The Inconvenient Bride (13 page)

“And it was your mission in marrying Sierra to teach them that?”

“Of course not. But—”

“No, it wasn't. It was your mission in marrying Sierra to show me up. What I want to know is, did you stop and think how all this was going to affect Sierra?”

Oh, now he was going to make it seem like Sierra was a victim? Anyone less like a victim Dominic couldn't imagine. “She didn't have to say yes!”

“Why did she?”

It was like being socked in the gut. A simple mild question that cut straight to the bone. As if Sierra had had no more reason to marry him than Carin—who hadn't.

“Go to hell, “he said through his teeth.

“Sorry,” his father said quickly. “I didn't mean—” He cleared his throat, but didn't speak.

What, after all, Dominic wondered, was there left to say?

But being Douglas, of course, he found something. “I'm giving a reception for you, Dominic. For you and Sierra.”

“Why? So you can hurt her the way you think she shouldn't be hurt?” Dominic said bitterly.

“If you believe that, you're no son of mine.”

“Then why?”

“To show a little family solidarity. She's your wife. She's my daughter-in-law. She's a part of Wolfe's now.”

“Lucky her,” Dominic muttered. Then, “Fine,” he said recklessly, “have a reception for us. Invite the whole damn city if you want.”

“A
RECEPTION
?” Sierra beamed at the news. They were walking through Central Park on Sunday afternoon. The sun was shining. People were playing Frisbee and walking dogs and tossing footballs and, according to Sierra, all was right with the world. “How nice of him.”

Dominic didn't think it was nice at all.

For all that the old man had blathered on about family solidarity, Dominic knew the people who would be there—most of whom wouldn't be family, and a great many of whom would have an opinion about Sierra with her purple hair and her funky clothing—and the opinion wouldn't be good.

Personally he didn't give a rat's ass what they thought of his wife. But he knew they could freeze a polar bear's toe-nails in their dismissive, haughty, but very genteel way.

And he was damned if he was going to let them hurt Sierra.

The trouble was, he didn't know how to prevent it, short of telling her to dye her hair brown, paint her fingernails pink, and get a dress from some subdued, sophisticated designer. And if he did that, she'd think he was embarrassed to be seen with her.

He wasn't.

Admittedly, it made him a little self-conscious, knowing that peoples' heads turned at the sight of the two of them together. They were turning now at the sight of Sierra in her neon pink spandex top, black leather jeans and wide-brimmed floppy hat, walking alongside him in his Brooks Brothers' khakis and pale blue Oxford-cloth long-sleeved shirt.

“Mr. Buttondown and the free spirit,” Rhys had called them this morning when they'd had brunch with him and Mariah.

“They're good for each other. A balance,” Mariah had said approvingly.

A balance pretty much summed it up. He was still sleeping at one end of the hall and she was at the other. She talked with him, laughed with him, cooked with him, watched TV with him. But she hadn't touched him since the night they'd fought. It had been two weeks.

“When is the reception?” Sierra asked him now. “And where?”

Douglas had called right before they'd gone out, giving Dominic the final information. He told Sierra now, “This coming Friday. He's rented a yacht. A dinner cruise down around the tip of Manhattan Island and up the East River, then out by the Statue of Liberty.”

Sierra looked delighted. “Fantastic. How romantic with the sunset and the city skyline as a backdrop!”

“And three hundred of the old man's nearest and dearest friends and associates.”

Sierra blinked. “Whoa. That's a lot. But Rhys and Mariah will be there, won't they?”

Dominic nodded. “Nathan, too. Dad said he'd told Nath to turn up, and apparently he's going to.”

Nathan, the middle brother, was a globe-trotting photographer, the one son who'd eschewed any interest in the family business—or the family, for the most part.

But apparently when Douglas meant family solidarity, he meant
all
the family, even if he had to haul them back from the ends of the earth.

“I'm looking forward to meeting him. Is he anything like you?”

“More like you. He doesn't own a suit.”

“Heaven forbid.” She laughed. “Still, it will be fun, don't you think?”

Dominic forced a smile. “Sure. It'll be great.”

And if anyone gave her any grief, they'd better hope they could swim!

 

Friday evening. 6:00 p.m.

The moment of truth.

And as far as Sierra was concerned, definitely one of those
Anna and the King of Siam
moments. One of those mind-shattering, throat-grabbing, pure panic moments where she'd certainly have whistled a happy tune, if only she could have mustered enough spit.

They had boarded the yacht half an hour before.

“Yacht?” she'd said, gaping when she'd first seen it at the Hudson River pier. “It looks more like an ocean liner!”

Dominic had given her a grave smile. But his expression showed him to be almost as nervous as she felt, though exactly what Dominic had to be nervous about she was sure she didn't know!

They were, after all,
his
friends and
his
colleagues,
his
father's choices from
his
particular world. Oh, Finn and Izzy and the kids were coming. So were Chloe and Gib and Brendan, and two or three other couples whose names Dominic had got from her, including Sam and Josie Fletcher and their son, Jake. Not to mention, Rhys and Mariah, Dominic's brother Nathan and, to Sierra's surprise, her own parents.

“Of course I invited them,” Douglas had said just minutes before. “It's only proper.”

Proper.

That was what Sierra was worried about.

Ordinarily she didn't. Ordinarily she just went her merry way, did what she thought was right, and let the chips fall where they might.

But “right” wasn't necessarily the same in the world Dominic often inhabited. And she desperately didn't want to embarrass him.

She loved him, regardless of how he felt about her. And while she didn't think he had any great expectations of marriage—except of course the sex he wasn't getting at the moment—she didn't want him to regret marrying her.

So she was going to try to behave like some finishing school female for the next six hours, even though she thought she might croak.

She wondered again if she should have dyed her hair. She could have gone brown for the affair. It wouldn't have killed her. She'd been a blonde, after all, for Mariah's wedding so as not to shock a hundred impressionable Kansans.

But that had been for Mariah's wedding, because Sierra hadn't wanted to attract attention that should rightly have been her sister's. It had been right then to fade into the background.

Somehow, even though it might have made things easier, she couldn't bring herself to do it here. It would have felt like a copout. It would have seemed, even if only to her, that she wasn't being true to herself.

So her hair was still pretty purple—sort of more of a black cherry, actually—and she'd done it sleek and shining, then because they would be outdoors for a good part of it, she wore a broad-brimmed pink hat. Her dress was silk, purples and pinks, short and stunning, sleeveless with a high neckline. Very basic, yet very Sierra. Not as funky as some of her clothes, but not likely to turn up in the next issue of
Town and Country,
either.

It made her feel as if she could almost cope.

“They're boarding,” Rhys came in to report. The guests, he meant. When they came on board, they would go through a sort of modified reception line, just Sierra and Dominic, her parents and Douglas.

“So everyone gets to meet the bride,” Douglas said cheerfully. “Won't take long. Then you can move around and visit with people. Then dinner and dancing. You look
wonderful, my dear.” He gave Sierra an encouraging smile and looked as if he actually meant it.

She smiled back, then put her hand on Dominic's black tuxedo jacket sleeve and took a deep breath.

“You all right?” Dominic asked her. He sounded worried.

“Fine,” Sierra said briskly. She gave him her best whistling-in-the-dark grin, and made up her mind that she was telling the truth.

 

No one was rude to her face.

Of course they were all too proper for that, too well brought up, too genteel. Dominic knew they wouldn't do anything so impolite as to say what they were thinking, nor would they be so obvious as to catch a glimpse of the bride, then turn and walk away.

But sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, he saw people looking askance. The women, of course, more than the men. He heard mutters. The occasional indrawn breath of astonishment followed, naturally, by disapproval.

He gritted his teeth, smiled politely, said all the appropriate things. And hoped Sierra didn't hear.

She gave no sign that she did. She was as warm and friendly and engaging as she always was. She sparkled in public, like a jewel.

Costume jewelry, Dominic imagined most people would think, looking at her.

But it wasn't true. Sierra was as deep and radiant as the finest diamond. Her beauty came from within, not from what she chose to wear.

“Whatever could he have been thinking?” he heard just then, the voice a carrying whisper almost right behind them. Dominic turned slightly to see one of his mother's old bridge club members, Sylvia Ponsonby-Merrill, using her driving glasses to take another look at his bride.

“I really can't imagine.” This voice was even more fa
miliar. Younger. Mellifluous and carefully cultured. “I'm sure he
wasn't
thinking,” she said. It was Marjorie—she who'd demanded an engagement ring in return for her favors—disapproving now in honeyed tones. “Or,” she added with a small laugh, “certainly not with his head!”

Sierra was speaking to Talitha Thomas, the widow of one of his father's oldest friends. Talitha was patting her hand and beaming up at her, and Sierra was smiling and clasping the old woman's hand. She didn't falter once, but all the same, Dominic was sure she heard the exchange between Sylvia and Marjorie.

He wondered if either of them could swim.

Then his father appeared and invited the two of them to admire the sunset from the top deck, and the conversation turned to other topics.

Sierra went right on talking to Talitha.

On her behalf, though, Dominic fumed.

 

At first it was awful.

Like the first day of school in kindergarten, when you knew hardly anybody, and no one wanted to know you.

But no one ever did, Sierra had discovered, if you didn't try to know them. So that's what she set out to do. Every person Dominic introduced her to was an interesting individual. And she made sure to show she understood that. Most of them responded politely and, if they were reserved at first, the majority, by the time she'd finished talking to them, responded with at least a little warmth.

A few, of course, did not.

She told herself she didn't care. For herself she did not. But she hated that they thought less of Dominic because of her.

Not all of them did.

Tally Thomas, for instance. What a delightful surprise to see Tally there. The sprightly octogenarian had been one of Sierra's first clients when she'd come to New York. Tally
had been a regular at the little salon on Madison where Sierra had first found a job cutting hair, and one day when her regular stylist was ill, she'd made do with Sierra.

After that she'd insisted on Sierra always doing her hair.

She'd followed Sierra through three more salons until Sierra had told her she was going to go to Paris. Then Tally had given her a series of French lessons. “So you don't let them get the best of you,” she'd said, with a twinkle in her eye.

Sierra had loved the lessons and she hadn't forgotten Tally's kindness. Though she hadn't seen Tally much since she'd come back and was working on photo shoots now, she was delighted to see her first real client.

Tally was equally thrilled to see her. “Who'd have thought it!” she'd said, clasping Sierra's hands in her own. “Never would've dreamed one of Douglas's boys would have such good sense!”

“Dominic's brilliant,” Sierra had assured her, watching her husband out of the corner of her eye. He had stiffened at the voices of two women behind them, and what they were saying made Sierra stiffen, too, though she did her best to pretend she hadn't heard.

They didn't matter, she assured herself.

Only people like Tally mattered. Kind people. Loving people.

And, of course, Dominic.

“My secretary, Shyla,” Dominic was introducing her to now.

And Sierra put the other women out of her mind and took Shyla's hand. “I'm so glad to meet you. How does Deirdre like her Yankees' cap?”

Shyla laughed. They talked, compared notes on Dominic, and, Sierra was delighted to see, made him blush.

Then Mariah appeared and said, “It's time to go sit down and eat.”

“You okay?” Dominic asked her.

And Sierra nodded. Yes, she was.

 

She'd said she was fine.

Then she disappeared.

They ate dinner, cut the cake, fed each other bites of it, and she was smiling and happy, then told him she needed to wash her hands, headed for the ladies' room—and disappeared.

“You're supposed to be dancing. The bride and groom lead out the dancing,” Rhys said into his ear. Dominic was pacing the deck. He'd been over all of them looking for her when she hadn't reappeared. He'd seen everyone, smiled and shook hands and met some curious gazes, and he could hardly say he'd mislaid his bride, so he'd kept looking by himself.

But she didn't seem to be anywhere!

“You and Mariah dance,” Dominic said now, brushing Rhys off.

“We're not the bride and groom.”

“Well, pretend you are,” Dominic said through his teeth. “Sierra's not here!”

“What the hell do you mean, not here? This is a boat, for God's sake! Where could she be?”

“How the hell should I know? She went to the head and she never came back.”

“Maybe she's still there.”

“It's been half an hour!”

“Did you look?”

“Of course not. I didn't go busting in. It's not a unisex bathroom.”

“Did you ask?”

Dominic grunted. “You don't go around asking for your lost bride.”

“Well, no, I never have,” Rhys said cheerfully, “but I've never lost mine.”

“Since you married her,” Dominic said pointedly. He
wasn't going to allow Rhys very much smugness. His brother had screwed things up pretty badly with Mariah before he'd come to his senses and begun to live happily ever after.

“Since then,” Rhys agreed. “Want me to ask?”

Dominic didn't want anything of the sort, but it was better to have Rhys ask than to do it himself. “If you want,” he said offhandedly. “But don't tell them I sent you!”