Accompanying Alice (34 page)

*

The double wedding rehearsal was nearly over by the time they got to it. Helen, who had somehow been coerced into spending the day babysitting Mamie’s boys, made
I’ll get you for this
faces at Alice the minute she stepped into the church. Alice, who was feeling fairly invincible with Gabriel’s hand at her waist, smiled gently back at her. Grace and Phil huddled with Becky and Michael near a side altar, apparently in the midst of a heated argument. The groom’s parents and the groomsmen sat on one side of the church looking bored, except for Skip, who wandered aimlessly about wearing a painful
to
witness I’m-in-love-and-she-doesn’t-know-I-exist expression. The rest of Alice’s sisters sat with their families whisper-laughing and chatting, taking brief meaningful glances at Alice and Gabriel, Helen and Skip, and Grace and Phil, then turning back to one another and giggling.

Michael’s parents sat alone in a back pew, looking as though they weren’t sure why they were there. Alice gulped when she all of a sudden realized they were not here as the
in-laws for one of her sisters, but for her
daughter.
No matter how often she’d thought about Becky’s marriage the past few days, the reality of it hadn’t sunk in until now.
She should, she realized almost guiltily, probably go over and try to get to know them.

Serene, dark-haired Julia Block Brannigan floated gracefully to the back of the church, hand outstretched to Gabriel. In her thoughtful laughing way, she assessed the man who made her eldest daughter glow, gave Alice an intense knowing perusal and went off to speak to the deacon who’d conducted the rehearsal.

The dinner afterward in a side room at
another local pub
seemed to include a lot of everybody’s relatives who weren’t actually part of the wedding party. The families were noisy and jovial and, jumbled together by circumstance
,
even the in-laws found they enjoyed one another’s company. At least briefly.

Alice felt more comfortable than she had at any family gathering in years. In the past, being with her family had tended to make her examine her conscience and wonder what sins she’d committed lately. Because even after years on her own, when she was with her mother and her sisters, she was still the eldest, the one to “set a good example,” after all. But tonight she felt none of that; tonight she had Gabriel at her side and…

She felt his arm brush hers and she glanced at him, smiling, then touched him with concern.
There was something in his eyes, his expression, that was almost indiscernible, something Alice sensed before she saw it. He seemed restless, distracted, and she thought his concentration on what was going on around him lapsed a beat now and then.

When she tried to ask him about it, he shook his head, unable to tell her that she’d caught him in the worst case of the “wishfuls” he’d ever had. Wishing he could stay with her, wishing he could be as close to his family as Alice was to hers, wishing this whole damn undercover was over so he could go back to New Jersey and figure out a way to get out or go on. Unable to tell her the only three words he really wanted to say to her, because not knowing if he even had a future after the lies Markum had spread about him made them stick in his throat.

Instead of saying anything, and hoping to distract her, he kissed Alice thoroughly in full view of her mother and her daughter, then went off with Michael to talk to Phil about turning up at the wedding. Openmouthed, Alice gazed after him for a long minute, then treated her mildly amused mother and her heartily flabbergasted daughter to an unrepentant stare before going off on her own to browbeat Grace about Saturday. Grace, however, had already been guilt-tripped into submission by Becky. She offered Alice her inimitable
do I know you
stare and politely asked big sister if her veil would arrive in time for the wedding since, as far as she knew, everything else would. In thirteen seed pearls, Alice assured her guiltily, the veil would be there,
too. Then she fled.

Skip stopped her halfway across the room to repeat his office
building
bookstore
-bistro
proposal without Helen prompting him. He had, he said, checked out Alice’s background, talked to her former employers and been able to present a glowing report on her potential to his partners, who had then agreed unequivocally to back her in opening
as many as
three
such places
over the next three years.

Bent on finding Gabriel, whom she could no longer spot anywhere in the room, Alice nodded at what she hoped were the appropriate spots, accepted Skip’s card and told him she’d get back to him in a couple of weeks. Then she squirmed purposefully through the rest of the crowd and went in search of Gabriel.

***

“No,” Gabriel said sharply into the
disposable cell
phone
he’d picked up earlier in the day
, “I don’t want to wait, Jack. Sonovabitch has got me where it hurts. Besides, we wait and there’s no way to keep him from finding out about the warrants. Whatever else the bastard is, he’s not a fool. If you got the warrants, we gotta execute ‘em.”

Listening for Jack Scully’s response to his tirade, Gabriel glanced uneasily around
the
side
of the
pub where he’d retreated for privacy,
keeping tabs on the crowded parking lot.
He
hat
ed
not having a
definsible
wall at his back. A lot of untidy emotions were running around inside him, and he didn’t intend to get caught out in the dark because of them. Being with Alice had made him realize he had a lot of old baggage to deal with, starting with reconciling with his parents and coming to terms with why he’d become a cop in the first place. For the first time in a lot of years, he had something more than the next case to keep him going.

“No, Jack, back off, I’ll bring him in,” he snapped now. “You gotta pay for the truth, isn’t that what you always say? This is my case. I’m paying. You knew what I was going to find—that’s why you sent me on it. So when I corroborated what you suspected about Si you’d have his daughter’s godfather for an unimpeachable witness.”

Again he listened briefly, stabbing the inside wall of the kiosk with a finger. “You and the rest of the suits just be there when I get there, Jack, and bring some decent backup,” he said and, after slamming the phone down, went back inside the restaurant. Whether he
should or not
, he
couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to Alice.

He found her in the hallway between the tavern’s general seating area and its private rooms. There were no words. He looked at her, and she knew at once. He took a step toward her, and she was in his arms. Why, Gabriel wondered savagely, did you always know for sure what you were looking for when it was time to leave?

“Alice—”

“Please, Gabriel—”

People were staring at them. He found a door, pushed it open. The closet was dimly lit and private. Alice clasped her arms around his neck. Her mouth was open on his, desperate. He pushed her away.

“I’ve got to go.”

“It’s too soon. Don’t go yet.” She didn’t mean to say it, couldn’t stop herself. She hid her face in his neck. “I’m sorry. Strike that. My mouth got away from me.”

Gabriel took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and lifted her face where he could see it. “One of the best things about you is your mouth,” he said. “Don’t apologize for it. I like always knowing where I stand with you. In my business, too many people deal one way to your face and another to your back. I needed a good dose of your honesty to help me put my priorities in perspective.”

Alice tried to laugh. Failed. “Gee, you make running off at the mouth sound like a virtue.” Her eyes teared suddenly and she hugged Gabriel hard to keep him from seeing. “Thank you for giving me a new perspective, too.”

Gabriel’s arms tightened around her. “It’s entirely my pleasure,” he whispered.

They clung to one another for a long moment. Then Alice raised her head and Gabriel’s hold on her loosened. “I’ll—” He stopped.
I’ll be back.
The phrase hung in the air unused. He didn’t want to make her a promise he might not
be able to
keep.

“Come—”
Come back to me.
She didn’t say it because she didn’t want to load him down. She eased herself out of his arms. “The wedding’s two o’clock Saturday,” she said softly.

Gabriel rested his forehead against hers, brushed her cheek with his fingers. “I’ll remember that,” he returned.

Then he was gone.

Alone in the hallway once more, Alice wondered what she would do if he was still gone tomorrow.

Chapter Thirteen

T
he rest of the dinner dragged on forever.

Phil’s brothers kidded Grace’s sisters until both sides were locked in an increasingly obnoxious battle of retorts.

Skip plied Helen with words of love, a set of emerald earrings and the whispered promise that the matching necklace would be hers on their wedding day. He then moped when Helen firmly informed him that she wasn’t going to marry him, would never want to marry him, and if he truly loved her, he would know the way to her heart was hardly precious gems, especially
green
ones, even if he only gave them to her because they poetically matched her eyes. She was in the army, for God’s sake, and saw more green than she wanted to.

She was also, she said, not particularly interested in managing his life as she had quite enough to do managing her own and her sisters, and that any man who might eventually capture her heart and the rest of her, as well, would know, understand and encourage that. He would also, she stated definitely, be able to knock her off her feet by looking at her, be capable of standing toe-to-toe with her in verbal combat—and occasionally win—and be understanding enough to volunteer—
on
his own
—to
hire the caterer and the maids even if there was only the two of them
to entertain for dinner. And he would never, ever, under any circumstances, on any occasion whatsoever, wear a three piece suit.

The night grew long.

Since the wedding had expanded to include her daughter as the second already married bride, Alice felt obligated to stay and maintain appearances—which was not something she did well. She made the most cursory small talk with the in-laws, only half listened to what was going on around her and had no idea what she was eating, because her palate had gone flat. She couldn’t get Gabriel out of her thoughts. Every time she turned around she thought she saw him out of the corner of her eye, thought she felt him behind her.

In four days he’d invaded her life completely. They’d become “a couple,” and more. She felt unfinished without him.

When you find him, you’ll know,
her mother had said.
It won’t take long. You’ll know.

Well, she
did
know finally, dammit, and now she wanted to tell him, show him, but he was gone.

When her family started to whisper about his absence, then to ask her about him, she had nothing to say. Wasn’t sure what she could say that would neither compromise nor jeopardize him. What could she say? Sorry, guys, he had to go to work? He’s an FBI agent masquerading as a bad cop to catch some dirty cops who sold information about up-coming operations to the bad guys, and who, as a sideline, execute other cops who get in their way? Only really what he’s doing—but he didn’t know this at first—is being used by a man he’s worked under for ten years to trip up a man he’s loved and trusted for fifteen years who’s been using him for the past five or six years to cover up a trail of drug theft, corruption, murder and embezzlement? And the sting
is going down tonight?