Four Weddings and a Fiasco: The Wedding Caper (2 page)

Hadley said, “Officer Hamilton, I want to be clear about this. I arranged for this meeting, but this is not my operation. Although I got your chief to agree to send you with a suitcase packed for a week—” Hadley almost smiled, as if he knew what sort of speculation that had raised in her mind. A suitcase packed for a week of “business casual.” She’d had to look it up, then wondered if she’d come anywhere close. “—I have no official role in this. Neither does your department. This is Mr. Yount’s operation. The mayor asked for my cooperation in finding a capable candidate for this role.”

Okay, she was getting the picture. They didn’t want her for her investigative skills or because she worked harder than anyone else. They wanted her because the genetic dice had made her female. To their minds that made her as perfect to play the role of
wife
as any other female of approximately the right age and not repulsive looking.

That might be what they expected from her, but that wasn’t what they were going to get.

“A married couple makes sense,” she said with give-nothing-away calm.

Larkin’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing, while Yount said all the appropriate things about being glad she was on board.

“Questions?” Hadley asked.

“Do I report to you or Chief Simms?”

“Neither,” Yount said. “It’s in the best interests of San Francisco to find out what’s going on out there, so you’ll report to me. Both of you.” He exchanged a look with the man who would be playing her husband. There was history behind that look. And maybe some warning. But who was warning whom . . . and about what? “Your department has agreed to give you the necessary time, starting Friday when your Marriage-Saver retreat begins.”

She shook her head. “We need prep time to get our cover straight.”

Yount shook his head right back at her. “The only reason we could get Eric and his— and you in now is there was a cancellation. That’s why all this is so last-minute. Usually it takes months to get in. But we can’t wait that long. The decision on the sale has to be made. And in the meantime, people could be getting hurt.”

“Then we need to start right away with our prep.”

Yount looked to Hadley in question. Larkin looked at her, his expression unreadable.

Hadley grunted. “Officer Hamilton is right. I’ll get clearance on the extra time for her to be away.” He ran a palm over his short hair. “You’ve got until check-in at Marriage-Save on Friday afternoon.”

“Officer Hamilton should spend the time with you at your place, Eric, so she’s familiar with it,” Yount said. “And the two of you can bone up on all the stuff married couples know about each other. That’ll give you a chance to fill her in on what you know about Marriage-Save, too.”

What most married couples truly knew about each other would take a lot less four days to learn. But information on Marriage-Save would be helpful. And knowing the physical layout of Eric Larkin’s place and neighborhood would add to their performance. Plus, observing how he thought and reacted would make it easier to maneuver around him when she started working the case on her own.

“A few basic facts should do,” Larkin said. “There’s no reason to—”

“Yes there is,” Hadley said bluntly. “You’re going to be getting counseling. If your stories don’t add up they’ll smell a rat right off. Officer Hamilton is one-hundred percent correct on this.”

Larkin looked as if he wanted to keep arguing, but Yount distracted him.

“You need a problem,” the mayor’s aide said abruptly.

“What?”

“A problem. A reason you’re heading for divorce that you can tell the people at Marriage-Save. Something more specific than general incompatibility. Something the counselors can try to fix. A conflict, a core argument — you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Larkin’s voice was flat. The kind of flat that came from being run over by a truck.

K.D. tucked that away for later exploration.

“Good point,” she said to Yount. “Infidelity? Abuse?”

“Hey!” Larkin objected, turning to her. A glint of humor lurked in his eyes.

She widened her eyes in assumed surprise. “What? I could be the one running around. Or the abuser. It happens.”

“Great. We’re going to counseling because you beat on me? Forget trying to save that marriage — I’d divorce you.”

“Too bad more women don’t react that way to abuse.”

“Yes, it is.”

That solid, even response eased one layer of concern. A woman — even a cop — pretending to be married to a stranger needed to know certain things about him. Not that she would let down her guard no matter what, but it helped.

“I’m adding that to my list,” Yount said, typing into the laptop on his desk. “Need a marital problem.”

The woman sitting on the couch cleared her throat delicately, and every head turned toward her.

“If they’re going to be married,” she said, “there needs to be a wedding first.”

“Y
ou’re right — of course. A wedding,” said Yount.

“I will donate the services of my team.”

Yount practically bounced in his chair. “Terrific. Ms. Martin here put on the wedding for the mayor’s niece last year, and it was amazing. You couldn’t be in better hands.”

“A wedding—? We don’t need a wedding,” K.D. protested as her brain cells started to reassemble after the shotgun blast of that word. At least she’d stopped herself from saying
we don’t need no stinkin’ wedding
. “The date would be wrong and —”

“We can take care of the paper trail,” Yount said.

“You do need wedding photos, Officer Hamilton,” Ms. Martin said. “That’s part of the package Marriage-Save requires that its
guests
bring.”

How did the woman know? She had a ring on her left hand that looked fairly new. What was her role? She could ask, but not yet. She’d learned that by listening first, she picked up information to make later questions a whole lot better.

“But to have believable wedding photos by Friday, we need to start immediately. Most of my team is already preparing for this weekend’s weddings.” A small smile. “The real weddings.”

“Excellent. Let’s go to the Rose Chalet now, and RJ and I can give Officer Hamilton a crash course on Eric, along with general background,” Yount said.

Larkin tensed. Before he could say anything, Captain Hadley said, “Good” and stood. The decision had been made.

Yount was also on his feet. “You drive Officer Hamilton over to the Rose Chalet, Eric.”

“I’ll drive myself,” she said. “Just give me the directions.”

“It’ll be better if people in the neighborhood see you together,” Yount said. Amusement flickered across his eyes. “Besides, it will give you a chance to start getting to know each other.”

H
e did not want to get to know Officer K.D. Hamilton.

What Eric Larkin wanted was a tennis racquet in one hand, a ball suited to being pounded to bits in the other, and an opponent across the net he didn’t much like.

Say, Ken Yount.

If Officer Hamilton had said no, Ken would have had to withdraw his objections to Eric’s plan. Hiring an actress to play the role of his soon-to-be divorced wife made a hell of a lot more sense than this. He only needed a woman as window-dressing to get him in the place so he could gain access to their records. He didn’t need a bodyguard.

It had seemed like such a good idea at the time to get Ken involved.

RJ had called and asked him to come to the Rose Chalet to meet Rose Martin, RJ’s employer . . . and now his wife.

She’d presented the information she’d gathered and the concerns she had clearly and concisely. If those concerns bore out, it would not be good for the people who sought help, for their neighborhood, or for the city. That’s why Eric had gone to Ken, a friend from college.

Had Ken been this pigheaded back then? He sure was pigheaded now.

Ken hadn’t budged — if Eric didn’t accept having a professional involved, Ken would pull the plug on the whole thing.

Why did K.D. Hamilton have to say yes?

He glanced toward the tall woman in the passenger seat of his practical sedan and asked himself a better question:

Why did she have to look like this?

When Dwight Hadley had said he knew of the perfect woman, Eric had never considered he might mean it literally.

Her legs had gotten more than their share of the inches of her height, but the rest of her — especially the curves — were in proportion. The instant she’d walked into Ken’s office, Eric’s libido had whined that it was too bad her jeans weren’t tighter, to reveal more of those curves. Better yet, no jeans at all . . . . .

Great timing. His libido had taken an extended vacation, ever since things went sour with Hilary. Correction, ever since he’d known they’d gone sour. According to Hilary the turning-to-sour had come well before he knew about it.

In Ken’s office he’d tried to distract his inconvenient libido by concentrating on her face, reading her features and expression the way he might someone he was deposing.

Strong, straight nose. Wide mouth in a slightly rounded face. He suspected the short, wispy style of her chestnut hair was meant to offset that fullness. She needn’t have bothered. The sharp, high cheekbones and her eyes left no doubt that she was not a wimpy or naïve young thing.

Ah, her eyes. The aqua of an inlet in the Caribbean lit by sun.

And he had felt them on him like a lover’s heated hand each time she’d looked at him.

Looked at him with interest.

Just not the kind of interest his libido was doing the Lambada about.

Officer K.D. Hamilton had been taking him apart, weighing each piece, and putting him back together with her eyes from the moment she’d walked in that office.

Eric mentally damned a pair of his oldest friends to several interesting variations of anatomical improbabilities.

If RJ hadn’t brought this issue to him, asking for his help as a favor, if Ken had let him hire an actress, he wouldn’t be in this position of having this reaction to the stranger who was going to pretend to be his wife for the next week.

He glanced at K.D. Hamilton as he turned on to the street where the Rose Chalet was.

Oh, hell, maybe it would be better than it had been having a wife who’d pretended she wasn’t a stranger.

“Mr. Yount said it would be good for people in the neighborhood to see us together, but wouldn’t they know what your wife looked like if you’d been married?” She had a habit of talking abruptly, without any of the throat-clearing or head-turning that clued you in before most people spoke.

“No.” Her gaze on his profile seemed to demand more than that. “I was married. Six years. I moved here after the divorce.”

“Here, being San Francisco?”

“Yes. And this neighborhood. A couple blocks that way.” He nodded to the west.

The quiet in the car seemed to hum with her speculation. But at last she stopped watching him, looking straight ahead through the windshield.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “The only ones who might realize you’re not my ex-wife are the people who’ll be at the Rose Chalet, and my assistant. You’ll meet Myrna later.”

“But if people know you’re divorced …”

“They don’t. Not most people.” That got another flick from her aqua eyes. “I don’t see any need to broadcast my private life.”

“Ah.” Did he imagine a hint of approval?

He parked near the Rose Chalet. Ken’s SUV, carrying him and Dwight Hadley, had gotten a spot practically in front of the door. Figured.

They passed through a garden that had to be RJ’s work. It had that feel of lushness under the control of a master.

The door swung open for them.

Eric’s hand went to the vicinity of the small of K.D.’s back in an automatic gesture of escorting a woman. He stopped the gesture short of contact, and started to let his hand drop.

In that instant what seemed like a flood of people — and questions — came at them.

“Any food allergies?” asked an energetic woman with long, dark hair.

“The bouquet needs to be dynamic, but restrained,” declared a woman in a distinctive dress as she tilted her head slightly, sizing up K.D.

“Oh, I know I’ll find you the perfect dress,” said a smiling blonde. She reached out — and up — clearly intending to hug the woman beside him.

K.D. stepped back to avoid the hug, and instead brought her high, rounded backside into full contact with the palm of his hand, which had stopped at that level when the chaos erupted.

He squeezed. Slightly. An automatic reaction. An instinct, really. And he stopped almost immediately. Almost. Certainly stopped well before his libido wanted to.

K.D.
’s head swung around to look at him over her shoulder. And part of him was relieved her fist didn’t follow. Another part of him was dismayed at the betrayal he thought he read in her eyes. And then where was something else in her expression—

A camera stuttered in a tattoo of shots.

“Hope I caught that,” said a female voice apparently coming from a large potted plant.

Then Eric caught the flash of a smile behind a camera, and realized a real woman stood behind the plant.

“Everyone, please,” Rose Martin’s voice rose in easy command. “I told you this is urgent, but I do think we have time to let them in the door.”

The horde receded.

“Let’s go to the dining room to discuss this,” Rose added, and they obeyed.

“You all know Eric and Ken from our earlier meeting. This is Captain Hadley, the contact Ken mentioned then,” Rose said, standing behind the chair at the head of the table as the others flowed in. “And this is Officer Hamilton. She’s agreed to work with Eric.”

“Please, call me K.D.” she got out before the swarm took her over again with greetings.

Eric watched her take it all in, watched her clear eyes make connections between the people. He’d met them all several times and he was still working at getting it straight.

Besides Rose and RJ, there was Rose’s childhood friend Anne Farleigh. She was involved with Gareth, a private detective and former police officer. He and K.D. exchanged acronym-laced sentences that appeared to have plenty of meaning to them and none to anyone else.