The Wedding Dress (5 page)

“Anne, I have all the time in the world for you. And if you need to talk—”

“Say hello to Donovan for me,” she said as she put down the phone and looked back at her mother’s dress.

It was actually romantic, when she thought about it, the way her mother had all but counted the moments until the man she loved returned from the road.

Thinking about it any other way…well, the alternative hurt too much, so Anne threaded a needle instead, getting to work on the beading. It was one of those jobs that wasn’t technically difficult but did require concentration and patience.

All the images she had of her parents’ wedding came from photographs and her vivid imagination, but that didn’t stop her from feeling their love for each other every time she touched the dress. All she needed to do now was—

“
Ow!
”

She sucked her finger until it stopped hurting, and when she was sure she wasn’t going to bleed all over the dress, she told herself to concentrate as she got back to work on the beading. It was proving trickier than expected, because too much force would tear the silk, while not enough wouldn’t get the stitches out.

Anne squinted close as she worked, trying not to think about Gareth, or the case, or…

A snag.

Somehow, she’d snagged the dress. If she wasn’t even more careful now, it could turn into a full-fledged rip.

Finally accepting that she was all thumbs today, right when she couldn’t afford to be, she put aside her mother’s dress carefully, determined not to do any more damage.

What was wrong with her?

But as she glanced at her watch, the answer was painfully obvious. The mediation was going to start in fifteen minutes.

She’d been trying to ignore it all morning, thinking about her parents, the dress, talking to Rose…anything but the thought of sitting opposite a woman claiming to be her sister and trying to be polite while a stranger made
accusations
about her father.

Yet Gareth had been clear that he thought this was the only way to get the whole crazy mess straightened out before it went any further. And she’d promised him that she would go.

Anne found her first real smile of the day as she thought about seeing Gareth again. He’d said that he wouldn’t go inside the meeting room itself, but she could imagine him standing outside, waiting for them to sort this whole mess out.

He did look so good standing outside places, after all.

And afterward, when the nonsense about her father was resolved…well, Anne could easily imagine laughing with him over it all, and then maybe, just maybe, they could revisit the moment they’d had yesterday. Only without the pulling-away-at-the-last-minute part, of course. And then, once everything was neatly back into place in her life, she would come home and restore her mother’s wedding dress to its original glory.

Chapter Nine

Anne had expected a courtroom, or at least a judge presiding over it, not a small conference room in the courthouse with Gareth standing outside. He looked wonderful in another of those oh-so-formal suits of his that made her want to greet him with a hug just to rumple him a little bit.

A young woman stood beside him, presumably Jasmine Turner. She was blonde with blue eyes, but as far as Anne was concerned their similarities stopped there. Especially if you looked into Jasmine’s eyes, which had a hard glint to them that Anne had never seen when looking into her mirror.

Still, Anne was going to do her best to look for the good in Jasmine Turner. After all, disliking someone at first sight just wasn’t
her
. People almost always turned out to be nicer than you might think when you gave them a chance.

“Hello, Anne,” Gareth said. “This is Jasmine and Richard Wells, Jasmine’s lawyer.”

“She’s late,” Jasmine snapped. “The mediator is inside already.”

“Actually, I’m in the middle of a very important project at work, so I’d like to know how long this will take,” Anne said. “I have to rework the beading on an entire dress and—”

“It will go quicker if you stop talking about dresses,” Jasmine snapped.

The gray-haired lawyer opened the door to the mediation room. “Why don’t we get started?”

Anne nodded. The sooner they did this, the sooner she could show everyone just how delusional they all were. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“That would have been about five minutes ago,” Jasmine immediately replied.

Gareth interrupted in a conciliatory tone. “Remember, the idea here today is to talk things through to see if you can come to an amicable agreement about what should happen next.”

Anne wanted to kiss Gareth for reminding them all to be calm and reasonable.

Instead, the three of them went into the conference room, leaving Gareth behind. A woman wearing a gray business suit peered at them over the rims of her glasses from the head of a large conference table. Jasmine and Richard headed for one side of it, while Anne went for the other automatically. She did her best to maintain her usual happy demeanor, smiling at the mediator as she sat down.

“You must be Jasmine and Anne,” the mediator said, addressing them rather than the lawyer. “I’m Rebecca Williams, and I’ll be mediating this discussion. The aim here today is to see if we can’t avoid the case between the two of you going to court. I’d like this to be an open and polite discussion. I know that often isn’t easy in difficult circumstances, but I won’t allow this to degenerate into an argument. You’ll each have the chance to say everything you need to say, but the price of that is that you have to let the other person speak too.” She turned to focus on Jasmine. “Now, I understand that Ms. Turner is asking for half the estate of Edward Farleigh?”

“I am,” Jasmine said. “It’s what I should have received years ago. I’m only asking for what I deserve.”

The mediator turned to Anne. “And you, Ms. Farleigh, are resisting this claim because—”

“Because this is nonsense,” Anne said. “I’m sorry, but my father would never have cheated on my mother. So there’s no way he could have had an entire other family.”

“Yes, there is!” Jasmine insisted.

The mediator held up her hand. “Ms. Turner, it would be best if you could please tell us why you believe Edward Farleigh to be your father.”

Richard Wells opened the file folder he’d brought in and slid it in front of his client.

“While my mother raised me by herself, there was a man who came to the house sometimes when I was a little girl. I didn’t know who he was, but when I got older, and it was just me and Mom, and I started asking about my father, I couldn’t help wondering if it was him. Finally, a few months ago, she gave me his name.”

“Maybe,” Anne said, trying to be reasonable, “she made one up to get you to stop asking.”

“My mother wouldn’t do that.”

“And my father wouldn’t have had a relationship with someone other than my mother,” Anne countered. “He loved her too much.”

“We’re here to discuss the facts of a case,” Ms. Williams reminded them, “not to speculate about motive.”

Jasmine nodded. “All right. It’s a fact that I saw Edward Farleigh’s photograph in a newspaper. It’s a fact that I recognized him as the man who used to come to the house when I was a little girl. And it’s a fact that when I confronted my mother, she ended up admitting that he is my father.”

“Is your mother here so that we can confirm that?” Ms. Williams asked.

Jasmine looked slightly uncomfortable, shifting in her chair. “She said…she didn’t want to be part of all this.”

Anne smiled to herself. Even this woman’s own mother didn’t want anything to do with her case. Then why should anyone else believe what she said?

“Clearly, if your mother isn’t prepared to go along with this,” Anne said, “you must have made a mistake. Maybe there’s someone who could actually help you find your real father? Someone like Gareth?”

Jasmine rolled her eyes. “He’s the one who helped us put together the rest of the story.”

“You saw this man you think might have been your father what? A couple of times?”

“Closer to a dozen. We’ve pieced together the dates he visited with the dates of the affair he had with my mother. They coincide with dates Edward Farleigh was on book-signing tours.”

“Are you sure you didn’t take a bunch of dates my father was on tour and fit your memories around them?” Anne asked. “Because if you really
wanted
him to be your father—”

“He
is
my father!” Jasmine practically spat at her.

“Why don’t we hear the dates?” Ms. Williams interrupted. “Then we can go from there.”

Jasmine gripped her papers tightly as she started to read from her list.

Anne wasn’t sure what reading the dates would do to help their situation. After all, she had been just a girl at the time, so she hadn’t kept track of the exact dates of her father’s tours.

Until, suddenly, one leapt out at her.

“Did you just say May seventeenth?” She laughed out loud, because she simply couldn’t help it.

It was over. It was finally over.

“What’s so funny?” Jasmine demanded. “Do you think this is a joke?”

Ms. Williams intervened. “Ms. Farleigh, why don’t you tell us what’s so important about May seventeenth?”

Anne smiled. “It’s my birthday. Do you really think that my father, that
anyone’s
father, would spend his daughter’s birthday with some other family? This is ridiculous.”

Jasmine stood, and her lawyer spoke up. “It seems that we made a mistake in trying to resolve this situation with mediation. Thank you for your time, Ms. Williams.” Jasmine didn’t so much as acknowledge Anne as she stalked from the room. Richard Wells hurried out after his client.

Anne didn’t care about either of them as she thanked the mediator and practically bounced her way out of the room to where Gareth was still standing by the door.

He looked at her carefully. “How did it go?”

Anne beamed at him. “I’m glad you talked me into coming today.”

“You are?” Gareth sounded more than a little surprised.

“Yes, I am.” Anne reached out to hug him. “Thank you. If I hadn’t come, then it wouldn’t be over.”

Gareth raised an eyebrow. “Over? You and Jasmine agreed to a settlement that quickly? I’m surprised Richard didn’t say something about it when he left…and he didn’t look particularly happy, either.”

“No, we didn’t agree to a settlement. I simply showed her why she couldn’t possibly be my sister. Even her own mother wasn’t prepared to stand up for her, so what does that tell you?”

“Anne,” he said slowly, “I’m not sure this case will be quite so easy to wrap up. Why don’t you tell me everything that happened?”

“Must I?” Anne asked. “I just want to take this whole stupid mess and put it behind me so that I can get on with my life.”

“I’d feel a lot happier if you did tell me.”

Anne thought for a second or two. Strictly speaking, she should probably be getting home to work on Felicity Andrews’s dress, not to mention her mother’s dress. On the other hand, when the alternative was spending more time with Gareth, it wasn’t exactly a difficult choice.

Especially when she remembered that moment yesterday when they’d been so close to one another.

“Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll tell you everything. But only if you let me tell you over lunch.”

Chapter Ten

Gareth should have said no, of course. Private detectives didn’t go to lunch with the people on the other side of the case they were working. Not unless they were trying to talk them into accepting a settlement. And certainly not because the woman happened to be beautiful and wonderful and impossible to get through to all at once.

So how did he come to be sitting in a small restaurant with views out toward the Golden Gate Bridge, sitting across a table from Anne, and looking into her eyes?

Yes, he needed to find out what had happened in the mediation…but the real reason was that he’d been so swept up in Anne from the first moment he’d set eyes on her walking in the rain that it had been impossible to say no.

Still, he had to try to keep some measure of professionalism. “Now will you tell me how things went in the mediation?”

Anne made a little face. “Just a few more moments, could we pretend we’re simply out enjoying a nice lunch together?”

Gareth didn’t need to pretend to enjoy himself around Anne. And, surprisingly, he found he wasn’t quite ready to ruin the moment by pressing her for more details about the case. “So, you’ve lived in San Francisco all your life?”

Strictly speaking, he knew the answer because he’d done his research for this case, but he just wanted to hear Anne talk. She had a beautiful voice, so full of hope and optimism. He could listen to her talk all day.

Besides, there was something very different about listening to Anne tell her story rather than studying a list of facts he’d compiled about her. Lists of facts didn’t have her infectious enthusiasm, for one. And they didn’t put in all the little details that made a stranger so much more.

“Yes, I’ve lived here all my life in the same house I live in now. What about you?”

“I have a place not that far from here. I moved to the city because there was a good job available with the police here, before…before I went solo.”

She paused as if to digest that new piece of information, before saying, “So you must know all the good spots in the city.”

How, he wondered, had she innately known that he didn’t want to talk about his reasons for leaving the force?

“Actually, apart from traveling around for my cases, I pretty much stay in my neighborhood.”

“You’ve really never gone looking for all the neat little areas in the city?” Anne asked, sounding surprised, like she couldn’t believe that everybody didn’t spend their days wandering around San Francisco.

“I’ve been busy building my own business,” he said, but even he could hear it as the lame excuse it was.

Anne shook her head with a smile, reached out across the table to take his hands in hers. “There are so many wonderful things in this city. Anywhere, if you just look. Come with me.”