A Bride After All (6 page)

“O
kay, we’ve got that crisis settled, you’ve talked Skip into wearing a tux. Thank you, Nicky, I knew you could do it if anyone could. I can’t believe how he fought me on this, when he was so adamant about having me wear a gown. Now, when were you going to tell me you’re bringing a date to my wedding?”

It was Saturday afternoon and Sean was already at the bowling alley, beginning a long day of birthday partying with his best friend, Jacob, ending with the sleepover. When Barb had called, asking him to come over, Nick had readily agreed. It would help pass the time before he picked up Claire and they went to dinner.

Because, for reasons he didn’t think he should explore too deeply, time had seemed to move at a
snail’s pace ever since he’d dropped her back at her condo yesterday after the game.

God, that was funny. Watching the Death Lasso go flying through the air toward another row of spectators (from the opposing team, which could have gotten nasty if the disk had hit the guy’s head rather than its dying-swan lazy tap against his back). Hearing Claire’s whispered
omigod
. But it was the horrified expression on her beautiful face that had been priceless; a real “grab your cell phone and take a picture for your Christmas cards” moment.

“Hmm?” Nick asked his cousin, still unable to hold back a smile every time he thought about Claire’s reaction to his teasing, which was to bury her face against his shoulder as she tried to muffle her laughter.

It had been…
a moment
. Yes, that was it. One of those strange, unexpected, impossible to foretell or plan moments that could end up changing everything.

“I said, when were you going to tell me you’re bringing a date to my wedding?” Barb repeated. “It’s not like the reception isn’t casual and there’s just going to be tables, and no seating chart. But you could give a girl some warning. Aunt Beatrice already had someone lined up to bring as her guest, but now she’s going to insist that Uncle Mick has to find some way out of his important business trip and come with her instead.”

“Nice try, but I’m not buying it. Uncle Mick is an electrician, Barb, and the wedding is on a Saturday.
Two reasons the words
important business trip
and
Uncle Mick
don’t go together. The words
Saturday afternoon baseball games on TV
and
Uncle Mick
? Now those two go together. Just out of idle curiosity, who was it?”

“Who was who?” Barb asked, twisting one of her dangling curls around her finger, a habit she’d had since childhood, whenever she was nervous.

“The woman, Barb. Who was the woman Aunt Beatrice was going to sic on me this time? I’ve seen quite the parade these last few years. The giggler. The Earth Mother. The gum-cracker. If we had more weddings and christenings in this family, one day I’d fully expect to see her dragging in some gal tossing flaming batons in the air as she whistles the
Battle Hymn of the Republic
.”

“Okay, okay, I get the point. Yes, she found somebody she thought you’d like. After all, Anita is my matron of honor, and you know she’ll be sitting with Bill, not you. The two of them are inseparable.”

“Anita is also about twelve months pregnant. You’d better just hope she makes it for another two weeks.”

“She’s
eight
months pregnant. Nobody is ever twelve months pregnant.” Barb grinned. “But she does look it, doesn’t she? She told me she’s gained sixty pounds. She also says she doesn’t know how. She said that to me when we had lunch last week, and as I watched her down her second double cheese-burger and a large order of fries. I don’t want that to happen to me when Skip and I get pregnant.
Remember Sandy, when she carried Sean? She just had this cute little pot belly, and even then not until she was pretty far along.”

Nick nodded his head, did his best to smile. Yes, he remembered when Sandy was pregnant with Sean. How she’d hated the changes pregnancy made to her body. Her band outfits were all leather, and leather didn’t have the stretching ability of other materials, and revealed every body flaw. At one point he noticed that she’d pretty much stopped eating, and they’d had one hell of a fight.

But then she’d cried, said the wife of one of her band partners had told her that the baby just automatically fed off her body fat and there wouldn’t be any problem. She was contrite. She was horrified that she might cause her own baby any harm. But she never did eat enough to allow Nick to relax, stop mentally counting her calories.

“You’ll be a great mother, Barb. And Skip will make a great dad.”

“I know. If we have girls, he’ll be like putty in their hands, and if we have boys, he’ll want them all to be offensive tackles, like he was.” She leaned across the kitchen table and took Nick’s hand in hers, squeezed it. “We both couldn’t do any better than to watch you with Sean. You’ve been both mother and father to him, and he’s a great kid. I’m…I’m sorry I mentioned Sandy. My timing was really off there, wasn’t it? Now, tell me about your date for my wedding.”

“First you tell me how you found out I have a date for the wedding.”

Barb withdrew her hand and began playing with the straw in her glass of iced tea. “I went in for my fitting this morning. You know, at Second Chance Bridal? Chessie was there, and that woman you and I met the first day. Marylou Smith-Bitters. She’s really nice. She—”

Nick held up one hand to stop her. “You don’t have to say anything else. I get the picture. And you probably got chapter and verse about Claire.”

“Yes, that’s her name. Claire. Claire Ayers.” Barb picked up her glass and spoke around the straw, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “Marylou’s already got a gown picked out for her,” she told him, and then took a long sip of iced tea. “She told Chessie to put it on hold for a month. Not that there’s any pressure, Nicky, but just so you know the timeline.”

“Okay, now that’s not funny,” Nick told her.

“No, I didn’t think so, either. I thought it was
hilarious
. She makes Aunt Beatrice look like an amateur. Still, I can’t wait to meet this Claire, as she sounds very nice. Has Sean met her yet? You don’t want to do that too soon, you know.”

“Too late for that advice, Barb. Claire and Sean have already met. He seems to like her. He asked me to invite her to his basketball game yesterday. You’re saying that was a mistake?”

He didn’t mention how he’d asked Claire to take Sean home on Thursday night, how she’d made him
chicken and noodle soup and put him to bed. Sean, that was. She’d only made Nick the soup. And why did that thought come into his head?

But he shouldn’t have asked her to take Sean home. When he looked back at that one, he saw the flaws on his own. He hadn’t considered that Sean, virtually motherless these past six years, might so easily form an attachment to a female figure coming into his orbit.

“Well, if you’re really back to dating—and it’s about time—then I’d say don’t make a habit out of bringing your dates around Sean, no. That sort of thing could confuse him.”

“I’m not planning on installing a revolving door to my bedroom, Barb. It was one woman, and it was just a basketball game. Okay, and one other time. After class.” He was about to explain more fully, reluctantly, when Barb interrupted to say that she already knew that he and Claire both taught classes at the community center, so that probably didn’t count.

“We’re keeping score?” he asked her, feeling like he’d just dodged a bullet.

“Not us, but I can’t speak for Marylou Smith-Bitters. Oh, don’t make that face. You know women can’t help themselves when it comes to eligible single men. We have this
thing
about seeing them all happily settled down with the right woman.”

“Which Sandy wasn’t,” Nick heard himself saying before he could edit his words. He rarely thought about Sandy anymore, often forgetting for
months on end, and usually only remembering because Sean had done something wonderful and he thought the boy’s mother should want to know about it. Which she probably wouldn’t.

Except it had been different this week. Because this week had been different. Not that he was going to share that piece of not-so-great information with his cousin.

“I never said that, Nicky,” Barb protested, and then sighed. “Oh, okay. No, she wasn’t. You are over her, right? I mean, she really knocked you and everyone else for a loop when she took off like that. I can’t say I ever really liked her, but nobody expected what she did. Leaving Sean like that, a baby just out of diapers? If I could have gotten my hands on her I would have wrung her neck for her. But you buckled down, and you’re the best dad I know. I don’t know if Claire is going to be the one, and that’s none of my business. I’m just so glad you’re seeing someone.”

“I haven’t been living in a cave for the last six years, Barb. I won’t tell you Sandy didn’t pretty much destroy me when she left, but I think that was more because of what she did to Sean than to me. We weren’t happy, and both of us knew it. So, yes, I’m over Sandy, and have been for a long time. And I’ve dated my share of women.”

His cousin tipped her head to one side, looking at him intently. “How many of them have you let within ten feet of your son?”

“None of them,” Nick answered quietly. “Just Claire.”

Barb’s frown lifted into a smile. “Aha. I think I’m looking forward to meeting Claire.”

Nick’s smile was genuine. “I’ll be sure to warn her.”

Claire decided she’d hit the right note with the third outfit she’d pulled from the closet. Besides, she didn’t really have a fourth; all her clothes seemed geared to the office and the chance they might end up with something wet and sticky on them, so they all needed to be wash and wear and Ironing Not Necessary.

But she liked the combination of slate-blue slacks and ivory silk sleeveless shell, plus the light, patterned zip-up collarless jacket her sister-in-law had given her on her last birthday. The materials were good, but the overall style remained simple, casual. The last thing she wanted to do was look as if she’d taken all sorts of pains to dress for the evening.

Even though she had.

She resisted pinning up her hair just because it was fast and easy, and bent herself in half so that the heavy mass of hair dropped toward the floor. Then she brushed through it again and again before standing up all at once, flipped her head back and watched in the bathroom mirror as her hair settled itself where it wanted to go. As usual, it “wanted” to tumble away from her forehead and temples and settle into soft waves that fell several inches beyond her shoulders.

She felt professional with her hair pinned back. She didn’t want to feel professional tonight. She wanted to feel like a woman.

She might even need to; she hadn’t felt much of anything for too long.

“Damn,” she breathed as the doorbell rang. She gave a last quick look at her five-minute face, found her bone, open-toed heels as she passed through the bedroom, and managed to control her breathing by the time she opened the door to see Nick standing there.

“Hi,” she said, shyness hitting her in a way that hadn’t happened since she was in the third grade and her mother somehow wrangled a way to get her backstage at a New Kids On The Block concert, to meet the band. As she remembered the event, she’d stood there with her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, unable to make a single coherent sound. So
hi
was at least a step up.

“Hi, yourself,” he said, smiling at her from the doorway. “You look…would it scare you off if I said you’re beautiful?”

“I think I can handle it. Thank you. I
feel
like a woman who spent all day at the hospital and then rushed home so I could be on time for our…our date.”

“In that case, I’m glad I made reservations at Emeril’s. It sounds like you could use a relaxed dinner.”

Claire snatched up her purse from the table beside the door and stepped outside, checking to be sure she had her key before closing the door. “Emeril’s? As in
let’s kick it up a notch
? I’ve watched him on TV. But he’s opened a restaurant in the new casino, hasn’t he?”

“His own steakhouse, yes. I’ve haven’t been there yet, but I’ve heard good things, and figured tonight might be a good time to give it a try. Do you like steak?”

“I was raised in Chicago, Nick. You know, the Chicago stockyards? Asking me if I like steak is like asking someone raised in Maine if they like lobster.”

“Good point. So your day was busy?” he asked as he held the car door open for her.

She gave him a quick recap of her day, and how thrilled she was to check out a set of quadruplets born two days earlier at the hospital, with all of them doing well in the NICU. “That’s the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit,” she told him. “But they’re in great shape. Two of them haven’t even needed oxygen. Tiny, though. The biggest just tops four pounds, with the second one close behind him.”

“Sean was a little over seven pounds, and I was afraid to hold him. What in hell do you do with four babies at one time?”

“I’m not sure, but I’m guessing sleeping is pretty low on the list. We’re seeing more and more multiples these days. I mean, they’re not exactly commonplace, but this is the third set I’ve seen since I joined Derek’s practice, so that averages out to one set a year. Other than the quads, my day was pretty much routine, signing out a few patients to go home. How was yours?”

He turned to look at her, his mouth opening, and
then he turned his attention back to the traffic on the bridge. “Let’s see. I used dynamite to blast Sean out of bed for basketball practice at nine, brought him home, explained that everyone takes a shower after basketball, even if it isn’t time for bed. That took a while. Got him to the bowling alley for the party after turning around and coming home only twice—once for his toothbrush, the second time for the present we forgot on the kitchen table. He gets his great organizational skills from me, obviously.”

“Busy morning,” Claire said, laughing. At the time, he must have been frustrated as hell, but in the telling, he’d made it all into a series of amusing father-and-son incidents. Sean was a lucky boy.