His Darling Bride (Echoes of the Heart #3) Page 8

  “At least the boys got it out of the way early, too. No one’ll be hurling on your wedding video.”

  “Whatever.” Dru massaged her belly, rooting through the freezer with her free hand. “Brad’s officially dry until this little bundle shoves its way into the world. He’ll be drinking sparkling cider with me after we say our I-dos.”

  Bethany plugged in the blenders and took the tubs of premade daiquiri mix from her sister. Trays of ice came next. The vintage aluminum kind. Bethany pulled the levers to pop the cubes free, loving the honest, straightforward way her sister and Brad loved. They’d fought hard to get to this place.

  “If it makes any difference,” Bethany said, “Clair and Nic said that after I left, the guys’ partying was pretty tame. Travis and Brad might have been a little overserved, but they had Oliver as their designated driver.”

  “Overserved by your cowboy?” Dru grabbed a bottle of rum from the pantry. “The guy you now say means nothing, only he would have decked your ex if Oliver hadn’t? I hear your clinch at McC’s drew quite a crowd.”

  “It was just a kiss.” Bethany fed mix, fruit, ice, and booze into the first blender. And Mike kissing her hand earlier today had just been a goodbye. “I’ve already explained why.”

  She’d talked to Marsha and Joe when she’d dropped Shandra off an hour ago. To Dru and Selena when she’d returned to the Douglas house—where she’d moved in after the first of the year, when Dru and Brad had offered her their guest bedroom. She had Oliver and Travis and Brad to track down next. Of course they’d hear an earful on their own.

  “Everyone needs to let it go now,” Bethany insisted, including her.

  “Good luck with that. You’re helping me over at Mom and Dad’s tomorrow afternoon, right? So we can pretend to do wedding stuff while we check on Joe? You know Mom or someone else will bring up your Cowboy Bob.”

  “His name is Mike.” Bethany stabbed the switch to transform the first mixture into frozen perfection. She licked stickiness from her thumb and met her sister’s steady gaze. “And he’s nobody to me.”

  “He has you spinning. While the family’s been watching you slowly come unglued the last month or so.”

  “I am not.” Bethany absolutely refused to be. “I’m fine.”

  Her sister didn’t look convinced. “If you spend any more time painting, Brad and I are going to move your bed into the sitting room. And now you have a creative space to disappear into in Atlanta, on top of the kids you’re already teaching three days a week down there.”

  “I love it here,” Bethany insisted. “With you and Brad. With everybody.”

  “I know you do, kiddo. You never would have stayed so close, even when you were on your own in Atlanta, if you didn’t want to be with the family. But you’re spending more time by yourself every week. Don’t ask me of all people to believe that’s by chance. Is it too much, the wedding and the things you’re doing to help Brad and me around here and at the Whip?”

  “Of course not.”

  Dru had had her own problems adjusting to aging out of foster care. She hadn’t hesitated to share all the gory details when she and Bethany had started talking again in January—after Dru and Brad had reconnected. Before long, Dru had taken Bethany under her wing, the way Bethany was trying to pay that kindness forward with Shandra.

  Her older sister had made a place for Bethany in her home so Bethany could stop working odd jobs around town to make ends meet—including doing the majority of the cleaning at Dan’s Doughnuts, in exchange for living in the postage-stamp-sized studio apartment Dan and Leigh Hastings owned above their bakery. Dru had smoothed the way for Bethany to reconnect with their family, too.

  There was nothing Bethany wouldn’t do to repay her sister or any of the people who’d always been there for her, no matter what.

  “This family means everything to me,” she insisted.

  “I know it does.” Dru’s expression resembled Marsha’s when their mother was being supportive but ruthlessly realistic. “But your art means almost as much to you. And even though I’ve kept everyone else out, I can’t help peeking into your studio every now and then.”

  Bethany stared at the floor, dread prickling at the back of her throat at the coming conversation. It was a wonder it had taken her sister this long to say something.

  “I’ve seen all the unfinished canvases,” Dru said. “All those nights, all the work you’ve been doing. You’re so determined to have something to give Mom and Dad at the wedding. And now you’re pursuing this residency in Midtown. But is any of it making you happy?”

  Dru waited for Bethany to look up.

  “How long has it been,” Bethany’s sister asked, “since you’ve finished a canvas? Including last year, when you lived and painted in that tiny place over Dan’s.”

  Bethany swallowed. “Since high school.”

  It was the thousand-pound gorilla on her shoulders. It was the secret she’d been keeping from everyone—even from herself, as often as she could make herself forget. Because if she just kept painting and thinking that the next canvas would be the one to dream its way into the world, then she could keep believing she was happily settling into her old life, and that things were finally working out.

  Dru handed her a worn dish towel trimmed in a crazy green-and-orange pattern that looked like something straight off the Brady Bunch set. Bethany wiped her fingers, squinting against her stinging eyes so she didn’t have to wipe them, too.

  “Is it still because of some guy in high school?” her sister asked. “Because Benjie made swiss cheese out of your heart and your ability to create?”

  Bethany shook her head, swamped with the memory of Mike’s steamy kisses Thursday night instead of her run-in with Benjie. “Of course not.”

  “Is it all the wedding planning and craziness?” her sister asked. “Because we—”

  “I need to be close to everyone again.” Even if Bethany didn’t know how to hold on to them yet. “Especially now that . . .”

  “Dad’s sick?”

  Joe’s heart attack in the spring had been a blow to everyone. For Bethany, it had been the shock she’d needed to get that there were no guarantees. That the time to finally get things right in her life, to learn how to be with the people who’d always loved and accepted her, was now. And as nerve-rattling as the last few months with the family had been, she’d relished every second of being back with them.

  “It’s okay,” her sister said, “if you’ve been seeing this guy Mike in Atlanta. If that’s why you’re not interested in dating guys around here, it’s—”

  “I’m not dating anyone.” Bethany set up Dru’s mommy cocktail in the second blender. “I’m dealing with enough baggage already. There’s too much else on my mind.”

  “Then clear your mind and hang with someone who makes you feel good, if that’s what this guy does for you.”

  “Now you’re channeling Nic and Clair instead of Mom.”

  “Dating just for fun isn’t a personality flaw, Bethany.”

  “It is when you’ve landed as many losers as I have.”

  “Then stick to kissing hunky guys in bars, if that feels safer.”

  Bethany snorted at the idea that anything she might do with Mike would feel safe. She started the second blender while she portioned the frothy pink confection from the first one into four martini glasses. The delicate gilded-rimmed stemware had been Vivian Douglas’s.

  “Just don’t think you have to hide a guy or anything else from the family,” her sister said.

  “Now, why would I hide anything from the clan, after the boys were so laid-back about meeting Mike the other night?”

  The guy would be an absolute blast to date, no doubt. He was funny, charming, and sweet. His interest in Bethany’s art earlier today, genuine or not, had made her feel incredible. Each time she was near him, the knotted-up things inside her felt as if they might finally slip loose. Each glimpse of Mike made her want to capture his rugged profile in paint.
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  She poured the bride-to-be’s alcohol-free drink and handed Dru the glass, intending to push through the butler’s door into the living room where the other women were waiting.

  Dru blocked Bethany’s escape, sipping her mocktail. “You know that whatever you do, whatever you’re going through, whatever you need is okay with me, right?”

  “Of course I know that.”

  Her foster sister ambushed her with a hug. “You can’t give up on love, Bethany. Remember that. Maybe some people can. Maybe sometimes you want to. But you’re not made that way, or when you aged out of the system, you wouldn’t have stopped running when you got to Atlanta.”

  The kitchen door swung open from the living room. Selena poked her head inside, glorious dark curls framing classic features and almond-shaped eyes.

  “No fair,” she said as Bethany and Dru slid apart. “You two are bogarting the libations, while Ginger and Leigh and me are exiled with Vivian’s cuckoo clocks.” She cocked her head at Dru. “Exactly why haven’t you tossed them out yet? They’d make great kindling for a bonfire.”

  Dru helped Bethany stage the tray with three rum-doused daiquiris. She handed the final one to their sister-in-law.

  “Brad’s grandmother’s favorite things belong here,” Dru said. “They’ve belonged here a lot longer than I have, so they’re staying. Now, let’s kick this bash into high gear.” She disappeared into the other room with the tray, leaving Selena to hold the door open for Bethany to follow with Dru’s drink. “I need you ladies’ help to get Bethany dishing about Chandlerville’s newest bartender!”

  “Rick’s not talking,” Selena said half an hour later, the party conversation stuck firmly on the subject of Mike. She’d snuggled into the corner of Vi Douglas’s weathered brocade couch. “I didn’t get any more out of him and Law than what Oliver reported. Or maybe they don’t know any more about Thursday night than the meltdown the rest of the bar saw. Your man of mystery,” she said to Bethany, “sure knows how to make an entrance. Give.”

  Bethany tossed popcorn at her. “You’ve been pestering Rick Harper for gossip?”

  “Hey”—Selena tossed Cheetos back, each of her fingernails polished with a different color Bethany suspected perfectly matched her niece’s manicure—“my husband finally got his chance to defend his baby sister’s honor. The whole family’s been waiting for half a decade for that Carrington louse to eat a face full of somebody’s knuckles. And to add insult to injury, some new-in-town guy was necking with you before my man and his sidekicks got there. And you say it was just to piss Benjie off? I’m rooting around for whatever details I can dig up.”

  “Oliver would have asked Rick if Selena hadn’t,” Dru said. “He’s always been overprotective where his baby sister is concerned.”

  “He told me once,” Selena said to Bethany, “that when family services first placed you with Marsha and Joe in the midst of your I don’t need no stinkin’ home phase, that it was like looking in a mirror.”

  It had been the same for Bethany.

  When you came from a life so fractured you wish you’d come from nowhere, you learned not to want wherever you wound up next. She and Oliver—and she and Shandra now—had recognized that about each other, without having to know the details about their very different journeys to foster care.

  “He’s still steaming about whatever he thought he saw when the boys walked up to you,” Selena said. “To hear Oliver bluster, you would have thought Rick’s new bartender was taking advantage of you.”

  Ginger Reed Jenkins released an exaggerated sigh. “Why doesn’t some gorgeous cowboy ever take advantage of me?”

  “Because your husband,” Dru answered, “would knock any man who tried clear to the next county.”

  “No one was taking advantage of anyone at McC’s,” Bethany insisted.

  “Which only makes inquiring minds want to know more,” Dru quipped. “Especially after you and Cowboy Bob were getting chummy at brunch.”

  “I wanted to apologize and clear the air.”

  “Travis stopped by the bakery for his coffee and cruller this morning,” Leigh Hastings said to Bethany, “and asked Dan what he knew. I guess your brother figured since you lived over the bakery for a year, maybe we were in the vault. My husband told him we didn’t have the scoop on whatever you’re hiding about the guy. And that even if we did, we wouldn’t be sharing the deets unless you said it was cool.”

  “Thanks,” Bethany said. “But I’m not hiding anything.”

  “Come on.” Dru waggled her eyebrows. “We need some juicy gossip to liven things up.”

  She yawned and propped her bunny-slippered feet on the coffee table. She had a fuzzy slipper collection that rivaled Bethany’s obsession with patterned tights.

  “I’ve arranged for a stripper,” Leigh offered.

  “I brought the No Boys Allowed movie.” Bethany raised her glass in another toast, hoping to nudge the conversation along to a different topic.

  “We’re stocked up on your drug of choice.” Selena checked with Ginger, who patted the shopping bag she’d dropped onto Vi’s threadbare oriental carpet.

  “Then it’s a hootenanny.” Dru pulled a throw pillow into her lap, smiling slyly. “But first . . . more dish.”

  “He sure is easy on the eyes,” Ginger purred.

  “I hear he’s a hunk of burning love.” Leigh relaxed into the cushions behind her.

  “He turned heads just eating soup at G&Bs,” Dru noted.

  Bethany drank too much daiquiri too fast, thinking about just how easily he’d turned her head again.

  Brain freeze!

  She winced.

  “What I don’t understand,” Selena said, “is why you seem so bent on letting this guy slip away, even if Thursday night was just a fluke. There’s clearly plenty of chemistry there.”

  “Maybe too much chemistry?” Dru asked.

  While everyone waited for Bethany to answer, the out-of-rhythm ticking of close to a dozen wall-mounted cuckoo clocks filled the room. She inhaled and reminded herself that none of them meant any harm. Ginger and Leigh were good friends of Bethany’s, not just Dru’s and more recently Selena’s. They were great women, wonderful people, and they’d been around Chandlerville long enough to know Bethany’s history, at least since she’d been placed with the Dixons.

  So why was Bethany fighting the itch to leave the party early?

  “I’m having a hard enough time dealing with everything,” she confessed, “without worrying about whether what I’m feeling for a new guy is going to get me into as much trouble as falling for all the other guys I have.”

  Selena and Dru exchanged a long look.

  “So you are falling for him?” Dru asked.

  The doorbell rang, sparing Bethany.

  “I thought our stripper would never get here!” Leigh glided across the room, her drink in hand. She sipped as she opened the door. “Hey, Peter. How’s your night going?”

  “Busy Sunday.” Peter Forino was the eldest son of one of the families that frequented the Dream Whip. “You’re the third house I’ve been to just on this street.”

  “And it used to be such a nice neighborhood.”

  “What?” His cheeks reddened beneath his adorable freckles and teen acne.

  “Nothing.” Leigh brushed a reassuring hand down his arm as Bethany and the rest of the party animals giggled. “Just set the pizzas on the coffee table. How much do we owe you?”

  “For two large pies?” He stepped inside, dropped off the boxes, and checked the ticket taped to the one on top. “Extra toppings. Deep dish. That’s twenty-five fifty. My dad heard what tonight was for.” He grinned at Dru, his expression slipping to confusion when he caught sight of her slippers. “He threw in breadsticks and marinara sauce for dipping, and told me to tell you to have a great time.”

  “Make sure you thank him for me,” Dru said.

  Selena stood and dug a wad of bills from her tote bag, passing them over.

  “That
covers your tip, too,” she said. “Thank Vinnie for all of us.”

  Peter counted what she’d handed him and grinned. “Thanks! I will.”

  He jogged back to the door and outside to the compact car his folks had bought him for his eighteenth birthday—with the understanding that he’d be delivering for Little Vincent’s Pizza more nights and weekends than he’d be cruising with his friends.

  Bethany slipped into the kitchen for the paper plates and napkins Dru had insisted on. No decorations, no fuss, no cleanup. Her pre-wedding bash was either going to be a fun, easy break for everyone, or it wasn’t happening. By the time Bethany returned to the living room, Selena had flipped open the box of cheese and pepperoni, extra mushrooms, and was pulling out the first steaming slice.

  She plated it and handed the bounty to Dru. “Vincent and Betsy Forino make the cutest kids. Their youngest, Bella, is the reigning princess of my second-grade class.”

  “Peter just came in for dress shoes to wear to the Chandler High Homecoming Dance.” Ginger ran a local shoe boutique, Neat Feet, that her parents had started ages ago. “He’s up for homecoming king.”

  “A hunk of burning love in the making.” Leigh grabbed a plate and a slice from the veggie box. She nibbled daintily, crust first.

  “Let’s hope his parents teach him to benevolently wield his power over women.” Dru glanced Bethany’s way, her understanding clear for how confusing love and belonging could be. How Bethany’s instinct might always be to distrust where her heart wanted to lead her. “The world is full of enough men only interested in what they can get out of a woman, never in what they could give.”

  “Not your man.” Bethany took her first mouthful of the best pizza on the east side of Atlanta. She closed her eyes in reverence, savoring the spicy, cheesy goodness. “Brad lost his heart to you when we were all kids. The same way Selena was Oliver’s one and only from the second they set eyes on each other. I’m glad I’m here to see the four of you finally wising up and figuring things out.”

  It was that kind of life-changing wisdom Bethany desperately wanted for herself.