Bride Quartet Collection (12 page)

Casually, he began to search for recipes on the Internet.

It didn’t mean he’d ask her over for dinner. It was just an in case sort of thing. If he lost his mind and actually followed Bob’s advice, it would be good to have a plan.

An outline, so to speak.

Nothing too fancy or complicated, he thought, as
that
would be a disaster. But not too basic or ordinary. If you were going to cook for a woman, shouldn’t you make more of an effort than tossing something in the microwave?

He printed out a few possibilities, and made notes on potential menus. And wines. She liked wine. He didn’t know anything about wine, but he could learn. He put everything in a file.

He’d probably ask her to the movies anyway. The standard movie date, followed by pizza. Casual, no pressure or expectations. That was what he’d most likely do, he thought as he walked out of the office into his bedroom to change into a fresh shirt.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to pick up some candles, maybe some flowers. He glanced around the room, and imagined her there. In candlelight. Imagined lowering her to the bed, feeling her move under him. Watching her face, the light shimmering over it, as he touched her. Tasted her.

“Oh boy.”

After a calming breath, Carter stared down at the cat who stared up at him. “She’s right. Sex is a whopper.”

T
HE HOUSE ON CHESTNUT LANE WITH ITS BIG YARD AND OLD trees had been one of the reasons Carter had given up his position at Yale. He’d missed it—the blue shutters and white clapboard, the sturdy porch and tall dormers—and the people who lived inside it.

He couldn’t say he came to the house any more often now than when he’d lived and worked in New Haven. But he found contentment knowing he could drop by if the mood struck. He stepped in, turned out of the foyer to glance into the big parlor where Chauncy, the family cocker spaniel, curled on the sofa.

He wasn’t allowed on the furniture, and knew it, so his sheepish expression and hopefully thumping tail were pleas for silence.

“I didn’t see a thing,” Carter whispered, and continued on toward the great room, and the noise. He smelled his mother’s Yankee pot roast, heard his younger sister’s laugh, followed by multiple male shouts and curses.

The game, he concluded, was on.

He stopped at the entryway to study the tableau. His mother, raw-boned, sturdy as New England bedrock, stirred something on the stove while Sherry leaned on the counter beside her talking a mile a minute and gesturing with a glass of wine. His older sister, Diane, stood with her hands fisted on her hips, watching through the wall of windows. He could see her two kids bundled to the eyeballs, riding a couple of colorful sled disks down the slope of the backyard.

His father, his brother-in-law, and Nick continued to shout at the action on the TV on the other side of the breakfast counter. Since football either gave him a headache or put him to sleep, Carter chose the girls’ side of the room and came up on his mother from behind to lean down and kiss the top of her head.

“Thought you’d forgotten about us.” Pam Maguire offered her son a tasting spoon of the split-pea soup simmering on the range.

“I had a couple of things to finish up. It’s good,” he said when he’d obediently tasted the soup.

“The kids asked about you. They assumed you’d be here in time to sled with them.”

There was the faintest hint of censure in Diane’s tone. Knowing she was happiest if she had something or someone to complain about, he walked over to kiss her cheek. “Nice to see you.”

“Have some wine, Carter.” Behind Diane’s back, Sherry gave him a quick eye-roll. “We can’t eat until the game’s over anyway. Plenty of time.”

“We don’t put off family dinner for sports at our house,” Diane said.

Which, Carter thought, probably explained why his brother-in-law took advantage of the more lax Maguire rules.

His mother just hummed over her soup as, to a man, the football enthusiasts leaped from chair and sofa to cheer.

Touchdown.

“Why don’t you have a nice glass of wine, too, Di?” Pam tapped her spoon, adjusted the flame under the pot. “Those kids are fine out there. We haven’t had an avalanche in more than ten years now. Michael! Your son’s here.”

Mike Maguire held up a finger, pumping his other hand as the kicker set for the extra point. “And it’s
good
!” He sent Carter a grin over his shoulder, his pale Irish skin flushed with joy and framed by his neat silver beard. “Giants are up by five!”

Sherry handed Carter a glass. “Since everything’s under control in here, and in there,” she added, nodding toward the stands, “why don’t you sit down and tell us all about you and Mackensie Elliot.”

“Mackensie Elliot? The photographer?
Really?
” Pam said, drawing out the word.

“I think I’ll catch the end of the game.”

“Not a chance.” Sherry maneuvered him back against the counter. “I heard from someone who heard from someone who saw the two of you getting cozy at Coffee Talk.”

“We had coffee. And talked. It’s the Coffee Talk way.”

“
Then
I heard from someone who heard from someone that you were even cozier at the Willows last night. What gives?”

Sherry was always hearing from someone who’d heard from someone, Carter thought wearily. His sister was like a human radio receiver. “We went out a couple of times.”

“You’re dating Mackensie Elliot?” Pam asked.

“Apparently.”

“The same Mackensie Elliot you mooned over for months back in high school.”

“How do you know I . . .” Stupid, Carter thought. His mother knew everything. “We just had dinner. It’s not national news.”

“It is around here,” Pam corrected. “You could’ve invited her here tonight. You know there’s always plenty.”

“We’re not . . . it’s not . . . We’re not at the point of family gatherings. We had dinner. It’s one date.”

“Two with the coffee,” Sherry corrected. “Are you seeing her again?”

“Probably. Maybe.” He felt his shoulders hunch as he shoved his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know.”

“I hear good things about her, and she does very good work. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be doing Sherry’s wedding.”

“Isn’t she Linda Elliot’s daughter? Or it’s Barrington now.”

“I haven’t met her mother. It was dinner.”

The news pulled Diane away from the window. “Linda Barrington, sure. Her daughter’s close friends with the Browns, and Emmaline Grant, and that other one. They run that wedding business together.”

“I guess that’s the one then,” Carter acknowledged.

“Linda Barrington.” Diane’s jaw tightened as she compressed her lips in an expression Carter knew reflected disapproval. “That’s the woman who had an affair with Stu Gibbons, and broke up his marriage.”

“She can hardly be held responsible for her mother’s behavior.” Pam opened the oven to check her roast. “And Stu broke up his own marriage.”

“Well, I heard that she pushed Stu to leave Maureen, and when he wouldn’t she told Maureen about the affair herself. Maureen skinned Stu in the divorce—and who could blame her—and after that
she
wasn’t so interested anymore.”

“Are we talking about Mackensie or her mother?” Pam wondered.

Diane shrugged. “I’m just saying what I know. People say she’s always on the hunt for the next husband, especially if he’s someone else’s.”

“I’m not dating Mackensie’s mother.” Carter’s tone was quiet enough, cool enough, to light a fire in Diane’s eyes.

“Who said you were? But you know what they say about apples and trees. You might want to be careful, that’s all, so you don’t have another Corrine Melton on your hands.”

“Di, why do you have to be such a bitch?” Sherry demanded.

“I’ll just keep my mouth shut.”

“Good plan.”

Pam cast her eyes at the ceiling as her oldest daughter stalked back to the windows. “She’s been in a mood since she got here.”

“She’s been in a mood since she was born,” Sherry muttered.

“That’s enough. She’s a pretty girl, as I recall. Mackensie Elliot. And as I said, I’ve heard good things about her. Her mother’s a difficult woman, no question. As I recall, her father’s charming and absent. It takes a lot of spine and stomach to make yourself into something when no one gives you a foundation.”

Carter leaned down, kissed his mother’s cheek. “Not everyone’s as lucky as we are.”

“Damn right. Diane, call those kids in so they can get cleaned up. That’s the two-minute warning.”

When dinner conversation jumped from a rehash of the game, to his niece’s school play, veered into wedding talk and skipped over to his nephew’s desperate desire for a puppy, Carter relaxed.

His relationship with Mac—if there was one—had apparently been taken off the table.

Nick cleared, a gesture that had endeared him to Pam since his first family dinner. Mike sat back, looked down the long length of table in the formal dining room. “I have an announcement.”

“Are you going to get me a puppy, Grandpa?”

Mike leaned down to his grandson, whispered, “Let me work on your mom a little more.” He eased back again. “Your mother and I have an anniversary coming up next month. You’re still my valentine,” he added and winked at her.

“I thought you might like a small party at the club,” Diane began. “Just family, and close friends.”

“That’s a nice thought, Diane, but my bride and I will be celebrating thirty-six years of marital bliss in sunny Spain. That is, if she agrees to go with me.”

“Michael!”

“I know we had to put off the trip we’d planned a couple of years ago when I took over as chief of surgery. I’ve cleared two weeks in February, written them in stone. How about it, sugar? Let’s go eat paella.”

“Give me five minutes to pack, and I’m there.” Pam shot out of her chair, raced over, and dropped into Mike’s lap.

“You’re all excused,” he said, waving at his children.

There it was, Carter thought, there was another reason he’d come home.

The constancy.

CHAPTER NINE

A
CRAPPY MOOD DIDN’T SERVE AS AN EXCUSE FOR MISSING A Monday morning breakfast meeting. So Mac took it with her, like a snarling dog on a leash, to the conference room at the main house. Laurel and Parker sat nibbling on cranberry muffins in what had once been the Browns’ library.

The books remained, a kind of frame to the space. The fire crackled cheerfully in the hearth. The old gleaming library table held the setup for coffee, and she knew the engraved console hid a supply of bottled water.

Her friends sat at the round inlaid table in the center of the room. Bright and beautiful, she thought, both of them. Every damn hair in place at eight-freaking-A.M. Just looking at them made her feel sloppy and gawky and somehow
less
in the torn jeans she’d dragged on.

“And when I called him on it?” Laurel lifted her cup of what Mac knew would be perfectly prepared cappuccino. “He said, ‘I never leave the house without my toothbrush.’ ” She let out a snort of derision, then smiled at Mackensie. “You’ve just missed my retelling of The Demise of Martin Boggs. Why the hell did I go out with someone named Martin Boggs anyway? I hope your date was better than mine.”

“It was fine.”

“Mmm, that good, huh?”

“I said it was fine.” Mac dumped her laptop on the conference table and stalked over to the coffee bar. “Can we get started on this? I have a lot to deal with today.”

“Somebody got up on the cranky side of the bed.”

Mac flipped up her middle finger.

“Right back at you, pal.”

“Girls, girls.” Parker let out a long, windy sigh. “Do I have to separate you? Have a muffin, Mac.”

“I don’t want a goddamn muffin. What I want is to get on with this meeting that’s a total waste of time anyway.”

“We have three events this weekend, Mac,” Parker reminded her.

“Which have all been outlined, organized, scheduled, discussed, blueprinted, and microscoped down to the last overblown detail. We know what we’re doing. We don’t have to talk it to death.”

“Drink some coffee,” Parker suggested, but her tone had cooled. “It sounds like you need it.”

“I don’t need coffee, or a stupid muffin.” Mac spun back around. “Let me just sum all this up. People will come. Two of them will get married—most likely. Something will go wrong and be fixed. Someone will get drunk and be dealt with. Food will be eaten, music will be played. People will leave and we’ll get paid. The two who most likely get married will most likely divorce within five years. But that’s not our problem. Meeting over.”

“In that case, there’s the door.” Laurel gestured. “Why don’t you use it?”

Mac slammed her coffee back on the counter. “Good idea.”

“Just a minute. Just a damn minute!” Parker’s voice snapped out, spoiling Mac’s furious exit. “This is business.
Our
business. If you don’t like the way it’s run, we’ll schedule a meeting so you can air your grievances. But your bitch-fit isn’t on this morning’s agenda.”

“Right, I forgot we live and die by agenda. If it’s not on the Holy Spreadsheet or keyed into the Magic BlackBerry it isn’t Parker-worthy. Clients are allowed to believe they’re human beings with actual brains and emotions, while you herd them down your preordained path. Everybody falls in line for Parker, or God help them.”

Parker got to her feet, slowly. “If you have a problem with the way I’m managing the business, we’ll discuss it. But I have a group coming in about fifty minutes for a tour. I have an hour free today at two, so we can take this up then. In the meantime, I think Laurel had an excellent idea. There’s the door.”

Flushed from the cold, Emma rushed in. “I wouldn’t be late, but I dropped a whole—” She stared when Mac shoved by her, and kept going. “What’s wrong with Mac? What happened?”

“Mac had her bitch on.” Temper smoldering in her eyes, Laurel picked up her coffee. “We didn’t want to play.”

“Well, did you ask her why?”

“She was too busy slapping us around for that.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. I’m going after her.”

“Don’t.” Temper iced in her eyes, Parker shook her head. “Just don’t. She’ll only put her foot up your ass for your trouble. I’ve got potential clients coming this morning, and we have current ones who need attention. We’ll work around her for now.”

“Parker, when one of us has a problem, we all have a problem. Not just in the business.”

“I know that, Emma.” Parker pressed her fingers to her temple. “Even if she’d listen right now, which she wouldn’t, we don’t have time.”

“Besides if we all went ’splody every time one of us had a lousy date, this room would be full of our bloody body parts.”

“Mac and Carter?” Emma shook her head at Laurel. “I don’t see how that could be it. My mother talked to his last night and called me after to try to pump me. As far as I know, everything went fine when they went out.”

“What else?” Laurel demanded. “What makes a woman bitchier than a man? And okay, maybe occasionally each other. But . . .” She trailed off, closed her eyes. “Her mother. God, we’re idiots. Nothing crawls up Mac’s butt like her mother.”

“I thought her mother was in Florida.”

“Do you think distance is any deterrent to the force that is Linda Elliot?” Laurel asked Parker. “Maybe that’s it. That’s probably it, or part of it. But it’s still no reason to rip at us the way she did.”

“We’ll deal with it. We will. But we’ve got three events lined up, and we need to go over the details.”

Emma opened her mouth again, then swallowed the words when she saw Parker flip a Tums off the roll she took out of her pocket. No point, she thought, in having two friends upset. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about the urns for Friday.”

“Great.” Parker sat back down. “Let’s get started.”

S
HE KNEW WHEN SHE’D ACTED THE BITCH. SHE DIDN’T NEED A diagram, or to be offered muffins like she was a two-year-old who needed a cookie.
And
she didn’t need her friends showing her the door. She knew exactly where it was.

She knew how to do her job. She was
doing
her job right this minute, wasn’t she? Mac cut the first mat for the photos she hadn’t had the heart or the energy to mount the night before. In a few hours, she’d have a completed custom package and a very satisfied client. Because she knew what the hell she was doing without explaining every damn step of the process to her business partners.

Did she need to know why Emmaline selected eucalyptus over asparagus fern as filler in an arrangement?

No, she did not.

Did she need to know Laurel’s secret ingredient for butter-cream frosting?

Right back with the no.

Did she need to discuss Parker’s latest entry in her Crack-Berry?

Dear God, no.

So why the hell did anyone care what filter she planned to use or which camera bodies she’d decided to strap on?

They did theirs, she did hers, and everybody was happy.

She pulled her weight. She put in the time, the effort, the hours the same as the rest. She . . .

She cut the damn mat wrong.

Disgusted, Mac tossed the ruined board across the room. She grabbed another, checked and rechecked her measurements. But when she lifted her mat knife, her hand shook.

With considerable care, she set it down, then took two steps back.

Yes, she knew when she’d acted the bitch, she thought. And she knew when she had to get a grip on herself. As in right now. She knew, too, she admitted with a sigh, when she owed two of the people she loved most in the world an apology.

Even if they had been snotty—and they damn well had—she’d been snotty first.

She checked the time and sighed. She couldn’t do it now. Couldn’t get this weight off, not when Parker was currently escorting clients through the house.

We’re full service. We can tailor every detail to reflect your needs, and your vision of the day. Here’s our crazy bitch of a photographer who’ll be documenting that day for you in pictures.

Wouldn’t that be perfect?

She stepped into the powder room to splash cold water on her face. They were her friends, she reminded herself. They had to forgive her. That was the rule.

Steadier, she went back into her studio.

She let her machine take her calls and gave her current task all her concentration. When she’d finished she decided the client would never know the package had been created by a bitch in the throes of a massive attack of self-pity. Once everything was loaded in her car, Mac drove to the main house.

True, they had to forgive her, but first she had to ask. That was another rule.

Out of habit, she went in the back. When she stepped into the kitchen, she saw Laurel working at the prep counter. With a hand steady and precise as a surgeon’s, she monogrammed heart-shaped chocolate.

Knowing better than to interrupt, Mac held her silence.

“I can hear you breathing,” Laurel said after a moment. “Go away.”

“I just came in to eat some crow. I’ll be quick.”

“Make that very. I’ve got another five hundred of these to finish.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for acting that way, for saying those things. Things I didn’t mean in the first place. I’m sorry for walking out on the meeting.”

“Okay.” Laurel laid down her brush and turned. “Now, the question would be why.”

Mac started to speak, found her throat snapped shut. The sudden barrier had her eyes filling. She could only shake her head as tears spilled over.

“Okay, okay.” Laurel crossed over, folded Mac into a hug. “It’s going to be all right. Come on. Sit down.”

“You have five hundred chocolate hearts to monogram.”

“It’s probably more like four hundred and ninety-five at this point.”

“Oh, God, Laurel, I’m so stupid!”

“Yeah, you are.”

Quickly, efficiently, Laurel had Mac sitting at the counter with a box of tissues and a small plate of as yet unadorned chocolate hearts.

“I can’t take your candy.”

“It tastes a lot better than crow, and I’ve got plenty.”

Sniffling, Mac took one. “You make the best.”

“Godiva should tremble in its boots. What happened, honey? Was it your mother? Light went on,” she added when Mac didn’t speak. “Right after you did the outraged stalk.”

“Why can’t I suck it up, Laurel?”

“Because she knows every button to push when it comes to you. And no matter how much you suck up, she’s got more.”

It was, Mac had to admit, the heart of the target. “It’s never going to change.”

“She’s never going to change.”

“Meaning that’s on me.” Mac took another bite of chocolate. “I know it. I do. I said no. I said no, and I meant no, and I would’ve kept saying it even if Del hadn’t taken the phone and hung up on her.”

In the act of getting down a glass, Laurel glanced back. “Del was there?”

“Yeah, he came by to tease me about Carter—which is a whole other area of what the hell am I doing—and she called from Florida wanting another couple thousand so she could stay another week and finish her recovery.”

“I’ll give Del credit for hanging up on her, but he should’ve come back here to tell us.”

“I asked him not to.”

“So what?” Laurel demanded. “If he had any sense, he’d have done what you needed not what you asked. Then you wouldn’t have wallowed all night and woken up the bitch.”

She set a glass of ice water beside the chocolate. “Drink that. You’re probably dehydrated. How many times did she call after Del left you alone?”

“It’s not his fault. Twice. I didn’t answer.” Mac heaved a sigh. “I’m really sorry I took it out on you.”

“What are friends for?”

“Let’s hope Parker sees it that way. Can I take these up, to sort of sweeten the deal?”

Laurel chose two white chocolate hearts from her supply. “She’s no match for the white chocolate, and you might need the edge. Me, you just pissed off. Easy to get over it. You hurt her feelings.”

“Oh, God.”

“I figure it’s better you know that going in. She’s pissed, too, but it’s the hurt feelings you’ll need to get down to.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Knowing Parker, and she did, Mac went directly to the conference room. The
incident
had occurred there, so Parker-logic dictated its follow-up would take place in the same venue.

As she’d expected, Parker sat at the table working with her Crack—her BlackBerry. The fire had calmed to a cozy simmer, and the coffee had been replaced with the bottle of water Parker was rarely without. Her laptop sat open and beside it rested a tidy stack of files and printouts.

Parker was never anything but
prepared
.

As Mac came in, Parker set the BlackBerry aside. Her face was cool and blank. Her business-to-attend-to face, Mac knew.

“Don’t say anything. Please. I come bearing chocolate and every possible variety of apology. You can have as many of them as you want—the chocolate and the apologies. My behavior was ass-hatty in the extreme. Everything I said was from the box of stupid I brought in with me. Since I can’t take it back, you have to forgive me. You don’t have a choice.”

She set the plate down. “There’s white chocolate.”