A Christmas Bride Read online

  His question annoyed the hell out of Willow. Who had put David Lyndon in charge of the world? He wasn’t royalty, no matter what Courtney and her pals had said about him last night at the Jaybird.

  She straightened her shoulders. “I’m exercising my rights as a citizen of the United States. I’m here on legal business related to my suit against Restero.”

  “You weren’t coming to make more trouble?”

  Damn it all to hell and back. For an instant he reminded her of Corbin, standing there all poised and cold and in charge. Corbin always got his way too, and it was so irritating. Her emotions spilled over, and she poked David right in the middle of his chest. “I. Am. Not. A. Troublemaker. All I did was point out a case of Medicare fraud that affected hundreds of patients. People should be grateful to me for what I did. So just get the hell out of my way.”

  “I’m not talking about all that. I’m talking about your little plot to get me to reopen the inn.”

  What plot? Oh, crap. David must have gotten wind of Melissa Portman’s alternate wedding plans. No wonder he was ticked off.

  “Look, David, I have nothing to do with Melissa Portman and her wedding plans. I’m not here to bother you. I just need a notary public. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll—”

  She tried to walk around him, but he grabbed her by the arm. A hot-cold shiver ran through her synapses. Corbin had grabbed her like this. Once. His violence had shaken her both emotionally and physically. She wanted to pull away from David, and yet that touch locked her in place.

  She braced herself for his violence, but it didn’t come. “I need to talk to you,” he said on a long, deep puff of air that turned into steam as he spoke.

  She pulled her arm from his grasp, mildly surprised that he let her go so easily. “About Melissa Portman’s wedding? I know nothing about that topic.”

  He shoved his hands into his pants pockets. Was that because of the cold, or was he ashamed about the way he’d tried to manhandle her?

  “Please.” His jaw flexed, and the tension along his neck and shoulders and the bruised-looking skin beneath his eyes told her a lot about his state of mind. A deep pang of sympathy wrenched her chest. He was still mourning Shelly. Deeply.

  “All right, David. But let’s get out of the cold.” She stepped around him, but he caught up with her in time to open the front door for her—something of a surprise after the way he’d just grabbed her.

  “Come on,” he said, striding down the marble-floored hallway to the ground-floor offices of Lyndon, Lyndon & Kopp. “We can talk privately in my office, and then Arwen can notarize your papers.”

  “Arwen Jacobs works here?”

  “She’s one of the paralegals,” he said as he ushered her through the reception area and into his office, which commanded a view of the county courthouse and city hall through gigantic double-hung windows. Someone had spent a lot of time and money decorating the room with authentic-looking antiques. Probably Shelly. The office bore her unmistakable attention to every historical detail.

  He gestured to a pair of leather-covered wing chairs that stood beside a gorgeous antique partner’s desk. “Sit down.” It was a command.

  She didn’t like being commanded by anyone, but she needed to clear up this misunderstanding. So she took off her ski jacket and settled into the chair. He unconsciously straightened his tie and took the seat behind his desk. Then he leaned forward with a take-no-prisoners stare.

  Game on.

  She straightened her spine and concentrated on sitting square in her chair. That would make her look bigger than she was. In her career, she’d had to deal with plenty of powerful men who thought they were entitled. The key to success was to command a presence of her own. She wished to hell she was wearing her black Dior suit with a red silk shell and her Louboutin heels. She’d feel well armored in those clothes.

  But she’d dressed for barn chores today in worn jeans and her ancient UVA sweatshirt. The informal clothes left her vulnerable, so she didn’t wait for David to initiate the conversation. “I think you’ve jumped to an incorrect conclusion. I never—”

  “I want to make it absolutely clear that you are not ever to talk about Shelly in public again.”

  “What? David, Shelly was my best friend.”

  “Did you tell Melissa that my wedding was a disaster?” He sat back in the chair. Was that a retreat? Or was he getting ready to pounce on her? It was right then that she noticed the wedding band on his left hand. He hadn’t taken it off, and right now his thumb was touching it.

  Wow. She’d stepped into a big pile of it, hadn’t she? She’d told the truth, but without regard to how it might hurt him. Obviously, Shelly had never told David about her breakdown the night before the wedding. And if he’d learned about it from someone else who hadn’t even been there, that would have been a big blow. “David, I’m sorry. I assumed you knew all about what happened that night.”

  “My wedding was not a disaster. Is that clear?” He stopped playing with his ring and stood up. He leaned over his desk, his face a study in misplaced fury. “And you will tell Melissa the truth about it.”

  Willow took a couple of deep breaths, trying to slow her pulse. She had never seen David so angry before. “David, I never said your wedding was a disaster. Not to anyone. What I told Melissa was that Shelly didn’t have the wedding she wanted because she allowed your mother to bully her. And I advised Melissa not to let that happen to her.”

  “Jeff came in here this morning and practically demanded that I host his wedding. He said you put this idea into Melissa’s head.”

  “I didn’t do anything of the kind. Melissa came to that conclusion on her own. In fact, if you want to know the truth, I told Melissa you would never agree to having the wedding at Eagle Hill Manor.”

  “Of course I won’t. I told them to elope.”

  Willow stood up and reached for her ski jacket. “David, do you really think having Jeff and Melissa run off to Vegas is a better idea than letting them use the inn for their reception?”

  “Mother has already planned a beautiful wedding for Jeff and Melissa. It’s too late to change plans now. They’re being difficult, and I don’t like being dragged into the middle of it.”

  “It’s not too late. And while I’m sure the wedding that your mother has planned will be extravagant and expensive, it’s not the wedding Melissa wants. Melissa was near tears last night, David, just like Shelly all those years ago.”

  “And I’m sure you took advantage of those tears. Really, Willow, you’ve created a huge mess. Everything would have been fine if you’d just kept your mouth shut.”

  Just keep your mouth shut? Really? How many times had she heard that from Corbin and his minions at Restero? Don’t say anything. Just cover things up. Just be a good girl and go with the flow.

  Willow finally found her anger. David might be grieving, but he was also behaving like a self-absorbed jerk. She pulled on her ski jacket, trying without success to control her pulse rate. A wise woman would have turned around and walked out.

  But there were so many words trapped inside her, begging for release.

  She leaned on David’s desk, coming eye to eye with her best friend’s husband.

  “First of all, Melissa was upset about the wedding before I said one word. Second of all, you don’t get to tell me who I can speak with or what I can speak about. And third, I think if Shelly were alive, she would be thrilled to host Melissa’s wedding at the inn. And what’s more, if there’s a heaven and she’s looking down at you right now, she’d be so disappointed.”

  * * *

  Willow stormed out of the legal building without getting her papers notarized. She needed to walk off her fury, so she headed down Church Street into downtown Shenandoah Falls. The wind chafed her cheeks and raised tears, which weren’t entirely wind-induced.

  Still, she couldn’t pinpoint the reason for her out-of-control emotions. Was it anger? Sadness? Grief? Or maybe some mix of all three. She’d come b
ack to Shenandoah Falls, but her friends Shelly and David were lost to her now.

  The irony crashed down on her. When she’d been young, she’d counted the days, hours, and minutes until she could leave this small backwater and get on with the rest of her life. But now that her life had turned into a bowl of sour cherries, she resented and mourned every change that time and absence had brought to her hometown.

  She walked all the way to Liberty Avenue, her head down, wiping the tears from her cheeks as she went. But when she reached the corner of Liberty and Church, she stopped and raised her head, wiping away a final tear. She squared her shoulders and took a good long look at Shenandoah Falls’s main street.

  Things had changed here, but maybe for the good.

  The traffic on Liberty Avenue was heavy. The storefronts were occupied. New, wrought-iron lightposts edged the street, and storefronts had been restored and updated. There was even a new, high-end coffee shop right there on the corner.

  Juni’s words from the night before came back to Willow. Eagle Hill Manor wasn’t the only business opportunity in Jefferson County. Shenandoah Falls itself looked like one big, fat business opportunity waiting for the right person to recognize it. People with jobs in DC and Winchester were buying houses nearby. The population was growing and the pressure on downtown commercial rents suggested a healthy real estate market.

  Oh yes, a person could do a lot of business in this town. And Mom had made a valid point this morning about Willow’s future. Maybe she ought to quit trying to fit in and work for other people. Maybe it was time to work for herself.

  A glimmer of an idea began to sprout. What if Willow bought Eagle Hill Manor? What if she could swing that deal right now, in time for Melissa and Jeff to have their wedding there?

  She hurried into Bean There Done That, got herself a chai latte, and settled into one of the coffee shop’s easy chairs. She spent the rest of the afternoon reading the online lifestyle section of the Washington Post and the society page of the New York Times, followed by Brides magazine and half a dozen wedding-planning sites.

  Holy crap, people were spending ridiculous amounts of money on weddings—and not merely rich and well-connected people like Pam Lyndon. Middle-class people blew huge amounts of money just to get married.

  Willow opened up the word-processing program on her tablet and started outlining what she knew about the demographics of Northern Virginia and what she’d need to research further. She also made notes on the size of the wedding industry and a few back-of-the-envelope guesses about the cost of renovating Eagle Hill Manor and the old chapel—basically the plans that Shelly had talked about the last time she and Willow had lunched together in New York.

  Maybe she could make Shelly’s plans for the inn a reality. Maybe she could dig herself out of the hole Corbin Martinson had thrown her into.

  The beginnings of a business plan began to emerge. All she needed was an investor—someone who would overlook the things Restero was saying about her.

  Ordinarily that might be a problem, but Willow had an ace up her sleeve named Jefferson Talbert-Lyndon, who happened to be number thirty-seven on the Forbes list of billionaires.

  Chapter 5

  David’s uncle Jamie, the CEO of the Lyndon family’s vineyard and agricultural business, believed in putting up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving. There were good marketing reasons for this, but the real reason was that Uncle Jamie was a Christmas junkie whose birthday fell the first week of November, and he just liked having tinsel around when he blew out the candles on his cake.

  As a result, Jamie’s birthday party—a big bash held at the winery every year—marked the unofficial start of the holiday season for the Lyndon family.

  He’d outdone himself this year. White lights twinkled in the naked wisteria vines that wove through the patio’s pergola. Two gigantic wreaths hung on the barn doors that led to the tasting room. Yards of pine roping wrapped every post, beam, and window frame.

  “Bah humbug,” David mumbled as he and Natalie walked down the path that led from the parking lot to the winery’s tasting room.

  “What does that mean, Daddy?” Natalie asked.

  Busted. “It’s just an expression.”

  “An expression of what?”

  His face burned. How do you tell a kid that you hate Christmas? “When you’re older, you’ll understand,” he said. Boy, he was a master at using that line.

  It worked this time because Natalie was more excited about Uncle Jamie’s birthday party than she was curious about his foul mood. She skipped ahead, drawn to the shiny tinsel the way moths are drawn to candlelight. Her enthusiasm for the holiday was enough to drive any respectable Scrooge right into a bottle of bourbon.

  But maybe it was okay. Natalie certainly didn’t understand how the holidays coincided with the bleak advent calendar in David’s heart, which counted down the days until the anniversary of her mother’s death.

  They entered the brightly lit tasting room, and Natalie shed her coat in one lightning-fast move and then shot forward, disappearing into the crowd of party guests without even a backward glance. David deserved that. His Christmas spirit had been killed two years ago.

  He picked up Natalie’s jacket from where she’d dropped it, shed his overcoat, and headed in the direction of the cloakroom. He hadn’t gotten far when Roxanne Kopp, the long-legged, dark-haired daughter of his law firm’s managing partner, intercepted him. He’d known Roxy since they’d both been children, and he knew his mother, father, and boss wanted something to blossom between them.

  “David,” she said in a voice like silk over warm skin. She plucked the coats from his fingers. “Let me help you with that.”

  Roxy was all grown up now and had a Siren somewhere in her distant heritage, or maybe a Rhinemaiden, given her family’s German ancestry. Either way, she possessed the ability to whisper unsuspecting men to their doom. Her low, sultry voice wasn’t her only weapon. She was slim, tanned, and had a nice rack, which she was expert at displaying.

  Tonight she wore a tight skirt, a pair of screw-me heels, and a white, sheer blouse with half the buttons undone. Lace and cleavage peeked out from the V of her neckline. It was hard not to notice.

  “Roxy,” he responded as he stomped on the urge to snatch his coat from her manicured hands. He didn’t want to deal with her tonight. He didn’t want to look at her cleavage, even though she was shoving it in his face.

  But he was a man. A lonely man whose sex life had been cut off two years ago. So he did look. The view was impressive but uninspiring.

  Roxy took care of the coats and then sidled up to him, deftly taking him by the arm. His whole body reacted to her touch. But he didn’t want her. He had to stop himself from pulling away from her.

  “David,” she whispered, leaning her breasts into his arm, “you don’t have to be frightened of me.” Her breath feathered across his cheek. “I could show you a good time. And, baby, you look like you need something like that. Besides, we’ve been friends forever. You can trust me.”

  He wasn’t frightened. But he didn’t want a mindless hookup with Roxy either. They each deserved more than that. He let his thumb wander over to touch the gold band he still wore on his left hand. Being attracted made him feel guilty. He still took his vows seriously. He wasn’t ready to let them go.

  He wanted to get away from Roxy, but there was no graceful way to escape. So he let her hang on his arm as he snagged a glass of Bordeaux from one of the circulating waiters. And then he followed her lead as she headed toward the fireplace, which was roaring away in full holiday blaze, its mantel festooned with greenery and colorful quilted Christmas stockings.

  His mother was waiting there, sipping a glass of red.

  “Hello, dear,” Mother said, giving him a warm and somewhat intense hug. She pushed him back at arm’s length. “I heard that you and Heather had a visitor this morning.”

  Here it came. He braced for her displeasure.

  “Did you really te
ll Jeff he should elope?”

  “What?” Roxy pulled away a fraction of an inch. “David, you didn’t. Really?”

  “I wasn’t the one who put the idea in his head. Jeff made it quite clear that Melissa didn’t like your plans for her wedding. He asked me to host the wedding at Eagle Hill Manor and then threatened to elope. I called his bluff. It seemed the simplest solution to his problem.”

  Mother and Roxy rolled their eyes in unison. He sipped his wine, fortifying himself for the battle to come.

  “They can’t elope,” Mother said in her take-no-prisoners tone. “It would be a disaster. We need that wedding, David. You of all people should realize that. We’re inviting all the A-list New York donors, most of whom are Nina’s good friends.”

  Mother hadn’t said anything he didn’t already know. But for some reason the truth, spoken out loud in that tone of voice, raised a deep shame that spilled through him like a poison.

  Shelly would be so disappointed in you.

  Willow’s parting words, meant to hurt, had done their job. She’d left him scored and bloody on the inside.

  “Did Shelly cry the night before our wedding?” he asked.

  Mother’s gaze narrowed. “David, what on earth…?”

  “Did she? Willow Petersen says she did.”

  “I have no idea. David, your wedding was beautiful. My goodness, we had the vice president there. And your father managed to work out that deal on—”

  “She did cry. And she never said one word about it.”

  “David, really, we’re not talking about Shelly. I know this is hard for you, but—”

  “Yes, Mother, I know. We’re talking about my political career and Dad’s political career and how my wedding was mostly about that deal Dad worked out with the vice president. And, you know, I can suddenly see Jeff’s point.”