Lori Wilde - There Goes The Bride (9 page)

“I’ve let you down,” he said to Honey.

“Excuse me?” She looked up, assessing him with cool green eyes that revealed nothing. The same inscrutable eyes Delaney had inherited.

“Over the years, I haven’t been the kind of husband you deserved.”

She stared at him for a long moment then said, in the oddest tone of voice, “I got exactly what I deserved.”

“You didn’t deserve an alcoholic.”

“James Robert, you’ve been sober for fifteen years. It’s all in the past. Forget about it.”

“I’ll never be able to forget it. Or what I did to you and Delaney,” he said. “I haven’t really made full amends.”

“Yes, you have.”

“If I’d truly made amends then why haven’t you forgiven me? I’m so sorry I hurt you, Honey. So very sorry.”

“You’re forgiven. Now can we stop talking about this, please?”

“You should have divorced me.”

“I’m going to keep this veil,” she said, getting up and crossing the room to put the veil in her closet. “If Delaney wants it back, she’s going to have to ask me for it.”

It irritated him that she pretended to forgive him when he knew she hadn’t. She punished him every day. Like she was doing now. By not allowing him to say what he needed to say. By dismissing his apology as inconsequential.

“I want things to be better between us,” Jim Bob said. “Like they used to be when we were first married. Remember?”

“Let’s go to sleep, James Robert. It’s late.”

“Stop changing the subject. I don’t want to talk about wedding veils. I want to talk about us. How we’re going to spend the rest of our lives once Delaney is married and off on her own and she’s no longer the glue holding us together.”

Honey looked at him with those calm green eyes that revealed nothing about what she was really feeling. “I don’t know what you intend to do, but I’m planning on living my life exactly as I have been.”

“Filling it up with what? Charity events and Pilates and spa dates with your friends?”

“Why, yes.”

“Where do I fit into your plans?”

“What is it that you want from me?”

I want you to love me the way you used to!
He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake some feeling into her. But you couldn’t force people to feel something for you if they didn’t.

His chest constricted. “What happened, Honey? What happened to the girl I married? The one who had big dreams and an even bigger heart? The one who used to laugh at my jokes and let her hair down once in a while? The one who told me we were a team and as long as we were together, nothing could break us?”

She reached across the bed and stroked his cheek with her index finger, the unexpected tenderness in her eyes cutting straight to his heart. “Delaney’s grown now. We’re in our mid-fifties. What’s past is past. I can’t be something I no longer am, and I can’t bring Skylar back. Now please, can we just go to bed?”

He wanted to shout. He wanted to throw something against the wall. Anything to get her attention.

But he did not.

Jim Bob put the crossword puzzle aside, turned out the light, and slid down in bed. He reached for Honey and pulled her into his embrace. She did not resist, but she held her body so stiffly against him, he could take no comfort in her arms.

She was an ice queen. Beautiful, but untouchable. Impossible to know even after thirty-four years of marriage.

There was no getting through to her. He’d been trying for years. She had her idea of the way things were supposed to be, and Honey refused to budge. The terrible thing was, much as he still loved her, Jim Bob didn’t know if he could live with that anymore.

Divorce was an ugly word, but he was almost ready to say it.

When Honey had finally fallen asleep, Jim Bob got up, went to the closet, took out the wedding veil, and put it back underneath his daughter’s bed.

Someone in this family damn well deserved to hold on to their dreams.

On Monday, after seeing Evan off at the airport, Delaney guided her silver Acura south toward Galveston Island to meet Lucia Vinetti. Her mind wandered during the fifty-minute drive and for some inexplicable reason, she found herself thinking about the man she’d thrown the tarp over outside Evan’s office. The man from her mysterious vision.

Why did she keep thinking about him?

She liked well-groomed, well-bred men. Not scruffy, tough guys who stared at her as if they could see every thought that passed through her head.

Even now, just recalling the way his dark eyes had stared at her caused Delaney’s body to tingle.

She shivered. She didn’t like feeling this way. It upset her equilibrium. And she had spent her life putting on a calm face. Passive nonresistance had taken her this far in life, and she was sticking with it.

Forget the guy. He’s just an illusion. An image of masculine perfection you’ve conjured in your own mind. Focus on the job at hand. This is what you want. Your own base of clients and referrals, so you can prove to your mother that you don’t need her interfering in your life.

Although it was just a small step, this new project represented the freedom she’d longed for, but had just been too afraid to reach out and grab. Winning this contract was a huge deal for her, and she wasn’t going to let the memory of some studly guy she’d briefly brushed up against distract her from her goal.

She longed to make her business something special. Something that was hers alone, but until now she’d been floating along, just letting her mother make things happen for her. Taking the path of least resistance. It was her pattern.

Delaney crossed the bridge onto Galveston Island and traveled the main thoroughfare. At the next red light, she consulted her notes for the correct address. Lucia’s place was several blocks north of the beach.

When she turned onto Seawall Boulevard, the sight of the Gulf of Mexico made her smile. Her mother hated Galveston, with its scandalous island history and touristy atmosphere, precisely the two things Delaney loved most about the town.

She found the adorable old Victorian residence without any problem. The lawn, while trimmed short, was not landscaped with any particular design in mind. A hedge here, a flower bed there, a clump of coconut-bearing palm trees thrown in.

The house was painted an outdated color of canary yellow and trimmed in powder blue. Wind chimes dangled from the porch and pink flamingos decorated the yard. Whimsical, kitschy, and cute, but definitely not for the more upscale clientele willing to pay top dollar for an island retreat. Delaney took out her notebook and jotted:
work on curb appeal.

She parked in the driveway beside a white ten-year-old American-made sedan and hurried up the sidewalk. Before she even had a chance to knock, the door was thrown open, revealing Trudie Klausman dressed in a pink Bermuda shorts set and a bright red fedora and beside her stood a kind-faced woman in her early seventies. She wore a floral-print housedress covered with a well-worn, faded blue gingham apron.

The sight of the woman conjured images in Delaney’s mind of chocolate chip cookies and pastries made from scratch with loving hands. Lucia looked like the grandmother Delaney had always longed for, but never had. Her mother’s mother had died before Honey had even married her father. And her father’s mother had been infirm with a debilitating illness, living the remainder of her years in a private care facility. Delaney had never known her grandmother when she’d been spry and healthy.

“It’s so good to see you,” Trudie said. “This is my friend Lucia. Lucia, meet Delaney Cartwright.”

She held out her hand to Lucia, but the elderly woman ignored her outstretched palm and instead enveloped her in an embrace that smelled like vanilla extract and lavender soap. “Welcome to my home, Delaney. It’s so nice to meet you. Trudie’s told me so many wonderful things about you.”

A glow of warmth at the woman’s friendliness stole through her. After meeting Lucia, she wanted the job more than ever. “Thank you, Mrs. Vinetti. I’m honored that you’re considering hiring All the World’s a Stage.”

“Please, call me Lucia.”

“Lucia it is.” Delaney smiled.

“Come inside,” Lucia invited. “I can’t wait to see what you think of the house.”

In true Victorian fashion the rooms were small, but plentiful. While the house was exceptionally clean, and the woodwork phenomenal, it was a little worse for the wear. Fifty-two years of family living jam-packed the house with knickknacks and photographs and keepsakes.

It looked as if Lucia never threw anything away, and apparently a lot of people had given her many things over the years she felt obligated to display. Her homey style, while wonderful for living in, was too jumbled for enticing buyers. Nothing was cohesive. Not design or color schemes. Not furniture style or window treatments. If Lucia were to show the house in its present state, potential buyers would see it as overcrowded, old-fashioned, and out of step.

Delaney, however, loved it.

Lucia’s house presented her first real decorating challenge. Her mother’s friends and acquaintances were the kind of women who redecorated every few years. They were well aware of trends and fashions. Staging their homes for sale had usually consisted of little more than rearranging furniture for the best layout or bringing bits of nature indoors to create a breezy feel or simply giving the place a good cleaning.

“Trudie tells me you’re engaged to be married,” Lucia said.

“Yes, August fourth.”

“That’s wonderful.” Lucia beamed. “How did you and your fiancé meet?”

“We’ve known each other since we were small children. Before that really. Our mothers met in Lamaze class.”

“So you don’t really have a story about how you two first laid eyes on each other?” Trudie asked.

“No,” Delaney admitted. As far back as she could remember, Evan had been there. Like a security blanket.

“It’s almost as if you’re marrying your brother, huh?” Trudie asked.

“No, no.” Delaney forced a laugh. Trudie’s statement disturbed her because her relationship with Evan
was
more like brother and sister than passionate lovers. “It’s nice. Marrying someone you know so well.”

“I guess I could see it. Built-in trust and all that,” Trudie said. “But I’d be afraid I’d miss the sparks of really falling madly in love.”

“This window seat is adorable, Lucia,” Delaney said, purposefully directing the conversation off herself as they entered one of the bedrooms on the first floor that had been converted into a library.

Bookcases lined the walls. Delaney took a peek at the titles. Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen, Mary Stewart, Daphne du Maurier. Many of the same books that lined her own shelves at home.

“My Leo made it for me,” Lucia said with a sigh in her voice. “So I could curl up and read and still look outside to keep an eye on the children chasing butterflies in the backyard flower garden.”

“The window seat is definitely the highlight of this room,” Delaney said, relieved that she’d seemed to have sidetracked Trudie from talk of romance.

Lucia ushered her down the hallway, Trudie bringing up the rear. “And here’s the kitchen. I raised six children of my own here and then my four grandchildren, after my daughter-in-law died and my son, Vincent, needed help with the little ones. They’re all big ones now, but they come back to visit me often.”

Delaney surveyed the room.

The wallpaper was faded. It would have to be replaced. The appliances were all circa the mid-eighties. The dining table was even older than the appliances and bore the scars of too many children banging on it with silverware and toys. The linoleum was peeling in the corner by the refrigerator, and there was a burn mark the size of a saucepan bottom on the Formica countertop.

“This is the heart of the house,” Delaney breathed, surprised at the nostalgia welling up inside her. But that was silly. How could she be nostalgic for something she’d never had? She wished with all her might she could have grown up in such a home where kids were allowed to spill and sprawl and their growth spurts were marked in colored pencil on the wall beside the back door.

She immediately felt disloyal to her own family at such a thought. She’d had all the privileges the Cartwright money could buy. But that had included hired cooks and maids. She missed the boisterous camaraderie of cousins and siblings, of the numerous aunts and uncles and grandparents that this house clearly boasted. The Vinettis had what Delaney had always longed for. A close-knit, extended family.

“For sure,” Trudie said. “This is where the family congregates when they visit. And it can get pretty rowdy in here, with all the laughing and teasing and eating. Lucia’s an excellent cook, and she makes the best Stromboli you’ll ever put in your mouth.”

“So what do you think?” Lucia asked. “What needs to be done? Can you give me an estimate for what this might cost?”

“Just let me jot down a few notes.”

“Sit,” Lucia invited. “I’ll make coffee and we’ll have some tiramisu I baked this morning.”

Delaney sat, took her calculator and her notepad from her purse, and crunched numbers while Lucia served up espresso and the ladyfinger cake.

Lucia settled in across from Delaney, anxiously pleating her apron with her fingers.