The Bride Wore A Forty-Four

By Maggie Shayne

Copyright 2005 by Margaret
Benson

Smashwords Edition Copyright 2012
by Maggie Shayne

http://www.MaggieShayne.com

E-book and Cover Formatted by
Jessica Lewis

http://authorslifesaver.com

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter
One

Chapter
Two

Chapter
Three

Chapter
Four

Chapter
Five

Chapter
Six

Chapter
Seven

Chapter
Eight

Chapter
Nine

Chapter
Ten

Chapter
Eleven

About
the Author

Connect With Maggie

Also
Available

"No, no, absolutely not, Kira. Lilies could
kill
Aunt Thelma. You
know
she's allergic."

Kira sighed in response to her mother's
ruling out another element of her dream wedding. Or at least, what
she thought was her dream wedding. She was really only guessing, at
best. But lilies had seemed right

"Sit up straight dear. Now why don't we go
with something
reasonable
like roses. Red and white roses.
Those stargazers as so tacky, anyway. Practically hot pink. We just
don't
do
hot pink, love."

Mother tapped the desk to get the attention
of the wedding planner, who was staring at Kira with sympathy in
his chocolate brown eyes. "Pay attention, Marshall. We want red and
white roses. Perfectly elegant. Write it down."

"If your daughter wants lilies, Mrs.
Shanahan—"

"We've already established that lilies could
kill someone, Marshall. We don't want a beloved aunt dropping dead
at this event, now do we?" She looked from Kira to Marshall and
back again, possibly because Marshall was looking so intently at
Kira. So intently, Kira got the feeling he was trying to read her
thoughts.

She stifled another sigh. It was his job to
figure out what she wanted. He was her wedding planner. Hell, he
couldn't know how little she really cared about any of this.

Mother glanced at her watch. "I have to run.
Meeting with the caterer in ten minutes. Come along, Kira."

"You go ahead, Mom."

Her mother blinked in surprise. "You don't
want any input into the final decisions regarding the menu,
dear?"

"I'm not going to get any input whether I go
or not. So I'm opting out." The words came out harsh and laced with
sarcasm. Totally unlike her—so much so that it surprised her to
hear that tone in her voice instead of her usual, docile, soft
tones.

Her mother pressed a hand to her chest
"Kira?"

Kira softened her expression. Her mother had
swooped in and picked up the pieces of Kira's life when it had been
so torn apart she thought she'd never put it back together. She had
screwed up. Everything. Badly. She didn't know how, exactly, but
she had. Her mother never judged, never condemned, just swooped.
And Kira had let her. Let her go just as far as she wanted with the
coddling, the babying, the taking over and directing of her life.
At first, she'd been physically unable to take charge for herself.
Later, it was just easier to let her mother continue.

She couldn't hate her mom for doing it. She
was the one who had allowed it. And she really didn't care about
the details of the wedding, just as long as she got to marry the
wonderful man her mother assured her she loved deeply. Peter was
everything she had never known she had always wanted. And she had
her mother to thank for remembering for her.

"Go on, Mom. I'm just a little overtired. And
the wedding's only a week away."

Her mother nodded and pressed a palm to
Kira's cheek. It was warm, soft loving. "If you really want
lilies—".

"Not badly enough to make Aunt Thelma sick."
She didn't even know who Aunt Thelma was. "Roses will be
great."

"All right, hon. I'll go on to the caterers
and um—well, I'll see you for dinner. All right?"

Kira nodded and watched her mother go. The
woman shot a few worried glances over her shoulder at her on the
way out, but finally she was gone.

"So have you tried telling her that it's your
wedding, not hers?" Marshall asked.

Kira turned, having all but forgotten he was
in the room. No, that wasn't quite true. Marshall Waters had a
presence that wasn't easy to forget. He looked for all the world as
if he'd been scooped off the stage at a punk rock concert, stripped
of his tight T-shirt and torn jeans, and dressed in a suit and tie.
He'd kept the short and spiky dark brown hair, the rock star
physique, and the intense brown eyes. He did not look like a
wedding planner.

"Why bother at this point?" she asked,
smiling. "She's already picked the dress, the bridesmaids' gowns,
the cake, the invitations—''

"The groom?" he asked.

She shrugged and sank further back into the
chair in front of his desk.

"Where is Peter today?" he asked, rolling a
pen between his fingers. "I thought he'd be with you for the final
run-through and that long awaited floral decision."

She drew a breath, sighed. "He had an
important meeting."

"It's Saturday. He shouldn't be working on
Saturdays," Marshall commented.

She got the feeling, and often, that Marshall
didn't much like Peter. "Why not?" she asked. "You're working."

He shrugged. "Wouldn't be, if I had a
gorgeous bride-to-be waiting at home."

She met his eyes even as the compliment hit
her squarely in the chest and spread its warmth through her, then
lowered hers quickly, because his were seeing a little too
much.

"I should go."

"Stay," he said. "You're hungry. Your
stomach's been rumbling since you sat down. And I have a sandwich
order due here any minute."

"I have things to—"

"I know. You have an appointment with the
caterer, which you already wriggled out of. Meaning you're free.
Stay. As your wedding consultant, I recommend a half hour of
stress-free relaxation and a meal."

Before she could answer, he picked up the
phone, told someone to double his lunch order, and to bring it "up"
when it arrived. Then he put the phone down and got to his feet,
came around the desk, and took her elbow in his hand. "Come
on."

"To where?" she asked.

But he didn't answer, just ushered her out of
his office through a side door she hadn't noticed before, up a set
of stairs that were not designed to impress, and finally out
through the door at the very top—and onto the building's roof.

Buildings in Syracuse were not terribly tall.
But this one was one of the tallest, and from it, the entire city's
skyline spread out—not to mention the rolling hills beyond it, all
the way to the deceptively blue sparkle of Onondaga Lake.

"Can you imagine it, a couple of centuries
ago?" he asked her. "Iroquois country. Probably nothing as far as
you could see besides smoke coming from an Indian village or two,
and maybe the fort at St Marie."

She smiled, trying to imagine it as he
described it. The breeze blew bits of her hair free of its elegant
French twist and she managed to draw her gaze in again and focus on
her immediate surroundings.

The roof was a garden. Decorative concrete
urns, pots, and man-sized boxes lined it all of them spilling over
with greenery and flowers. A small patio table with an umbrella for
shade stood near a four-foot-tall fountain complete with cement
cherubs playing harps. He waved a hand at the chairs near that
table. "Sit. Be comfy."

"This is nice," she said, doing what he
suggested, taking a seat. She tucked her navy skirt under her as
she sat and unbuttoned the matching blazer. "You bring all your
harried brides up here?"

"Only the ones I've been dying to talk to
without their overbearing mothers present."

"She's not overbearing."

"No more than a buldozer." He paused. "I'm
sorry. I shouldn't have—''

"It's okay." She held up a hand. "I know how
it looks. But she's only acting this way because I sort of...I sort
of need her to."

He lifted his brows. "I gotta admit I've been
wondering. You're not a skittish seventeen-year-old, Kira."

"Twenty-five," she told him. "But I wouldn't
know about the skittish part."

He nodded slowly. "It's not that you're
afraid to stand up to her," he said. "In fact you seem to be
forcibly restraining yourself from snapping her head off now and
then."

Kira tipped her head to one side. "You're
pretty insightful."

He shrugged and said nothing.

She leaned back in her chair and closed her
eyes. The sun beamed down, the breeze blew, the traffic moved
below, and she became acutely aware that she had utterly nothing to
do, nowhere to be, no one to answer to for the next hour. For the
first time in what felt like days, she breathed deeply, fully,
slowly. "This feels good," she admitted.

"Enjoy it then."

He didn't make a sound to intrude on her.
Just let her sit there as the sun's heat and the sense of peace
seemed to make her muscles unclench, one by one, bit by bit. Her
body softened. At some point she heard footsteps and something
being set on the table. She smelled fresh bread and tomato and
turkey and maybe mustard.

When she got around to it she opened her
eyes, only to find Marshall leaning back in his chair across from
her, his gaze fixed on her face. And she wondered if he'd been
looking at her like that the entire time, and got the feeling he
had.

"Food's here," he said. But he didn't look
away.

She did, focusing instead on the sandwich in
front of her. A pickle sat on the plate beside it There were also a
miniature bag of potato chips and a diet soft drink. "You eat up
here every day?"

"Every day since I've been here. Unless it's
raining," he said. "And sometimes even then."

"I don't blame you. It's nice."

He nodded, still watching her. When she
looked back at him, he finally broke the intense gaze, and dug into
his sandwich.

They ate for awhile, neither one speaking.
Then finally, when he had finished, he said, "So why don't you tell
me when you decided to let your mother run your life?"

She smiled and popped the last bit of her
pickle into her mouth, then licked her fingers. "Right after I
screwed it up so bad I almost lost it," she said. Then she
shrugged. "I needed a break. And hell, she's doing a much better
job than I ever did. At least, I assume she is."

He frowned. "Details?"

She wiped her mouth with her napkin, shrugged
her shoulders. "Sure. Why not?" Then she leaned forward, reached
out to clasp his hand in hers, and hesitated for a moment at the
warm static that shot up her arm at the contact. But she quickly
shook it off and drew his hand to the back of her head, pressed his
palm there. "Feel that?"

"I sure do."

Something in his voice made her lift her
eyes, and she realized they were leaning close, face-to-face over
the table, in a posture that suggested they might be about to kiss.
Her eyes locked with his very briefly, but she quickly closed them
and drew away a little. "I meant the bumpy little ridge in my
head."