“I'll give you a hand,” Herb said, and put down his beer.
“No, Herb. I'll help,” Cydney said. “You rest your back.”
“Nice of you, kiddo, but I'm sure your back's as tired as mine.” He patted her arm as he went past her with Aldo. “I got Georgie's eight suitcases into the car. I'm sure I can get them out.”
With a bad back? Eight suitcases? What had her mother packed? Why had she lied about Herb? And why did she let him call her Georgie?
“Darling, there you are. Come and
see
this room!” Cydney turned her head and saw her mother sailing toward her. “It's fabulous!”
So was the room Cydney stood in, big as a barn with a view of autumn-flamed woods through the glass wall and a stone fireplace with a hearth so huge the fire screen looked like a backstop. The pine floor gleamed where it wasn't covered with rugs and blue leather furniture.
“Don't stand there with your mouth open, Cydney.” Georgette took her arm and turned her around. “Come and look.”
“Here's your purse, Mother.” She swung Georgette's Hermes bag off her shoulder and held it out to her.
“What? Oh—thank you.” Georgette tossed the four thousand dollar leather bag on a chair. “You
must
see this room.”
“In a minute. I have to bring in the luggage.”
“Don't be idiotic.” Georgette grabbed her hand and towed her across the living room. “Let the men get the bags.”
“But you told
me
to get the bags, Mother. You also told me Herb has a bad back, but Herb says—”
“Oh, enough about the luggage. Look at
this
“
Georgette reached the pocket doors, pushed them all the way open and flung Cydney ahead of her like she was a stone in a slingshot. She stumbled, straightened and stared around the great room.
“My God, Mother! It's
filthyl”
“Of course it's filthy.” Georgette swept past her into the room. The dust on the floor was so thick Cydney could see the tracks her mother and Bebe had already made. “A man lives here.”
A rotten, devious man named Angus Munroe. As spotless and showplace perfect as the living room was, Cydney was sure he'd left the great room knee-deep in grime to dishearten and discourage them.
“Look past the dirt,” Georgette said, proving that he'd have to try a lot harder to defeat her. “Look at the dimensions, the view—”
“What view?” Cydney batted a dust mote trailing all the way from the beamed ceiling out of her face. “The window's so dirty I can't see it!”
“Here it is, Uncle Cyd!” Bebe popped up on the dais steps, in front of a glass wall like the one in the living room, the solarium doors behind her zebra-striped with dirt.
“Think of the possibilities.” Georgette moved ahead, sweeping her arms up and out. “An autumn garland on the mantel—” Cydney looked at the fireplace and its soot-blackened face. “Flowers in urns. Terra-cotta, I think. Baskets hung from the ceiling—”
“Not without a crane.” Cydney frowned up at the cobweb-draped beams. “And a toxic-waste cleanup crew from the EPA.”
“Must you be so negative?” Georgette spun around, her hands on her hips. “A little soap and water and elbow grease—”
“Oh no, Mother. No, no, wo.” Cydney backed away, shaking her head and her hands. “I am
not
cleaning this room.”
“Of course you're not. Where do you get these ideas?”
“Tote that barge and bring in my purse,” Cydney retorted. “Carry in the luggage and lift that bale.”
“Bebe.” Georgette turned her head halfway toward the dais. “Go on with your visualization. Close your eyes and
feel
the room the way you want it to look for your wedding. Can you do that, dear?”
“I'll try, Gramma.” Bebe plunked down on the dais steps and screwed her eyes shut, so tightly that her entire face puckered.
“You come with me.” Georgette crooked her finger and stalked to the far end of the room. Cydney sighed and followed. Her mother shut the pocket doors and took her by the arms. “Bebe nearly burst into tears when she saw this mess.”
“So did I. How come you're so cheerful?”
“Paxil. And I'm not fooled by Angus Munroe and his mischief. Handsome as sin, but a real prick about this wedding.”
“Mother!”
Cydney gasped, torn between shock and laughter.
“For heaven's sake, Cydney, I've heard the word, and I was married to one for eighteen years. Divinely handsome, your father, but a real—”
“Right, Mother, I've got it,” Cydney cut her off. “What are we going to do? And don't tell me sit on the steps and visualize.”
“That was to distract Bebe. What we're going to do is hire professional cleaners. What we're
not
going to do is say one word about this to Angus Munroe. We're going to be gracious and serene and fawn all over him with gratitude.”
Cydney looked up at the ceiling beams. “I vote for a rope.”
“Lucky for us Bebe is marrying Aldo and not his uncle. It's bad enough he'll be an in-law. Impossible man.” Georgette sighed, rubbed her temples and looked at Cydney. “Thank
God he isn't interested in you. Imagine the life you'd have with a man like that.”
Cydney blinked, startled and suddenly awash in her most X-rated fantasies of Angus Munroe, real hot stuff dreams that went way beyond peach roses at her first book signing. Smoldering glances over candlelit dinners, trips to Hawaii to make love on moon-washed sands, a honeymoon in Paris on red silk sheets drenched with sex and champagne. Oh yes. Cydney could imagine it. So vividly all she could do was stare at her mother.
“It leaves me speechless, too.” Georgette laid her hands on Cydney's shoulders. “Now. I'm going to finish this silly visualization thing I started with Bebe. You distract Munroe. He upsets her terribly.”
“She doesn't look upset.” Cydney leaned around her mother and peered at Bebe, sitting with her eyes shut, her elbows on her knees, her cheeks on her fists and her mouth slack. “She looks like she's asleep.”
“She's traumatized. You know how insecure she is. She's positive Munroe hates her.” Georgette took Cydney's elbow and propelled her toward the doors. “You keep him busy until I get her calmed down.”
“Keep him busy doing what?”
“Make him show you the house. Ooh and ahh a lot. I don't know. Just go charm his socks off.”
“Since he isn't wearing any, that shouldn't take long.”
“Oh, for God's sake, Cydney, then tell him jokes. Seduce him. I don't care. Just keep him away from Bebe.”
Georgette opened the pocket doors and pushed Cydney through them. She spun around, her mouth open to have the last word—at least once in her life—but the doors whacked shut in her face.
Cydney stared at them, closed her mouth and pressed her fingertips to the headache thudding above her eyes. She should've stayed in the garage. Why hadn't she stayed in the garage?
She heard muffled voices, creaky footsteps, and moved out from under the gallery. The fifteen bedrooms Munroe said
Tall Pines had must be up there, through the archway and down the hall. By the thumps and scrapes she heard, so were Munroe with Aldo and Herb and the luggage. Let her mother charm and distract him, Cydney decided. All she did was irritate and annoy him.
Cydney wandered toward the bar, saw a hallway beyond the second set of pocket doors and followed it into a dining room with wainscoted walls and tiny blue roses in stripes on creamy wallpaper. Another enclosed staircase rose up the back wall. The oval Chippendale table and cherry buffet reminded Cydney of her grandmother's furniture. The biggest breakfront she'd ever seen covered another wall, a lovely set of Blue Willow china behind its glass doors. Aunt Phoebe's, she thought, all of it.
The room proved how much Munroe missed her. It was a shrine—and it was immaculate. It smelled of potpourri and furniture polish. The finger Cydney wiped across the table came up clean. She felt tears in her eyes but blinked them away. She was tired, that's all, and madder than hell at Munroe for the cheap trick he'd pulled with the great room. She refused to be touched by how sweet and sentimental this room was.
She left it in a hurry, following another hall with a big, white-flxtured bathroom on one side and an even bigger butler's pantry with a double sink and built-in drawers and shelves behind glass doors on the other. The kitchen beyond had a bay window at the far end with a pine table and bench built into the curve of the window. There were more cabinets than Cydney had ever seen and a wood block center island with slatted wooden stools that cut the room in half lengthwise. The gas stove had twelve burners and four ovens, two on top, two on the bottom. There were two refrigerators—or maybe one was a freezer. Holdovers from Tall Pines' incarnation as a bed-and-breakfast, she guessed. The floor was brick red ceramic tile, the countertops gray-flecked granite.
“My mother will have an orgasm when she sees this,” Cydney murmured, opening cabinets until she found a glass.
She took it to the sink, the size of a washtub and split into thirds, and ran herself a glass of cold water. While she drank
it—wishing she had two Tylenol to go with it—she opened one of the stained-glass panels latched shut on the pass-through above the sink and saw the bar and the living room on the other side.
This will be perfect for serving hors d'oeuvres to the guests, Cydney thought, closing her eyes and taking a stab at visualizing the wedding. She could see her mother sliding trays of elegant munchies through the cutout, Herb arranging them on the bar, Munroe filching a couple with a drink in his hand. She could see Bebe in her wedding dress and Aldo in a tux, dancing and feeling each other up under the cover of Bebe's veil. She could even see Gwen, wearing a mother-of-the-bride corsage and enthralling the guests with her vivid presence, but she couldn't see herself anywhere—not even in the butler's pantry washing glasses like Cinderella in the scullery.
She couldn't see it, Cydney realized—any more than her mother could see Munroe being interested in her—because she didn't belong here. Forget Bebe's claim that she couldn't get married without her, the minute Gwen showed up Uncle Cyd would cease to exist. It had happened before; it happened every time Gwen put in an appearance. It would happen again, Cydney was sure, the second Gwen set foot in Tall Pines.
She'd be less than a guest at the wedding, she'd be a fifth wheel. The bride's old-maid aunt. If she had any guts, she'd save herself the hurt and humiliation of fading into the woodwork. She'd get her keys from Munroe, lug her suitcase out to the Jeep and take herself back to Kansas City. Before Bebe enshrined a dining room in her honor.
Cydney exhaled slowly, drew a deep breath and smelled Clorox, Pine-Sol and Soft Scrub. She opened her eyes and glared at her reflection in the stainless-steel sink. How did Munroe think he'd get away with this? The rest of the house so clean it squeaked but the great room a shambles? Did he think they wouldn't notice? Or did he think they wouldn't dare call him on it?
“Wrong on that one, pal.” Cydney banged her rinsed glass down on the drain board, suddenly so angry she couldn't see straight.
She pushed through a louvered swinging door, moving quickly past the bar and aiming at the stairs until she saw the solarium doors standing open. She stopped and listened but the house was still. No bumps or thumps from upstairs, no muffled voices. Must be finished with the luggage, she thought, and made a beeline for the open doors.
'Scuse me,
her little voice said.
I'd like to remind you that the last time you went off like this you wrote that letter to
People
magazine. Look where that got you.
Good point, but you just couldn't ignore this strong a compulsion to kill somebody. Cydney stalked up three wide steps onto the dais in front of the solarium doors and stepped outside onto a deck. Empty except for a handful of Adirondack chairs and a breath-snatching view of the lake, a vast, curled finger of water rimmed in red and gold forests that filled the horizon.
It was spectacular. Tall Pines was spectacular.
Cydney had dreamed about coming here. She thought she'd been invited to a literary soiree or something. She couldn't remember why or what Tall Pines looked like in her dream. Not that it mattered. All that mattered was getting her keys back and her suitcase and going home.
She went to the rail and looked over. Nobody down there, either, just a flagstone terrace, a swimming pool drained and covered for the winter and a hot tub built inside a gazebo with steamed-up glass walls. Cydney could see herself in the tub, could almost feel the jets beating the sleep-deprived ache out of her muscles. When her brain tried to paint Munroe into the tub with her, she frowned and turned toward the doors.
Munroe stood there, leaning on the frame, looking her over, his gaze drifting from her head to her Keds and back again.
“Feel free to use the hot tub,” he said. “You look like you need it.”
“Gee, thanks for noticing,” she shot back, her feelings stung.
“You look beat. That's all I meant.” He straightened off the door frame and scowled at her. “I'm trying to make you feel welcome.”
“Yes, you said that. You said you'd do everything you could
to make us feel welcome. Well, Mr. Munroe. I knew the second I saw the great room just exactly how welcome we are here.”
“Gus. Good.” Munroe smiled. “I hired a janitorial service from Springfield to clean the place up yesterday.”
“Did you pay them extra to dump the dirt from the rest of the house in the great room?”
Munroe blinked at her and said, “Huh?”
“Bebe almost burst into tears when she saw it, but I'm sure that's what you intended. Happy now?”
“Confused,” Munroe snapped. “What are you talking about?”
Cydney gave a rueful snort. “Like you don't know.”
“I'll tell you what I know. You didn't want to come here in the first place.” He leaned a hand on the door frame, an irritated, what-the-hell edge in his voice. “Second, you don't like me, and third, you're pissed about something but I'll be damned if I have any idea what.”
If Angus Munroe wasn't one heck of an actor, then he really and truly had no idea what she was talking about. Uh-oh, Cydney thought, her stomach sinking. She'd done it again— leaped before she looked and jumped to the wrong conclusion.
I tried to warn you,
her little voice said.