Wisconsin Wedding (Welcome To Tyler, No. 3) (8 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said.

His apology seemed genuine. What did she want from the man? Any other woman discovering an ex-lover back in town wouldn’t go nuts at the prospect of people finding out about their long-dead relationship. It wasn’t as if she’d been married to another man when Byron had burst into her life.

“I weighed all the pros and cons when I decided to come to Tyler,” Byron said.

“And you came anyway.”

“He’s my brother, Nora. I had to come.”

“Just keep your distance,” she told him.

“Okay.”

“And don’t tell anyone
anything.
I value my reputation in this town.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

“Scout’s honor?”

He winced at the acid in her tone. “I’m not making fun of you.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Nora…”

“What you are doing, Byron, is belittling me. And I object. Vociferously. You don’t have to understand me, but do not belittle me.”

He sighed. “Nora, for the love of God, if I took out a billboard and announced that Nora Gates and I fell in love three years ago and it didn’t work out, do you honestly think anyone in Tyler would give a damn?”

She squared her shoulders. “I swear, if there was a rock handy the coroner would be examining
two
bodies found at Timberlake Lodge! We did
not
fall in love. We—”

“Okay. I’ll put on the billboard that Nora Gates isn’t a virgin and I know it because I slept with her. Or should I be more explicit?”

“I’m just saying—” her whole body was on fire! “—that whatever it was we had together, it had precious little to do with love.”

“Then it had to do with sex. I’ll put that on my billboard.”

“Dammit, Byron!”

“Don’t ‘dammit’ me, Nora. Just tell me what you really do want.”

“I want you not to exist!”

“No can do.”

“Then at least…” She groaned, wondering what she did want. “At least respect me. I don’t want my friends and
customers—my community, Byron—to know that I…that you…”

“You did. I did. We did. Nora, nobody but you will care.”

“That shows how little you know about Tyler.”

Byron didn’t relent. “Maybe it shows how little you know.”

His tone was soft and seductive, so serious she would have thought he cared and understood, but experience had taught her otherwise. “I’ll take full responsibility for my actions,” she said tightly, “but don’t you judge me, Byron
Forrester.
I’m not the one who talked a dying old woman into spending so many of her last days having her picture taken. I’m not the one who cynically swept a vulnerable small-town girl off her feet. I’m not the one who said Tyler wasn’t for him and slithered out of town. I’m—” She stopped, staring at him. “What’re you looking so incredulous over?”

“You,” he said.

“Me? Byron, aren’t you
listening?
”

“Yeah. I’m hearing every word, sweets. Just one question—what vulnerable small-town woman did I cynically sweep off her feet?”

Nora called him something that, coming from her, would have raised Liza Baron’s eyebrows and dropped the jaws of half the people in Tyler. Aunt Ellie wouldn’t have been shocked; it was her favorite thing to call randy neighborhood dogs who ran amok in her bushes.

Byron Forrester just laughed.

It was the same laugh that had awakened her from too many dreams over too many months. A laugh that she hadn’t made up, but was real. Byron wasn’t a fantasy.

“Relax, Nora,” he said. “Lots of women fall for cads.”

“I don’t.”

“You did. At least for a little while.”

If she stayed there, she
would
skin him. Or fall for his roguish charms all over again.

“But I promise,” he went on, “that I won’t tell anyone you were human once for a few weeks. I’ll keep your secret, Nora.” Then his eyes darkened, and he added, “Until you decide you want to tell the whole world yourself that you’re human after all.”

Spotting Cliff and Liza out on the lodge’s veranda kept Nora from an appropriately physical reaction. She wasn’t a violent person. She wasn’t even remotely homicidal. She just wanted Byron Sanders Forrester out of her life.

But his brother was about to marry one of Tyler’s first citizens.

Byron, Nora thought miserably as she trudged up the path, pretending she hadn’t heard that last gibe, would haunt her
forever.

* * *

A
S
B
YRON WATCHED
N
ORA
in full retreat, a sudden, brisk wind blew off the lake and chilled him to the bone. It was like a parting shot from the owner of Gates Department Store, warning him to keep his distance.

Well, he thought, too late.

“Coffee’s ready,” Liza Baron yelled from the porch. “Lunch’ll be ready in a bit.”

Byron was torn. Given his reception, he wished he’d ignored Liza’s invitation to the wedding and had waited to hear from Cliff himself. The least he could have done was to have worked up the guts to tell Nora the truth last night. Not that she’d given him the chance. There’d been the book of Beethoven sonatas, the beefy piano student. His own unexpected reaction to a woman he’d slept with for a couple of weeks one past summer—which was how he’d tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to think of her the past three years.
Standing in her dining room last night, watching her just now in the cold light of day, he’d remembered how very much he’d loved her. Leaving her with so much unsaid, with all the promise of what they could have been together unfulfilled, had been one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do. And also one of the most important. If he’d stayed, he’d have risked destroying any hope for Cliff.

“What to do, what to do,” he mused, watching the sunlight catch the cool shades of Nora’s hair, making it shine.

He wondered if he would be doing everyone a favor—including himself—if he just headed back to his campsite, packed up and got the hell out of Tyler.

“Are you coming?” Liza yelled.

“In a minute.”

And he trotted back to his musty tent, threw things into his nonexecutive-looking duffel in a flurry of purpose and action. Then came the cry of geese and another chilly gust off the lake, and he collapsed on Cliff’s rock and thought, the hell with it. What was waiting for him back in Providence? Another smarmy phone call from another author who actually wanted to make a living at his writing? More dubious looks from Mrs. Redbacker? More mornings tossing darts? No, he thought. He wanted this time with his brother. He wanted to get to know Cliff Forrester all over again.

And Nora Gates.

He wanted this time with her, too. God help him, but he wanted to get to know her all over again, just to find out if what he was feeling right now was real. If what he’d done three years ago
had
been right for her, too.

He sighed, skimming a rock out onto the lake. What he was feeling right now was regret. For the lies, the choices he’d made, the time lost. And desire. There was no question
he was feeling a good dose of desire for the gray-eyed woman he’d loved so many, many months ago.

He was also damned hungry, he thought, climbing stiffly to his feet.

By the time he joined Cliff and Liza on the veranda, Nora was long gone and they had put together a simple but fabulous lunch. There was ham and Wisconsin cheese on locally made sourdough rye bread, sliced fresh tomatoes—the last vine-ripened tomatoes of the season, which Liza herself had tucked away—and leftover cranberry-apple crisp, made, of course with Wisconsin cranberries and apples.

It was almost—but not quite—too cold to eat outside.

“Nora left?” Liza asked.

Byron shrugged, trying to seem neutral on the subject of Nora Gates. “Apparently.”

“You two chitchatted quite a while. She knows you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah. She thought she recognized you.”

“Did she?” He stabbed a slice of tomato with a fork. “She didn’t say anything. Mostly we talked about the geese.”

“Uh-huh.”

Liza didn’t sound convinced. Cliff eyed his brother, then looked away. “I’ve got a few things I need to get done.” Without another word, he took off with his sandwich and a cup of coffee.

If Liza was annoyed by her fiancé’s abrupt departure or her future brother-in-law’s sidestepping her questions, she gave no indication. She did not, Byron decided, have a suspicious, devious mind. He already found himself admiring her energy and optimistic nature, and it was easy to see how much she was in love with his older brother.

Unfolding her long legs from under her on her wicker
chair, she planted her feet on the newly painted veranda floor. “So, Byron,” she said, “do you think your brother’s going to string me up for sending you and your mother that invitation?”

“Did he say he would?”

She grinned. “No, but I got the drift.”

“I’d have warned you I was coming, but you didn’t include an address or number—”

“Intentionally. I figured I’d just strike the match and see if I could start a fire. You want some more coffee?”

She was, obviously, a woman who didn’t look back. “No, thanks, this is fine.”

“Cliff didn’t tell me he saw you last night.”

She spoke without defensiveness or anger. She was a confident woman, too, and sure of Cliff’s love for her. Whatever Cliff’s reasons for ducking out, they had nothing to do with his relationship with Liza Baron. That was rock solid. Byron had been concerned his brother might have fallen for a woman who’d pity him and indulge his isolation, who’d coddle him and exacerbate his problems. Liza Baron, however, was clearly not that kind of woman.

“We needed to talk first,” Byron said.

“Have you?”

“Some. Not enough.”

Liza nodded. “I guess you two seeing each other for the first time in so many years must be about as unsettling as my coming back to Tyler to live and all. And it’s gotta be a lot tougher.”

Byron didn’t speak. It
was
tough to see Cliff—and Nora—and not know how it would turn out.

“How come you’re here so early?” Liza asked baldly.

“Let’s just say I’m on an advance scouting mission.”

Liza slapped what must have been another tablespoon of
spicy mustard onto her sandwich. “In case Cliff was marrying some fruitcake or had gone nuts altogether?”

Byron smiled. “Something like that.”

“Well,” she said, jumping to her feet, “we’re both probably crazy as hell, but not in the way most people think. Byron…” She paused, suddenly serious. “Byron, I’m worried about Cliff—that I’m making him bite off more than he can chew at one time. Mother says I need to go easy, but then she so obviously wants this big wedding—and then
I
go and meddle in Cliff’s relationship with his family. I mean, not too many weeks ago he was living up here like a damned timber wolf.”

“I can leave,” Byron said.

“No, that’d be the worst thing you could do. The horse is already out of the barn, as the saying goes. I mean, you’re here, Byron.” She looked in the direction Cliff had gone and said, almost to herself, “I ache for him sometimes.” Then she turned to Byron and smiled, her eyes shining with tears. “And he hates it.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“For starters, move out of that damned tent. Looks terrible to have you camping out at the lake. People will think you’re another recluse like Cliff and the whole damned Forrester family’s nuts. We’ve got to find you a regular place to stay until the wedding.”

“I don’t mind camping—”

“
I
mind. The gossip mill in this town’s grinding me and my family to pieces enough without having my future brother-in-law washing his face in the lake. Can you imagine the morning of the wedding? This is going to be one fancy shindig, you know. It just won’t do to have you show up smelling like a musty old tent.”

Byron laughed; Liza did have a way about her. “I won’t stay here with you two, so don’t even try that one on me
again. In fact, I wasn’t planning to stay at all. The wedding’s not until next Saturday.” He thought of his nonrefundable ticket and his Yankee soul almost rebelled, but he added, “I’ll come back.”

Liza frowned, scrutinizing him. “Business to tend?”

“No, but—”

“Then stay. Unless,” she said, obviously well aware she wasn’t being told everything, “there’s some compelling reason you can’t.”

The reason had just gone screaming back to town. No, Byron thought, not screaming. Not Nora. She did everything purposefully, deliberately. He’d bet she’d never gone over the speed limit in her life. The one time she’d been out of control had been with him, which was why she hated his guts. And also because he’d behaved rather badly toward her, but that was another matter.

His momentary distraction had given Liza enough time to come up with an impulsive idea. “Hey—why don’t I ask Nora to put you up? She’s anxious to give me a hand, and from what I hear she’s a great hostess. She lives alone, so she loves to have company.”

Byron didn’t believe it necessarily followed that one who lived alone loved to have company, but he didn’t disabuse Liza of that point. “Nora Gates, you mean?” he asked as innocently as he could, considering he’d not
that
long ago slept with the woman. Nevertheless, he wasn’t an altogether inefficient liar. “I could never ask her—”

“I could. Leave everything to me.”

“People could get the wrong idea—”

“Good!” Liza was grinning, warming to her solution. “It’d do Nora’s reputation a world of good to have a little dirty talk circulating about her. Gosh, people have already started calling her Aunt Ellie. You never knew her, but she’s a legend in Tyler. She started Gates Department
Store. Nora takes after her, but she’s…I don’t know, she’s
not
Aunt Ellie. It was just the two of them for so many years, and now Nora’s alone….” Her voice trailed off, as she nodded to herself. “Yeah, I like this idea. I’ll let you know what she says.”

And she was off, serape flying. In another minute, Byron heard her white T-bird roar to a start.

“She’s tough when she latches on to an idea,” Cliff commented, coming onto the veranda.

Byron set his empty cranberry-apple-crisp plate on the lunch tray. “Nora will choke on her teeth when Liza asks her to put me up.”