Actually, they still seemed kind of glamorous, especially the ones who reach their fires from the sky. But it would take more than that to polish Brian Thiel’s image in my eyes. I just didn’t like the man.
“He’s always been a good athlete,” I said grudgingly. “But he’s still a jerk.”
“Bri isn’t so bad. Wait a minute! Talk about ancient history! Talk about smoke jumpers! You’re avoiding the wedding because of
Jack.
You’re skipping out on a Muffy wedding because of what happened that night between you and Jack the Knack.”
I sat bolt upright.
“Absolutely not,” I lied indignantly. “I haven’t thought about Jack Packard in years.”
“Bullshit,” said my old friend. “Complete and utter bull. I bet you think about Jack every night. I bet you don’t dare see him in person because you’re afraid you’ll steal him away from Tracy just so you can—”
“B.J., I’ve got someone at the door.” I reached out a hand to make a knocking noise on the coffee table. “Sounds urgent. Talk to you later, OK?”
“OK, but promise you’ll think about coming. Promise, Muffy?”
“I promise, Muffy. Now good-bye.”
I remained on the couch, mummied in my afghan, staring out at the rain once more. The air was so pale and dense with droplets that I could barely see the blue and orange girders of the Fremont drawbridge across the lake, or the lone sailboat tacking across the middle. Must be the SS
Masochist.
Idaho, I mused, would be hot and sunny and
dry.
I hadn’t seen my mother in a while. Tracy the television star might not care about the honor of my presence all that much, but B.J. was always a hoot to be around. Not to mention Sam and Cissy Kane and their legendary hospitality. I could even stay at the lodge, and let the latest crop of waitresses wait on me. Besides, there was that vow the Muffies made, to dance at each other’s weddings....
But not with Jack, no way. I drew my hair down over one shoulder and twisted my fingers into the curls as my thoughts went twisting into memories of hot summer nights, parties and laughter, fast cars and slow dances. But most of all, I was remembering Jack the Knack, the here-today, gone-tomorrow smoke jumper who broke every female heart within range. Including mine.
I’d fallen hard for Jack Packard, yearning at him from the edge of his wide and lively circle of friends. Then one fateful night he had asked me to dance. When the music slowed I moved boldly into his arms, and slipped my hands into his back pockets with a show of sophistication that Jack mistook for reality. We ended up in bed, I ended up in tears, and he ended up driving me home in appalled silence. We avoided each other for the rest of the summer, and even now I winced at the thought of that foolish, foolish girl. But even now, as a woman, I sometimes caught myself daydreaming about a rematch with Jack the Knack.
I sighed and shoved my hair aside.
He’s probably forgotten
all about that night, anyway. I bet he’s changed a lot. He’s almost
forty. Mom said he’s retiring from smoke jumping so he can move
to California with Tracy, so I’ll probably never see him again.
Never is a long time. I’d love to see him just once—
“Hey!” I jumped, startled, as a whiskery kiss landed on the back of my neck.
“Morning, Stretch. Been up long?” Aaron Gold, unkempt and unshaven, rolled lightly over the back of the couch and heavily onto me. He pushed me flat and slid his hands down under the afghan, and then up under my sweatshirt. He wore jeans and nothing else.
“Not long,” I said, making a halfhearted attempt to fend him off. “Don’t tell me the phone woke you. Nothing ever wakes you.”
“Nope. Just having a dream about you, so I thought I’d check out the reality. Mmmm...reality’s pretty dreamy.” His hands wandered, then he pulled them free to plant his palms along either side of my head. He did a push-up and held it, looking down into my eyes.
“Tell me something, Stretch.”
“What?” I asked brightly, hoping for a query about breakfast, about the weather forecast, about anything in the world except—
“Who’s Jack Packard, and why have you been thinking about him?”
“I said I
hadn’t.
”
“That’s not what your voice sounded like.”
Sometimes you bluff your way through an awkward moment. Sometimes you kiss your way through.
“Forget Jack,” I told Aaron—and myself—as I wound a hand around the back of his neck. I love the back of his neck. “C’mere, you.”
No deal. Aaron’s a reporter, and once his curiosity is engaged, he’s undistractable. “I’ll c’mere in a minute. Who was on the phone?”
That was a safer question. “Oh, just B.J., my friend from Idaho. I’ve told you about her.”
“Yeah, I remember.” Aaron’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. They were fine eyes, a deep, polished brown, surrounded by laugh lines. He wasn’t laughing now. “You were trying awfully hard to get her off the phone.”
“She’s...really long-winded.” Then to distract him, I spoke on impulse. Never speak on impulse. “Aaron, let’s take a trip next weekend, get some sunshine.”
“Now you’re talking.” He dropped beside me and propped himself on one elbow. “I’m starting to rust around here! Where shall we go? A guy at the
Sentinel
just got back from Puerto Vallarta. He said it was dirt cheap and the snorkeling was incredible.”
“Um, I was thinking about Sun Valley.”
“Idaho? That’s for skiing.”
“No, it’s great in the summer. In fact, they get more tourists in summer than winter. We could go hiking or kayaking or horseback riding. And Ketchum, that’s the main town, is full of restaurants and art galleries.”
Aaron cocked his head, considering, and a lock of crow-black hair fell across his eyes. That gets me every time.
“Sounds too much like work,” he said. “I’m more in the mood for vegging out on the sand. You could wear that little bathing suit you bought in Florida. Or
not
wear it. This guy says suits are optional down there, if you go to the right beach.”
He began to demonstrate that sweatshirts were optional in Seattle, but I stopped him.
“The thing is, Aaron, this other friend of mine is getting married in Sun Valley next weekend. I thought I’d be too busy to go, but I’m not, and I really should be there. That’s what B.J. was calling about.”
“Oh. A wedding.”
“A fancy wedding—the Kanes are quite wealthy. So, gourmet food and live music and a weekend at this private resort in the mountains. It’ll be fun, and you can meet B.J. and my other friends—”
“And Jack Packard?”
“Well, sure, he’s the groom.”
“Oh.”
Aaron relaxed perceptibly, and I pressed my advantage.
“We can fly into Boise and rent a car. Ketchum’s just a couple hours’ drive, and we could stay the first night with Mom. She’d like to meet you. Actually, she knows Tracy’s mother, Cissy, so she’s going to the wedding herself. We could give her a ride....”
In my enthusiasm for the logistics of the trip—I adore logistics—I failed to notice the look on Aaron’s face. But then I caught it: the look of a man who’s been asked to meet his girlfriend’s mother. At a wedding.
“Come to think of it, Stretch,” he said, rising and heading for the bedroom, “I don’t have a lot of vacation time accrued right now. Maybe later this summer.”
I heard a drawer shut, then he reappeared in a Red Sox sweatshirt, car keys in hand.
“I’ll get the
New York Times
and the bagels, if you scramble the eggs. Deal?”
I sighed. “Deal.”
Chapter Two
A PROMISE IS A PROMISE. ON MONDAY MORNING, HIGH ATOP the global headquarters of Made in Heaven, I held a company-wide staff meeting and gave serious consideration to B.J.’s request.
Which is to say, I leaned back from my secondhand desk in the workroom, one rickety flight upstairs from my kitchen, and said, “Eddie, what if I went to Idaho for a long weekend? Would that be a problem?”
I was hoping for an affirmative, but my half-time, not-too-silent partner just snorted. It’s one of his job skills.
“Wouldn’t be a problem if you went for a month,” he growled. “We’ve got no damn business till August. I told you we should have taken a booth at that bridal expo in February, but you were too busy playing around with Aaron.”
I swiveled to face him. Eddie Breen is white-haired and wiry, an old friend of my late father, retired from both the merchant marine and a career in accounting. He handles the contracts and the money, when there is any, with ferocious precision, and he holds decided opinions about everything. Up to and most certainly including my personal life.
“You used to encourage me to play around with Aaron,” I pointed out. “You were his biggest fan.”
“He’s all right.” Eddie glanced up from his computer and rotated the ever-present cigar from one side of his jaw to the other.
Unlit
cigar; I run a nonsmoking HQ. “You taking him to meet Louise?”
“N-no.” Louise was my mother. “No, an old friend of mine is getting married in Sun Valley, but Aaron can’t come. Mom will be there, though.”
“Hunh. Big wedding?”
I nodded, knowing what was coming.
“Then why in blue blazes shouldn’t you go?” he demanded. “See what kind of ideas you can pick up. Maybe pick up some clients. Come to think of it, why didn’t this friend hire you in the first place?”
“Tracy and I aren’t that close anymore,” I said, swiveling back. Both our desks face the lake, by far the best feature of the workroom. The good room out front, where I meet with clients, has a lake view, as well, but also the classy carpet and the adorable wicker furniture. “Besides, I’m not sure I feel like going on a trip by myself.”
Eddie didn’t reply. But as the raindrops slithered down the windows in long wavering streaks, a thought came to me. I could keep my promise to the Muffies and do my mother some good into the bargain.
Mom had spent Christmas on the Oregon coast with Eddie, and neither one of them had told me about it beforehand. So that meant there was something going on. Something romantic? They’d seen each other only once since then, as far as I knew, but Mom seemed to call Eddie even more often than she did me.
“Here’s an idea,” I said casually. A light touch was called for. “Why don’t we both attend this wedding? I’m welcome to bring a guest, and you could size up the vendor operations while I’m looking over the dresses and the flowers and so forth. Then we could visit Mom for a day or so afterward and compare notes.”
Not light enough.
“Listen, sister,” said Eddie over his shoulder, as he stabbed at his keyboard. “You know damn well I’m doing this overhaul of our billing system. Why would I want to go gallivanting off to see some friend of yours get married and make small talk with a bunch of strangers? Probably have to wear a tie, for God’s sake. If you want to go, then go.”
That was the crux of the matter. I didn’t want to go, and I didn’t like the reason why. I was happy for Tracy, really, but also a little envious. OK, more than a little. Tracy was a bride, B.J. was a contented wife, and I couldn’t get a date for a wedding.
Aaron said once that weddings make single women feel extra single, and he was right. Irritating and averse to commitment, but right.
“Never mind,” I muttered. “I’ll stay here and concentrate on marketing.”
“You sure?” asked Eddie. “You don’t sound sure.”
“But I am. I’m not going to Sun Valley, and that’s final.”
“All right, then,” he said, rummaging in the stacks of paper on his desk. “If you want to think about marketing, think about this.”
He tossed a magazine at me, and I caught it in a heavy flutter of glossy pages and pull-out postcards. You can get a real workout hefting bridal magazines. The gown ads alone pump up your biceps something fierce. But it was the cover of this particular rag that Eddie wanted me to see.
The cover was a close-up of a devilishly handsome rogue in his forties, sporting a tuxedo and a sensuous, self-assured smile. He had a full head of lustrous, wavy, run-your-fingersthrough-it black hair, and a spark in his bedroom eyes that said if you were lucky, the fingers in question could be yours.
The man was Beau Paliere, international celebrity and wedding planner to the stars, and the headline read “Beau Knows Romance!”
I sighed, a deep, complicated sigh. Those curving lips promised romance, all right, or at least the most exquisitely romantic wedding any bride could desire. But to me they promised only exquisite revenge. Beautiful Beau was my own personal, private Parisian nemesis. Every chance he got, Beau got between me and success.
“It says he’s coming through Seattle this summer,” said Eddie sourly. “Private party for Bill Gates and then a cruise to Alaska. How many possible clients you think he’s gonna turn against us this time?”
“It wasn’t my fault, Eddie. He insulted me!”
This past Christmas, after upstaging me royally on a local TV show, Beau had invited himself to a Made in Heaven wedding. During the reception, he’d offered to make me one of his personal assistants—and then demonstrated just how personal my assistance was expected to be. I had not responded well.
“But did you have to knock the man down?” demanded Eddie, not for the first time.
“I didn’t knock him down! I keep telling you, he fell. How was I to know he’d lose his t-toupee?” I snickered as I brought the word out. I couldn’t help it, the memory was just too funny.
Eddie struggled to remain stern, then gave up and cracked a smile. “Must have been a sight, all right.”
“It was priceless!” My snicker burst into laughter. “Can you imagine what it cost him to keep those pictures out of the tabloids? Not that he’d even notice the money, but—”
“Kharr-negie!”
This time Eddie and I both swiveled to look through the good room toward the doorway that led to the houseboat’s outside staircase. The door had been flung open by a massive grizzly bear of a man in a dripping rain parka. He had flameblue eyes and a dark thicket of beard, and he was dangling a long white cardboard box from one shovel-sized hand.
The bear flashed a gleaming grin. “Kharnegie, my friend, you mek me breakfast,
da
?”
Eddie snorted again and returned to his stabbing. Boris the Mad Russian Florist was not his favorite individual. Besides, my partner left the vendor management, along with the bride management, to me. Not a people person, Eddie Breen.
Boris Nevsky, on the other hand, was hugely personal. When I joined him in the good room and shut the connecting door behind me, he deftly shifted the box to one side and swept me into a massive Slavic embrace. I pushed him away, but with a laugh. I’m fond of the Mad Russian.
“Boris, what are you doing here?”
“I deliver centerpieces for leddies’ luncheon at Spinnaker’s.” This was a lakeside restaurant near the houseboat. “My last job before vacation. But door is locked! I call manager, she is coming in one hour. One hour! I myself deliver, special favor to her, and she kips me waiting! So I think, I visit my dear friend, she will mek me breakfast. See, I bring you extra flowers that I take to fill gaps. Manager does not deserve special favors. She deserves gaps.”
He thrust the box—the bribe—at me, and as he bent to clear the glass-topped table of wedding magazines and photo albums, I folded back the lid. Stargazer lilies, pink lisianthus, baby’s breath...
“These are beautiful, Boris, thank you. But I’m working, I can’t just drop everything and—”
“Bah! You are not working too much these days.” He dropped himself into the wicker love seat, which moaned in pain, and took the box from me. With surprising delicacy, his broad brown fingers began to shake loose each blossom and set it on the table. “Joe tells me so. He worries for your liddle business. Bring vase.”
“Joe gossips too much,” I said severely, filling a wide glass cylinder from the sink in the corner where Eddie makes coffee. “He should mind his own business, not mine.”
Joe Solveto, Seattle’s premier caterer, had offered me a job the previous year. A good offer, and maybe I should have accepted. But being my own boss suited me, and I was determined to stick it out.
I joined Boris on the love seat and began to hand him stems as he demanded them, like a nurse slapping scalpels into a surgeon’s palm. The Mad Russian had his quirks, but I loved to watch him make his magic.
“More freesia, the yellow... Now fern, liddle one.”
“The market’s kind of slow right now,” I ventured.
“Not so! Joe is busy. I am busy. More fern.”
“If you’re so busy, why the vacation?”
He shrugged. “I must take week off because of repairs to my building. My customers will miss me terribly. Terribly! Now lily.”
As the arrangement took shape, I pondered my own lack of customers. At a more prosperous time, Beau Paliere’s revenge might not have mattered. But with the economy in the doldrums, the majority of middle-class brides were having smaller weddings and doing the planning themselves. A wedding designer had become an expendable luxury.
Meanwhile, luxury-class brides were spending as much if not more than usual, throwing caution to the wind along with rose petals and rice. But now celebrity weddings, bride styles of the rich and famous, were all the rage, and everyone wanted wedding designers with upscale experience. If you had prominent names on your client list, you were booking a year or more ahead.
But I didn’t have any, not with Beautiful Beau dropping his poisonous little hints in certain ladies’ ears. Made in Heaven was languishing, and so was I. That ill-fated Christmas wedding hadn’t yielded any referrals, and my big New Year’s wedding had been canceled by the groom. Not that I blamed him for dumping that particular Bridezilla.
In any case, I’d managed some smaller ceremonies since then, along with a few private parties. But if I didn’t score a high-profile bride pretty soon, I might as well close the office and sublet the top of the houseboat to tenants. I’d have an easier time paying my rent.
“Finis!”
announced Boris. His English was uneven, but his French was flawless.
“Les belles fleurs pour ma petite amie.
Voilà.”
He swept the unused flowers into the box, set it aside, and slid the overflowing vase to the precise center of the table. The new creation was perfectly proportioned for its spot, and it subtly echoed the colors of the room, right down to the throw pillows on the love seat and the landscapes on the wall.
“Boris, you’re a wonder!”
“Da,”
he said, a modest man admitting the truth. “Genius of flowers, one customer calls me. She is correct. Now, breakfast?”
“All right,” I laughed. “I guess you’ve earned it. Let me just tell Eddie.”
But Eddie was pushing open the connecting door, his snowy eyebrows drawn together in concern.
“Your friend B.J.’s on the phone, says it’s urgent.”
“She never gives up! Hang on, Boris.” Exasperated, I returned to my desk and lifted the receiver. “B.J., I haven’t decided yet, OK? I’ll call you tonight and—honey, what’s wrong?”
For a moment I heard only sobbing. Then, “Carnegie, I need help.”
“Is it Matt?”
“No. No, I just... I just need you to...”
“What is it, what happened?”
Another harsh sob, then a long, shuddering breath, followed by an audible attempt to get a grip and control the tears. B.J. was always the tough one.
“Couldn’t you... I mean...look, could you possibly come to Ketchum for a couple of days? It would mean a lot to me. You don’t have to stay for the wedding if you don’t want.”
“Of course I will. I can probably get a flight today. But what—?”
“Muffy, Brian is dead.”