On the Way to a Wedding (12 page)

There was a knock on the door, and both Isabelle and Toria stopped moving.

Another knock.

“I’ll get it,” Toria said, with a lot of tiredness in her voice. Or resignation. She set her wine glass on the table and reached for her crutches.

“Sit down,” Ryder said. “I’ll get it.” He walked to the door and pulled it open.

“Who are you?” the man in the hall asked. He wore a three piece suit that belonged in an office like Pro’s.

“Ryder O’Callaghan,” Ryder said, watching the man. “Who are you?”

“I’m Greg Lorimer.” A slight pause. “Victoria’s fiancé.”

Victoria?
For no reason in particular, Ryder didn’t like the man. Not one bit. Neither of them made a move to shake hands.

“What are you doing here?” Lorimer asked.

“He’s with me,” Isabelle said, hustling up beside him.

What the hell . . . ?

He almost jerked his head toward Isabelle, but he forced himself to keep his eyes on Lorimer. Maybe this guy was the jealous type. Maybe Isabelle was covering for Toria?

“He’s a friend of my nephew’s,” Isabelle said, like it was true.

“Hello, Isabelle,” Lorimer said. “What are
you
doing here?” He made it sound as if Isabelle had no business spending time with
his
fiancée. Then he walked into the apartment.

“Toria hurt her foot,” Isabelle explained and hurried after Lorimer into the living room.

Feeling ignored, Ryder shrugged and closed the door.

Lorimer stood on the other side of the small coffee table staring down at Toria. He picked up the empty bottle of Summer Island Cherry Blossom Rosé and read the label.

“Don’t feed her this stuff, Isabelle. You know it doesn’t agree with her.”

Toria stayed on the couch but she held her crutches in front of herself.

Lorimer set the bottle back on the coffee table, and looked at the pizza box, two pieces left. “So you’ve eaten,” he said. “I thought we were going out.”

Toria didn’t say anything. Ryder remembered her reaction to the peaches . . . with the brandy. The 292s were making her sleepy. Especially with the wine.

“How’s your ankle, darling?”

Standing near the entrance, Ryder listened, the sounds jarring in his head. He frowned. The way Lorimer said
darling
didn’t sound like . . .
darling
.

“Hurts a bit,” she said. “It’ll be all right.”

“I never had time to find out what happened. Whose fault was the accident?”

“No, you didn’t have time. You were in the middle of a deal.”

“Which was quite successful, by the way,” he answered. “So, whose fault was it? Does this mean your insurance rates will go up?”

“It was no one’s fault. I drove off the road.”

“Not paying attention, again, Victoria?”

Victoria?
There it was again. How come he called her, Victoria?

“It’s a bad road. Full of potholes.”

“Which road?”

“The one she was on,” Isabelle said, intervening. “Would you like some pizza, Greg?” She offered him the box, bumping it into him.

Lorimer took the box, stared at it a moment like he didn’t recognize it, and then sat next to Toria with the box in his lap. No one said anything. Lorimer watched the pizza languishing on the cardboard, Isabelle studied the label on the wine bottle with the corkscrew still sticking out of the top of it. And Toria stared at her wedding gifts on the blue cement block bookshelves.

It seemed unreal. One minute they’d been laughing about how to explain the garden hoses to the janitors, and in the next moment they were acting all guilty, as if her fiancé had caught the three of them playing strip poker. A horrible image when he looked at Isabelle.

Not a bad image when he looked at Toria. In fact . . . not bad at―

He should leave. Right away. He had no business being here. Even if he wasn’t imagining a game of strip poker.

“I’d better be going,” he said.

And he left.

· · · · ·

Ryder was gone. It was just as well. Before he came back, she would somehow talk Isabelle out of this ridiculous waterfall idea, borrow Isabelle’s car, and drive to Kalispell to see Aunt Glenda. And then maybe Toria could put her life back in order.

Greg finished the last piece of pizza, then tapped his fingers over his lips, brushing away imaginary pizza crumbs. Isabelle sat in the chair that had held the wedding dress, looking like she was chaperoning.

“Who is that guy?”

Someone I actually enjoy being with―

No. He’s an infatuation. A reaction to the circumstances. Nothing more.

“A friend of my nephew’s,” Isabelle said, again.

Isabelle was trying to protect her, as if she needed protection, from Greg.

A lightness touched her, waved through her, like a window opening to freedom. She smiled, knowing she could deal with Greg.

But Ryder? What about him? Did she need protection from Ryder?

Of course not. At least, she hoped not. Just because she had enjoyed having him here, having him sitting next to her, that didn’t mean anything. Did it?

“We needed him to carry up some wedding things,” Isabelle explained.

Toria almost laughed, because it was true.

“I see,” Greg said, dismissing Ryder as any kind of problem. Greg handled problems all day. That was his job—to make problems go away.

Now he was looking at her bookshelves. “You should start moving that stuff to your mother’s house.”

Feathery tentacles of fear touched the edges of her mind. But the wine, and probably the pain killers, blunted her response, and it took a moment to get out the words. “I won’t be doing that.”

“We’ve been over this, Victoria.”

“I’m not living in my mother’s house.” The words slipped out. Of course she wasn’t living there. She’d never agreed to that particular idea.

“Don’t worry, darling. She’ll be in a different part of the house. She’ll have her own little suite and she’ll be―”

“I never agreed to that.” And it’s irrelevant, she thought. “We aren’t―”

“I’ve put the Eau Claire condo on the market.”

What?
When had he decided that?

“I thought you were just getting the condo appraised?”

“That was the first step, and now it’s on the market. I want the Varsity Estates house.”

Want?
When had
this
happened? “That’s why you want to marry me? For my father’s house?”

“You shouldn’t drink wine, darling.”

Odd bits of conversation tumbled through her mind. Greg telling her mother not to worry about money, her mother’s suddenly important renovations.

“You never intended for us to live in the condo, did you?”

Toria was aware of Isabelle in the background, sitting with ankles crossed and arms folded, leaning back in the chair. Watching.

“See what I mean?” Greg said, making it sound like an endearment. “You’re drunk, darling.”

“I’m not. I had two glasses.” Why was she arguing about how much wine she’d drank?

He lifted the pill container from the pharmacy. “What is this?” he asked, sounding so reasonable.

She hated Reasonable. She had lived with Reasonable for too long. “I told you I am
not
marrying you.”

“Of course you are.”

Her breath caught as a suffocating blanket of memories pressed against her. She shook her head and cleared her mind. “Isabelle, in my bedroom on the dresser, bring me that ring.”

Isabelle popped out of her chair and left the room.

“Were you angry?” Greg asked.

“What?”

“Driving angry? Is that why you—what did you do?”

Don’t answer the question. He’s distracting you
. “I made a sharp turn and hit the ditch.”

Don’t talk to him!

She felt the ring, the pinch of the sharp diamond as Isabelle pressed it into her hand. Toria looked at the platinum band, then with the ring on her palm, she held it out to Greg. “Take it. I’m not your fiancée.”

I’m not your property to manage
.

Greg stared at her for a beat, never looking at the diamond. Then his lip lifted on one side. “I’m not taking that ring. I’d just have to give it back to you.”

And with that, he calmly stood, and walked out the door.

Isabelle bounced out of her chair, rushed over to the door and locked it. Then she spun around, with a twirl of her flowery full skirt and with her hands held in front of her, fingertips touching. “That went well,” she said.

It did?

Toria held the ring between her thumb and index finger, twisting it in the evening sunlight coming through the balcony windows. The diamond was perfectly cut, Greg had said. Multi carat . . . she should remember the number. And expensive. The light bounced around inside the gem, trapped there.

“What do I do with this?”

“We’ll courier it to his office,” Isabelle said. “He’ll have to sign for it.”

“You’re right,” Toria said. “Good idea.”

Isabelle took the diamond. “I’ll do it first thing tomorrow morning.”

Chapter Seven

Ryder watched from his truck as Greg Lorimer exited the building and got into this year’s model of the BMW Z4 Coupe. A second later, boom boxes cranked up and pounded over the still night air.

As relief washed through him, he loosened his grip on the steering wheel and tipped his head down. He didn’t know what he would have done if Isabelle had left first.

Lorimer was driving away, a flash of red and chrome and noise, past the restored Firebird.

Now Ryder allowed himself to look at the Firebird. The classic muscle car lined up next to the geranium filled flower boxes along the circular drive of Dalhousie Towers. It waited, like a limousine, parked opposite the place where Lorimer had parked his Bimmer. The Firebird glowed in the late evening sunshine.

The color looked close to the original, a brilliant orange. Headers protruded from the hood, giving the car a commanding presence. He wished he had time to take a closer look at the vehicle . . . wished he knew the owner. Probably some creative teenage genius.

Besides the Firebird, three other cars remained on the circular drive. A rusty blue Astro minivan, a relatively new Honda Accord—maybe three years old, and an ancient Oldsmobile station wagon. That would be what Isabelle was driving. Or would she take the bus? Probably the bus.

Maybe she’d spend the night with Toria? That would be good. He could go now. He touched the key in the ignition, but his hand froze and he couldn’t turn the key. He couldn’t turn the engine over. So he didn’t like the guy. So what? Lorimer was typical of Toria and the crazy cast of characters that populated her life. This was none of his business.

He saw a flicker of green and orange and red just past the entrance doors. Someone was coming out of the building―

Isabelle.

She squeezed her large pink canvas bag tightly to her chest, like she was carrying something important. Her long flowery skirt fluttered in the breeze over top of her purple and orange striped stockings, and her frizzy blonde hair rippled like a flag. Pausing by the entrance, she reached inside her bag and pulled something out. He couldn’t see what it was, it was too small, but she was staring at it, studying it in the light of the setting sun, like she was trying to decide what to do with it. And then she seemed to―

Yes. She pushed it on her finger. A ring. Something to complete the eccentric wardrobe.

She fished in the bag again. This time she’d find her bus pass. Maybe he should offer to drive her home? But then, how would he explain still being here? He could say his truck wouldn’t start or―

A flash of metal in the dimming light. Not a bus pass. She was holding a set of keys. She did have a car, but―

It couldn’t be. She was getting into the Firebird. The orange Firebird with the headers and the attitude.

He touched his forehead to the steering wheel and closed his eyes for a second. When he looked up again, she was driving away, spinning the tires momentarily. She probably didn’t realize how much power she had.

So, he thought, Isabelle was gone. And so was Lorimer. The entrance to the building stood empty. Inviting . . .

A sense of anticipation swirled around him, lightly touching him, like the first flakes of snow coming out of the sky. Then he remembered. He still had her pink insurance card. He pulled the keys from the ignition. And smiled.

Not only that, he needed the address for the school. It would be a lot of fun to build that waterfall.

A moment later, he buzzed her apartment.

“What!” she snapped.

Whoa. What’s up with her?
“It’s me,” he said. “I forgot to give you―”

Before he could finish what he was saying, the lock buzzed open. Just like that.

He opened the door and stepped inside, pausing as it closed behind him. She hadn’t answered when Lorimer had buzzed. What was going on? Were they fighting? The thought made him happy.

Stupid, thinking that. And no, it didn’t make him happy, he told himself, feeling contented. Just a—what did they call it?

A lover’s quarrel. Could be anxiety about the imminent wedding. If he was getting married in three weeks, he’d probably feel the same way.

Except . . . he
was
getting married in three weeks.

Right
.

A jerk of realization stunned him. He saw the date in his head, saw it circled on his calendar, like an oil change due date.

Less
than three weeks. It was Tuesday already. Both he and Toria were getting married in two and a half weeks. And now she was having some kind of argument with her fiancé.

Ryder, on the other hand, never got upset with Catherine.

Except, well, there was the poodle―

Then he had an unconnected thought, anxiety for Toria, and a feeling of protectiveness. He frowned.

How
had
Lorimer got in? Had someone else let him into the building?

Must have, he decided, looking around the small lobby. And that was not a good thing. Letting someone in who didn’t belong here.