Love Letters from Ladybug Farm (32 page)

Bridget looked at her uncertainly. “Did I hear correctly? Did he say he had bought a place?”

“Ten miles away?” questioned Lindsay, and even Paul lifted an eyebrow.

“Look at it this way, Mom,” Lori offered helpfully. “At least you have a plus-one for the wedding tomorrow.”

Cici clutched the wet side of her hair with one hand and clapped the other over her un-made-up face. “My life,” she muttered, “is over.”

“Focus, ladies,” Paul commanded. He made a little shooing gesture to Cici. “Hair, makeup, go.” He tapped his watch. “Tick tock.”

“Bartender!” Cici glared at him as she started up the stars. “I’ll get you for this, and that’s a promise.”

But it was a promise she did not have time to keep, since before she reached the top of the stairs Catherine’s car was pulling up, horn honking imperiously. Before Lindsay and Bridget could even get the bridal gown out of the car and up the stairs to Lori’s room—which would be the bride’s staging room for the wedding—the bride herself arrived with three of her bridesmaids, demanding to see the garden setup. By the time Cici finished drying her hair and applying her makeup, strangers were wandering through the downstairs rooms of her house with drinks in their hands, gazing around like tourists in a museum, and more were meandering around the porch and spilling onto the lawn. Paul was in earnest conversation with Catherine, and Richard could be heard to say heartily, “Welcome to our home,” as he poured a glass of red wine for a bald man in a linen suit.

“My home,” Cici corrected sharply, and then tried to soften the words with a smile. “Welcome to Ladybug Farm. I’m Cici Burke, one of your hostesses this evening.” She passed a sideways glance to Richard. “He’s just helping out.”

While she conducted a rather pointless conversation with the man, who turned out to be the bride’s uncle and the officiant of the ceremony, she heard Richard say to one of the bridesmaids, “Now you look like someone who’d be interested in the bride’s special, an apricot-tini. Believe me,” he confided, “the color is the best part.” The girl burst into giggles, melting into his charm as effortlessly as any other twenty-three-year-old whose path he had ever crossed.

“Just like old times, huh, Ci?” he said, coming around the bar to stand beside her when they both found themselves momentarily alone. He handed her a martini glass with something apricot-colored in it. “You and me, good times, good food, good people.”

“No,” she said firmly. “No, it’s not just like old times.” She took a sip of the drink and grimaced a little. Apricots and martinis clearly were never meant to be mixed. “Our old times were beer and pizza and chicken pox.”

He smiled and caressed her back briefly. “Which is why we deserve to treat ourselves now.” Then, with a deep breath of the clear fresh air, “God, this place is beautiful. Just look at those trees. What are they, anyway? Just like a movie set.”

She stared up at him in blank incomprehension for a moment. “Richard, what are you doing here?”

“Living the dream, baby,” he replied, smiling at someone across the way. “Living the dream.”

“Richard, for heaven’s sake, what were you thinking? You bought property? In Virginia?”

He looked extremely pleased with himself. “Not just property, Ci, but eighty-seven acres of the most beautiful horse country you’ve ever seen. Fenced and cross-fenced, with a fifteen-stall barn already standing. I can’t wait to show it to you. It’s exactly what I was looking for. Exactly.”

“Eighty-seven acres?” Her voice was bordering on shrill as her incredulity rose. “Are you crazy? Why would you do such a thing?”

He chuckled. “At today’s prices, I’d be crazy to pass it by. It’s a great investment, less than half an hour away from my little girl, everything I’ve always pictured when I thought about where I wanted to retire.”

“You are not retiring here,” Cici stated flatly. “You’re not.”

“Listen.” He took her arm, turning her a little away from the crowd that was milling around at the bottom of the steps, and he bent his head close to hers, lowering his voice earnestly. “I know how we left things, and that’s fine with me, really. I know this probably seems impulsive but I’ve been thinking about it for years, and now everything is coming together. The timing is perfect. Don’t look at this like I’m trying to pressure you. Think of it as a chance for us to take our time, enjoy each other, settle into the feeling of being a family again...”

With every word he spoke her eyes grew wider, and by the time he finished she was shaking her head adamantly. “No.” She downed the remainder of the martini in a single swallow. “No. Let me be clear about this, Richard—no.” She started to walk away, then spun back to him with a wide sweep of her arm. “This,” she declared, indicating all that surrounded them, “is my dream, not yours, don’t you see that? And now all of sudden you come swooping down like—like some kind of conquering hero and decide you want what I have, and it feels like you’re trying to steal my dream. That’s what it feels like!” The flash of hurt in his eyes stabbed at her, and she drew a breath, trying to gentle her tone. “I’m sorry, Richard, I really am, for whatever insane midlife crisis made you think this could work out. But we’re not a family. We’re barely even friends. You don’t belong here, and I. . . ”

It was at that moment that a Mustang convertible came screeching up the driveway, top down and belching the thrum, thrum, thrum of woofers from the back speakers. It stopped with a spray of gravel in front of the house, dislodging a bevy of drunken young men, one of whom, wearing a mis-buttoned Hawaiian print shirt and baggy shorts and a silver paper crown, appeared to be the groom. He staggered and grinned with a goofy two thumbs-up as he clambered over the closed doors of the car.

“I have work to do,” she said, and walked away.

It was the arrival of the groom, everyone agreed, that signaled the downward turn of the event. Before he had even stumbled completely out of the car, Traci burst out of the house and started to scream at him. “Jason, where have you been? You’re late! I told you we were starting at five and I told you not to be late! Where’s the cake topper? Did you bring the cake topper? Don’t you dare stand there with all your drunk friends and tell me that you didn’t do the one thing I asked you to do!”

At which point Jason, who had been struggling to look suitably chastened, suddenly burst into laughter, and was supported by his groomsmen with a rousing chorus of “Here Comes the Groom.” Traci dissolved into tears and ran into the house, followed by her mother and all six bridesmaids.

Margaret, Jason’s mother, arrived in a print silk suit and three-inch spiked heels, which sank immediately into the soft ground of the lawn when she tried to cross it. She did, however, bring the missing cake topper, and insisted upon inspecting the dining room setup to make certain her instructions for the evening had been carried out. So while Lindsay tried to comfort the hysterical bride and Paul took charge of the groom, Cici was left to escort Margaret on her tour of inspection.

“Really Mrs. Thornton,” she insisted, “why don’t you just have a glass of wine and enjoy your evening? Leave everything to us.”

To which she merely snorted, surveyed the dining room arrangement, and demanded, “Where are the place cards? I sent silver-framed place cards and a seating chart. What did you people do, pawn them?”

Cici, whose temper had already been tested to the breaking point, drew a sharp breath for a reply. But, fortunately for her, before she could release it, Bridget, looking like an executive chef in a black straight skirt and high-collared white shirt, came through the swinging door with a bright smile and a box of silver-framed place cards in her hands.

The mother of the groom was mollified, the bride, having been informed of the arrival of the cake topper, was persuaded to leave her room, and Paul somehow managed to get everyone to the garden for the rehearsal. Margaret did not like the location that had been set aside for the string quartet, so four chairs, a potted fern, and two silk dogwoods were moved from the center of the fan-shaped rows of seats to the front, near the podium. Catherine thought there should be a microphone for the officiant, and wondered how much trouble it would be to round one up before tomorrow.

Nonetheless, Paul, with his clipboard and precisely orchestrated schedule of events, managed to keep everyone on task until Margaret started complaining about the heat, and why no one had thought to erect a shade canopy to keep the guests out of the sun, and whose idea was it to have an outdoor wedding anyway? Then the videographer realized that—speaking of sun—at two o’clock in the afternoon, he would be shooting directly into it, and Cici pointed out that if they moved the wedding arch they would lose not only the frame of the mountain and sheep meadow background that Traci had insisted upon, but the entire line of the bridal procession.

It was at this point that one of the groomsmen started baaing to the tune of “Here Comes the Bride.” Traci was in the middle of screeching at her mother that this was all her fault, that
she
was the one who wanted a sheep-farm wedding and that
she
should have known where the sun was—and when she heard the baaing, she went suddenly stiff. She turned, eyes blazing and cheeks flaming, and marched over to the offender—who by this time had smothered both his singing and his giggles and was trying to look innocent—and told him flatly he was out of the wedding.

As it turned out, the sheep imitator was not just a grooms-man but the best man, and also the groom’s brother. Jason informed Traci that if his brother was out of the wedding, so was he, to which Traci retorted that that suited her fine, at which point Margaret turned on Catherine and demanded that she control her daughter, and after that, it was pretty much a free-for-all.

“After all this work,” Cici muttered to Paul, “she is marrying that jerk if it’s the last thing she does on this earth.”

“And I am not moving a single chair,” warned Paul darkly.

Cici waded into the melee, shouting for attention. “Ladies! Gentlemen! This is a wedding! We should be cooperating, not fighting!” She looked for help to the officiant, who, well into his third apricot-tini, merely smiled beneficently. “What if,” she suggested to Traci, “the videographer shot from behind the podium, which means he would be away from the sun? And you’ll be doing the wedding photographs in the morning, so you’ll still have your shot of the mountains and sheep, just like you wanted, with no sun in the way.”

The videographer agreed that he could shoot from behind the screen where the musicians were stationed, which would make him as unobtrusive as possible, and Traci reluctantly conceded accord.

They lined up again, boys on one side and girls on the other, all of them glaring across the lawn at each other, looking more like the Jets and the Sharks from
West Side Story
than the friends and family of a happy couple about to be united forever in the sacrament of marriage. The groom was persuaded to take his place at the head of the aisle, joking with his best man and sipping from a bottle of beer, as Traci, in jeans, a T-shirt, and a shoulder-length tulle veil, made her way down the aisle on the arm of her father, whom Cici could not have picked out of the crowd until that moment.

All proceeded smoothly until the officiant rehearsed the vows, beginning with “Do you take this woman?” And the groom, grinning, nudged his best man and replied, “Let me think about it.”

Traci turned to him, snatched the beer bottle from his hand, and poured it over his head.

In the stunned silence that followed, Cici muttered, “I’ll kill her. I’ll kill her with my bare hands.”

Paul laid a soothing hand upon her arm. “Don’t be ridiculous, darling. You have a child. Let me do it,” he said grimly, and strode forth to place himself between the warring bride and groom.

“Dinner,” he announced loudly, hands upraised, “is served.”

As the official wedding planner, friend of the bride, and unabashed celebrity, Paul’s place for the evening was at the table, serving as host. Lindsay and Cici were the designated servers, and Richard, with his customary elan and unflappable self-assurance, had appointed himself
homme de maison
, telling jokes as he poured the wine and seated the ladies. Cici found reason to be grateful, for once in her life, that Richard had never met a woman he didn’t like.