sadie I would say yes in a heartbeat. But she’s so excited about being a flower girl. All she talks about is the wedding. I already showed her the sketches for her dress.” She had to smile as she recalled their meeting. “Naturally, she wanted a few changes.”
He groaned. “It’s starting already. She’s six years old. What does she know from fashion?”
“Like all women, she knows what she doesn’t like. But, she’s a reasonable young woman. We worked it out.”
Their gazes caught and for a moment she felt lost in wonder that this amazing man – and his terrific kid – were hers. It happened like this. Not every day, but surprisingly often. She’d catch him looking at her, or they’d say the same thing at the same moment. Something would strike them both funny, and they’d catch each other’s eyes and then it was as though magic happened. She could see so deeply into him, feel herself opening to him. And then the moment would pass as quickly and mysteriously as it had come. Until the next time it happened.
“So, back to the war analogy, General, what is the big deal with having a wedding planner?”
“It was the way she made it clear it would be in my best interests to meet with her. Like my mother has something up her sleeve.”
“Like what?” He seemed genuinely perplexed.
“I don’t know. Like she hired Italian stone masons and they are rebuilding the Waldorf Astoria stone by stone in Kaslo just so she can have the right wedding photos.”
“You know, now you mention it, some dude with a bag of cement was eating spaghetti and singing Puccini on Main Street today.”
“Very funny.”
He leaned forward and took her hand. “Hey, lighten up. It’s going to be okay.”
She squeezed his hand. “What was your first wedding like?”
She felt his hand go rigid in hers. “You really want to know?”
“Yeah. I really want to know.”
“It seems strange talking to you about my first wedding.”
“Everything that happened to you, including your first marriage, is important to me because it’s part of you.”
He blew out a breath and looked up at the sky as though the deepening blue, with a hint of cloud at the edges, might roll out a movie projector and screen his wedding video.
She waited. The three girls had left the swings and were now taking turns going down the slide. Going down the slide seemed to involve a lot of chatting. She smiled to herself.
“I don’t know. We were both so young, Laura and me. We got married at the Presbyterian church. I remember being nervous. I wasn’t sure I’d be a good husband and it all seemed such a huge responsibility.”
She pictured him young and earnest and in love. “But you took the chance anyway.”
“I guess.”
She watched Sadie fly down the slide. “And it worked out okay.”
He glanced at her as though she were making a bad joke. And she realized that while she’d been watching Sadie he was probably thinking about how his wife had died an early and painful death.
“I meant because you had a happy marriage for as long as she lived. And you have Sadie,” she said.
“Oh. Yeah.”
She sipped her coffee and found it had grown cold. She put down her mug. “Are you nervous about marrying me?”
“No. No. Maybe a little. Are you nervous about marrying me?”
“I think I’m nervous about the wedding itself. Trying to manage my mother and getting everything done. But you?” She smiled. “You I’m sure of.”
They finished their coffee, let Sadie play until the light was fading and then collected her. She was so tired she didn’t even argue. “I had the best time,” she said as they headed to the car. “I love Amanda and Shayan.”
Erin waited for the question she could feel coming. “I told them about my dress and how I’m going to be a flower girl. Erin, can they come to the wedding?”
Yep, she’d been right. She was about to explain about the small number of guests and then she remembered that her mother kept shoving more people on the list. Why shouldn’t Sadie, who was part of the wedding party, be allowed to invite her bffs? “Of course you can, honey. I’ll call their mothers. We’ll figure something out.” And boom, she hit sixty guests for a forty-person wedding.
When they got back to Jared’s, she helped him put Sadie to bed. The little girl wanted Erin to tell her a story. It was a routine that had started in February when Sadie had believed, thanks to fairy tales, that all step mothers were wicked, evil creatures.
Ever since then, Erin had been on a mission to reclaim the role of the step mother.
“Can I have a story, Erin?” Sadie gave her the heart-stoppingly cute wide-eyed innocent expression that pretty much melted lead.
“As soon as you’ve brushed your teeth and washed your face.”
She said good night to her dad and then she and Erin cuddled up on the single bed in her bedroom. The picture of Sadie’s mom, an older version of Sadie with blond hair and blue eyes, looked on from the dressing table. Erin always liked the idea that she was somehow part of this, and hoped she could live up to Sadie’s mom’s standards. “Which story shall we tell tonight?”
“Good Cinderella.”
“But we had that last night.”
“I like that one. I want it again tonight.”
A tail banging on the floor suggested that Cupid wanted it too.
“Okay. Let’s see.” Erin had to remember what she’d created. She settled against the headboard and played with her soon-to-be stepdaughter’s blond curls. “Once upon a time there was a little girl named Cinderella.”
“No,” Sadie corrected her. “She was a princess.”
“Right.” She smiled. “Once upon a time there was a princess named Cinderella. She was a lovely young princess with curly blond hair who loved to keep her room tidy and help with the dishes.”
This always got the two of them laughing.
“Then one day Cinderella’s father married again. He chose an intelligent and kind woman because he wanted a good mother for Cinderella. This woman already had two daughters of her own, but she knew it would be a good thing to have Cinderella as a daughter because she could teach the two lazy girls how to be good daughters.”
“Were they really lazy?”
“So lazy that when they went to the playground they didn’t slide down the slide.”
“They didn’t?” Her blue eyes opened wide. Erin always tried to change the story a little bit no matter how many times she told it.
“No. They had servants to do the sliding for them.”
Sadie had the best laugh. It came from deep in her belly and seemed to reverberate through the house. “I bet they didn’t swing themselves on the swings either.”
“You are correct! They had to have special swings that did all the work so they simply sat on the seat and the swings automatically swooped up and back, up and back.”
“That’s pretty lazy.”
“Exactly. That’s why their mother wanted princess Cinderella to set an example for the lazy girls, and she did.”
“And was she an evil stepmother?”
This was the best part and had become their private joke. Part reassurance, part bonding. “No. She wasn’t,” Erin said. And then together, the two of them shouted, “She was the Best Stepmother Ever!”
“And that’s what I’m going to try to be to you,” she said, as she tucked Sadie in and kissed her forehead. “I’m going to try my hardest to be the Best Stepmother Ever!”
She figured there were enough evil stepmothers in literature and fairy tales. She needed to start changing the perception. One story at a time.
She was still smiling when she came downstairs. Jared was watching the news in the den. She sat beside him and he put an arm around her and pulled her against him. “Why don’t you stay tonight?”
She wanted to. She leaned in and kissed his neck. He always smelled so good there. But she�
�d made a rule for herself and she was determined to stick to it. She didn’t want Sadie to see her sleeping in her Dad’s bed until they were married. Maybe it was old-fashioned or prudish, but she’d made a commitment to be the Best Stepmom Ever and she was determined to make a start before she was officially Sadie’s stepmother.
“We’ll be married soon,” she said, turning his face toward her and kissing him.
“I want you in my bed now!”
“I know. And I love it.” She kissed him again, longer this time.
“We could do it right here,” he said, pushing her gently back on the couch.
“What if Sadie wants something or has a bad dream? I am not blowing my chances of being the Best Stepmother Ever by canoodling on the couch with the father.”
“Canoodling?” He looked at her like she was deranged. “I do not canoodle.”
She kissed him again. “God, I love you. Why don’t you come by the cottage tomorrow while Sadie’s at school? You can show me all the ways you don’t canoodle.”
“I’ll see if I can fit you into my schedule.” Then he rubbed her thigh through her jeans. “I hope you are working out and taking your vitamins.”
“Of course I am. Why?”
“Because you will need all your stamina for the honeymoon.”
As she drove back to her cottage, Cupid riding shotgun, she imagined her future with Jared and Sadie, all the nights ahead when she and her husband would go to bed together, wake up together. Make coffee and breakfast and see Sadie off to school together.
They were dumb little routines but she longed to be part of them. She just had to get through the next few weeks.
Chapter Three
Jared flipped channels but he couldn’t focus.
Erin had asked him if he was nervous about getting married. Hell, yeah, he was nervous. He felt sometimes like he was barely holding it all together. His daughter, his job as a software designer, keeping up a house and trying to be a functioning member of society. Now he was going to add a new role. Husband.
Maybe if she was still here and they were making love he’d feel more settled. If he could reach over and feel her there beside him in the night, know she’d be there in the morning, he wouldn’t have this unease.
She’d asked him about getting married the first time.
Seemed like a strange question for a fiancée to ask. He’d tried to be honest. He’d always tried to be honest with Erin. He’d loved Laura. Still did, always would. But she was dead. Now he loved Erin. He wanted to spend the rest of their lives together.
Then, as usual, she’d refused to stay the night.
It occurred to Jared in a sudden illumination that she’d never stayed overnight at his place. Every time they’d been intimate, or lucky enough to have a whole night together, they’d been at the Kaslo inn or at her place.
He knew he wasn’t always the sharpest knife in the drawer where women were concerned. He had daily proof of that from his daughter and his mom. But maybe the thing about her never staying at his place was about more than being discreet. Maybe she didn’t want to share the home that Jared had shared with his first wife.
A dull ache began in his gut. He shifted but the ache persisted. He flipped off the TV and looked around the den. Okay, it wasn't fancy. Nothing about his house was fancy. It was a solid home built during Kaslo’s boom as a logging town back in the twenties and thirties. But it was home. Had been since before Sadie was born.
He rubbed at his chest. It hadn’t occurred to him that Erin might want to choose her own house, but he guessed it made sense she would. And, if he knew anything about women, it was that they never came out and said what they wanted. They figured a man should know without being told. Like he was supposed to be a freakin mind reader.
Normally the woman he consulted on such matters was his mother. Trish Gardiner was about as cool as a mom could be, but she was still his mother and somehow asking his mom about why a woman wouldn't bed him under his own roof seemed like it was crossing an invisible line.
He couldn’t ask his mom.
The thing was, he wanted Erin to be happy. She was taking on a lot. Him -- and God knew he wasn't always the easiest man to live with -- his six year old daughter, Sadie, and the home of another woman. He couldn’t change himself, though he was willing to try if it would make her happy. He couldn’t change Sadie. That was a deal breaker. And Erin clearly loved his daughter, so it wasn’t an issue.
But the house?
It wouldn’t be easy, since this was the house they’d brought Sadie home to when she came home from the hospital. This was the only home his daughter had ever known. But he could understand how it could feel to be getting married and not to want to move into another woman’s space. Especially as she had been a good wife and a good mother. On some level Jared still missed her, assumed he always would. She was Sadie’s mother for heaven’s sake. And if she’d lived he was fairly confident they’d have been one of those couples who was happy forever. But it wasn’t given to them to have the chance to prove to the world that some marriages were happy forever. Instead, she’d been taken from him far too young.
And now he’d met Erin. Loved Erin. Erin was a very different woman from his first wife. She had more darkness in her, had that quirky creative streak that he adored even though he didn’t really understand it. As she was a different woman, he felt his love was different too, somehow, which he found comforting. He could still love his first wife, which he always would. But he could also love Erin without feeling any sense of betrayal or guilt.
So to him, having Erin move in under the same roof where he’d lived with another woman was no big deal.
He was beginning to think, however, that it was a big deal to Erin.
But then why didn’t she say something? He pondered the question as he prepared for bed feeling strangely let down that he was doing so alone. She should be here with him, not going home alone to a little cottage by the river. Then he realized that her going home to that cottage night after night might be her way of communicating that she didn’t want to live in this house.
For some reason, she didn’t want to say, “Jared, honey, I don’t want to live in the house you shared with your first wife. I want my own house.” Then he’d know what to do. Instead, she refused to stay over.
He supposed that was a fairly obvious hint.
He blew out a breath. Fine, he thought, as he brushed his teeth.
Fine, he thought as he checked on Sadie and found her sound asleep, her arms thrown wide as though she were trying to hug the whole world. When he thought of the way the two females had bonded he knew he’d do anything to keep Erin happy.
He made a note to call a realtor in the morning.
“Ohmygawd, guess what?” Erin all but shrieked the words into his ear when she called him while he was working the next day.
He was lucky that he could work remotely, from home, so he was always around for his daughter. Though technically, he wasn’t actually working right now.
He was currently trolling real estate porn looking for suitable houses in the area but he played the guessing game with her anyway. “You’ve got a mouse in your cabin and you’re standing on top of a chair right now waiting for me to come right over and shoo it out for you?” He kind of liked the mental picture even though he knew Erin was perfectly capable of dealing with a mouse. At least, he imagined she was.
“No. Of course not.”
“But if there was a mouse, you’d deal with it right?”
“What do you think I’m marrying you for?”
He chuckled. “Okay. Not a mouse. Let’s see. The river flooded and –”
“No! Don’t even say that. If my new collection was ruined by a natural disaster I couldn’t take it.”
A nice three bedroom with attached garage scrolled by. He stopped. Looked like a decent-sized yard out back. Good for Sadie and Cupid. Price was in the steeper range of what he thought they could afford, but he added it to his favorites
file anyway.
“Okay, then. Not a natural disaster.”
“Well, sort of. My mother’s coming.”
Who in their right mind would design a roof line that ugly?
“Erin, she’s your mother. Of course she’s coming to the wedding.”
“Not the wedding, Jared. She’s coming out early. So the three of us can get together. And by the three of us, she does not mean you. She means me, my mother and the wedding planner.”
A Victorian with gingerbread trim wandered up his screen. He thought old houses were too much work, but it was certainly pretty. And there was a loft upstairs with a window. Could be a great studio he thought. Erin might like it. He added it to the favorites. “Doesn’t your mother want to meet me before the wedding?”
She made a sound, probably the kind of sound she’d make if there really was a mouse in her house and she was trying to get rid of it. “Of course she wants to meet you. I’m not freaking out about that part. I’m freaking out about me, the planner and Mother. I have to warn you, in battles with my mother, I almost always not only lose, but end up apologizing.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting your mom. I’ll takes notes.”
“Ha ha.”
Seemed like the Victorian house was located near the river. Cupid would love being so near the trail. “Do you like Victorians?”
“Victorians? You mean like prudes? Or Dickens novels?”
“No. I mean like houses.”
“Sure I do. What’s not to love? All that architectural detailing, and those old wooden floors, and wainscoting. Stained glass windows? But I don’t think I’d ever own one. Too much work.”
He felt a surge of relief. Knocked the blue Victorian with the gingerbread trim out of his favorites file. “That’s what I think, too. See? We were made for each other.”
“Except that I’m trying to express my heart-burning angst about my mother ruining our wedding, and you’re trying to change the subject to architecture.”
