A Small-Town Bride Read online

  Chapter Eight

  The rain set in about five o’clock that afternoon, just as Dusty was leaving Amy’s cabin. It spoiled his plans to fish Liberty Run for a few hours. Instead, he ended up at home tying flies, sitting by the woodstove that was enough to heat his small A-frame house.

  He was working on a few wooly buggers, trying to imagine how they would glide across the water as he tugged on the line, but his thoughts kept wandering back to that moment when he’d wiped the soap from Amy Lyndon’s eyes.

  He shouldn’t have done it. Nor should he have bought the dog food or the leash or any of that stuff. He had no business taking care of Amy, or even having thoughts about her, unless they were strictly related to the work they both performed at Eagle Hill Manor.

  But instead of concentrating on his fishing flies, Dusty worried about Amy living way up there on the ridge. He hoped to hell she figured out how to start a fire in the wood-burning stove. She had enough wood for tonight’s fire. He’d made sure of that. But someone would have to split some logs for her. He didn’t think Amy knew how to use a hatchet or an ax.

  Who would do that for her if he didn’t? And since he’d been the one to suggest the fishing cabin, he felt responsible for her somehow. Tomorrow he’d run up there and split enough wood for a week. And maybe by then she and her father would figure things out and she’d go back to living in the lap of luxury in that stone mansion up near the vineyard. Her daddy had probably paid more than a million bucks for that house, which had more square footage than any two people would ever need.

  She would never understand the beauty of his small, hand-built house. He pulled the magnifying glasses from his face. Damn. He needed to quit thinking about her. Maybe he should run up to Charles Town and grovel for Zoe’s forgiveness.

  He jettisoned the idea almost as soon as it crossed his mind. He didn’t want Zoe. She’d been nothing more than a diversion on those nights when even a tiny house got lonely. Going up there wouldn’t be fair to the woman.

  He got up and restlessly stared out the floor-to-ceiling picture window. A tiny vibration hummed inside him, and he imagined that a maple might feel the same restlessness in the springtime when it awakens after a long winter. His tiny house felt like a cage tonight.

  Just then headlights cut through the rain, announcing a visitor. Dusty rarely had company out here, and never unannounced. He flicked on the front floodlights to reveal a beat-up Ford pickup coming to a stop in his drive. He didn’t recognize the truck, but he sure recognized the man who got out of it and dashed through the downpour to the roof overhang by the front door.

  Damn it to hell and back again. He yanked the door open. “You aren’t welcome here,” he said, staring into his father’s face.

  Daddy had sure gone downhill in the last eight years. Rheumy, bloodshot eyes squinted at Dusty from out of a waxy, gray face, and a jack-o’-lantern grin exposed wide, gaping holes where teeth had once been. The scent of booze and cigarettes clung to his dirty clothes, the familiar reek unleashing a shit ton of bad memories for Dusty.

  “What’d you do with my house, boy?” Daddy said in his broken-down voice.

  “Tore it down. Now, get going. I don’t want you here.”

  “Got nowhere to get to.” Daddy leaned into the doorframe, his body language as evil as ever. “You know Sally Hawkes over at the Winchester Daily?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I know her.” The question tweaked Dusty. How the hell did Daddy know about the writer who’d tried to assassinate his character?

  “That Sally woman called me up a week ago to ask a whole bunch of questions. You been holding out on me, boy. Since when did the county decide they wanted our land?”

  “Since about a year ago.”

  “Why the hell are you giving them a hard time about this? I say we cash in now.”

  “Daddy, you don’t own this land anymore. I bought it from you eight years ago. It’s my land they want.”

  “You think I’m a fool, don’t you? That cash you gave me wasn’t near enough for this land, boy.” His father took a menacing step forward, balling up his fists the way he always had. “I owned this land before you were ever even born. And I’m here to get my cut of the sale price.”

  Daddy came at him like he’d done a million times before. Only this time Dusty didn’t let him win. This time Dusty gave him a hard shove. Daddy backpedaled and slipped on the rain-slicked decking. He tumbled back and landed hard. He didn’t get up.

  For an instant Dusty wondered if he’d finally gone off and killed his old man. Upon closer inspection, Gregory Dustin McNeil Sr. was still alive. But the dude might not be for long if Dusty left him out in the rain. So against his better judgment, he picked the old man up and hauled him inside the little house that had been built small on purpose so that Daddy would never have a place to come home to.

  * * *

  Amy’s Bec & Bridge dress hugged her hips, and the surplice neckline made the most of her minimal boobs. Accessorized with a plain gold chain, hoop earrings, and her Valentino black patent T-strap shoes with the three-inch stiletto heels, Amy had done her best to please Aunt Pam.

  Too bad she’d forgotten to steal one of the umbrellas in the front hall closet this afternoon when she’d gone home to get her stuff. The skies had opened up, and the hard spring rain had undone her grooming efforts. She tried to fix the damage in Aunt Pam’s first-floor powder room, but it was hopeless.

  Of course, Pam was on her the moment she entered the family room. As always, her aunt’s hugs were warm and loving and reminded Amy that her aunt—as difficult as she could be—loved her family fiercely. But before the hug ended, Pam whispered, “There are two TV cameras recording everything, so be careful what you say. And I wish you’d made an appointment at Glamorous You. Your hair is a disaster.”

  Pam ran her fingers through Amy’s hair, trying to fluff it up a little. “I’ve got to run and check on Lydia and dinner,” Pam said. “Danny’s at the bar, and I trust you understand what you need to do.” Pam gave her arm a resolute squeeze before she hurried off.

  Amy pivoted toward the bar and found her prodigal cousin gazing at her out of surprisingly serious brown eyes. “Hello, Amy. You’ve grown up.”

  He lounged on one of the barstools with a long-necked Sam Adams in his hand. The California sunshine had burned away all traces of his East Coast origins. Sun-bronzed skin, a bright orange and blue Hawaiian shirt, and a long ponytail down his back made him stand out in the mostly blue and gray worsted crowd.

  Amy wanted to rush right into his arms, but Danny wasn’t alone. A stranger with a scraggly beard and a video camera stood beside him, his telephoto lens trained on her, ready to catch whatever emotion she let fly.

  “Danny,” she said in a cool and calm voice, trying her best to channel Aunt Pam. She crossed the carpet, holding out her arms, and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, afraid to show the emotions that knotted up in her throat. She’d missed him so much.

  For a long time Danny had been her wingman and champion. As kids, they’d been the closest cousins in age and temperament. Neither of them was of the same genius caliber as the rest of the clan. So naturally they’d gotten into adventures—and trouble—together. They’d also watched each other’s backs until he’d found the courage to tell his father, Uncle Charles, that he didn’t want to be a lawyer, hated Harvard, and wanted to work in film. Uncle Charles had reacted to this news by telling Danny that if he wanted out of Harvard and into film school, he could damn well pay for it himself.

  And since Danny had a very large trust fund, set up by his maternal grandfather, paying for tuition had been no problem. He’d left home, gotten his degree, and even produced several arty films that had gotten critical notice at Sundance but had failed financially.

  Still, in his early years out West, he’d gotten some notice as a serious filmmaker, and then his affair with Mia Paquet, the reality TV celebrity, had sidetracked his career and his life. At least, that’s what Amy thought. The rest
of the family thought Danny deserved whatever trouble he got into because he’d dared to break out of the family mold.

  “Wow, what happened to the little girl I remember?” Danny asked.

  “I’m still little, but now I wear higher heels. And you look kind of rad with the ponytail.”

  “Yeah, so I’ve been told.” His gaze shifted to Uncle Charles, who stood by the French doors talking politics with Uncle Mark and David. Amy gave the room a quick scan. Most of the family had yet to arrive, and David had come without Willow and Natalie. Not a surprise, given that Natalie had school tomorrow and Willow had a house full of guests.

  Aunt Julie sat on one of the couches across the room playing with the most adorable toddler Amy had ever set eyes on. Beside Julie sat the infamous Mia Paquet—glamorous and beautiful, like a Barbie doll with boobage out to here and legs down to there. Danny had always appreciated the girls with the biggest racks, so of course he’d hooked up with Mia.

  Gathered around Mia and her baby were two other women Amy immediately recognized as Mia’s girlfriends and the other stars of the Vegas Girls reality TV show. Ivory of the chocolate-brown skin and pink-streaked hair. And Pearl with the incredible cheekbones and the blue-black Asian hair coiled around her head. In the presence of these gorgeous, put-together women, Amy faded away to invisibility.

  “I’m tending bar at the moment,” Danny said, pulling Amy’s attention back where it rightly belonged. “What can I get you?”

  “I’m sure there’s some Bella Vista Merlot back there.” She took one of the empty stools as he snagged a glass from the rack above the bar and poured her a glass of the family wine.

  “You know, the producers will cut out the product placement. But nice try,” Danny said.

  “I wasn’t trying to advertise the family vineyard.” She glanced at the photographer. “And to be honest, I’m ticked off at you for putting everyone on television. It’s invasive.”

  “I’m sorry about that. But I wanted to introduce the baby to the family.”

  “You could have brought Scarlett back for a visit with her family without the cameras.”

  His eyebrows lowered in the signature Lyndon scowl—the one every male member of the family had inherited from William Lyndon, the man who had built Charlotte’s Grove and whose portrait glared down from above the mantel in the formal parlor. “Without the wedding, Scarlett will never legally be a Lyndon,” Danny snarled.

  “No? Can’t you make a declaration or something in Nevada?”

  “I can, but it’s not the same as being married to Scarlett’s mother.” The tension across his shoulders and the harsh tone in his voice suggested that Danny was wound tighter than the grandfather clock in the front hall. He might be wearing a carefree Hawaiian shirt, but the happy-go-lucky guy she’d known as a kid had disappeared. This Danny seemed more like her brothers and cousins. More serious. More focused.

  She glanced uneasily at the cameraman waiting like a giant predator to pounce on her the moment she said something juicy and full of conflict. There were so many things to say, starting with the admonition that in the twenty-first century he didn’t have to marry Mia to claim responsibility for his daughter.

  Danny noticed the direction of her stare. “You don’t have to be coy. Everyone knows why I’m here. I’ve been trying for the last two years—from the moment I found out we were going to have a baby—to make Mia my bride. So right now I’m asking everyone in the family to make this wedding all it can be. I want all of you to be happy for me. And for Scarlett.”

  Unfortunately, Danny didn’t sound happy for himself. But, then again, Lyndons were a failure when it came to marital bliss.

  Amy regarded the people in the room with a critical eye. She doubted Pam and Mark had married for love. She couldn’t remember ever seeing them kiss or hold hands. Aunt Julie and Uncle Charles almost never spoke to each other. And Mom and Daddy’s marriage hadn’t been a bed of roses.

  Amy would fail if she tried to talk Danny out of marrying Mia. But at least she could try to talk him out of turning his loveless marriage into a sideshow that would suck the rest of the family in.

  She turned back toward him. “Ambushing the family and putting them on television isn’t a good way to get them on your side or even to make them happy about your choices. A better way would have been to invite them all to a private ceremony with a party afterward.”

  Danny shook his head. “Amy, I know Pam thinks you can change my mind about this, but you can’t. Mia will never agree to a private ceremony. She wants the moon and the stars and the whole world watching. That’s the quid pro quo, as Dad would say. The only way I get her to the altar is to sacrifice everyone’s privacy.”

  Amy glanced at the cameraman and thought about what she could possibly say to convince Danny to give up this idea, and she came up with absolutely nothing. Danny seemed committed to his plans, and if she challenged him here, it would only create the kind of drama the TV show fed off.

  She’d need to get him in a private moment, and even then she didn’t think she had much chance of changing his mind. It suddenly occurred to her that having the family depend on her for this important task was, maybe, not such a great thing. In the end, she’d be blamed for failing them.

  She was angsting over this when the boys swept into the family room with the usual fanfare. The boys, as everyone called them, consisted of Danny’s brothers, Jason and Matthew, and Amy’s brothers, Andrew and Edward. And like a wolf pack, these urban-dwelling, well-educated, good-looking, politically connected alpha dudes always made a big statement when they showed up en masse.

  The arrival of all that male beauty immediately engaged the cameraman, who turned away from ordinary Amy to capture Danny’s reunion with his brothers and cousins. Being left aside didn’t bother Amy in the least. For once being invisible had its merits. The camera crew ignored her all through cocktail hour. And she managed to avoid Aunt Pam as well by hanging out with Aunt Julie and playing with Scarlett, who was a joy.

  At dinner, Uncle Mark, the most alpha in a pack of alpha men, took charge, dominating the table conversation—a turn of events that clearly annoyed Mia, her girlfriends, and the executive producer.

  No doubt Uncle Mark had carefully chosen the most boring topic possible—a discussion of the bipartisan criminal justice reform bill under consideration before the Senate Judiciary Committee. And once Uncle Mark seized a conversation, no one could ever get it back. His nickname—Bulldog Lyndon—summed it up nicely.

  All through the salad and main courses, Uncle Mark pushed the conversation so down into the weeds that the camera crew lost interest and stopped recording. His masterful performance might have completely thwarted the television people were it not for the fact that Uncle Mark had to take a phone call just as dessert was being served. Apparently the bipartisan negotiations over the very bill he’d been discussing had hit a snag, and Bulldog Lyndon was needed.

  No sooner had Mark left the table than Mia took charge, exploiting the opportunity as only a reality TV star could, by dropping two gigantic bombshells.

  “I have some fabulous news,” Mia said in her breathy Marilyn Monroe voice. “We just got word that our wedding is going to also be a Say Yes to the Dress special. We’re scheduled for a shoot at Kleinfeld in New York on Wednesday. And since we’re doing this on a quick turnaround, I’m expecting there to be a lot of drama over the dress selection.”

  Mia almost squealed, as if wedding-dress drama was the best thing ever. She turned toward Aunt Pam. “I can’t wait to try on dresses. And, Pam, I’d be so pleased if you would come with us to New York. I need your fashion advice.”

  Pam blinked a few times. “Say Yes to the Dress?”

  Pearl, Ivory, and Mia’s jaws dropped in unison, as if none of them could fathom how a twenty-first-century woman had never heard of the reality show where brides choose their dresses while their friends and family kibitz.

  But the Vegas girls didn’t know Aunt Pam. She watched public
television and cable news, and that was it. The rest of the time she entertained herself by reading—mostly history. Amy could no more imagine Aunt Pam appearing on Say Yes to the Dress than she could see her aunt attending a Miley Cyrus concert, with or without the twerking. Her aunt just didn’t do popular culture.

  Amy had to rescue Aunt Pam before she said yes to dress shopping. “Aunt Pam, Say Yes to the Dress is a reality show where brides try on wedding dresses while their family members ridicule and judge each selection.”

  “Good God. Why?” Aunt Pam said.

  “Because it’s fun to watch,” Pearl said.

  Quite true, and Amy could well imagine how an episode featuring a showgirl and a senator’s wife would be fraught with make-believe drama. Ivory and Pearl would urge Mia to buy a mermaid gown with a neckline down to her navel, and Aunt Pam would suggest something a little more formal.

  Uptight even.

  Yeah, it was a train wreck in the making and would probably boost the show’s ratings. But it would be bad news for Uncle Mark’s reputation and his next election.

  Pam glanced at Julie and then Amy and then back at Mia. She straightened her spine. “Don’t you think it’s more appropriate for you to invite Julie? After all, she’s your future mother-in-law.”

  Way to go, Aunt Pam. She’d sidestepped the invitation and backhanded the ball into someone else’s court. No doubt she’d learned this as a killer on the tennis courts down at the country club.

  But Julie was a low-handicap golfer, and she knew how to hit a ball a long way. “Oh, don’t bother about me. I’m a fashion disaster. I’ll stay home and babysit Scarlett.” The twinkle in Julie’s eye suggested that she’d watched Say Yes to the Dress once or twice. Who knew?