Accompanying Alice (15 page)

“What’s the matter?’

“They’ve been talking about me.”

“That surprises you?”

“No, it’s just...I don’t think I can do this.” She fiddled unconsciously with the buttons of the new shirt he’d put on during their last stop, tilted an anxious face to him. He felt and looked good, warm, sexy. Familiar. The tip of her tongue flicked out to taste her upper lip. “I told you I’m not good at this, Gabriel.”

He touched her face, smoothed her hair back over her ear, liking the way she turned to him. The way it felt to hold her. Reassure her. “I’m right beside you. You’ll do fine.”

Alice crushed his shirt in her hand. “But—”

“Shh.” Gabriel put a finger to her lips, shutting out the world for an instant, intent only on her. “Don’t think so much, it gets in the way.” He drew a long breath and stooped without warning, kissing her hard. Her lips parted slightly, asking to linger with his, but he pulled himself up sharply, shying away from the danger zone her mouth represented. “Just stick by me,” he whispered, “and we’ll both be fine.”

He held her an instant longer than it took her to square her shoulders, then released her. Her eyes were on him, soft, self-conscious, wary, full of
maybe.
He tried to repress the surge of heat her
maybe
made him feel, and failed. His palms on her shoulders felt damp. “Ready?”

Not for you,
Alice thought, and kept the hand that wanted to touch the kiss he’d left on her mouth folded tightly at her side. “It might be better for you if you just wait here and I do this first part alone.”

Gabriel grinned. “Easier maybe, not better.”

“Sure?” Alice asked. “I’ll be all right if you
want to duck off to the men’s shop and see about your tux—”

“United we stand.” He laughed and offered her his hand, wanting hers for support. “Besides, what else are friends for?”

“Well—” Alice’s smile was small and crooked “—if you’re sure.”

Without a word Gabriel drew her hand through the crook of his arm and together they walked across the lobby.

Friends.

With potential.

*

“You’re late,” they accused Alice, while their eyes pinned, examined and dissected Gabriel. “No one answered your
phone. We’ve
been calling for over an hour. You should have called. We were worried about you.”

“Sorry,” Alice apologized. “We made a couple stops. Gabriel needed a few things.”

A likely story, their eyes said.

Alice sucked in air.
If
they refused to believe the truth when she told it... Why did she feel guilty about telling it?

“So,” she said into the stony silence, “anyway, we’re here.” She waved a hand at Gabriel. “I’m sure you all know who this is. Gabriel, these are my sisters. Helen you met yesterday. Meg...”

She began with the petite redheaded management consultant in jeans and the company T-shirt, indicating each sister in turn. Edith, the nurse, was a tall slim brunette with an olive complexion and green eyes. Twink, another brunette slightly shorter than Edith, wearing a fluorescent green sundress, managed a law office. Sam-the-paramedic-volunteer-fireman was the one in the denim miniskirt and yellow polo shirt, and Grace— “Where’s Grace?” Alice asked.

“Not here,” Twink said helpfully.

“Nobody’s seen her since yesterday,” Edith breathed.

“Not since
Ma
said she came home and took a shower and left.”

“I called Phil,” Meg put in. “But no one’s seen him, either.”

“We figure they’ve gone off somewhere and eloped,” Sam said, “and left us to deal with the relatives while they have a bang-up time. I
told
certain people—” she looked at Helen, who ignored her “—this thing was getting too big.”

“Don’t worry.” Twink winked broadly. “If they’ve eloped, we’ll get ‘em. I called a friend of mine with the state police and asked if they’d keep an eye out for Grace’s car. They’ll bring ‘em back.” She smiled gently. “I told him to feel free to use handcuffs.”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow at this pronouncement, but wisely remained silent. Helen gave Twink a withering look and linked arms with Gabriel, tugging him to one side to impart dark secrets.

“Y’see,” she murmured, “there’s something you ought to know about before you get any more involved with one of us than you already are. We have a—” she made an expressive circling gesture with one hand “—little problem in this family that nobody talks about. It’s called
com-mu-ni-ca-tion
. Nobody does. Not even—” she eyed Alice pointedly “—those of us with teenagers to preach at who really ought to know better.”

“Those of us who live in stone houses,” Alice suggested meaningfully back, “really shouldn’t throw glass.”

“You always say that,” Helen complained. “What does it
mean
?”

“It means,” Meg said, “that if the shoe fits your foot you ought to take it out of your mouth and put it there.”

“What? Me?” Helen put a dramatic hand to her heart. ‘‘I’m the only one of us who communicates with anyone. Don’t you get my memos? Aren’t they clearly stated? Don’t I always tell you who’s doing what with whom and when?”

“Telling.”
Edith stabbed an aggrieved finger at her. “You’re always
telling
people to do things. You never ask, you never suggest, you never
listen.”

“But I’m a major,” Helen said, surprised. “That’s what majors
do
.”

“Not in this family,” Sam said hotly, ‘‘‘cause I’ll tell you, Major, if I’d wanted someone to tell me what to do all the time, I’d have joined the army myself to save you the trouble. I mean, you’re not even the
eldest.”

“Yeah,” Twink nodded. “That’s right. Alice and Meg are both older—”

Gabriel drew Alice aside. “How long does this go on?”

“Until you stop it,” she murmured. “It’s a test to see if you’ve got what it takes to handle Brannigans. I tried to warn you.”

“I thought you were a Meyers.”

She cocked her head, surprised. Surely, she’d told him...

No. They’d said a lot about themselves, one another, without sharing the details. The things he seemed instinctively to know about her, like the things she knew about him, came from somewhere else, from some deeper timeless knowledge.

Heart to heart,
she whispered to herself, then immediately shunned the thought. Even a wide-open all-seeing heart needed time, and hers was neither.

“I was married to a Meyers for about a month,” she said. “I kept his name for the girls. Pretense of respectability, you know?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s old.”

Again something passed between them, some intense deep-seated understanding, that curious sensation of fullness and not being alone that strangers could share because they didn’t have to worry about what secrets they knew about one another—or didn’t know.

Except they weren’t exactly strangers anymore. And they’d begun to share secrets.

In
the instant of recognition, their eyes slunk away from one another like thieves after a job.

“So,” Gabriel said, “how do you suggest I handle your sisters?”

Alice shrugged. “Ignore them, they hate that. It always gets their attention.”

Gabriel nodded. “Meet you here after I pick up a tux?”

“Or across the hall at Camille’s Bridal Boutique.”

“See you in a few.” He brushed her mouth with a brief goodbye and started away, then turned back. “What name?”

“Witoczynsk—”

“Brannigan,” Meg, Helen, Edith, Twink and Sam shouted after him. “Phil’s marrying a Brannigan.”

“Of course,” Gabriel muttered and disappeared.

The minute he was out of sight, Alice’s sisters dragged her into the bridal boutique changing room and pounced on her.

“Where did you find him?”

“At the side of the road.”

“How long have you known him?”

“A... while.”

“Are you going to keep him?”

“He’s not a stray dog.”

“Are you living together?”

“For now.”

“What are you going to do with him tonight while we’re there?”

Tonight? Phooey. She’d forgotten about tonight. Too bad they hadn’t. “Nothing in front of you, but he’ll be there.”

“Ah-ah, Alice.” Twink brushed one index finger over the other, shaming. “No kids under eighteen and no men of any age. You made the rules.”

“So, I’m changing the rules. Big deal.” She bit down on the automatic defensiveness, ignoring her sisters’ further comments by concentrating her attention on the brilliant teal, dark green, electric blue, violet and bright pink tea-length dresses Edith, Sam, Meg, Helen and Twink wore respectively. Then she smoothed down the bodice of her own deep red scooped-neck cap-sleeved gown. The satin was smooth and cool to touch, easily the prettiest thing she’d ever worn. And even she of the self-deprecating attitude was willing to admit the color brought out the best in her. She should have known better than to distrust the artist in Grace.

She turned, posing in front of the mirror while the boutique’s seamstress tucked and poked at the fabric. The one thing Grace had refused to quibble about were the bridesmaids’ dresses. She’d refused any suggestion that summer was the time for pretty pastels, insisting instead that her sisters be outfitted in real colors that not only suited their personalities and complexions, but also in colors that didn’t look as if they’d wash out in the rain. An overall theme of everlasting commitment was what she was looking for, she’d said, reflected by colors that looked as if they were committed to something besides a single afternoon’s wear and a plastic bag in the back of the closet. Grace had chosen colors that looked as though they’d last forever, which was precisely how long she wanted her marriage to last.

Alice watched her sisters turn, preen and laugh, each beautiful in her own vivid hue. She wished she’d been as certain as Grace was about what she’d wanted for her own wedding—and marriage. But then, she wasn’t Grace, or any of her other sisters, either. She was just plain old waffling never-knew-what-she-wanted Alice, who’d always thought that life should come equipped with rules
—
something numbered and printed on a little card she could carry around in
her purse like a restaurant tip table to review whenever she couldn’t figure out what to do next.

With a wry smile, Alice stepped out of her dress and handed it to the waiting salesclerk, who promised to box it up and have it at the front of the shop for her when Alice was ready. Not knowing what to do next seemed to be the flaw of her generation. They’d made every effort to do things better than their parents, but every time they thought they had it all figured out, some study came along and proved them wrong. Stupid, but true. In a day and age of ever available expert analyses, the only thing you could trust to tell you right from wrong was your conscience and your heart. And
if
your conscience lied and your heart had been wrong once too many times in the past, what did you have left?