The Secret Wedding Dress

The girl nodded, her face streaked with tears.

“I’m worried about my cat. Daddy’s real busy, but Fluffy’s only ever lived in a ‘partment. I don’t want to leave her, ‘cause maybe she’ll get lost.”

“Ah.” Sylvie considered the distance from her to the cat. It wasn’t that the span was so great, but the limb seemed pretty frail. “Where was your apartment?”

“Atlanta. I’m six, almost. I loved my school and my teacher. Do you think they’ve got a nice school here?”

“I’m sure of it. I lived in Briarwood all my life, well, except for a few years I went off to work in New York City. There’s a bunch of things that’re way better here.”

The girl stared at Sylvie with huge, watery eyes. “I’ll like it okay. My daddy said it takes time to get used to somewhere new. What happened to your dog? My daddy said that dog’s gonna be trouble.”

Sylvie smiled at the girl who obviously planned to parrot everything her father said. No telling what she might discover about her new neighbors at this rate.

“Oscar isn’t really my dog,” she explained. “Normally he’s friendly and loveable. I bathe pets and sometimes dogsit, too. Look, honey, why don’t I try to get Fluffy down?”

“I’d like that, thank you,” the child said politely.

Sylvie inched out on the limb. “Is your last name Whitaker?”

“Uh-uh. Mercer. Rianne Mercer. My daddy’s name is Joel, and my mommy’s name is Lynn.”

Creeping out several more inches, Sylvie absorbed those facts. It must mean that Iva’s great nephew had sold his inheritance. She was about to ask, when she heard the limb crack. Her heart jackhammered wildly. The Mercers’ back door flew open and the man with the gruff voice called, “Rianne? Where are you, sweetie? The movers need you to tell us where you want your bed.”

The girl swung around. “Can I come in a minute, Daddy? Fluffy’s still in the tree.”

Sylvie heard dark muttering that mirrored the thoughts running through her head. Then she heard a sound like pebbles striking metal. Rianne’s dad was pouring dry cat food into a bowl—but that only occurred to her when, big as you please, Fluffy leaped down from her perch. She landed safely below on all fours and dashed through her back door. Rianne shouted gleefully and raced after her pet.

Sylvie was glad her ignominious fall into her yard, limb and all, took place after her obnoxious, arrogant neighbor had closed his door. Luckily, her pride was all that suffered injury. Although, she mused, limping toward her cabin, who knew what aches and pains she’d have come morning?

JOEL MERCER had gotten a fair glimpse of his neighbor, wrapped tight around a sagging tree branch. His earlier impression had been of a scrawny dark-haired woman in her mid-to-late twenties, who behaved in a somewhat bizarre fashion. Hell, what was he thinking? She’d acted like a complete fruitcake.

Seeing her on to that branch was his second glimpse, and it did nothing to alter his first opinion. She’d changed clothes to climb trees, apparently. Her hair no longer hung straight to her chin as it had; she’d secured a twist atop her head with what resembled a large metal chip-bag clip. Spiky hair poked out every which way. Joel wondered if she’d been attempting to spy on him. Was that why she’d decided to swing through the trees like Jane of the jungle? God only knew, but Joel had run into of some pretty odd women hanging out in Atlanta’s singles bars. Women he’d labeled predators. In spite of his weekly comic strip, which centered on a couple of zany cartoon girlfriends named Poppy and Rose and described their dating misadventures, Joel usually managed to keep his private life fairly tame. Making his life tamer still had been his one goal in moving to laid-back Briarwood, North Carolina, into the home he’d inherited from his great-aunt. That, and keeping Rianne from seeing her mother’s face splashed all over half the billboards in town because it confused and upset her. Joel didn’t begrudge Lynn her newly acquired high-powered TV anchor job. He did resent that she never made time to spend with their daughter.

“Rianne, let Fluffy eat in peace. I need you to come upstairs and pick the bedroom you’d like. Then we’ll set up your bed.”

The girl skipped up the curving staircase, landing hard on both feet at the top. “I never choosed my room in our ’partment.”

“Choosed isn’t a word, honey. It’s chose. And you should say apartment.”

“Why?” She slipped her hand in Joel’s.

Answering his daughter’s endless whys had been his second-biggest challenge as single dad to a precocious child. The first, he discovered, was figuring out how to safely shuffle Rianne in and out of women’s public restrooms in restaurants, malls and parks. Now, that took charm and ingenuity. He always had to garner the aid of kind, elderly ladies; he’d learned to sense which faces to trust.

“The rules about using the proper words will fall into place when your new first-grade teacher gives you word lists. I’ll help you study them.”

“Daddy, the lady next door said I’ll like school here. She said she’s lived here her whole life, ‘cept for when she lived in New York City.”

“She didn’t live in that house, Rianne. I knew the couple who lived there. Mr. Shea taught me how to fish in the lake I showed you. His wife, Mary, baked the best oatmeal-raisin cookies I’ve ever tasted. I can almost smell them even now. Okay, snooks, this is the yellow room. Across the hall, the other room is painted…violet, I guess. One of its walls is covered in flower wallpaper. We can change the paint color and pick out new paper, if you’d like.”

“I like this room, Daddy. Oh, look, there’s a bench in the window. I can see Oscar playing in the lady’s yard.”

Joel knelt on the bench and gazed down on his neighbor’s backyard. Given the amount of land attached to the Whitaker estate, he wondered why his great-uncle Harvey hadn’t picked a more secluded spot to build. “Considering the size of the neighbor’s dog and the way he scared poor Fluffy, I’d rather you stayed far away from that woman and her pet.”

“Oscar’s not hers. She baby-sits him. She gives doggies baths and sometimes dogs stay with her, like I did at my baby-sitter’s the days when you worked late.”

“Gr…eat!” Joel heaved out the word. “I see a dog run and kennels. Hmm. I wouldn’t have thought that would be a legal business inside the city limits.”

“Why?”

“Just because,” Joel said, eyeing the neighbor’s yard as the movers hauled in Rianne’s bed. He turned from the window with a frown. He’d always sworn he wouldn’t resort to answering his kids’ questions with just because. As a boy he’d had an inquisitive mind. His parents, who fought constantly, never gave straight answers. Their bitterness had led to their eventual breakup and to his estrangement from them. Which was another reason this house and Briarwood held such fond memories for him. Iva and her good friends, Bill and Mary Shea, had nothing but time to lavish on a lonely, neglected boy. Joel’s folks had finally split the year he’d turned fifteen. His dad, a career Army man, went on to a new duty station in Hawaii. He’d remarried ASAP, and his new wife had given birth to a son. Joel’s dad seemed to forget he had an older son from his first marriage. He retired in Hilo, so Joel had never met his stepbrother. And his mom had continued with her job in Atlanta until she, too, met and married a new man. Seventeen by then, Joel elected to stay behind. His high school teachers and counselors secured him an art scholarship, for which he’d always be grateful. As a lonely child, he’d coped with moving from one army base to the next by drawing funny caricatures of the people around him. His drawing ability, combined with observational skills and a dry wit made him a good living from the time he’d hired on to create political cartoons a decade ago, to now. After a few years, the paper had offered him his own, more lucrative, weekly strip, which went into syndication a while ago.

“I’m going to have the movers bring in the posts for your bed, Rianne. How about if, after they go, you help me by handing over the bolts, nuts and wrenches I need? Then I’ll assemble my bed. After I finish that, I’ll fix us something to eat.”

“What?”

“Whatever I find in the first food box I open. Tomorrow, early, we’ll go grocery shopping.”

Putting together beds soon became a chore that was next to impossible to complete. But by then, what to fix for supper was no longer an issue. Within minutes of the moving van’s departure, a steady stream of Briarwood matrons started bringing in so much food Joel was astonished—and wary. Especially after the first talkative stranger, a woman named Millie McDaniel, informed Joel that she owned the only hair salon in town, and he realized that along with casseroles came questions. Briarwood’s self-appointed welcoming committee was determined to find out the intimate details of his life. But ever since his very public divorce from a prominent newschaser, Joel had learned how to smile politely and say nothing personal.

Seconds after he shut the door on a very persistent shopkeeper, Joel noticed his next-door neighbor striding down her lane. Where earlier she’d worn raggedy cutoffs, she now had on a floaty pink sundress. Joel hesitated just inside his door, juggling a layer cake in one hand and a macaroni-and-beef casserole in the other. Because she carried a covered metal pan, he assumed she was about to be his next inquisitor. Joel vacillated between meeting her head-on and pretending not to hear his doorbell.

Instead of escaping, he edged out onto the porch, admiring the change a dress made in her appearance. A full skirt swished appealingly around her slender ankles. On one ankle he identified a circle of gemstones winking in the setting sun. A minute or so passed while he enumerated her other attributes. Then two things dawned on Joel. One, she’d noticed him ogling her. Two, she wasn’t going to his house. A car had pulled into her lane, and a spiffily dressed man emerged from the sleek black Mercedes coupe. He whipped open his passenger door and relieved the woman of her pan of goodies, then waited while she folded her full skirt inside the car. The man watched Joel, too.

Joel had barely darted inside before the driver handed the pan to his passenger and bent to say something that made her glance toward Joel’s open door. He abruptly slammed it shut.

Big deal! So, the country mouse had a boyfriend with a few bucks. It was just as well. Joel hadn’t come to Briarwood in search of dates. One mistake of the kind he’d made in marrying Lynn was all a man needed. Lynn had turned out to have a greater interest in skyrocketing to fame as a foreign correspondent, which had led to this new job as a high-profile TV anchor, than she’d ever had in staying in one place building a home with him.

“That cake is lopsided, Daddy,” Rianne announced as Joel carried the last gift into the big, country-style kitchen. “It sorta looks like the one you made for my last birthday, ’cept that one had my fav’rite chocolate frosting.”

A stab of something like nostalgia had struck Joel as he’d watched the couple drive off in the hot car, but it faded instantly. Bending, he swung his daughter into his arms for a hug. If he hadn’t met and married Lynn Severson, he wouldn’t have Rianne. She was the best thing in his life.

“Can we eat the ’sketti the woman with the bright red hair brought?”

Joel grinned. “Bright red is accurate. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that shade.” As Rianne’s blue eyes widened, Joel laughed and set her down. “If I let you, kid, you’d eat ’sketti every night. And it’s spaghetti. Tell you what. I’ll turn the oven on low and put this in to warm while we finish raising the canopy over your bed. I swear, we’re not moving again until you’re twenty-one. I’m not ever wrestling with that canopy again. I’d sure like to have a talk with the masochist who engineered that.”

“What’s a mas…maso—that word you said, Daddy? What is that?”

Joel nearly swallowed his tongue. “Never mind, honey. It’s not a word you’ll need to know in first grade—if ever,” he muttered, taking the stairs two at a time to the first broad landing.

Chapter Two

Across town at her parents’ home, Sylvie divided the time before dinner between sidestepping the issue of her new neighbor, and avoiding too much chumminess with the man her sister, Dory, had sent to collect her. Where did her family dig up these guys? Chet Bellamy’s company had apparently sold Dory’s insurance agency a new computer system, and he was in town for a week to see that it got up and running. Thank heaven the man had no desire to leave his thriving business in Asheville. And as he’d said he was on the road a lot, Sylvie couldn’t really begrudge him this one evening in the company of her lively family.

Dory and Carline, twenty-five and twenty-four respectively, cornered their older sister in the rambling family kitchen.

Carline, eight and a half months pregnant and always focused on food lately, snitched several slices of cheese from a platter Sylvie was arranging. “I can’t believe you sat and watched brand-new people move into the Whitaker place and don’t have a thing to say about them.”

Sylvie slapped her sister’s hand as she polished off the two pieces of cheese she’d taken and reached for more. “Mom asked me to fix this to take out on the porch as an appetizer. If you keep grabbing everything I cut, Carline, the tray will look like a mouse got into it.”

Dory cut a chunk of pepper jack for herself and nibbled on it. “Jane Bateman passed the word at our insurance agency. She’d gone to the post office at noon and saw the moving truck, and knew they turned down Blackberry Road. She figured out they were headed to Iva’s. I left work late, or I’d have gone by there with something from my freezer they can reheat in a microwave. I wonder if the Mercers play bridge,” she said, glancing at her sisters. “Peggy at the post office told Jane that’s their name, Mercer. Peggy said their mail’s being transferred from Atlanta. City people are more likely to play bridge, don’t you think?” she asked hopefully.

Sylvie bumped against the refrigerator as she moved around the counter. The dull ache reminded her of her earlier fall from the tree. “They have at least one child, a little girl. And a cat,” she added in afterthought.

“A girl? Great,” Dory said, suddenly smiling. “How old? Kendra’s age, I hope. They could play together when Kendra stays with you.”

“This child, Rianne’s her name, is probably a year or so older than Kendra. She asked me about the school here. I’d say she’s in first or second grade.” Sylvie looked out and saw her niece and nephew playing on the swing set outside. Kendra was an advanced four, and Roy a sturdy, delightful toddler.

“What did the girl have to say about her parents?” Carline asked, levering herself up on one of the stools that ringed the kitchen counter.

“Nothing much.” Sylvie picked up the platter and prepared to go out to the porch where the men stood talking to her parents, Nan and Rob, as Sylvie’s dad tossed steaks on a built-in barbecue. “She gave their names. You already know her dad’s Joel. I believe she called her mother Lynn. I only saw him briefly, hauling luggage from his vehicle. I never caught sight of the wife.”

“Maybe she stayed behind to tidy up the house they sold in Atlanta.” Carline helped herself to a small cluster of grapes even as Sylvie tried to lift the plate out of her reach.

Stopping at the door, Sylvie turned. “That’s something else the girl mentioned. She said her cat’s only ever lived in an apartment.” Sylvie was again reminded of her tumble from the neighbor’s tree as she nudged open the screen with her hip.

“Gosh,” Carline exclaimed, pausing with a grape raised to her mouth. “Maybe there is no Mrs. Mercer. I mean, if they lived in a city high-rise…”

Sylvie recognized the expression that passed between her sisters. Their dedication in matching her up with some—any—unattached male always shone like a thousand-watt lightbulb. “Stop right there! It’s not too likely that a divorced guy with one kid would buy a home the size of the Whitakers’. Especially not in a backwater like Briarwood. Where’s the future for him?”

Dory pounced immediately. “Who said Mercer’s divorced? Did his daughter say that?”

Sylvie noticed the look again, and rolled her eyes. “Get this straight once and for all, you two. Capital N, capital O in foot-high letters. Whether he’s divorced, widowed, never married or openly gay, you will not shove me in his direction, is that patently clear?”

“Openly gay?” the sisters chorused with laughter that was cut off when Sylvie banged the screen door.

Her neighbor’s name didn’t surface again during the meal, for which Sylvie was thankful. But as she and Chet prepared to leave, Nan Shea set a big plate of chocolate chip cookies on the pan Sylvie had brought a molded Jell-O salad in. “What are the cookies for?” Sylvie turned in surprise.

“Do you mind running them over to your new neighbors? I can’t because tomorrow and the next are my days to volunteer at the library. Chocolate chip cookies are so much better eaten fresh.”

A refusal rose to the tip of Sylvie’s tongue. Knowing her mom, she’d rearrange her entire day to deliver the cookies herself if Sylvie didn’t. Besides, Sylvie recalled Rianne Mercer’s tear-streaked face. If anything would lift a homesick kid’s spirits, it’d be chocolate chip cookies. “Okay, Mom…if Mercer’s still up unpacking boxes when Chet drops me off, I’ll bring the cookies over tonight.”

Dory tried unsuccessfully to pull the plate from Sylvie’s hands as she signaled her mom with an eyebrow. “I’ll take them to Mr. Mercer in the morning, and add something from Grant and me. Mother, I’m sure Sylvie was planning to offer Chet a nightcap, weren’t you, Sylvie?”

“Actually, no,” she shot back, bestowing her most practiced smile on her escort. “I heard Chet tell Daddy he wanted to get an early start tomorrow for his drive back to Asheville. I wouldn’t dream of keeping him up late. Maybe next time he’s in town…” She let the suggestion linger, hoping against hope that she’d also heard Chet say he’d completed his company’s project in Briarwood.

To the man’s credit, he seemed to catch on to the fact that he hadn’t elevated Sylvie’s heart rate.

“Sylvie’s right, Dory,” Chet said quickly. “I intend to be on the road by 6:00 a.m.”

“One drink, you two. How long would that take? Unless…” Dory pouted prettily, her meaning made plenty clear.

Sylvie opened the door and hurried out, but not before murmuring tightly, “Dory, honestly! Give me a break.” Sylvie knew that few could pout like Dory. She had it down to a science. So much so, her husband, Grant, bless his heart, chuckled and playfully clapped a hand over her mouth.

Pausing at the gate, Sylvie thought of something she’d forgotten to mention. “Carline,” she called, “Ted Moore’s mom was taken to the hospital today. He and Anita went to Tennessee. They have no idea how long they’ll be gone. I’m boarding Oscar. Did Anita get hold of you about sending their wedding gift directly to Kay and Dave?”

“She left a garbled message on my store phone. She must’ve been on her cell somewhere in the Smokies. Half the message was cut off. That’s too bad about Mrs. Moore. I hope she recovers.”

“A small stroke, Anita told me.”

Nan Shea stepped off the porch. “No stroke is small when you’re eighty, as Ted’s mother is. If they left suddenly, they probably forgot details like watering the plants or having someone collect the mail. I’ll call around tomorrow and see if anyone’s doing it. If not, I’ll get a volunteer from the community club.”

“Mom, you’re the best,” Sylvie said from the car. “Your organizational ability puts us all to shame. I had Anita standing right in front of me and it never occurred to me to offer that kind of help.”

Rob slid an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “I recall Nan making a similar comment to her mom forty years ago. I’ll tell you girls what your grandmother said, and I hope you remember, because it left an impression me. Lou said that what makes Briarwood so livable has to do with each resident practicing what she called ‘good neighbor policies.’”

Sylvie and her sisters nodded, but Sylvie felt that her dad’s eyes rested the longest on her. As Chet shut her into his coupe, she pondered her reluctance to extend any kind of neighborliness to Joel Mercer. Her father’s admonition left her feeling guilty, and she hated the feeling.

“Do you get bombarded like that all the time?” Chet asked as he backed out of the drive.

Sylvie’s still-guilty gaze flashed to her companion. “Pardon?” Could this man read her mind?

A sheepish expression crept over his face. “Dory simply would not let me wiggle out of coming to dinner tonight. She was even more persistent that I pick you up. I have to admit I expected you to be an ugly duckling.” He flexed his fingers on the wheel. “You’re so…not that…I can’t imagine why she’s selling you so hard. Are you the town’s scarlet woman or something?”

Sylvie’s jaw dropped, then laughter bubbled up. “To my knowledge, that’s not a label anyone’s attached to me. But if I thought it’d discourage my well-meaning family and friends from setting me up with any Tom, Dick or Harry who still happens to be breathing, I’d start the rumor myself. Oh, sorry.” She covered her mouth. “I didn’t mean to imply that you fell into the geriatric singles group. Some have, though.”

“No offense taken. I have a mother and four sisters who can’t abide the notion of anyone walking through life except as a couple. Change that to read a male and female couple. I heard your comment earlier. The one about a man being divorced, widowed or openly gay. I am. Gay, but not openly. My family would never accept that, so it’s easier to sidestep their efforts to hook me up with some nice woman. I sort of wondered if you and I were in a similar boat.”

Sylvie was awfully afraid she probably resembled the large-mouth bass often pulled from Whitaker Lake. “I, ah, no. I’m arrow-straight, really.” She felt her ears burn and studied the pan and the plate of cookies resting unsteadily on her lap.

He winced. “Too bad from my perspective. I fancied I glimpsed a kindred spirit back there at your parents’. Forgive me for speaking out of turn,” he said stiffly. “No disrespect meant, but I sort of hoped maybe we could do a long-distance appearance-of-romance thing. Maybe string my folks and yours along.”

Thinking Chet had gone out on a narrow limb, baring his soul to a virtual stranger, Sylvie relented and gave him something in return. “I was badly hurt by a man in New York, whom I loved and trusted, Chet. My family doesn’t understand why I can’t embrace what they want for me, which is marriage. You and I probably do share a similar angst when we’re placed in our families’ crosshairs.”

Chet swung down her lane. He left his seat to open her door, but didn’t turn off the Mercedes’s engine. Assisting Sylvie out, he brushed a limp kiss over her cheek.

“I wish you the best, Chet. For the record, if you come back to Briarwood, I will serve you that postponed nightcap.”

“It’s a deal. Shall I walk you to your door, or do you plan to deliver those cookies to your nosy neighbor?”

“Nosy?” Sylvie darted a quick glance at Mercer’s well-lit window. Maybe a curtain had dropped, or maybe the window was open and the fabric had been stirred by a breeze. She couldn’t tell.

Chet shrugged. “I know our comings and goings are being observed.”

“I think I’ll hold off delivering my mother’s offering until after I put on sweats and change back into the real me. Have a safe trip to Asheville.” She ran lightly up her drive. Sylvie didn’t know what made her do something so uncharacteristic then, but she turned and blew Chet a kiss. If Joel Mercer was spying, why not give him an eyeful?

She set the cookies on top of her fridge and let Oscar out while she pulled on some comfortable sweats. Not five minutes after she’d tied her sneakers, all hell broke loose in her backyard. Tearing outside with flashlight in hand, she discovered her delinquent houseguest had once again treed Fluffy the cat. As if on cue, the back door across the fence banged open, and out charged a fire-breathing Joel Mercer.