The Wedding Dress (4 page)

“Why . . . why would he drift away from the family? Katherine, you’re making up stuff that isn’t there. When has Tim missed a family event, or Sunday dinner, or birthday party since we’ve been together? Not one.”

“Charlotte, Tim proposed to you with his grandmother’s ring after knowing you for two months.” Katherine flashed her fingers at Charlotte. Two. “It took him that long to ask out his last girlfriend for the first time. He prayed, talked to her after church, got to know her a bit, talked to people who knew her to see what she was like. They dated for six months and we thought she might be the one because Tim didn’t waste time dating a woman if he didn’t think it was going anywhere. Then, out of the blue, he meets you at a Christmas dinner and we didn’t see him for almost two weeks. We thought he’d lost his mind. Mom Rose feared he’d miss Christmas day with us.”

“The relationship took us both by surprise,” Charlotte said, propping her shoulder against the opposite wall. By the door. “But he is right for me. I’m right for him.” Isn’t he?

Charlotte had never met anyone like Tim. Never felt the way he made her feel. Never been thisedver bees far in love. And despite the terror of free-falling and her drive up to the ridge this morning to shut out the city’s noise and hear God, Charlotte desperately wanted Tim to be her forty-year man. The love of her life.

Katherine squinted at her. “David tells me he and Tim haven’t picked out their tuxes yet.”

“There’s still time.” Charlotte tried to read Katherine. Where was she taking this inquisition?

“I’ve not seen an invitation or save-the-date card.”

“Invitations are at my house. Katherine, is any of this your business? Tim and I are getting married.” If only the conviction in her voice would boomerang around to her heart. “And we’ll do it our way. Rest assured, we have no plans to break away from his parents or his brothers.” Charlotte started for the door.

But Katherine smacked it shut with her hand. “Oh, it
is
my business. This family is my business. Tim is closer to me than my own brother. I won’t see him hurt or this family torn apart. I’m raising three children as Roses and I want them raised like their dad, not the mess I had to endure with my parents.”

Charlotte grabbed the door handle and jerked hard. As she did, Lauren, Rudy’s date for the evening, burst into the ladies’ room. “Charlotte, there you are. Tim’s looking all over for you. Hey, Katherine.”

“Lauren.”

Charlotte left without a final glance back. Tim stood in the hall, against the wall, his hands tucked in his pockets.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” Charlotte fell against him, letting his presence warm away Katherine’s cold confrontation. “I’m really sorry about the trunk money, Tim.”

“Forget it. I just had to cool down.” He hooked his finger under her chin. “I’m sorry for what I said about your dress. You can buy whatever you want. We’ll find a way.”

Charlotte kissed him, and Tim slipped his hands around her back and held her close.

“Want to dance?” she said.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

On the dance floor, Tim curled Charlotte into him and peered into her eyes as the singer crooned about “the house that built me.”

“What happened in there?”

“Nothing.” Charlotte swayed side to side, round and round with him. “Ladies’ room privilege.”

“But you’re upset. Nothing is that sacred.” Tim craned his neck in an obvious effort to see who exited the restroom alcove. “It was Katherine.”

“You should’ve warned me she was a pit bull.”

“Didn’t think she’d go after you.” Tim gently held Charlotte’s head between his hands. “Her bark is worse than her bite.”

“Have you ever been bitten by her?” Charlotte made a face, almost smiling, the tension of her exchange with Katherine thinning. “She seems to think she has dibs on you. On the whole family. If we lived in biblical times and something happened to David—”

Tim’s kiss landed on Charlotte’s lips, clipping her thought, and they moved to the rhythm of the melancholy music.

“The most beautiful girl in the room is in my arms,” Tim whispered in her ear, “so if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not talk about my brother’s wife.”

When he kissed her again, Charlotte slipped her arms around his neck and let her burden go.

A little after eleven, Tim drove Charlotte home and walked her up the four flights to her loft, slipping his hand into hers, loosening his tie, and unbuttoning the top of his shirt.

“We’re thinking of taking the bikes out tomorrow, going to the dirt track.” Tim leaned against the wall as Charlotte unlocked the heavy steel loft door. Tim was a passionate, amateur motocross racer. “Paul and Artie haven’t been racing since they moved to Texas.” Tonight Charlotte learned Paul and Artie were cousins on his mother’s Buchanan side. “Come with us. I’ve even talked Dave and Jack into coming.”

“I have an appointment with Tawny.” Charlotte flipped on the entryway light and leaned against the doorjamb.

“You have an appointment on Sunday?” Tim slipped his hand around her and pulled her close to him.

“You’re racing?
On Sunday?
” She arched her brow, grinning, mimicking his inflection.

“We’re not racing, we’re
riding
.”

“It’ll be a race the moment you start the engines.” She reached up to lace her fingers through his hair. “Want to come in?”

“You think you know me so well?” His quick kiss was playful as he stepped past her into the loft.

Did she? His competitive nature and passion fort>< passio all things extreme weren’t hard to see. Tim carried those on the surface. But she didn’t have long to contemplate. Tim hooked her away from the door, letting it slam behind him, and drew her tight.

As he did, her heels crashed into something hard and she stumbled backward, falling out of his embrace.

Tim snatched her hand before she hit the floor. “Char, are you okay?”

“I’m fine . . . What’s this box?” Charlotte bent down to fold back the flaps and peer inside. “Oh—our wedding invitations.”

“What are they doing in the hall?” Tim carried the box to the polished tamburil wood slab coffee table. Charlotte had saved for a year to buy the piece—her first real furniture purchase.

“Dixie brought them home from the shop.”

Tim squinted at her. “Do we need to have a wedding meeting? Figure out where we are?”

Charlotte exhaled. “Yes. This week, Tim. It’s already the middle of April.” She worked her way past him to the dining table where she’d left her iPad.

“Monday night?” Tim tapped his phone’s screen. “No, I’ve got a city council meeting.” He peered at Charlotte. “Looks like Dave and I are going to get the downtown refurbishing job.”

“Tim, really? That’s great. Tuesday I have a consult with the mayor’s daughter.”

“Mayor’s daughter?” He arched his brow. “That’s my girl. I’m impressed.”

“She read about Tawny in the paper and figured if we could make Miss Alabama happy, maybe we could do the same for her.”

“By all means, let’s give the mayor’s daughter the Charlotte Malone treatment. How about Wednesday?” Tim walked around the sofa toward the dining table. “I’m free. Dinner, then wedding business?”

“Perfect.”

Tim tapped on his phone’s screen, then gathered Charlotte for a long, slow kiss. “I’d better go because I don’t
want
to go.”

“See you in the morning.” Charlotte exhaled, eyes closed, breathing in the scent of his skin. Then she watched him leave, bracing for the door to click closed behind him. That sound always stirred the phantom fear of being alone. All alone.

Ever since Mama died, Charlotte kept uneasy company with aloneness. She was one of one. Gert used to play an old record, something about one being the loneliest number. Charlotte hated the song and left the house when Gert put it on.

Charlotte Malone ended up being her own island, formed from the landscape of her family—by birth and by death.

Kicking off her shoes, she wandered into the kitchen for a water. Twisting off the cap, she paused by her window and gazed toward the distant orange glow of Birmingham, examining her thoughts and separating her emotions.

She jumped when someone pounded on the door. “Tim?”

“I have a delivery from the Ludlow Estate for Charlotte Malone. A trunk.”

Charlotte pressed her nose to the door and eyeballed the man on the other side of the peephole. “It’s kind of late,” she said. When she paid for the trunk to be delivered, she expected it to be next week. Not at a quarter ’til midnight.

“You’re telling me. Just need you to sign and I’m gone.”

Charlotte unlocked the door and a skinny man in dirty jeans sporting a Fu Manchu hoisted the trunk into the loft. “It don’t weigh nothin’. Hope you got your money’s worth.” He held out the clipboard. “Sign here.”

When he’d gone, Charlotte shoved the trunk to the center of the loft and knelt in front of the welded lock. “Well now, my new friend. Do you know what trouble you caused me today?”

Chapter Three

 
Emily

August 1912
Birmingham

 
S
he was late. Again. Emily took the corner toward Highland, cutting across Mrs. Schell’s yard, walking fast, reining in her desire to run, shoving her hair into place by securing the loose pins. She willed the hot August air to stir, to breathe. Perspiration trickled across her neck, beneath her high collar and down her back.

Mother would be irritated. Father, amused. But the suffrage meeting ran long. So many opinions and voices. It made her head ache.

Emily sprinted up the walk and around the house to the servants’ kitchen entrance, her skirt flapping against her ankles, her heels
clip-clomp
ing on the pavement.

Well, if Mother scolded her for being tardy, Emily could blame Phillip. He’d intercepted her as she was leaving the meeting. Just the very memory of his kisses in the back of his carriage made Emily’s temperature rise.

If only he’d intercepted her before the meeting. They’d have had more time and she could have escaped Mrs. Daily’s deplorable speechze=. Her voice rose up, then down, up, then down.

Mrs. Daily was certainly entertaining. Emily laughed softly, then just as she passed the large evergreen, a hand reached around, gripped her arm, and jerked her behind the tree.

With a shout, Emily whirled around with her fist drawn back, ready to strike. Earl Donaldson, her neighbor and childhood friend, knew the power of her punch. He’d jumped out from behind a tree one too many times, and eventually she belted him.

“Emily, simmer down, it’s me. It’s me.”

She lowered her fists and gazed into the eyes of Daniel Ludlow. Her knees went limp. “Daniel, what are you doing here?” She threw herself against him, the thump beneath his chest loud and clear. It’d been so long, months, since she’d heard from him.

“Looking for you, that’s what I’m doing, silly girl. Where have you
been
?”

“Where have I been? Right here, where you found me. Where have
you
been?”

“You know where I’ve been. Don’t tease me.” He grinned, shoving his ball cap back on his head, and her resolve to be angry with him jellied. “I looked for you when we were in town. How come you never came to any of our games?”

“I had more pressing engagements.” Emily turned away from him, but only by a half step or so. Did he expect her to drop everything and run down to Rickwood Field just to watch him bat a ball?

“What’s more important than baseball?” He scooped her up and twirled her around. “I missed you.” He pressed his cheek against hers, and Emily locked her arms around his neck.

“Plenty of things are more important than baseball. Art, theater, education, suffrage, learning how to run a household from Mother.” Emily pushed away from him when he set her down, leaving his puckered lips to kiss the air. “If you missed me, why didn’t you write me? And there is such a thing as a telephone. You’ve heard of that invention, haven’t you?”

“Come on, Em. I’m a poor ballplayer. I can’t afford phone calls.” Daniel fingered a strand of loose hair curling about her neck. She held her breath, tingling as his fingers brushed her skin. “And I did write you. Every week. The question here, young lady, is why didn’t you write me back?”

Emily stepped away from his hand. He was confusing her, plying her with his charm. “Did you come up to Highlands to examine me? How come I didn’t attend your ball games? How come I didn’t write? You’re the one who boarded that jitney and drove off with fourteen smelly men to play a silly game. Imagine grown men running round all day in the dirt, chasing a small white ball.”

“Em, it’s baseball. America’s pastime.” Daniel raI m Daniised his arms, his expression foretelling his passion. “It’s the greatest game in the world. And it’s getting better, Em.” He stripped his cap from his head, combed his fingers through his thick bangs, then settled the hat in place again. It had a big
B
on it for his team. The Barons. “We’re getting new rules and more leagues. A good hitter or sacker can make a decent wage these days. Stars are being born. Cy Young, Nap Lajoie, Ty Cobb. Word is he’s making a pretty penny up there with the Tigers. Five thousand dollars.”