The Wedding Dress (4 page)

“No, I wouldn’t do that to you, but if this goes to trial, people will find out. Edward Farleigh wasn’t the biggest author in the world, but he was big enough that people will be interested, and we won’t be able to stop that.”

As he spoke, Anne tried desperately to make sense of the way her life had turned upside down in the last twenty-four hours.

“Even though you’re certain that your father couldn’t do this, you should still go to the mediation. I’ll be right outside, Anne, I promise. It will just be you, Jasmine, her lawyer, and a professional mediator. Go there and prove your case. Show Jasmine and the mediator that you’re right. Please at least talk to them. It’s the best thing to do.”

Part of her knew that Gareth was right. Going to this meeting would be the only way to deal with the situation before it ruined her father’s reputation. Yet it seemed so unfair that someone could just show up and start questioning his marriage and behavior.

Just as unfair as her parents’ sudden deaths. They shouldn’t have been snatched away like that. And now, she thought as her eyes filled up with tears, someone was trying to take away her memories of them, too.

Chapter Seven

Gareth’s gut clenched tight as Anne started crying. Even if another investigator might have tried to ignore the pain of this sweet, funny, beautiful woman, he couldn’t do it. Instead, he had to reach out to try to soothe her by putting a comforting arm around her.

He honestly expected her to flinch at his touch. He was the enemy, after all. So when she surprised him, yet again, by putting her head on his shoulder and sinking down onto the couch with him while she cried, he couldn’t stop himself thinking about how perfect it felt to hold her like this.

“It’s going to be all right,” he promised.

She turned her face to his so that he was looking into the depths of those perfectly blue eyes…close enough that their lips were just a few inches apart.

“Gareth,” she said, his name barely more than a whisper.

He had dated plenty of beautiful, intelligent, talented women. Yet not
one
of them had made him feel the way Anne was making him feel right now. What was more, not one of them had made him want to open up to them; to let them into the parts of himself that he kept hidden.

Maybe it was because, even after having known her only a day, he sensed that Anne would never take advantage of him in any way.

So when she started to close the rest of the distance between them, her lips moving closer slowly, almost imperceptibly, Gareth wanted to pretend that he couldn’t see it coming, so that he could stay there and let this wonderful woman kiss him.

But he couldn’t.

Not when she was on the other side of a case from him.

The rules for a situation like this were clear. And he’d always lived his life strictly by the rules.

Pulling back, taking his arms from around her, and standing up was one of the most difficult things he’d ever done. But he did it anyway.

“I need to give you these again.” He took the envelope of legal papers out of his pocket and handed them to her.

Gareth’s gut twisted yet again at the clear disappointment—and hurt—on Anne’s face as she stood. He wished he could confess that he’d been drawn to her from the moment he first saw her. And that he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted any other woman.

Only, actually saying either one of those things would be completely unprofessional.

And totally against the rules.

Helping her navigate the legal case as cleanly as possible was all he could do.

“Gareth, did I do something wrong?”

“No, of course you didn’t,” he said softly. “Please promise me that I’ll see you at the mediation tomorrow.”

Anne stared at him for a long moment before finally nodding. “All right. Are you sure you won’t stay, though? For tea, or…?”

It would have been so easy to say yes. So easy, and, with Anne, so perfect. But he couldn’t break the rules like that.

Not even for her.

“I have to get back to the office.”

It was hard, keeping things flat and professional, heading for her front door like nothing was wrong. He managed to walk all the way out to his car without looking back, but he risked a glance in the rearview mirror, and saw Anne wave good-bye. Like it had been a friendly visit from some old acquaintance.

Of course, they’d almost become a lot more than that.

He couldn’t stop thinking of what it might have been like to close that distance between them and taste the sweet softness of her lips rather than pulling away.

“Stop it,” he told himself aloud. “It’s not going to happen. It
can’t
happen.”

Gareth put his Jaguar in gear and got out of there, because every moment he spent looking at her was another one he had to fight not to go back into the house and finish what they’d nearly started on the sofa.

* * *

“Did you do it?” Margaret asked when he walked back into his office.

Gareth nodded, even as his gut twisted at the memory of Anne’s tears.

“I’m proud of you,” she said, and then, “There’s a visitor waiting in your office, but I need to talk to you about that first, because—”

Gareth wasn’t in the mood to wait. Dealing with a new client was exactly what he needed, the only way he’d manage to get thoughts of Anne out of his head.

He pushed his office door open and stepped inside. “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, Ms.…Kyra, what are you doing here?”

Brian’s girlfriend stood up and smiled at him. “Gareth, it’s good to see you again.” Her voice was soft and warm, despite all that had happened six months ago. “Brian said you wouldn’t want to see me, and that you would be angry with me.”

“It’s not you I’m angry with.”

“Your secretary was very protective. She didn’t want to let me wait for you.” Kyra shook her head. “All this anger. Can’t we get past it? You and Brian used to be inseparable.”

“That was before he broke the rules,” Gareth said.

“Yes,” she admitted, “he broke a few rules. But he loves me and my son, and he only wants what’s best for us. In my experience, as long as no one gets hurt, doesn’t love matter the most?”

“Rules matter,” Gareth insisted. “If they don’t, there’s chaos, and everything breaks down.”

Brian’s girlfriend stepped back from him. “I’m not here to argue with you. I’m here to give you an invitation.”

Gareth was instantly wary. “What kind of invitation?”

“Brian and I are getting married. We’re having an engagement party later this week, and we want you to be there. Brian hasn’t said it, but I know it’s what he wants. And that he’s hoping the two of you will be able to put the past behind you. Please say you’ll at least think about it.”

She put the invitation on his desk and walked out of his office. Gareth stared at the thick cream paper, wondering how Kyra could possibly think that he’d want to go to their engagement party or that he’d be okay with spending time with Brian again when his friend couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth anymore?

And did he and his girlfriend really think that Gareth could put aside everything he stood for, all of his convictions, just like that for
love
?

Chapter Eight

As Anne picked out her outfit for work the next day, she caught herself sighing for what had to be the dozenth time.

What was wrong with her?

Moping around was so
negative
, and that wasn’t the person she wanted to be. Yet there was something about the thought of what had happened with Gareth yesterday—the almost-kiss that had kept her up half the night replaying it over and over—that was profoundly frustrating. So much so that yet another sigh slipped by her normally optimistic defenses.

In the past few months, she’d seen her friend Phoebe becoming far less cynical about the world thanks to her relationship with Patrick Knight. Anne really hoped that kind of thing didn’t work in reverse too.

It was just, that moment yesterday, when Gareth’s mouth had been just inches from hers and his arms had been around her, had been so good. More than that, it had felt
right
.

She’d spent so many years looking around for Mr. Right, even letting Phoebe and Tyce talk her into occasionally dating one of their friends. Only, with everything Anne had seen of her parents’ marriage, it had just seemed so obvious that she would know when the right person came along. Unfortunately, none of the men she’d dated had ever come close.

Heading downstairs to get breakfast, she put a pot on for tea. While the water boiled, she got a box of cereal out of the pantry and reflected that when she’d been in Gareth’s arms on her couch, she could have sworn there was something special between them: an impossible, perfect connection that she’d felt like nothing could break.

Until he had broken it by pulling back from her.

If they had that kind of connection, then surely he should have felt it too? Surely the thing about perfect love was that it should be perfect, not something that people got confused over, or pulled back from, or…

She looked down and saw that she was pouring tea into her cereal bowl.

“Damn it!”

Anne paused, more than a little horrified with herself for the way she was behaving this morning.

Which brought her to something else she couldn’t make sense of. Her parents had been such perfect, happy, loving counterparts to each other. Whereas Gareth was at the heart of a legal process that was slowly tearing Anne apart inside.

Didn’t that mean he couldn’t possibly be right for her?

And yet, Anne still wished he had closed that gap between them and kissed her yesterday.

Abandoning her breakfast, she walked back over to the pile of boxes all over her floor. On top of one of the boxes was a picture of her mother and father on their wedding day.

Her mother looked radiant in her wedding dress, like a princess. Her father was incredibly handsome in his suit.

Felicity Andrews and
San Francisco
magazine were expecting to use her mother’s wedding dress for the photo shoot. Fortunately, it didn’t take Anne long to find the dress. She’d gotten it out of its box many times over the years to stare at while she waited for inspiration to hit. Just the thought of the love her parents had was always enough to fuel her creative juices.

Now, Anne held the gown up to the light with a critical eye, looking at it the way she would a dress ready to be fitted to a bride. It was beautiful, but there was still a lot of work to do. The beading around the edges had faded over time, and some of the stitching had come loose. It would all need to be redone by hand. She ran the silk of the dress through her fingers, feeling the beading as she went.

Remembering her mother saying the beads had been a special gift from her father for the dress, she wondered if they had picked out the beads together? Or had her father brought them home from one of his book tours? Because he
had
gone on a lot of trips without her and her mother, hadn’t he…

On impulse, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed Rose.

“Hi, Anne,” Rose said, picking up the phone after the first ring. “How are you today?”

“Wonderful,” Anne said automatically, because…well, why wouldn’t she say it? “I’m just starting to work on my mother’s dress for the photo shoot.”

“The magazine feature is going to be a big deal,” Rose said. “It should attract a lot of attention, to you especially.”

“That would be nice,” Anne said. “Plus, it means I get a chance to go through all of my parents’ old things.”

“Ah,” Rose said, “the boxes.”

“The boxes,” Anne agreed, because Rose liked to tease her about the number of them taking up odd corners and closets. Keeping the phone pressed to her ear, she got out the sewing box Rose had given her one year as a birthday present, and started carefully using a needle to unpick the thread of the beading where it was worn. “My mother was always sewing, wasn’t she?”

Anne thought back to her mother greeting the two friends after school with milk and cookies and then sitting with them to gossip about the goings-on at school while she deftly worked at beading with her nimble fingers.

“Yes, I got the sense she loved it but was also trying to keep busy,” Rose said. “Especially when your father wasn’t there.”

That was true. Her father had often been away, and it would be so quiet with just the two of them there together.

“Lots of people spend time apart, though,” Anne pointed out. “Look at Tyce and Whitney.”

“Yes, but as soon as Whitney graduates from vet school, they’re planning to live together full time.”

“What about Phoebe and Patrick?”

“They go back and forth between San Francisco and Chicago so often I never know if I’m going to have a florist or not from one day to the next,” Rose said.

“But they’re deeply in love, aren’t they? Just like you and Donovan. I mean, you don’t always see him every day, because he’s so busy with work, but you’re committed to spending the rest of your lives together.”

“That’s the plan,” Rose said lightly; then her voice turned a little more serious. “Is this about what happened yesterday with the investigator?”

“I’m just saying, even if my father wasn’t here constantly, that doesn’t mean there was anything
wrong
.”

“No, of course not,” Rose replied. “Your father had to tour the country for his work.”

“Exactly.”

Anne was suddenly hit with a vivid picture of the way her mother would stand looking out the window after the taxi had left to take her father to the airport again. She’d tried to keep such a brave face on, but her sorrow had been palpable.

“I know Mom seemed so
lonely
sometimes, but that just shows how much they loved one another, doesn’t it? That they cared about each other so much it hurt every time they were apart. Is it like that with you and Donovan?”

“I see him practically every day. In fact, I’m going to see him in a minute.”

“Darn it, you should have told me I wasn’t calling at a good time.”