The Wedding Dress (2 page)

She started to push the papers back across the table, but Gareth held up a hand to stop her. “Anne, it doesn’t work like that. You’ve been served with legal papers now, and you can’t just give them back. If the two of you can’t resolve things in mediation, then I’m afraid this will have to go to court.”

Court?
She looked at Gareth for several seconds. “I’m really being sued?”

“Yes,” he said with a grave nod tinged with obvious regret, “you’re really being sued.”

Chapter Three

Anne looked as stunned as some of the victims he’d seen in his years on the force, as if she couldn’t believe that the world could actually throw something so awful her way.

It was understandable, of course, given that he’d just shown up at her door to tell her she had a sister she’d never heard of. He wanted to reach out and tell her that everything would be fine, but they were on opposite sides of the case, and his job was to help Jasmine Turner get what she was due.

Still, he found himself saying in a gentler voice than he usually used with the people he served, “Sometimes we don’t know the people closest to us as well as we think we do.” After all, hadn’t his closest friend, Brian, betrayed both him and the law?

“That must be a hard way to look at the world,” she murmured.

Gareth shrugged. “It’s just the way the world is. Things aren’t perfect. People aren’t perfect. The best you can hope for is that if you stick to the rules, you’ll at least end up doing what’s right.” He tried—and failed—to stop himself from saying, “Get yourself a good lawyer, Ms. Farleigh. If you’re planning to fight this, you’re going to need one.”

“Fight it?”

“The alternative is that you agree to Jasmine’s request and give her the share of your father’s estate that we believe she is entitled to. But whatever you eventually decide, you need to attend the mediation. All of the details are in the papers I gave you.” Gareth put it simply and calmly, but Anne still looked shocked.

“But that’s just—” She stood, picking up the teapot to bring it into the kitchen. “I’m sorry, I have work to prepare for tomorrow.”

Gareth understood this was her way of closing down the discussion. He should go, should never have been drinking tea with her in the first place.

Instead, he said, “I take it you design dresses?” He gestured to her sketches and sewing machine.

He welcomed the shift in Anne’s face from wary to passionate as she nodded. “I create wedding dresses for brides at the Rose Chalet.”

He’d heard of the wedding venue through friends on the force who had planned weddings over the years, and knew it was top-notch.

“From what I can see, it looks like you’re very good at it.”

“I love what I do.” She beamed at him, and it felt like his heart actually stopped beating as she said, “I’ve always tried to capture the love that the bride and groom feel for one another. It helps that I saw how deeply in love my parents were.”

He’d been hoping to segue back onto the topic of the legal proceedings more gently than that, but Anne clearly wasn’t going to give him that chance.

“That’s why you don’t want to accept that these proceedings are real, isn’t it?”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to have someone come into your home and accuse your father of—” Her flash of anger left as soon as it had come. “I’m sorry. I imagine you’re really a very nice man. In fact, I’m
sure
you are. It’s just… Excuse me a moment.”

She left the room and came back in with something wrapped up in wax paper.

“There’s always too much wedding cake, and it’s too good to throw away. I thought you might like some. I’ve wrapped it up so it won’t get wet on the way out to your car.”

Gareth had been thrown out of plenty of places over the years, had even left a biker bar headfirst when one of his clients didn’t like being shown proof that his wife was cheating on him. But he’d never had someone throw him out quite like this before.

He took the cake and was heading for the door when he was strangely compelled to put out his hand and say, “Despite the circumstances, it was good meeting you, Anne.”

“You too.”

Her hug took him by surprise, so that for a moment or two he could only stand there. He hadn’t run into many people who hugged rather than shaking hands. And as her delicate curves pressed against him, it was all he could do to hang on to his professionalism, standing perfectly still until she pulled back.

“Good-bye, Gareth,” she said, softly but firmly.

He walked out to his car and climbed in, trying to make sense of everything that had just happened. He didn’t think he’d met anyone with quite such a positive outlook on life before—almost determinedly so—but could anyone really believe there wasn’t even the slightest chance that their parents had cheated?

Gareth returned to his apartment, a luxurious space with views out over the bay. His modern furniture had been picked out for him by an interior designer, because the thought of picking it out by himself hadn’t seemed at all appealing. While he was on the force, he’d had a steady paycheck that could easily cover his monthly payments. Now, however, his income was dependent on the quality and frequency of the cases he was able to take on.

He’d thought the Farleigh case would give him and his assistant Margaret some breathing room. But it hadn’t turned out to be nearly as straightforward as he’d hoped.

Not now that he’d met Anne Farleigh.

Gareth was taking off his jacket when he realized there was something in one of the outside pockets. He unfolded the envelope full of legal papers from his pocket with as much wonder as if it had been a rabbit pulled from a hat.

How had she—

The hug.

Despite himself, Gareth smiled.

Chapter Four

Anne arrived at the Rose Chalet early the next day with her sketch book, fabric samples, and a beautifully organized photo album of wedding dresses she’d designed in the past five years. She was very much looking forward to working with Felicity Andrews from
San Francisco
magazine to help create the perfect wedding for her.

Rose and RJ were in the chalet’s main room cleaning up the mess left from Tyce’s concert. RJ was working to take down the lighting rig, while Rose mopped the dance floor. The chalet’s regular cleaning crew had already mopped, but Rose was never satisfied until everything gleamed.

Always elegant, this morning the chalet’s owner had tossed her suit jacket over a chair and rolled up her shirt sleeves. She’d tied her auburn hair back, which Anne thought showed off her friend’s beautiful cheekbones and deep green eyes well.

Anne had always been impressed with how well Rose and RJ worked together, as if they’d synchronized their movements. They not only cared about one another as friends and co-workers…but Anne had always thought that attraction simmered between them as well.

Only, Rose had a fiancé. And, presumably, she wouldn’t be marrying Donovan if she didn’t love him, so was whatever she felt for the Rose Chalet’s handyman just a passing thing? A friendship that had become a little too close?

Anne had tried to ask Rose that question late one night, but when her friend had turned white and pressed her lips firmly together, Anne had immediately laughed off her question as if it were a joke and changed the subject.

“Need a hand?”

Rose looked up from her mop and smiled. “Hi, Anne, perfect timing. With Phoebe’s and Tyce’s hours shifting a bit lately, we could use the extra help.”

As Anne picked up a garbage bag, she was struck not by the fact that their little family at the Rose Chalet was getting smaller day by day, but by the wonderful additions. First Julie had fallen in love with Andrew, then Phoebe and Patrick had found a love match, and now Tyce and Whitney were together.

Anne had never had that kind of luck when it came to love. She’d dated, of course, and most of the men had been perfectly nice, but romance should be a lot more than just
nice,
shouldn’t it?

One day, she told herself, she’d find a love as pure and wonderful as her parents had.

“Will the whole crew be working on Felicity Andrews’s wedding, Rose?”

Her friend stopped mopping for a moment. “Phoebe will be back from Chicago just in time to come in and do the flowers, Julie and Andrew have agreed to handle the catering, and Tyce has arranged for another band director to take over temporarily while he’s on vacation in Colorado with Whitney.” She sighed. “I’m sure it will go well, but I do wish we had everyone here for the event.”

“We’ll find a way to make it work,” RJ assured her.

“I hope you’re right,” Rose said. “
San Francisco
magazine is
big
. If Felicity doesn’t like what we do for her wedding, then it could really hurt the business. But if she likes it—”

“She’ll love it,” RJ insisted. “Right, Anne?”

“Of course she will.” She smiled reassuringly at her friend, even though it was harder than usual to stay positive and cheerful given what had happened last night with Gareth and those papers he’d tried to give her. “We’re going to knock Felicity’s Jimmy Choo’s off!”

Thirty minutes later, when RJ had finished with the lighting rig and had left the sparkling-clean building, Rose asked, “Are you okay, Anne? You don’t seem quite like yourself this morning.”

“I’m fine,” Anne said quickly, but her accompanying smile was even harder to force than the previous ones had been.

“Anne, it’s me,” Rose said gently. “I’ve known you since we were kids.”

“Since Mrs. McKlusky’s class at school,” Anne reminisced. “Do you remember that boy who always used to—”

Rose shook her head. “Don’t change the subject. I know when there’s something going on with you. Do you want to talk about it?”

No.
She definitely didn’t want to talk about it, or give the whole crazy story any credence at all.

But she also knew that Rose wouldn’t let it go until she came as clean as the shining floors. Because that was what best friends did for each other.

“Last night when I got home, there was a man waiting outside my house in the rain.”

Rose’s eyes widened with alarm. “Are you okay? Did you call the police?”

“Don’t worry,” Anne quickly reassured her, “he practically is the police. And besides, he was a perfect gentleman. Cute too.”

“I’m confused,” Rose said, her expression mirroring her words. “What did he want?”

“He’s a private detective, and he had some silly story about…well, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

Anne forced herself to keep smiling in an attempt to treat last night’s situation like the absurd mistake that it was. “He says my father had a secret daughter from an affair he had twenty-one years ago and that she’s going to sue me for her share of what my parents left me.”

When Rose’s eyes widened, Anne said, “I told you that you wouldn’t believe it. He tried to serve me with court papers, and when I told him he’d obviously made a mistake, he just kept standing outside in the rain.” She paused before adding, “I felt so sorry for him that I invited him in.”

Rose still looked more than a little alarmed as she asked, “What happened then?”

“I poured him tea, he tried to serve me the papers again, and then he left with a piece of cake.”

“Cake?” Rose asked before refocusing on the bigger issue with the same worried frown she’d been wearing since they’d started talking. “He served you with the papers?”

“Oh no, I put them in his jacket pocket when he left.”

“You did
what
?”

By now, Rose looked a lot more than worried. In fact, Anne hadn’t seen her looking like this since the time she’d found those three Australian backpackers sleeping in her front room.

“Anne, you can’t do that.”

“But I did.”

“But you
can’t
.”

This time, Anne was the one frowning. “That’s exactly what Gareth said.”

“Gareth?”

“The detective. Gareth Cavendish.” Despite his reasons for finding her, Anne smiled at the thought of him. “He really was pretty cute.”

Rose had pulled out her phone by then and was scrolling through her contacts. “I don’t care how cute he is. Not when he’s acting for someone who’s suing you. We need to find you a lawyer.”

Anne put her hand on her friend’s arm. “This is a mistake, Rose. My father didn’t do this. He
couldn’t
.”

Rose momentarily looked up from her phone to put an arm around her. “I know how hard this is, but do you think someone would go to the trouble and expense of suing you if they didn’t think they had a reasonable case?”

“But that’s…”

Anne could feel the abyss opening up in the pit of her stomach, but she forced herself to keep smiling. All her life, her smile had been her armor.

As long as she kept smiling, nothing could really be that bad.

“I’m on your side,” Rose assured her. “But you really need to—” She was interrupted by the bell at the front door.

“That must be Felicity Andrews,” Anne said, a wave of relief flooding through her. She hadn’t ever been quite so grateful for the arrival of a client. “We shouldn’t keep her waiting.”

Rose had never left a client waiting a day in her life. But, for once, she looked conflicted. Finally, she said, “Okay, let’s go give the publisher of San Francisco’s biggest magazine the wedding she deserves.”

Chapter Five

“Tell me what happened again,” Gareth’s assistant Margaret requested. The slightly water-stained envelope of legal papers sat on her desk between her computer and the picture of her four children. “I want to be sure I’ve got it straight.”

For fifteen years, they had worked together at the precinct. When he’d left, she’d had enough faith in his ability to succeed as a private investigator to come with him. He couldn’t let her down.

“Why do I get the feeling that you’re enjoying this?”

“Enjoying it?” Margaret shook her head. But she did smile, just a little. “I’m just trying to work out how it is that Gareth Cavendish, the toughest PI this side of anywhere, managed to get himself thrown out of a house by a woman who designs wedding dresses for a living.”