A Christmas Bride (8 page)

David followed Gracie's glance, which was how Willow found herself caught in his stare again, just like earlier in the morning. Only this time it seemed to last forever before David broke it by glancing down at the crusts of bread on her plate.

Willow decided right then and there that she was giving up tuna sandwiches. From now on she'd be a turkey-on-rye kind of girl.

Melissa took that moment to jump up from her seat and tackle David with a big, joyful hug that knocked her glasses a little sideways. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said, and then let him go.

His ears got red in the most adorable way. Then he gave Melissa the tiniest of smiles—one that barely brought his dimple out. “I haven't done anything,” he said in a gruff voice.

“Yes, you have. And thank you so much for hiring Willow to make it all happen. She's already been so helpful.” Melissa straightened her glasses and glanced back at the table where Courtney and Arwen waved at David like a couple of goofs.

Willow sat on her hands. She wasn't going to wave at him.

Or do anything else that came immediately to mind, because most of those thoughts were inappropriate. She was not supposed to notice how sexy he looked in his suit or the way his slightly too-long hair curled over the collar of his shirt. She wasn't supposed to notice the aura of power and competence that surrounded him, even when he was in parental mode.

It was wrong to feel this tingling in her belly. It was wrong to imagine him without the shirt and tie. To imagine what it might be like to touch his skin, feel the rasp of his beard against her face.

So wrong.

Last Friday Willow had worn a black business suit with a skinny skirt that showed her long, amazing legs. Today it was a black dress that hugged all her curves. Funny how that high neckline was way sexier than the open buttons down Roxanne's blouse the other night. David didn't need to go looking down Willow's blouse to admire her shape. That dress displayed her like it was painted on. And when he looked at her, it didn't disturb or disgust him. He enjoyed the view. He enjoyed it so much that he forced himself to look away and focus on finding a place to sit, since Rick Sharp had ensconced himself in David's favorite booth.

Unfortunately, the only booth available was the one right next to Willow's. He made sure to put Natalie in the bench seat that backed up to the bride and her bridesmaids. That way his daughter and the booth blocked his view of his wife's best friend. Equally important, he wouldn't have to worry about feeling the heat against his back. It seemed like a good idea until Natalie got antsy, hopped up on her knees, and leaned over the top of the bench seat.

“Hi, Miss Willow,” she said in a loud voice that everyone in the diner could hear, and then followed it up with, “Daddy told Mrs. Welch that she was stupid.”

“Natalie, sit down. Now. And don't use that word,” David said.

“But, Daddy, you—”

“Sit down and stop bothering Miss Willow.”

Natalie complied but not without a defiant pout that he found annoying as hell.

Willow peeked around the edge of her booth. “You have a moment?” she asked.

Well, crap.
He didn't want to talk to her. He totally regretted having hired her. And he was embarrassed by Melissa's recent show of affection. He just wanted to be left alone.

But that wasn't about to happen, was it? “Sure,” he said, then took a bite of the tuna sandwich Gracie had just delivered.

Willow turned back to Melissa and her friends. “Courtney, you and Melissa make a list of everything you want, okay?”

“Everything?” David heard one of the women say.

“Yup, everything. Including the fur-lined cloak. We'll need to figure out if it's possible to get something like that on short notice. So I'll need that list, with specific suppliers and manufacturers, as soon as possible.”

Squeals followed, and David had the sinking feeling that this wedding wasn't going to be a small, inexpensive affair after all. Good thing Jeff had called this morning and insisted on paying for the reception, including the food, beverages, flowers, cake, and dresses. David was paying for the repairs to the inn. And Willow's salary, of course, but that was negligible.

Willow slid into the facing bench, next to Natalie. “So I guess your dad took you out of school for the day, huh?”

Natalie nodded. “Yeah, and I got to go to the office with him, and Miss Gillian let me play with a computer and I did some math and then we came here for lunch.” Natalie picked up her grilled cheese and started munching.

Willow turned toward David. “Mrs. Welch got the better of you, huh?”

“I guess.”

“Well, don't feel bad. My mother had the same reaction.”

“I remember the story. She kept you out of school. For how long?”

“About a week.”

“You got to stay home from school for a whole week?” Natalie asked, clearly impressed.

“Well, it wasn't as fun as it sounds. Because I was home, I had to help my mom clean goat poop in the barn in the morning, and then we staged a sit-in at the school in the afternoon. That was kind of embarrassing, to tell you the truth.”

“Don't worry, Natalie. We're not going to stage a sit-in,” David said. “And you're not staying out of school for a week.”

“I'm going back tomorrow?”

“No. We have an appointment with St. Luke's Episcopalian School.”

“What's an ipopsickle?”

“Never mind. It's a new school.”

Natalie blinked at him, her eyes suddenly bright. “But…I don't want to go to a new school.”

Crap.
He'd disappointed her again, apparently. But before he could come up with something reassuring to say, Willow put her arm around her. “Oh, sweetie, don't cry. You're a lucky girl to be able to go to the Episcopal school. It's the best school in Jefferson County. You should thank your daddy. He's not going to make you stay home for a week or shovel goat poop.”

Natalie giggled at that. “We don't have a goat.”

“Lucky thing. Goats are smelly and noisy.”

“Do you still have a goat?”

Willow shook her head. “Nope. We have two alpacas named Bogey and Bacall. Want to see a picture of them?”

Natalie nodded, and Willow whipped out her cell phone and started showing Natalie pictures.

After a few minutes, Natalie asked, “Can I come over to your house and pet them?”

“Sure, if your dad says it's okay.”

Natalie looked at him expectantly.

“We'll see,” he said, and gave Natalie his I'm-in-charge look. He didn't like the idea of her visiting Linda Petersen's farm. God only knew what that woman was growing out there in her greenhouses. The stories continued to circulate that she was cultivating marijuana in between the herbs she used for her handmade soaps.

Natalie leaned back against the seat and gave Willow her I'm-a-poor-little-girl pout. She'd learned that look from Shelly, and it was both cute and annoying. “Daddy doesn't like animals much,” she said. “He won't let me get a dog or a cat or even a fish. And I want a dog for Christmas.” She folded her arms across her chest.

Enough.
He didn't need Natalie airing the family business for everyone to hear. “Finish your lunch,” he directed, and then turned toward Willow. “You wanted to talk to me about something?”

“Uh, yeah, it's about the budget for the inn. I walked through the place with Walter this morning. We made a list, and I'll be calling contractors today. I should have an idea of the budget by Monday or Tuesday, but there's one additional item we need to discuss.”

“What?” He barked the word, but Willow didn't even blink. She stared at him in that forthright way that had his gonads in a sudden uproar. What the hell?

“I made an inventory of the inn's holiday decorations,” she said. “They have to be replaced. Melissa is expecting the inn to look the way it did back in the day, when visiting Eagle Hill Manor for holiday tea was a highlight of the Christmas season.”

“I never visited the inn for tea.”

She sat up ramrod straight, the way she sometimes did when someone challenged her. “Really?” she said.

“My parents hosted their own teas.”

That got him a long, unreadable stare. What the hell was going on in that beautiful mind of hers? The wheels and cogs were obviously turning.

“Melissa wants the place to be transformed into a Christmas wonderland. And you told me to make Melissa happy.”

What was it about Christmas? Ordinarily sane people started spending ridiculous amounts of money on ribbons and evergreen and cutesy ornaments made in China by people who didn't even believe in Jesus. He hated it. He hated the excess. The consumerism. The way people went about
Merry Christmas
ing people right and left. There was nothing merry about this particular season. Not for him.

“Use the old decorations,” he said. “Clean them. Repaint them. Repair them. I don't care what you do with them,” he said. “But I'm not spending money on new Christmas crap that I will have no future use for.”

H
ale Chandler was a big man. Big in gesture. Big in voice. Big in body. He barely fit in the wing chair beside David's desk. His shoulders seemed too broad, his legs too long. He wore a rumpled blue suit and an equally wrinkled shirt. His tie was undone, his shoes needed resoling, and his hair was a little too long and graying at the temples.

It might be easy to dismiss the man with the red face and the extra fifteen pounds around his middle, but that would be a mistake. The spark in his brilliant blue eyes conveyed more than mere intelligence. The man played to win.

David's sister sat in the chair beside him. Compared to Hale, Heather looked dainty—a word David had never used to describe his sister before.

Both Hale and Heather were justifiably furious with him.

“It was the height of stupidity to pick a fight with the local elementary school,” Hale said. “Yelling at teachers and pulling your kid out of public school isn't going to go over too well with voters.”

“Not to mention the fact that Chief LaRue called Dad this morning. Apparently the principal was so ticked off by your out-of-control behavior that she was ready to send the chief of police to pick up Natalie as a truant. The chief wasn't about to do that without talking to Dad first, but still, David, really?” Heather gave him her you're-such-an-idiot look.

And he was an idiot. He knew better than to call any teacher stupid, especially when he'd supported the idiotic back-to-basics curriculum. He'd lost his temper and his perspective and mismanaged the situation. He knew better. But he couldn't shake the feeling that he'd done the right thing by stepping in and protecting Natalie.

“Look, I lost my cool, okay? But it's water over the dam. Let's move on. I have an appointment with St. Luke's at eleven. And until Natalie is enrolled there, I'm homeschooling her. The principal has no grounds for this power play.” He glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner of his office. It was only nine. It felt as if this meeting had been going on for hours.

“You're putting your daughter in private school?” Hale asked, his bushy eyebrows lowering.

“It's the best school in Jefferson County. Both Heather and I attended school there through the eighth grade. I'm sure Mother will be overjoyed.”

“Maybe so. But you yelled at those teachers, and now the whole town is buzzing about it.”

“David,” Hale said, leaning forward in his chair, “this fracas you've had with Natalie's teachers has undoubtedly emboldened Bill Cummins, and that's unfortunate. If you face a primary challenge, we're going to have to raise more money. A lot more money.”

“I suppose the good news is that you've gotten yourself on Jeff's good side by agreeing to host his wedding,” Heather said in a breezy tone. “Given that the big New York party is off, we'll definitely need to hit him up for a major contribution. Maybe he'll make some calls to his rich New York friends for you. He ought to. I mean, he owes you a huge favor.”

Having his sister give voice to his own thoughts did nothing to cheer David. He suddenly wished he'd agreed to host the wedding because it was the right thing to do, instead of justifying it by thinking about Jeff's money or Gracie Teague's influence with the business community. The deeper he got into the planning of this campaign, the more he had to sacrifice himself.

“Maybe we should get Jeff to endow a super PAC,” Hale said, turning toward Heather. “Make a note and follow up on that, okay?”

Heather nodded.

David's heart sank.

“Now, David,” Hale said, turning back toward David, “you need to apologize to the teachers at Natalie's school. And it wouldn't hurt if you sent a letter of apology to the Jefferson County Education Association and cc the Virginia Education Association. You don't want the major public school teachers' association endorsing Cummins, do you?”

The grandfather clock chimed the quarter hour, and David stomped on the sudden and irrational desire to scream at his campaign manager and chief political consultant. He also wanted to get up, walk across the room, and break the clock. Who needed a grandfather clock? It was big and noisy and required daily winding.

But Shelly had insisted that he needed one, and he'd allowed it. Now, every fifteen minutes the damn clock reminded him that his wife was dead.

He leaned back in his chair and counted to twenty while he took deep breaths. When he had calmed himself sufficiently, he said, “Do either of you even care why I was so upset with that school?”

“No,” they answered in unison.

That answer was depressing. It reminded him of those summers when Dad had insisted that David campaign instead of going fishing. He'd hated every minute of Dad's state-wide senatorial campaigns. And that had been way before the Supreme Court had opened the door to vast quantities of super-PAC money.

The more Hale and Heather talked, the more David realized that being a congressman had more to do with endlessly begging people for money and appeasing interest groups like the Virginia Educational Association than it did actually representing the people of the twelfth district.

“I have a lot of respect for teachers,” David said. “But Mrs. Welch was destroying Natalie's self-esteem. And it might come as a surprise to both of you, but I'm a parent first and a candidate second.”

Heather leaned forward and put her hand on his desk. “Natalie will survive a few failed spelling tests. It's not the end of the world. You overreacted.”

“She didn't misspell a single word. That woman gave her Fs because she has trouble with cursive writing. Cursive? Why are we teaching that in Jefferson County?”

“Because the school board passed—”

“I know, I know. I remember. And I was an idiot to support that back-to-basics idea. It's no fun being hoist by my own petard,” David said. “It's damn annoying.”

Heather smiled. “Davie, Natalie is going to be okay. We can work on improving her handwriting.”

Heather was right, and he'd totally lost his temper on Monday. If Shelly were still alive, she would have talked him down. She was so good at that.

He touched his wedding band, but it didn't make him feel any less annoyed or worried.

“Let's move on,” Hale said. “Heather has the issue platform ready for your review, and we've got a list of people we think would be great for volunteer coordinator. We'll need to schedule interviews for later this week. We want to get our ground game up and running fast, just to discourage Cummins from thinking about a run.”

Hale continued to speak, outlining an endless list of chores for David, while the clock ticked and chimed its way through two hours.

Willow spent Wednesday at Eagle Hill Manor interviewing potential contractors, none of whom could guarantee that they'd be able to finish Walter Braden's list of must-do repairs by December nineteenth.

Short of engaging in bribery—something Willow would not do—Walter was going to have to pare down his list, which was already the bare minimum needed to make the lobby and the dining room presentable for a wedding reception. The rest of the inn—the bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchen—were not slated to be renovated in any way. Those would have to wait until a buyer came along.

Willow still aimed to be that buyer, but to truly find investors she needed to work out a detailed budget for renovations, marketing expenses, and first-year operating costs.

Shelly had kept copious notes on her plans for the inn. The last time Willow had seen her, she'd been lugging the notebook around with her. Willow had hoped the notebook had survived the train accident, but unfortunately Shelly's Louis Vuitton tote bag had been lost in the wreck. The NTSB or Amtrak had the bag, but that was like saying it had fallen down a big, black hole.

So in addition to asking the contractors for bids for the short-term work, she'd asked them all to come back with estimates on a much larger list of renovations, including the bathrooms, the kitchen, and restoring the Laurel Chapel.

With all of that going on, she was pretty stressed out when she walked into the Jaybird Café ready to beg another bacon cheeseburger from her sister. Wednesday was the slowest night of the week, so it wasn't too surprising to find Juni sitting at the nearly empty bar.

“Hey,” Juni said as Willow snagged the empty seat beside her, “your aura is off.”

“I'm not surprised. I've had a rough day.” She flagged down Rory, the adorable Irish bartender, and ordered a Blue Moon and a burger.

“No, I'm not kidding. It's really off,” Juni said.

Rory put a frosty pilsner glass in front of Willow, garnished with an orange slice. She hoisted her glass. “Here's to having off-color auras. Who wants to be a conformist anyway?”

Juni smiled her toothy smile and threw her long, curly hair over her shoulder. Willow's sister was wearing an embroidered peasant shirt and a pair of jeans that hugged her curvy figure. The feather earrings were Mom's.

“I see you've been diving in Mom's jewelry box again,” Willow said as she put her glass down on the bar.

“And you, dear sister, have an alarming note of red in your aura, and I'm thinking those Jimmy Choo boots you're wearing today probably explain that on several different levels.”

Willow studied her ankle boots. “These aren't Jimmy Choos. They're replicas I bought online for half the price.”

“Uh-huh, and that would be what? Three hundred dollars?”

“Yeah, I guess, but that's better than six hundred, right?”

Juni shook her head. “I could buy ten pairs of shoes at Payless for three hundred dollars.”

“I know. And when I bought them, I had money to burn. But I have to be honest, Juni. I never thought that my shoe addiction would show up in my aura.”

“Well, among other things, red is an indication of materialism.”

Willow lifted her glass again. “That's me, the quintessential material girl.”

“I don't think so.” Juni shook her head. “I see a lot of turquoise in your aura. And blues are pretty rare, you know? But the red is something new.”

“So are you trying to tell me that I should give my shoes to Goodwill and go help Mom shovel alpaca poop?”

“Well, I suppose a little alpaca poop might do you some good,” Juni said, “but I don't think it would eliminate the red in your aura.” She paused a moment, then changed the subject. “You certainly dressed to impress today.”

Willow looked down at her white man-tailored shirt, jeans, and high-heeled boots. “This is not my dress-for-success outfit.”

“I didn't say you had dressed for success. I said you'd dressed to impress. Someone has piqued your interest, my dear, sweet sister. The red notes in your aura are very strong. In addition to materialism, the red indicates that someone has sparked your sex drive.”

Crap.
Willow hated the way Juni and Mom pretended to be all tuned in to the greater wavelengths of the universe. It was all a load of BS. The two of them were off on a fishing expedition, trying to figure out if Willow had lost her perspective when it came to David Lyndon. Mom seemed especially worried about that turn of events.

But Willow had not lost her perspective. Just because the guy suddenly revved her engines didn't mean she was destined to go the distance with him. For goodness' sake, he was her best friend's husband. He still wore his wedding ring. He was grieving for his wife. He was her boss for the moment. How many reasons were there for keeping David at a distance?

The delivery of her cheeseburger garnished with a big pile of sweet potato fries put an end to the irksome conversation. She picked up the burger and took a big bite—a process that almost required her to unhinge her jaw.

So her mouth was completely full when David Lyndon walked through the door with a savage look in his eyes. He gave the café a once-over, spotted Willow, and made a beeline in her direction. He took the empty stool on her right.

Willow snatched up her napkin and wiped the excess ketchup and mayonnaise from her mouth. As she continued to chew, Juni hopped down from the seat on her left. But before Willow's sister drifted away, she rested her hand on Willow's shoulder and leaned in to whisper, “Yup, you've definitely got red in your aura, and so does he.”

There was a bottle of Maker's Mark in the bottom bureau drawer in David's bedroom. If he wanted to, he could drink alone. But tonight he wanted company. That's why he'd come here to the Jaybird Café—a place he'd never visited before because he wasn't a big fan of country music or sensitive singer-songwriters, which was what passed for entertainment here.

But he hadn't come looking for entertainment. He'd come looking for Willow.

Hell, he'd spent the afternoon watching Willow from his home office as she walked the grounds with one contractor after another. He should never have come home early today. But Natalie's boredom at the office had become disruptive. And then, when he'd gotten home, he'd discovered that Poppy had a lunch meeting scheduled with Faye and then a doctor's appointment, followed by a visit to the beauty shop. Poppy was used to Natalie being in school during the day. So he'd been stuck. At home. With not much to do, since he sucked at playing dolls with his daughter.

Poppy had eventually returned from her errands and taken over the babysitting. But now David definitely needed a drink.

Willow gave him the cold shoulder as he took his seat, making a big show of eating a gigantic cheeseburger. He ordered a bourbon and then leaned toward her and murmured in the vicinity of her ear, “Turning your shoulder toward me won't make me go away.”

She whipped her head around. “Why are you here?”

“I like to drink at tinsel-free bars. Every other watering hole in Shenandoah Falls has Christmas crap draped all over it. It's not even Thanksgiving yet.”