Lori Wilde - There Goes The Bride (8 page)

And opening up a whole new aspect of her career.

Lucia Vinetti and her friend Trudie Klausman strolled through her garden in the gathering twilight, admiring the flowering bougainvilleas, inhaling the scent of red honeysuckle growing up the fence.

“I hope I’m doing the right thing. Messing with fate can be a risky proposition,” Lucia Vinetti said as she pulled a small bottle of lavender lotion from the pocket of her apron and rubbed a dab of it into her hands.

She’d led such a wonderful life, she’d never really minded growing old. But these wrinkly brown spots on her hands, Mother Teresa, how she hated them. When Leo was alive, he would laugh about her vanity, kiss her hands, and tell her she was in luck, because brown was his favorite color. Remembering her husband, Lucia smiled while at the same time her heart welled with sadness. She was going to miss this place so much, the garden in particular where she and Leo had worked side by side, coaxing things to grow.

“I’m telling ya, Luce, Delaney is the one for your Nicky,” her best friend Trudie said.

“But playing matchmaker? I’m not sure it’s prudent to interfere in other people’s love lives.”

Even at seventy-five Trudie still dressed like the Las Vegas showgirl she used to be. Garish colors, styles made for women a third of her age, outrageous props. Tonight she had a lime green feather boa tossed around her neck. But Lucia never judged Trudie for her eccentric clothes. She might be outrageous, but she was the truest friend Lucia had ever had.

“The minute I met this girl, I knew she was the one for your grandson.” Trudie sounded so certain. “But just to be sure, I did her astrological chart. The stars never lie. She and Nick are destined to be together.”

“But you said she’s engaged to marry another man.” Lucia kept rubbing her hands long after the lotion had been absorbed. Nervous habit, but then playing around with fate was something to be nervous about. “That isn’t a good sign. Nick’s already been cut to the quick by one fickle female; the last thing I want is to see my grandson get hurt again.”

“You were engaged to someone else when you met Leo,” Trudie reminded her.

Lucia thought of Frank Tigerelli, the wealthy man her family had wanted her to marry. He’d ended up going to prison in some real estate scam. Thank God for her Leo. He’d saved her from making the gravest mistake of her life.

“If something goes wrong and Nicky gets hurt, I’ll never forgive myself,” Lucia said.

“We’re just putting them together and letting nature take its course,” Trudie assured her. “If they meet and the whammy doesn’t strike, no harm, no foul.”

Lucia nodded and took a deep breath. Her grandson needed something to jar him out of his doldrums.

“Will you tell me the story again about how you knew Leo was the one?” Trudie asked, absentmindedly twirling her boa. “I love that story. Look at me. I had to go through three husbands before I got it right, and then Artie up and dies on me. Men.”

Lucia smiled. “Our first meeting was such a cliché, I don’t get why it fascinates you so.”

“You know why. Tell the story.”

The truth was Lucia loved telling the story as much as Trudie loved hearing it. “I had just turned eighteen. A friend and I had been invited to a party thrown by a man in our office where we both worked as secretaries. The party turned out to be very dull. I looked at a clock on the wall and it was only nine-ten. I wanted so badly to leave, but my girlfriend who’d given me a ride didn’t want to go. She’d found a fellow to flirt with.”

“Not much of a party girl, were you?”

“No.” Lucia smiled. “I seriously doubt that you and I would have been friends if we’d met back then.”

“Probably not,” Trudie agreed. “So then what happened next?”

“I was about to call my father to come get me, when Leo walked into the room. And then it hits me. A bolt from the blue. The whammy.”

“What did the whammy feel like?”

“My heart started pounding and I wanted desperately to run away, but at the same time I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Nor he me. He comes toward me and the crowd parts like the Red Sea. I’m barely breathing.”

Trudie sighed happily.

“Leo introduces himself and we start talking and talking and talking. The room gets less crowded and quieter. We find a seat and keep talking. My friend shows up and wants to leave. Leo tells me he’ll give me a ride home so I tell my friend to go on without me. Finally we’re the only ones left at the party. Even the host went to bed. I looked at the clock and it says nine-fifteen. I’m starting to think I’m caught in some weird waking dream and then I realize the clock has stopped. It stopped the minute I saw Leo.” Lucia’s voice broke and tears sprang to her eyes.

“Aw, Luce, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have prodded you to tell that story,” Trudie fretted. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“It’s all right.” Lucia swiped at her eyes. “Even though it hurts, I like remembering Leo.”

“See, don’t you want that kind of love for Nick?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then let go of your fears and put your trust in the magic that stopped that clock the minute you and Leo met. If Delaney Cartwright
is
Nick’s soul mate, they’ll know it.”

“And if she isn’t?”

Trudie shrugged. “She’s still a whiz at staging houses.”

Chapter 4

J
ames Robert, what is this?”

Jim Bob Cartwright glanced up from the
Houston Chronicle
Sunday crossword puzzle he was working to help him fall asleep and saw his wife, Honey, standing in the doorway, holding something out in front of her as if it were going to give her a disease. Jim Bob pushed his reading glasses up on his forehead to see what she was talking about.

“Looks like a wedding veil.”

“Exactly.” Honey’s lips were pressed together in a tight, disapproving line. If she hadn’t just had a round of Botox, Jim Bob had no doubt she would have been frowning.

He slid his glasses back down on his nose. “What’s a ten-letter word for flawless?”

“Perfection,” she said. “I found it under Delaney’s bed.”

“What? Perfection?”

“No, the wedding veil. Perfection is a ten-letter word for flawless.”

“So is Honey Leigh.” He smiled at her.

“I doubt that’s what the makers of your crossword puzzle had in mind,” she said dryly. “Delaney bought this at a consignment shop. If she thinks I’m going to let her wear this shabby thing at her wedding, she’s going to have to think again.”

“I think it looks nice,” he said.

“You would,” Honey grumbled and set the veil down on the edge of the bed. “It’s from a consignment shop.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s tacky. It’s been on other women’s heads.” Honey shuddered.

“What were you doing snooping in her room?”

“I wasn’t snooping,” she said defensively.

“No?”

“If you must know, I went to turn down her covers so she could slip right into bed when she gets home from her date with Evan. I expect they’ll be out late since this is the last night they’ll have together for six weeks. I saw the corner of the veil sticking out from underneath her bed and pulled it out for a look. What perplexes me is why she would want to wear a used veil. I’ve raised her better than that.”

“You’re too hard on her,” he said, but thought,
Who are you, Martha Stewart?
“Cut her some slack.”

“We’ve had this discussion a million times.”

“And you always win.”

“That’s right, and don’t make me say why.”

Skylar.

Their eldest daughter’s name hung in the air between them, painful as a third-degree burn. Jim Bob blinked and stared hard at the crossword puzzle.

He couldn’t say for sure when his marriage had started to unravel; certainly Skylar’s death had been a pivotal turning point. But if he were being honest, Jim Bob would admit the marriage had been fraying long before then, and he had no real idea why. He still loved Honey, deep down inside, but they hadn’t been close in a very long time.

In fact, when he thought back on their life together, he wondered if they’d ever really been emotionally intimate. Honey was always on guard, worried about presenting a glossy image of the impeccable wife, hostess, mother, or what have you. It felt like she was a consummate actress who’d perfected a role in a long-running play, and she was determined to get rave reviews each and every night.

And she expected him to play the perfect leading man, although she never hesitated to let him know how he failed to live up to the role.

He supposed her insistence on living what she called the “proper way” came from being a blue blood with a pedigree she could trace back to European royalty. While his family, before his great-grandfather had struck oil back in the 1920s, had been nothing but dirt-poor farmers. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, foolish things like not allowing Delaney to wear a used wedding veil mattered greatly to his wife.

With a clarity undiminished by the passing years, Jim Bob remembered the first time he laid eyes on Honey. He’d been attending a summer seminar at the University of Pennsylvania, and he’d seen her striding purposefully across campus as if she knew exactly who she was and where she was going and she wasn’t about to let anything or anyone stand in her way.

That strong sense of purpose was what had initially attracted him to her. She possessed a special something that he lacked—a driving force that pushed her to continually better herself. He admired the quality, but honestly did not fully understand it. Honey was a doer, whereas Jim Bob was just happy to be along for the ride. In that regard, Delaney had taken after him.

Growing up the youngest of the three Cartwright brothers, with a larger-than-life father, Jim Bob had gotten lost in the shuffle of his legendary family. He was laid-back and easygoing. Loved having a good time and believed that life took care of itself, that you really shouldn’t have to work so hard at it. Unlike Honey, who discounted anything that came easily.

His family had loved Honey from the minute they’d met her. Both because her blue-blood status gave respectable cache to their oil field money and because they believed she was exactly what Jim Bob needed to give him some direction in life.

They were right on both counts.

Honey had taken to his family like, well, a duck to water. Her own mother had died shortly after they’d met and she had no other immediate family. She’d told Jim Bob she didn’t get along with her distant relatives, since they’d forsaken her during her mother’s long illness. Medical bills had drained most of the fortune her father had made in textiles. Even her family home had been mortgaged to the hilt. They’d never been back to Philadelphia, and none of Honey’s relatives ever called or came to visit.

But her high-society cache and Honey’s unerring sense of direction hadn’t brought Jim Bob the happiness he’d thought their marriage was supposed to provide. His children had been the only things that had given him real joy.

And then Skylar had been killed.

Honey blamed him wholly, completely. Blamed his permissiveness and what she called his screwed-up priorities. Putting fun ahead of safety. And he couldn’t fault her for it. He’d actually pleaded Skylar’s case for less restriction, convincing Honey to untie the apron strings and let Skylar go to that damnable rock concert. Jim Bob never regretted any decision more.

When Honey had told him he would get absolutely no say in raising Delaney, he’d stepped out of the picture as far as discipline was concerned. Even when he didn’t agree with something his wife was doing, like putting Delaney on a strict diet, or pressuring her into plastic surgery, or egging her on to marry Evan, he’d kept his mouth shut. Jim Bob’s ideas on child rearing had gotten his oldest daughter killed. What in the hell did he know? He couldn’t buck Honey on anything.

Jim Bob peered over the top of his newspaper. Honey was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the wedding veil as if it were a poisonous viper. She was so damn determined this wedding had to meet some impossibly high standard she’d set up in her own mind. It was costing him a fortune, but the money wasn’t what bothered Jim Bob. He worried that Delaney was getting married simply to please her mother.

Not that he disliked his future son-in-law. Evan Van Zandt was a good guy and came from a very respectable family. Delaney could do far worse. It was just that, because of Honey’s overprotectiveness, Delaney had never really experienced life. Evan was the only man she’d ever dated. She’d never lived on her own, nor was she well traveled. She hadn’t even worked at anything other than this little business venture she’d started, except teaching undergrads when she was working on her master’s degree.

If it weren’t for Honey pressuring her friends into using All the World’s a Stage when they sold their houses, he doubted Delaney could keep the business afloat without tapping into the trust fund his mother had set up for her. Jim Bob couldn’t help feeling that his daughter deserved so much more out of life.

But how could he advise Delaney on marriage when his own was in such rocky shape?

Where had things gotten so messed up?

He looked at Honey. A sweep of blond hair had fallen across her cheek, and his heart wadded in his chest. The past was gone, and he felt the future ebbing away like hourglass sand. God, he’d screwed things up so badly.