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

Mike flashed back to Bethany’s hug with her forever sister. Her brothers’ well-intentioned overprotectiveness. Her wacky but loyal friends. Her obvious affection for all of them was as beautiful as the woman herself.

“These would be for the foundation’s holiday gala?” George asked. “The silent auction your mother’s chairing?”

“I always have you send a few prints.”

“Not images this personal.”

“They’ll show people Jeremy’s joy for life.” Mike felt the theme expand. “The way he lived the hell out of every day, despite the odds he faced.”

“Thanks to you.” George smiled through her worry. “Are you really ready to hand Livy a piece of your private world? So she can make money from something you did just for your brother?”

“The money’s not the point.” It had never been the point. “And it’s for the foundation. Research and grants and scholarships. Jeremy wouldn’t mind supporting that.”

George held out her hand for the binder. She scanned the two pages of proofs Mike had settled on. “This has nothing to do with whatever you landed in the middle of in Chandlerville?”

“I didn’t say that.” Mike scowled, sidestepping her curiosity.

He could never BS anything past George for long. But he wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.

How it wasn’t settling well that ten years had passed since he’d had Jeremy in his life. How it suddenly didn’t feel like enough of a distraction, losing himself for a few nights at McC’s and then in the job that had called him to Chandlerville in the first place. Not after stumbling into Bethany Darling. Not when Mike couldn’t stop thinking about her and wondering what Jeremy would think, too.

“Help me pick a handful of shots.” He pointed at the notebook. “Then you can get on with your orgy of tax planning. You can send me high-res proofs when you’ve got a minute, and I’ll think through the rest. Send digital copies of the schedules, too. My being out of sync if I pop back over this way won’t do anybody any good.”

Neither would his breaking his promise to steer clear of Bethany from here on out.

“And while you’re at it,” he said, making it sound like an afterthought, and wishing it truly was, “there’s a number in New York I need you to track down for me.”

Chapter Five

“This one’s for virgin daiquiris,” Dru Hampton said just before seven that night. The mother- and bride-to-be handed Bethany one of the two blenders she’d dragged from her kitchen cabinet.

Dru and Brad were transforming Vivian Douglas’s turn-of-the-century Victorian into their own space,
with Bethany helping them every spare minute she had. The plan was to be done
before the New Year, in time to welcome home the beautiful baby girl they were naming Vivi, after Brad’s grandmother.

“And this one is for everyone else.” Dru shoved a matching blender at Bethany. “Don’t worry about me. The bunch of you have a blast getting boozy at
my
bachelorette party.”

Bethany juggled the appliances and set them on the worn Formica countertop. “The wedding’s nearly a month off. Are you sure this rates as a bachelorette party?”

Her foster sister patted her gently rounded belly, adorably accentuated by one of the body-hugging sundresses Dru wore pretty much all the time these days.

“I’m finally not feeling like rot,” she said. “I’ll take my party now, thank you very much, in case the morning sickness makes an encore appearance.”

“You’re the one who decided to plan a big wedding in the midst of all of this.”

Bethany admired how effortlessly feminine her sister looked, despite Dru’s expanding baby bump. Bethany’s wardrobe—dressing most mornings while rushing out the door blinking sleep from her eyes—resembled the tattered aftermath of an exploded box of crayons.

“You and Brad could have done things quick and dirty,” she said, “like Oliver and Selena.”

“I want the big day.” Dru gave a dreamy sigh. “With the family there, the whole town. Music and flowers and photographs to look at forever, and Brad and me feeling like the luckiest people on the planet.”

“Or the sickest, if that little princess growing inside you is feeling ornery.”

“Weddings take time to plan, and we didn’t want to wait to start a family.”

“You play, you pay. Besides, if drinking virgin daiquiris at home with the girls is bugging you, go gripe at your bar-crawling fiancé.”

“Done and done.” Dru yanked the freezer door open. “I hit my breaking point when he rolled in Thursday night drunk off his protect-and-serve butt. We had a heart-to-heart over the pot of coffee he needed to pry his eyes open the next morning.”

“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.

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
.”