Third Time's the Bride! (12 page)

The man had done his best to convince her to jet off with him while they were in Italy. Or at least join him for a merry romp at one of his villas. She had to admit she’d been tempted. The playboy prince stood a half a head shorter than she did and sported a shiny bald spot at the back of his head, but his teeth gleamed beneath his handlebar mustache and centuries of aristocratic charm oozed from every pore.

“The only way to save me from despair,” he informed her mournfully, “is to introduce me to your so-beautiful mother.”

“Of course,” Dawn said drily. “Mom, this is Carlo di Lorenzo, Prince of Lombard and Marino. Carlo, my mother, Maureen.”

His smile caressed the older woman’s face.

“I see where your daughter gets her beautiful eyes, Signora McGill. They enchanted me from the moment we met in Venice. Now that Dawn breaks my heart by refusing to run away with me, you must help it mend, yes? Come to Rome, and I will show you the city as few people ever see it.”

Maureen McGill was no more proof against that charm than any of the supermodels and starlets Carlo had romanced over the years. Flustered and flattered, she shot her ex-husband a triumphant look and let Carlo claim her full attention.

“Thank God,” Dawn muttered, her knuckles white around the stem of her champagne flute.

Brian eased it gently from her hand and bent to murmur in her ear. “We can ditch this crowd, jump on a jet and be in Vegas in two hours.”

She considered it. Seriously considered it. But the mere fact that he’d made the offer loosened her knots and kicked in the stubborn streak she’d inherited from her mother.

“I would take you up on that in a heartbeat, but you’ve got a puppy to pick up tomorrow, remember? And I want our friends to help us celebrate in the afternoon.”

The wedding was scheduled for 4:00 p.m. Dawn could make it until then. She
would
make it until then.

“Your call,” Brian said, brushing his lips across her cheek. “If you change your mind, just say the word.”

The kiss, the soft promise and another glass of champagne soothed the jagged edges from Dawn’s nerves. The toast Brian offered when they sat down to dinner brought her joy in the occasion flooding back.

He nodded to his son, who scrambled to his feet. A beaming Tommy joined his dad in raising their water glasses.

“To our bright, shining Dawn,” Brian said with a look that wrapped twice around her heart. “She rolls back our night. And...?”

Keyed to his line, Tommy tipped his glass and sloshed most of the water onto the table before finishing happily.

“’N fills us with sunshine ’n smiles ’n stuff.”

* * *

“Great dinner,” Kate drawled some hours later.

She and Callie and Dawn were ensconced in one of the Ritz’s luxurious suites, indulging in what had become their pre-wedding-night tradition. One that harked back to ancient times, when a prospective groom might kidnap his bride and hold her for a full cycle of the moon—an early, preemptive version of the “honeymoon”—to make sure she wasn’t carrying another man’s seed. To prevent that dire happening, a vigilant father would often lock his daughter in a fortified towers or dark, dank cell until delivering her to the church the next day.

This particular tower offered a bird’s-eye view of the Washington Monument just across the Potomac. Floodlights illuminated the column’s gleaming marble, and its red eye winked at the ink-black sky.

“Doesn’t hold a candle to your last rehearsal dinner, though.” Grinning, Kate dunked a strawberry into her nonalcoholic sparkling cider. “Now that was a night to forget!”

“I wish I
could
,” Dawn retorted, shuddering. “I asked myself a half dozen times tonight why I was putting us through all this hoopla again.”

As always, Callie was the voice of calm reason. “Because you love Brian and Tommy and you want us all to share in the celebration of that love.”

“That’s what I told Brian when he suggested we jump a plane and head for Vegas.”

“Like Callie and I would let you ditch us,” Kate huffed.

“I told him that, too.”

“I thought he understood we’re a matched set.”

“If he doesn’t by now,” Dawn said, relaxing for the first time since she’d picked her mother up at the airport, “he will after tomorrow.”

“Hmm.” Still a little indignant, Kate demolished her berry. “Speaking of tomorrow, what time do you want me at the house to help you and Callie set things up?”

“Come anytime, but we don’t have to worry about setting up. LauraBeth is orchestrating everything.”

“Lordawmighty, that woman’s amazing. Can’t you divorce your mom and adopt her instead?”

“I wish!”

* * *

By eleven the following morning, Dawn had repeated that fervent wish at least a half dozen times. She should’ve expected her mother to jump in a taxi and arrive at the gatehouse hours before the afternoon ceremony.

The caterer was busy arranging white folding chairs in the garden. The florist and his assistant had transformed the gazebo into a leafy autumn bower and stood ready to attach small bouquets of fall flowers to the end row chairs when they were set. When Dawn opened the door to her mother, however, Maureen marched in and barely glanced through the open French doors at the crews working under the bright October sun. Her brows were straight-lined in a scowl that started a small knot of tension at the base of Dawn’s skull.

“You won’t believe what your father just did!”

Her furious glance shot from her daughter to Callie and back again. When neither commented, she slammed her purse onto the counter. She was wearing the mother-of-the-bride dress she’d purchased for Dawn’s last wedding. The two-piece, sea-foam green flattered her still-slender figure and would have brought out the color of her eyes if they hadn’t been narrowed to mere slits.

“He had the nerve—the
nerve
!—to call my room and tell me I made a fool of myself last night drooling over the prince.”

Dawn winced, and Callie stepped in instinctively to redirect her mother’s venom, as she and Kate had done so many times in the past.

“You didn’t drool, Mrs. McGill. Carlo’s a delightful, sophisticated man of the world. Of course you would enjoy his company. Dawn and Kate and I do, too.”

“Exactly.” With an angry sniff, she fluffed her sleek bob. “And if he wants me to jet off to the south of France with him, why should anyone care but he and I and...”

“Mommm,” Dawn groaned. “Making outrageous offers to attractive women is as natural to Carlo as breathing. He wanted to carry me off to Marrakech.
Still
wants to carry me off to Marrakech.”

Her mother glommed on to the first part of the comment and ignored the last. “You think I’m still attractive?”

“Of course you are. When you’re not scowling,” she added under her breath.

“Hmm. The prince must be at least ten years younger than I am. Do you think he really...?”

“Mommm!”

“All right, all right!” She cast a critical eye over the other two. “Why are you both just lazing around? And where’s Kate? I can’t believe she’s not here yet. You three always do each other’s hair and makeup before your weddings.”

She made it sound like a tradition forged over a dozen years and an equal number of nuptials. Which, Dawn conceded as tension knotted at the base of her skull, it almost was.

“Kate’ll be here soon,” she said stiffly.

The intercom buzzed at that moment. Dawn pressed the talk button with the same feeling as a prizefighter against the ropes.

“Dad ’n me are making cheese samwiches,” Tommy reported eagerly. “He says he’s not really ’sposed to see the bride before the wedding, but I told him you ’n Callie were probably hungry. Do you wanna have lunch with us?”

Dawn grabbed at the diversion with both hands. “Yes! My mom’s here, too. We’ll all come over.”

“’Kay. Then Dad’s gotta run to do some errand. He won’t tell me what it is. He says it’s important, though.”

* * *

Dawn came within a breath of abandoning her mother to Callie and Tommy and making the run out to Woodburn with Brian to pick up the pup. She resisted the impulse, although it took considerable effort. She kept a bright smile pinned to her face but the tension at the back of her neck took on the low, throbbing resonance of a kettledrum.

Callie did her best to divert both Tommy’s eager questions about his role in the ceremony and Maureen’s critical assessment of everything from the caterer’s buffet layout and Dawn’s little wisp of a hat.

The kettledrum booming now, Dawn pulled Callie aside. “We bought a doggie bed, puppy chow, a leash and collar and a bucket full of toys. They’re stashed at the house down the street.”

Brian had made the arrangements with the parents of Addy and Tommy’s friend Cindy. The plan was for the Carutherses to keep the pup until after the ceremony, when Dawn and Brian would present Tommy with their wedding gift.

“But we forgot a grooming brush. Wheatens require regular grooming. I’m going to run out and pick one up.”

“Now?”

“There’s a pet shop in the mall. I’ll zip over and back.”

“Why don’t I go?” Callie offered. “Kate should be here any minute. And the photographer. We want to do some informal ‘before’ shots, remember?”

Dawn swiped her palms down her jeans and shot a glance at her mother, now busily directing a change to the buffet table. “I just need to get out for a few moments.”

“Dawn...”

“I’ll be right back.”

She shoved the small leather case containing her license and credit cards in the back pocket of her jeans, snatched up the keys to her Mustang and fled the scene.

Chapter Twelve

T
he gatehouse doorbell rang just moments after Dawn departed the premises. When Callie answered, Kate marched in with a garment bag draped over one arm and a tight expression on her face.

“I saw a red Mustang whiz around the corner as I drove up. Please tell me that wasn’t Dawn at the wheel.”

“I wish I could.”

“Oh, God!”

“It’s okay. Really.” She ushered Kate inside and tried hard for cool and confident. “She just went to get a grooming brush.”

“Huh?”

“For the dog,” Callie clarified after a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure Tommy wasn’t within hearing range. “Dawn says the pup needs to be brushed regularly, but they forgot to get a grooming brush. So she’s making quick run to the pet store.”

“You’ve
got
to be kidding!”

Her nerves fraying, Callie fired back, “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

“For pity’s sake, why did you let her go alone?”

“She didn’t want company, although I—”

“Where’s my daughter?”

The peevish question had Kate rolling her eyes.

“Say no more,” she muttered. “I get the picture.”

Maureen appeared in the foyer, scowling. “Where’s Dawn? I can’t imagine why she insists this LauraBeth person walks on water. You should see the cake the caterers just brought in. It’s a one-layer sheet cake, for pity’s sake, decorated with nothing but two interwoven rings.”

Kate took a breath and stepped into the line of fire. “Those are the rings Dawn and Brian picked out for each other, Mrs. McGill. That’s all they wanted on the cake.”

“Maybe so,” Maureen sniffed, “but I must say a man who hobnobs with royalty might have chosen something a little more elegant for his bride. Especially if he makes as much as Wikipedia say he does.”

“I repeat,” Kate said with exaggerated patience, “those are the rings Dawn and Brian picked out. She told us they’re copies of an ancient Roman design. Since she and Brian met in Italy. The design holds special significance for them.”

“I suppose.” Maureen flapped an impatient hand. “Where
is
she?”

“She had to run a last-minute errand.”

The older woman stared at them, her color draining. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again on a low groan. “Oh, no.”

“She’ll be right back.” Callie infused the statement with all the assurance she could muster. “She just had to—”

“Call her!” Maureen said urgently. “Tell her the caterers need her. No, wait! Tell her Tommy’s feeling sick. He thinks he’s going to throw up and is crying for her.”

“I can’t lie like that,” Callie protested as she retrieved her cell phone.

“It won’t be a lie. I’ll stick my finger down his throat if I have to.”

Callie and Kate gaped at her.

“Oh, get over yourselves,” Dawn’s loving mother huffed. “You want her to go through with this one as much as I do.”

“But last night...”

“You said...”

“I know what I said.” Her mouth twisted. “I’ll admit I’m not the best advertisement for marriage...”

“You got that right,” Kate agreed savagely.

Those cat’s eyes narrowed, but Maureen bit back the sharp retort hovering on her lips and glanced over her shoulder at the boy happily directing the placement of a towering ice sculpture.

“Brian and Tommy are exactly what Dawn needs,” she said after a long moment. “They’ll give her the kind of home and family I wish... Well...” She sniffed and finished fiercely, “I’ll stick my finger down my
own
throat if that’ll bring her home.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Kate commented as she hit a speed-dial button on her cell phone.

A few seconds later, the rousing finale to Rossini’s
William Tell Overture
galloped through the air. The three women followed the Lone Ranger’s theme song to the kitchen, where they found Dawn’s iPhone buzzing and skittering across the counter.

“Great,” Kate ground out. “She forgot her phone.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Callie said with determined calm. “She’ll be right back.”

* * *

Brian returned just before 2:00 p.m. He took the flagstone walk to the gatehouse, intending to relay the success of his mission to Dawn before corralling his son and hauling him back to the main house to scrub down and dress up.

He spotted Tommy demonstrating his cartwheeling skills to Travis in the small square of lawn between the gazebo and the rows of chairs lined up with military precision. Kate, Callie and Dawn’s mother he found in the sun-filled breakfast nook. Seeing them seated shoulder to shoulder around the small table provided the first hint something was wrong. The double old-fashioned glass clutched in his prospective mother-in-law’s fist provided another.

“Where’s Dawn?”

Their answering looks ran the gamut from carefully neutral to a fake innocence to plainly worried.

“She said she forgot to get a grooming brush for the puppy, so she zipped over to the pet store in the mall,” Callie replied.

“When?”

Callie glanced away, Kate bit her lip and Maureen took a hasty gulp of what looked like scotch, straight up.

“Two hours ago,” Kate finally answered.

Brian extracted his cell phone from the back pocket of his jeans. “The mall’s a zoo on Saturdays. She probably had to circle the parking lot a half dozen times before she could find a parking spot. I’d better call and remind her of the time.”

“We tried that.” Kate jerked her chin at the counter. “She forgot her phone.”

Brian glanced at the rhinestone-studded case, then back at the three women. He’d had enough experience dealing with people of all types to see the worry and doubt they were trying so hard to conceal.

“Oh, well,” he said with a deliberately casual shrug, “she’ll get back when she gets back. Meantime, I’ve got puppy love all over my chin and cheeks. I’d better corral Tommy so we can both clean up.”

* * *

Brian refused, flat ass refused, to believe Dawn had skipped out on him. She had her share of faults; she’d be the first to admit that. But cowardice wasn’t one of them. If she’d changed her mind about this marriage, he told himself fiercely as he showered, she’d tell him so to his face.

And even if she had decided she wanted out, he thought grimly as he scraped a razor down his cheek, there was no way in hell she’d just take a powder and leave Tommy without a word of goodbye. Still, his stomach felt increasingly hollow as he got into his suit and tie.

Before going to check on his son’s progress, he glanced around the room he’d shared with Caroline. He’d removed the items that bore her more personal stamp. The sachet bag in her underwear drawer that still held the faint scent of roses after all these years. The tacky little Kewpie doll she’d won in a ring toss at a fair the first year of their marriage. The photo of her and Tommy that had held a place of honor on his nightstand.

The Kewpie doll now sat on a shelf in his son’s room, and the photo had been transferred from its frame to the breathtakingly beautiful album Dawn had designed for Tommy.

She’d sounded so sincere, so confident that there was more than enough room in Brian’s heart for Caroline
and
her. Yet, glancing around the bedroom, he couldn’t help wishing he’d insisted they make some changes to the house
before
their wedding instead of after. New furniture, new linens, new pictures and knickknacks. Or they could’ve knocked out the wall between the guest rooms and the upstairs office and enlarged the master suite. Or moved out completely and made a new start in a new home, as he’d contemplated more than once in the past five years.

Hell! Too late to worry about that now. His immediate priority was to put a wedding band on his bride’s finger.

With that intent firmly in mind, he headed for his son’s room. He found him on a step stool in his bathroom, squinting into the mirror and struggling with his new tie. He’d picked it out himself, he’d informed Brian. With Dawn’s help. Her eyes dancing, she’d assured Brian that glowing, neon dinosaurs added the perfect touch to the festivities.

“Hey, bud. Need help with that?”

“I kin do it.”

He said nothing as Tommy’s chin jutted out a little more with each failed attempt to make a knot.

“Ties are stupid,” his son muttered, yanking the ends free to start over again. “Why do guys wear ’em, anyway?”

Brian dredged his memory for a bit of arcane trivia he’d picked up during his stint in the marines. “They originally had a military purpose. Remember the man dressed as a centurion at the Colosseum in Rome? You couldn’t see it, but I suspect he’d wrapped a linen cloth around his neck to keep his armor from chafing. It would keep him warm, too, when he had to trudge through mountain passes.”

“This skinny thing wouldn’t keep me warm,” Tommy groused.

“True, but styles of neck cloths and cravats changed greatly over the centuries until we got stuck with what we have today. No, loop that end under. Now through. There! You’ve got it.”

His scowl gone, Tommy breamed at himself in the mirror while Brian nobly refrained from offering to straighten the lopsided knot. He did make a few swipes with a comb before Tommy hopped off the footstool. After being helped into his suit coat, his son had to take another few moments to preen, this time in the full-length mirror behind his door.

“You look pretty slick, bud.”

“I know,” Tommy agreed with a smug grin. “You look good, too,” he added magnanimously. “Just wait’ll Dawn sees us. Like Addy says, she’s gonna wig out.”

Brian hoped so. God, he hoped so!

Keeping his smile easy, he glanced at his watch as he accompanied Tommy downstairs. Two forty. Still a good half hour or more until their guests began to arrive.

Murmurs of conversation drew them to the den, where they found the other members of the wedding party. Travis had used the downstairs study to change out of his jeans and well-worn bomber jacket. He’d been pleased and flattered when asked to fly backup to Tommy as groomsman. No flattery involved, Brian had insisted. Only a bone-deep gratitude to the air force pilot for bringing Dawn into his and Tommy’s life.

His bride’s best friends had changed, as well. Kate’s hair was a cascade of blond curls, her face grimly cheerful above the rolled neckline of her rich, russet-colored dress. Callie wore a gold jacket and deep, burnt-orange sheath that made Brian think instantly of pumpkins and wood smoke. He would’ve appreciated the serene picture she presented if tight little lines hadn’t formed on either side of her mouth.

His prospective mother-in-law, on the other hand, made no pretense of appearing either cheerful or serene. Her fist was still wrapped around a double highball glass—recently refilled, judging by the amber liquid reaching halfway to its rim. Brian and Tommy were barely into the den before she blurted out a worried report.

“She’s not back.”

He aimed a cool look in her direction. “She will be.”

“She’s been gone for three hours!”

“Who’s gone?” Tommy wanted to know, taking a quick look around. “Is she talking about Dawn?”

“Yes, but...”

“She’s not gone,” he stated with utter assurance. “She’s hiding.”

Like bullets sprayed from AK-47s, questions flew at him from all sides.

“What?”

“Where?”

“Did she call you?”

“Why’s she hiding?”

Blinking at the barrage, he took a step back. “I... Uh...”

Brian smothered a quick oath and raised a hand as a signal to the others to back off.

“Why’s Dawn hiding?” he asked, keeping his voice calm and even.

“It’s tradition. ’Member, Dad? You told me about it. We’re not s’posed to see the bride before the wedding.”

That was it. That had to be it. Brian was still trying to convince himself as his son screwed up his face and made a quick clarification.

“I know Dawn ’n us had grilled cheese samwiches together at lunch. But that doesn’t count ’cause we weren’t dressed up or anything.”

* * *

No one, not even Dawn’s mother, had the heart to burst Tommy’s bubble. But even the boy’s confidence slipped as the house began to fill with guests.

LauraBeth, her husband and two of their four sons were the first to arrive. She cast a quick eye over the garden and buffet and spoke a few words to the servers circulating with trays of prewedding refreshments before giving her boss and his son warm hugs. Brian’s bland smile didn’t fool her for an instant. She pried the story out of him in thirty seconds flat.

Dawn’s father and brother rang the bell next. Maureen cornered them the moment they walked through the door. The three McGills were still huddled in a tight, anxious group when the minister from Brian and Tommy’s church arrived.

The Caruthers family arrived a few moments later and provided a welcome distraction for an increasingly worried Tommy. His little friend Cindy looked as though she would burst trying to keep in the secret of the puppy. Repeated knuckle thumps from her brother earned him nasty looks but kept the secret intact.

Brian’s parents drove up at the same time as Caroline’s. After a round of fierce hugs, Caroline’s mother caught Brian’s arm and pulled him aside for a low, intensely personal colloquy.

“I’m so glad you found Dawn,” she said, framing his face with both palms. “Tommy raves about her every time we talk to him. You were a wonderful husband to my daughter. You deserve every bit of happiness your new love can bring you.”

His throat suddenly raw and tight, Brian folded her in a ferocious hug.

“Enough of this,” Caroline’s mom said, sniffling. “Are those Dawn’s parents? Why don’t you introduce your former in-laws to your prospective in-laws?”

“You and Jerry will
never
be ‘former’ anything,” Brian assured her gruffly before complying with the request. To his surprise and considerable relief, Dawn’s mother smoothed the lines etched deep in her brow. She even managed to include her former husband in her acknowledgment of their daughter’s most stellar traits.

“She gets those laughing Irish eyes from me,” Maureen said, her own eyes holding a hint of a smile as they turned to her ex. “She gets her artistic flair, such as it is, from her father.”