Blissed (Misfit Brides #1) (2 page)

“You know what else?” she said. “
Most
buildings would at least have the courtesy to put a big sign on the door. So you can’t miss it.”

A sign for
what?
 

CJ straightened. The orange scent was fading, and his mind was engaging in a puzzle. This was good.

Better than where his mind had been headed. “In my experience, the people who want to use a confessional don’t need the sign.”

“A con—oh, God.” A hollow knock sounded, like a head hitting a door. “
Shit!
I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to say
God
. Really.”

His chuckle caught him off-guard. Of all the things he thought he’d be doing today, laughing inside a confessional wasn’t one of them. “Ah, you’re forgiven.”

He didn’t so much hear her suspicion dawning. He smelled it.

Familiar odor, that. Sort of like a bad pork chop on top of department store perfume, set off by female intuition and probably hormones too.

So much for funny. Still better than oranges.

“Are you the new priest?” she said.

“No, ma’am. Just a single guy too early for a wedding.”

More voices echoed on the other side of the wall, louder and closer. He couldn’t make out the exact words of the conversations outside, which gave him hope the confessional was as private as it was supposed to be, but he should’ve been whispering.

Basil would be pissed if he found CJ in here like this, and CJ still had enough respect for the collar that he wouldn’t suggest they take it out back to settle the grievance.

“You’re hiding too,” the woman said, the husky back in her voice. Distrust? Or was she intrigued?

“So few places to do it effectively,” he said.

If she got the hint, she ignored it. “Are you in the wedding?”

“Nope.” Dylan, the groom, had more best friends than CJ had sisters. Cleared him of all responsibility. Didn’t even get asked to be an usher.

Or maybe Saffron didn’t want to pick any more of his scabs.

“Why so early?” his intruder asked.

“I was in housekeeping’s way.” He could’ve stayed at the rectory, but Basil’s housekeeper was stopping by with her very single daughter. “You?”

“Oh, I’m not here for the wedding. Not to
attend
the wedding. The bride had a problem with her veil. All fixed now. So I should get going.”

She didn’t move. Not her shadow, not her scent—which was getting more orangey again since the suspicion had left her voice—not even her breath seemed to move.

CJ waited. Held his own breath.

“You having some trouble with somebody out there?” he asked. He didn’t know jack about any of these musician types Saffron and Dylan had invited today, and he wouldn’t tolerate it if a single one of them made any of his sisters or cousins or nieces uncomfortable.

“Oh, no. Not today. Exactly. It’s just—” She blew out a shaky laugh. “Hey, this is a confessional, right?”

Basil would have his head if he didn’t cut this off right now. “Technically there has to be a licensed operator for it to actually be a confessional.”

“Licensed operator?”

“Licensed from God. I’m not. Just a normal guy here. You sure nobody’s giving you grief?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just hiding from the Queen General and her latest poster boy.”

“The Queen General?” Which one of his sisters fit that description?

More like which one didn’t.

“Queen General Marilyn,” his visitor said. “Supreme ruler of Bliss and chairperson of Knot Festival.”

The words
Knot Festival
twisted CJ’s stomach, and the room seemed to climb ten degrees hotter. He tugged at his bow tie. The woman kept talking.

“According to the Queen General, divorced women don’t belong in Bliss’s bridal business, and divorced women don’t belong at Knot Fest, and divorced women especially don’t belong at high-profile Bliss weddings.”

He couldn’t tell if it was bitterness or regret coloring her words, but he would happily worry about someone else’s problems if it helped him ignore the itching beneath his undershirt. “You live your life according to your rules or hers?” he said.

“The last time a divorced person tried to buy a shop on The Aisle, the Queen General was so displeased she made the town flood.”

He stared at her shadow. Her words were English, but when she put them together like that, she might as well have been speaking alien.

Normal for a woman. But he’d take crazy woman-talk over Knot Fest talk and memories. He stretched out again. He could get her started, then doze off while she rambled. He was good at grunting
go on
noises in his sleep.

God bless his sisters. 

“Do tell,” he said.

“She probably didn’t
actually
cause the flood,” the woman said. “But she did keep the divorced guy from buying the shop. She jacked up the price of joining the BRA—”

CJ coughed. “The
what
?”

“The Bridal Retailers Association. All the businesses on The Aisle belong.”

The Aisle. Right. This crazy town called their main street
The Aisle
.

“The QG runs The Aisle,” the woman said. “So when this divorced guy tried to buy the party supply store, she went apeshit. She ordered the mayor to host a special Wedded Bliss Celebration that spring, married people only.”

“So not you?” he said.

Because he was oddly fascinated that Bliss wasn’t perfect.

His new whatever-she-was did that delicate snorting thing again. “She had the governor sign a proclamation naming Bliss the most family-friendly city in Illinois because of the Wedded Bliss thing. Most Married-est Town on Earth, and she won’t let anyone forget it. You don’t want to know what she did to discourage people from getting within four shops of the place this guy wanted to buy. And when he didn’t leave fast enough for the QG, the town flooded. He opened a shop somewhere north of Chicago instead.”

“And you want to live here… why?”

He knew better than to question a woman about her logic. But since this woman had invaded his confessional, he kept making rookie mistakes. He braced himself, waiting for the inevitable
You couldn’t possibly understand
. That one drove him nuts.

Instead, she dove right into the last psychological wound his sisters hadn’t hit yet.

First there was the soft sigh. Then her shadow drooped, and her voice did too. “It’s home.”

The sentiment echoed in the small room, her longing overshadowing any of her frustrations or regrets.

Home
.

A hot shiver prickled the back of his neck. His parents’ farm down near Peoria would always be
home
, but not like the home the yearning in her voice spoke of.

Her home sounded like family and kids and happiness. Like meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Birthday parties with kazoos and paper hats. Pets and chaos and laughter.

Or maybe he was imagining what
he’d
always wanted.

The confessional was hot as hell. Even his balls were sweating.

“I’ve only lasted this long because my parents have done so much good for the community,” she said. “They’ve buffered me.”

Self-loathing. Now that was a feeling he could relate to.

He felt her shuddery breath rattle his own rib cage. He needed to stop her, maybe crash through the screen and dive out of the room into safer territory. But he’d seen his sisters in action enough to know her ears were becoming intake valves to keep her mouth running, and her brain had already launched into dump-all-my-problems-on-the-innocent-bystander mode. She’d follow him until she said her piece or until she sucked every last molecule of oxygen from the entire church.

And he still had a few dozen female relatives waiting to wallop him with pity outside that door.

“But my mom’s gone now, and I know I can’t live here forever. I’ve made some mistakes. But I’d like to do a few more things my parents would be proud of before the Queen General destroys me.” The yearning was back in her voice, and it did more to scrape CJ’s wounds raw than his sisters had managed in all of the last four years.

“So if you don’t mind,” the woman continued, “I’ll just hang out here a few more minutes, and then she and her new Knot Fest poster boy can go ride off on their righteousness while I keep my mom’s shop going.”

The defeat and anxiety and sadness in the confessional were making it hard to breathe. He had an overwhelming desire to offer her a hug, and an equally strong desire to hasten her departure from what was supposed to be his haven.

He gripped the armrests on the chair, his palms sticking to the wood. “Takes a hell of a lot of balls to live like that.”

“You mean a hell of a lot of idiocy? I should’ve left months ago. Those games she played with the divorced guy? It’s my turn. She rewrote the Golden Husband Games rules so her Exalted Widower is eligible to be named Husband of the Half Century. And you know what? He’s the reason my husband left me.”

CJ squeezed his eyes shut.

He hated the word
widower
almost as much as he hated mention of the Husband Games. Five years ago, after eloping here, he had played. And despite not knowing much about being a good husband himself, he’d won.

He shoved the memory away and latched on to the injustice done to his partner in hiding.

Some guy destroyed her marriage? And now would get honored for it?

What kind of place
was
this? “Want me to kick his ass?”

“No!” Her shadow swayed. “Please. I wasn’t here. You didn’t see me, we didn’t talk. I don’t exist.” She chuckled, but there was nothing funny about it. “And to think, most of my life, I wanted to
be
her.”

A shaft of light broke through the room, and a cool draft whooshed a swell of conversation over the screen. 

“Ma’am?” Basil intoned in his holier-than-thou, constipated way. “Can I help you? Are you lost?”

“No,” she said quickly. “Yes. I mean, we were just—Yes, actually. Yes, I’m lost.”

There was silence. Then—“We?” Basil said.

Hell
. CJ squinted at her shadow.
Don’t look this way. Don’t look this way. Don’t—

Too late. “CJ?” Basil said. “If you’re in there—”

“Yeah, yeah,” CJ grumbled.

“CJ?” the woman said. And if he wasn’t mistaken, there was some horror lingering beneath her words. “CJ Blue?”

Odd. Both being recognized in a Bliss confessional, and that it would be horrifying. “At your service,” he said.

Basil’s long-suffering sigh made an unfortunately familiar appearance. “Marring the sanctity of the confessional, CJ? Low, even for you.”

This, at least, was normal. “If God’s everywhere, how can one room be more sacred than anywhere else?” He liked yanking Basil’s chain, and besides, Basil’s predictable “very disappointed in you” theological lecture would be a welcome reprieve.

Instead, another female voice broke in. “Natalie. I wasn’t aware you were Catholic. Or invited.”

“Veil emergency.” CJ’s confessional intruder—Natalie, apparently—mustered more cheer than a hoard of drunken elves, making CJ think he’d imagined the horror. “Can’t have a disappointed bride in Bliss, can we?” Natalie said. “Guess I found the wrong room.”

Yes. Yes, she had.

“They’re in the cry room,” Basil said. “It’s that way.”

“Thank you! Enjoy the wedding.”

A shuffling told CJ his hiding companion had just left him to the wolf in priest’s clothing and whomever the new mystery woman was.

Thank God.

“We’ll talk later,” the woman said. Even though Natalie had hit all his sore spots, CJ felt a twinge of sympathy.

Sounded like somebody was up for an ass-chewing.

“Something you’d like to confess, Princess?” Basil said.

“Jackass,” CJ muttered. 

“Careful, little brother. You’re still in God’s house.”

True, but it was one more bit of normal he desperately needed. Besides, if he didn’t react to the nickname, his siblings were more likely to call him by his real name. Their parents, free-spirited nature lovers that they were, had named all thirteen of their children after spices. Basil had gotten the only decent male spice name. God bless Rosemary for insisting on calling CJ by his initials, and God bless, well, God for not gifting his parents with any more sons.

CJ scooted around the screen and out the confessional, ignoring the holy look of severe disappointment that generally kept people from mistaking CJ for his eldest sibling. The woman with Basil was somewhat familiar. And not just because she looked vaguely like Hilary Clinton. She was dressed in a white power suit and had neatly styled short hair with so many different shades of color in it—most occurring in nature—that he wasn’t sure if she was blonde or brunette, though the sag beneath her chin suggested a natural gray.

Given her erect posture and the silent demands for acquiescence to whatever she was obviously about to say, he was surprised any of her skin had the audacity to droop out of formation.

A tingly sense of foreboding had more than just his balls sweating now.

Basil clicked the confessional shut.

“Mr. Blue,” the woman said, “I have an exciting honor to discuss with you.”

CJ scrubbed a hand over his face. Honors in Bliss weren’t his thing anymore. Whatever it was, he didn’t want it. Wasn’t so easy to say so, though. Something about the woman made his tongue want to say
yes
despite the fact that his brain, and one or two of his other favorite body parts, was screaming
no!
Took a swallow or two to find the appropriate deflection. “Appreciate the sentiment, ma’am, but I’m afraid I don’t have the necessary respect for the collar.”

While the woman tittered—which was a demonic kind of sound—Basil’s pious disapproval hit epic proportions. He puffed his chest, showing off his own collar. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Mr. Blue.” The woman offered CJ a hand so smooth it glowed, her pale blue eyes both inviting and scary as hell at the same time. “I’m Marilyn Elias. By the power vested in me as chairwoman of Bliss’s Knot Festival, I hereby invite you to participate in the Golden Husband Games.”