Bride Quartet Collection (92 page)

“She collected them on tour—different places my father was stationed or where she met up with him for R and R.”

“It’s a wonderful way to remember.You must’ve been to some of these places. Do you remember?”

“Not especially.” He took her free hand, led her back to the kitchen.

They walked in just as Kay closed the oven door.

“Kay, it’s so good to see you.Thanks so much for having me.”

“You’re welcome. Irises.” Pleasure warmed her face. “They’re my favorite.”

“Someone mentioned that. It’s Emma’s work.”

“Doesn’t she have a way.” Sniffing at them, Kay set the arrangement on the counter.“I’ll have them here for now, but tonight I’m going to be selfish and put them in my bedroom. Mal, get the girl some wine. She’s been working all day.”

“I’d love some.You have such a pretty home. It feels happy.”

Exactly right, Mal thought as he poured the wine. “Here you go. Ma.”

Kay sampled, pursed her lips. “Not bad.You two go on out in the living room and sit. I’ll bring out some hors d’oeuvres.”

“Can I help? I’m not much of a cook, but I’m a very good assistant.”

“Not much left to do now. We’ll just have a seat for a while. I guess you can go ahead and take the tray in with you, Mal, and I’ll be right along.” She opened the refrigerator, took out her best platter and the cold appetizers.

“Oh, I love these.” Carrying her wine, Parker stepped to the salt and pepper shakers.

She meant it, Malcolm concluded with considerable surprise. He’d gotten good at detecting her polite tone and her genuine pleasure.

There were fancy ones, funny ones, and, he guessed the most polite term would be, risqué ones.

“I started collecting them right after I got married. Something small I could pack up whenever we moved.Then I got a little carried away.”

“They’re wonderful. Charming and fun. Batman and Robin?”

Kay strolled over. “Mal gave me those for Mother’s Day back when he was about twelve. Gave me those humping dogs, too—didn’t think I’d put them out. He was sixteen then, I think, and trying to get my goat. I got his.” She glanced back, grinned at him and the memory. “Embarrassed the hell out of him when I put them on the shelf.”

Mal shifted. “What do you want me to do with this tray?”

Parker glanced at him, smiled. “Oh, thanks.” She chose a pretty round of bread topped with brie and a raspberry. “And these?” Parker continued, bonding with his mother over salt and pepper shakers while he held a tray of canapes.

He wasn’t sure, as the evening progressed, whether to be pleased, relieved, or worried about just how well his mother and Parker got on.

He knew very well Parker could and did adjust her manner and conversation to any sort of social situation. But it was more than that here. He knew, just as he’d known when they’d shared that first pizza, that she was relaxed and enjoying herself.

They talked about places they’d both been, places his parents had traveled before he’d been born, when he’d been too young to remember, others he barely remembered.

They talked about her business, and his mother’s laugh bolted out time and again when Parker relayed some weird or funny anecdote about an event.

“I’d never have the patience for it. All those people calling day and night, whining, bitching, demanding. Hell, I want to pop one of Mal’s customers at least twice a day.”

“Parker doesn’t pop them,” Malcolm put in.“She crushes them like bugs.”

“Only when absolutely necessary.”

“What are you going to do about Linda Elliot, or whatever her last name is now?” When Parker hesitated, Kay shrugged. “None of my business.”

“No, it’s not that. I’m not sure, really. It’s going to be tricky. I have crushed her like a bug, which gave me tremendous satisfaction. But she’s Mac’s mother.”

“She’s a slut who thinks she’s better than everybody else.”

“Jesus, Ma.”

“No, you’re absolutely right,” Parker said to Kay. “She is a slut who not only thinks she’s better than everybody else, but has a persecution complex on top of it. I’ve despised her all of my life, so there’s nothing you could say about her that would offend me.” Parker sampled another bite of lasagna and lifted her eyebrows at Malcolm. “What? I’m not allowed to despise anyone?”

“Just doesn’t seem your style.”

“She used and emotionally abused one of my closest friends as long as I can remember. She deserved a lot more than what I was finally able to give her. But . . .” Parker moved her shoulders, drank some wine. “She’ll come to the wedding. She’ll want to show off the new husband, flaunt it. She’s currently barred from the estate, but I’ll have to rescind the directive for that.”

“You, what, banished her?”

Parker smiled at Malcolm.“Yes.Very satisfying.And believe me, she’ll be handled at the wedding. I’m not sure how yet, but I’ll lock her in the basement before I let her spoil one minute of that day for Mac and Carter.”

Kay pursed her lips, nodded. “I bet you would. If you need any help on that, let me know. I’ve never had any use for her.”

“I didn’t realize you and Linda knew each other.”

“Oh, she wouldn’t know me from a naked Eve, but our paths crossed here and there. Used to come in for dinner when I worked at the restaurant. And she went to plenty of the parties where I helped out.”

Kay moved her shoulders as Malcolm often did to signal “no big deal.”

“She’s the type who looks right through you when she’s snapping her fingers for another drink or faster service, and doesn’t quibble to complain about the help when you’re standing right there.”

Parker smiled, and there was something fierce in her eyes.“Kay, would you like to come to Mac’s wedding?”

Kay blinked. “Well, I barely know the girl, or Carter either.”

“I’d very much like if you’d come, if you’d be a guest in my home for my friend’s wedding.”

“To help bury the body?”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. But if it does . . .”

“I’ll bring the shovel.” Kay clanked her glass enthusiastically to Parker’s.

“You two are a little scary,” Malcolm observed.

At the end of the evening, after the meal was cleared, after dessert and coffee—and when his mother made apple pie from scratch she was
serious
—she waved him and Parker off. “I’ll deal with the dishes in my own good time.”

“Everything was wonderful. Really wonderful.Thank you.”

Kay gave Malcolm a smug smile over Parker’s shoulder when Parker kissed her cheek.

“See that he brings you back.Take her up and show her your place, Mal.”

“Sure. ’Night, Ma.Thanks for dinner.”

He walked Parker around to the steps leading up to his apartment. “You gave her a really good time.”

“It was mutual.”

“She likes you, and she’s careful about who she lets in.”

“Then I’m flattered.”

He paused outside his door. “Why did you invite her to the wedding?”

“I think she’ll enjoy it. Is that a problem?”

“No, and she will. But something else was going on in there.” He tapped a finger to her temple. “Something else when you asked her to come.”

“All right, yes. Linda hurts people. It’s what she does, whether deliberately or carelessly. Your mother strikes me as a woman who doesn’t bruise easily, but Linda managed to. So she should come to Mac’s wedding as a welcomed guest while Linda will be there only out of duty, and will never be welcomed in my home again.”

“That manages to be calculated and kind at the same time.”

“Multitasking is my specialty.”

“No question.” He ran a hand down her arm, lightly. “You’re careful about who you let in.”

“Yes.”

He studied her a moment longer. “I don’t bring women here. It’s . . . weird,” he added, gesturing toward the house.

“I guess it could be.”

He unlocked the door. “Come on in.”

It wasn’t colorful like his mother’s, and came very close to spartan.And it showed an efficiency that spoke directly to Parker’s sensibilities.

“Isn’t this clever? I imagined a couple of small rooms, and instead it’s like one open space.A kind of great room, with a kitchen tucked in the corner, and your living space angled off by the furniture.”

She shook her head at the enormous flat-screen dominating the wall. “What is it with men and the size of their TVs?”

“What is it with women and shoes?”

“Touché.”

She wandered over, saw the small, and again efficient and streamlined, bedroom through the open pocket door, wandered back again.

“I like the pencil sketches.” The black-framed grouping on the wall held wonderfully detailed street scenes.

“Yeah, they’re okay.”

She took a step closer, peered at the signature in the bottom corner. “Kavanaugh.”

“My father did them.”

“They’re wonderful, Malcolm. It’s a good piece of him to have with you. Can you draw?”

“No.”

“Neither can I.” She turned, smiled at him.

“Stay.”

“I have an overnight bag in the trunk of my car.” She opened her purse, took out her keys. “Would you mind?”

He took the keys, jingling them as he studied her. “Where’s your phone?”

“In my purse. I turned it off before dinner.”

He leaned in to kiss her. “Answer your calls, then turn it back off. I’ll get your bag.”

She pulled out her phone when he went out, but took another moment to look at his space.

Ordered, efficient, she thought again, and very spare.The space, she thought, of a man used to moving on, and doing so with little fuss.

Shallow roots, she mused, and hers were so very, very deep.

She wasn’t sure, not at all sure, just what that meant.

Pushing it away, she turned on her phone and began to work her way through texts and voice mail.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

M
ALCOLM ARRIVED AT THE CRASH SITE WELL AFTER THE COPS, THE fire department, the paramedics. As a concession to the cold, light rain, he yanked up the hood of his sweatshirt as he walked to the yellow tape and flares.

They’d removed the bodies—he had no doubt there had been bodies when he saw the crushed and twisted mass that had once been a BMW.

The second car had taken an ugly hit, but could probably be salvaged.

With some luck, whoever had been in the Lexus should have walked, limped, or been carried away still breathing.

His job was to tow away what was left.

Over a road slick from an incessant drizzle, the cop lights shone through the shifting mist onto broken and glittering safety glass, skid marks, bent and blackened chrome, blood, and, more horribly, a single shoe not yet recovered from the shoulder of the road. It etched a picture in his mind, one of fear and pain and shocking loss.

The accident reconstruction team was already at work, but he could put it together for himself.

Wet road, a thin haze of fog. BMW, driving too fast, swerves, skids, loses control, crosses the center line, clips Lexus. Goes airborne, flips, slams, rolls twice, maybe three times.

Yeah, given the weight, the velocity, the angles, figure three times.

Somebody goes through the windshield, probably a passenger in the backseat of the mangled M6 who hadn’t been wearing a seat belt. If there’d been a front-seat passenger, he or she would’ve been crushed.The driver wouldn’t have been any luckier.

He could see the fire department had sliced through the BMW, using the Jaws of Life like a can opener, but the odds they’d pulled anyone alive out of that violent wreck were next to nil.

He’d seen pictures of the car he’d been driving after his wreck, and got a flash of it now. It hadn’t looked much better than the M6. But then stunt cars were built to wreck, built to protect the driver when they did, unless somebody up the chain decided to cut a few corners, save a few bucks.

He hoped the passengers had been unconscious or dead before that slam and roll.

He hadn’t been.And he’d felt it all, the shocking pain, the brutal tearing and snapping. Felt it all before he’d gone to black. If he let himself, he could feel it all still, so the smart thing to do was not let himself.

He stood, hands in his pockets, waiting for the cops to clear him to tow away the destruction.

W
HILE MALCOLM STOOD ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD, BLOOD AND pain in his mind, Parker smiled at the roomful of women chattering and laughing their way through the final stages of Mac’s bridal shower.

“We done good.” Emma slipped an arm around Parker’s waist.

“We done really good. She looks so happy.”

“I didn’t want to say it before in case it tempted fate, but I worried right up until the last minute that Linda would hear about this and crash.”

“You weren’t alone there. The advantage of having her living in NewYork now is she doesn’t hear everything, and having a new, rich husband keeps her busy.”

“May it last,” Emma prayed aloud.“This whole evening’s been great—and Linda-less. Everyone’s had such a good time.”

“I know. Look at Sherry. She still has that new bride glow, and the way she’s talking to your sister—”

“Pregnancy really agrees with Cecelia, doesn’t it?”

“It does, and the way they have their heads together, I think Sherry’s already wondering how it would agree with her. I think I should take over as photographer for Laurel. She’s—”

“No.”

“I don’t see why she should—”

“Parker, we talked about this.” Emma turned.“Laurel got voted in because I get too distracted and end up talking to everybody, and you . . . Well, you take too damn long trying to make the perfect composition or whatever so you end up getting next to nothing.”

“But they’re very good next-to-nothings.”

“Exceptional, but we’ll take less exceptional bunches.”

Parker sighed in defeat. She really
liked
taking pictures. “If we must. I guess we should mingle again. People are going to start leaving soon.” She slipped her phone out of her pocket when it vibrated. “It’s a text from Del.”

“Probably wants to know if it’s clear for him and Jack and Carter to come home.”

“No. He says there’s a bad accident on North, south of the parkway. Traffic’s diverted and backed up. We should let anyone planning to use that route know, and that they’d be back in a couple hours.”

“I hope no one was hurt,” Emma replied, then smiled as her mother beckoned her from across the room. “I’ll help pass the word.”

Like a good party, it tipped over its scheduled time, involved numerous stragglers, and left its hostesses limp with happy exhaustion.

“Now I want champagne.” Parker grabbed a bottle and poured. “You sit, Mrs. G.”

“I believe I will.” Mrs. Grady plopped down, slipped off her party shoes, stretched out her legs. “Fill that up.”

Obediently, Parker filled glasses to the rim while Laurel cut slices from what was left of the triple-tiered buttercream cake she’d covered with free-form chocolate petals.

“Golly. Look at those fabulous prizes!” Mac beamed blurrily at the gift table, where Parker had carefully arranged gifts as Mac had opened them. “It’s like I won a small, tasteful department store. Did I thank everybody?”

“Numerous times. Just how much champagne have you already consumed there, pal?” Laurel asked her.

“Bunches because I’m allowed to get a little blitzed at my own bridal shower.We had my bridal shower!” She took the cake from Laurel, plucked one of the chocolate petals. “Oh,
mmmm
. Did I tell you I love my cake?”

“Yeah, baby.” Laurel leaned over, kissed the top of Mac’s head.

“And that I loved absolutely everything? I’m so glad we did this in here, in family rooms. It just felt more home, you know? And everything looked so pretty. Em, the flowers. Just wow.You were so right to go with lots and lots of little arrangements and use that orange—what are they?”

“Cannas, and some zinnias.”

“Yeah, those, with the purple stuff to play off Laurel’s chocolate and the shiny green ribbons and all that.”

“Trust your florist. And it was really sweet of you to give Carter’s mom and his sisters flowers when they left.”

“They’re going to be my family now.” She beamed at everyone again. “I have such an amazing family. You guys, you’re the best ever, and I’m so lucky to have you. All of you, so damn lucky.And I’m so fucking glad my mother didn’t come.”

She took a breath. “Oops. Maybe I have had too much champagne.”

“You’re entitled.” Emma moved over to sit beside Mac, rubbed her arm. “It’s a happy time, and it was a really happy party. That’s all you need to think about.”

“You’re right. I’m just getting all the sappy stuff and the bitchy stuff out before the wedding. I don’t want to get all weepy and nervous on the day. So. Mrs. G, you’re all the mother I need, and you’ve always been right there.”

“I’ve had a good share of this bubbly, too. Don’t get me watered up.” Then she sighed.“Oh well.You’re a skinny, smart-mouthed redhead. And I’ve loved you since the day you first toddled in the door.”

“Aw.” Rising, Mac dashed over to grab Mrs. Grady in a rib-crusher. “Okay, Laurel.”

“Uh-uh.”

Mac snorted at Laurel’s reaction.“You’re a hardass when I need one, a friend through thick and thin.When I’m stupid, you tell me, but you never hold it against me.”

“That’s a good summing up.” Laurel laughed her way through Mac’s hug.

“Emma.Always a hand to hold, a shoulder to lean on. You find a way to see the rainbow in the storm, and that’s gotten me through a lot of storms.”

“Lots more rainbows for you, sweetie.” Emma hugged Mac hard.

“And Parker.” Mac scrubbed her hands over her damp cheeks. “Never once in my life have you let me down. Let any of us down. You’re the one who gave us family, gave us home, the one who opened us up to what we could do, who we can be.”

“Mac.” Parker got to her feet, laid her hands on Mac’s teary cheeks. “We gave each other family, and home.”

“We did. But it started with you.” On a sigh, Mac wrapped her arms around Parker, laid her head on Parker’s shoulder. “I know I’m buzzed, but I wish everybody everywhere could feel as happy, as loved, as
right
as I do this minute.”

“After that, I think we do at least. So that’s a start.”

It was nearly midnight when everyone was tucked into bed, and the party debris cleared. Still revved from success, feeling sentimental about Mac’s sweet, half-drunken speech, Parker wandered through the house, doing a final check.

Home, she thought. Their home, as Mac had said. Not just what had been passed down for generations—though that was the base—but what they’d made it. Just as her parents had made it their own, adding touches, living lives.

People would always call it the Brown Estate, she reflected, but those who lived there knew it was so much more.

Maybe one day she’d be able to share it, build on it, with the man she loved.

That, she knew, remained the underpinning of all her dreams, her goals, her ambitions.To love, be loved, to share, to build on that love and partnership something strong and lasting.

She could be successful without it. She could be content without it. But she understood herself well enough to know she’d never feel complete, never feel fully happy, without that loving partnership.

She believed, absolutely, in the power and the strength of love, the promises made, the endurance of commitment.Weddings were a celebration of that, a kind of show full of symbols and traditions. But, at the core it was the vows, the promises, the emotional knot tied between two people believing it would hold for a lifetime that mattered.

And she’d come to understand, was well on her way to accepting, that Malcolm was the partner she wanted for those promises, for that lifetime.

Still, she mused, partnership required that sharing, a depth of trust, a
knowing
. There were still so many places and pieces in him he shaded, or even closed off from her.

How could that underpinning hold, for either of them, if parts of him remained locked down?

Restless, she adjusted a pillow on the sofa. Maybe she asked for, maybe she expected, too much too soon. But Malcolm wasn’t the only one who wanted to know how things worked, and why.

She caught the flash of headlights against the window glass, frowned. Moving closer, she recognized Malcolm’s car and, delighted—it was as if she’d conjured him—went to open the front door.

“It’s late,” he said as he stepped into the portico, skimmed his fingers through rain-dampened hair.

“That’s all right. Come in. It’s cold and wet out there.”

“I saw some lights on, so I figured you might be up.”

“You figured right.” Something’s wrong, she realized as she scanned his face, saw the tension in it.“We just finished cleaning up.”

“Right. Right. How did it go? The thing?”

“It was great.” He didn’t move to touch her, to kiss her. She leaned in, brushed her lips over his in as much comfort as greeting. “Start to finish.”

“Good.”

He wandered the foyer, obviously restless.

Tell me what’s wrong, she thought. She could all but see the barrier between them, hated pushing at it. “Malcolm—”

“Got a beer?”

“Sure.” Give him a little time, she told herself as she led the way back toward the kitchen. “I guess you had a long night. Did you get everything done you’d wanted to?”

“No. I made a dent in it, but something else came up.”

She got out a beer, started to get out a glass.

“Bottle’s fine.” He popped the top, but didn’t drink.

How could she not know how to handle this—him—she wondered, when she always knew? “Do you want something to eat? We have leftovers from the party, or Mrs. G’s—”

“No. I’m good.”

No, she thought as he wandered the kitchen, he wasn’t.

Enough, she decided. Just enough. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I had things to do. After I did them, I didn’t feel like going home so I took a chance you’d still be up.You were.” He lifted the beer now, but after a single sip set it down. “Since you are, maybe I can talk you into bed.”

Frustration and disappointment mixed uneasily with resentment. “If I thought you’d come by for a beer and sex, I might be amenable. Since I don’t, no, you can’t talk me into bed.”

“It was worth a shot. I’ll get going.”

And now anger sifted into the mix. Her eyes flashed as he started out.“Do you think you can come here, knock on the door, then turn around and go when you don’t get what you want on your terms?”

His face remained calm—neutral, she thought—and she imagined he’d wear that same expression playing poker.

“I don’t remember laying out any terms. The mood’s wrong, so I’m going home.We can both catch a few hours’ sleep.”

“Oh yes, that’ll work now that you’ve annoyed and upset me.”

He stopped, dragged a hand through his hair. “Sorry. That wasn’t the plan. I should’ve gone home in the first place.”

“Maybe you should have, since you seem to feel our relationship shouldn’t involve any sort of confidences on your side, or expression of actual feelings.”