Stone Kissed (22 page)

“No, they got into their roles. Apparently they tried to outdo each other, shouting and grunting, pretending to move the Virgin Mary in place, just in case anyone came to investigate.”

“Did anyone?”

“No. He said it was as silent as the grave up there.”

“That’s a first.”

Grant sat on the bed beside her and looked out the window. He was so beautiful, the planes of his chest and shoulder edged with the last silver moonlight. She’d seen him day in and day out for weeks. They had worked together, sweated together, made love together, and still he took her breath away. It would always be that way for her. She memorized the line of his jaw, the plane of his cheekbone, the curves of his dark curls. This image of him she would hold inside her and it would never fade.

“How…how do you feel?” he asked the cloud outside the window.

Delia stifled a small, sad smile. “I’m not sorry, Grant. I’m not sorry for any of it.”

This was it, then. It was time for her to go.

He turned to look at her and her breath caught.

“You love me,” he said. “If I told you I loved you, would you believe me, Delia?”

***

It was the wrong question, and she looked at him with eyes full of pain.

Ah, damn, but he was clumsy with her. She wasn’t a client or rival—she didn’t deserve negotiation. She wasn’t his to coerce or bribe into doing what he wanted her to do. This last gesture of his was another manipulation to get what he wanted, what he needed, what he wouldn’t be able to live without.

“No,” Grant said. “Don’t answer that.”

She shook her head, her eyes wide and green as a mossy pond at twilight.

His decision was easy, his choice was clear. “I have something for you.” Grant handed the envelope to her, then planted his hands on his thighs and rose to leave, taking his slacks, shirt and the briefcase with him.

His hand lingered, however, on the bedroom doorknob. He pushed the door open more slowly than was necessary. When he stepped out and turned back toward the stairwell, he was only mildly surprised to see Bert looking back at him from the top of the stairs.

The hare didn’t move. He didn’t reach out a paw to stop him when Grant stepped past, even though he took slow, small steps to give the stone time to flow. Grant was halfway down the stairs, in fact, when he thought he heard Delia call out, “Wait!” her voice barely more than a whisper.

“Wait,” she repeated as he stepped back into the room.

He should have kept going, he knew. This was his chance to be noble and strong and walk into the sunset. But Grant had never mastered nobility. He’d been born in dirt and spent his life digging in it to find what he wanted, what he needed, what he loved.

Screw nobility.

She was on the second sheet, skimming rapidly. “Sit,” she ordered.

The thrumming in his blood was back. He bided his time, inspecting the room, inspecting the curls beneath Sophie’s headband. She shifted slightly and winked at him. He looked back toward the open door and saw Bert again, squatting this time with his forepaws on the carpet as if he were about to jump. The paper in Delia’s hand rustled and she flipped another page, the document trembling in her hands.

Grant rose to go to her as she stood, but she held out her hand to ward him off. Then, to his confusion, she knelt before the fireplace, reached up inside and gave a hard yank. A fine layer of dust dropped onto the three perfectly matched logs.

“Delia?”

She pulled a long match from the ceramic wall pocket and struck it, lighting the pages of the deed to Steward House—
her
deed—on fire.

Grant was paralyzed.

“Ask her,” a young voice commanded.

Grant flipped around in time to see the hare leap past the doorway and out of sight. When he turned back, Delia faced him, her eyes wide and dark, her hands open at her sides.

The thrumming rose to music, a chorus triumphant. She stood before him, a nimbus of firelight outlining her and illuminating her radiant beauty. Grant lowered himself to both knees and the music quieted to perfect, absolute peace. She smiled down at him.

He felt joy. He was joy.

Grant pulled her hands into his.

“Delia Forrest, I love you beyond reason. Will you do me the very great honor of becoming my wife?”

“I told you, Nancy, the invitation specified comfortable shoes.” Eleanor Hansdorf shook her head at her sister, picking carefully through the grass from the parking area behind the Steward House caretaker cottage.

Nancy scowled back at her, the lavender feather on her hat quivering with outrage and irritation. “This is the most ridiculous wedding I’ve ever attended. And we haven’t even gotten there yet.”

“Oh, hush. It’s going to be lovely. Delia promised to reserve our seats.”

They crossed the side lawn and rounded the corner to the front of the house. Both women paused to take in the astounding sight before them. The entire Wolverton statuary collection, and several “guest” statues—including Mrs. Hansdorf’s own satyr and nymph—had been arranged in a circle around the perimeter of the front lawn, with clusters of chairs covered in gauzy white fabric nested among the figures.

“I don’t understand the aesthetic,” Nancy grumbled. “Why did he put Atlas next to that pair of shepherdesses?”

A heavily pierced girl sniffed and wiped her hands down the wisp of fabric that served as her excuse for a kilt. “Who’s that old guy next to the big bunny?”

“That’s Beethoven, Rachel,” replied the small, bespectacled woman with a large camera around her neck who stood beside her. “You got your notebook? Go get some quotes.” She turned to Eleanor and Nancy, “Are you guests of the bride or the groom?”

“Both,” Eleanor replied. Nancy stepped to her side with and they smiled as she took their pictures.”

“Society page six?” Nancy asked, her sneer almost disguised.

“Lord, no. This wedding’s going to take the entire issue of the
Stewardsville Gazette,
” the reporter replied. “We need some good news around here.”

Eleanor nodded. “Delia told me about the destruction of the
pleurant.

“Between you and me…” the reporter lowered her voice and stepped even closer, “… that Virgin Mary Grant replaced it with is even creepier. But that’s not the problem.” She lifted the camera and took a candid shot of two little girls in matching yellow dresses playing cat’s cradle at the base of Eleanor’s satyr. “We may have another missing person. It’s overshadowed the vandalism.”

“Another? This is a strange little town.” Nancy muttered.

The reporter pushed her glasses up her nose and looked Nancy in the eye. “You don’t know the half of it.”

Two children broke from their parents and raced into the circle of statues lining the drive, narrowly skirting the new gazing pond in the center of the grass.

“Reese!” cried one mother helplessly as a seven-year old stumbled in the grass, staining the knees of his brand-new khaki slacks. He climbed onto a chair in front of a massive stone cat to stroke its nose.

“She’s purring, Mom.”

“What’s that woman doing?” Nancy asked Eleanor. She pointed to a blowsy faux-redhead, who was dipping her fingers in her champagne flute and rubbing them across the lips of a Roman matron on a plinth.

“Myrna.” The reporter shook her head, but she lifted her camera to get the shot.

A young cleric in his collar and a lightweight short-sleeved shirt stepped into the vine-covered archway erected in front of the entrance to Steward House, but he was overshadowed by the statue at his side, a St. Francis, complete with a stone bird on his shoulder.

Eleanor pushed her sister lightly into one of two chairs between her nymph and satyr. To her quiet delight, the two little girls, like most of the other children, eschewed the chairs and stayed with their favorite statue. Even this high in the hills late August was steamy, so she and the other guests woven between the other statues rested their elbows on pediments and fanned themselves with the programs from their seats.

The first bridesmaid—Miss Kelsey Hardcastle, according to the program—came alone up the white carpet rolled out on the driveway, moving very slowly to minimize the side-to-side caused by her very pregnant belly.

“Goodness,” Nancy said. “Twins, you think?”

“There’s a story there. Mark my words.”

Miranda Wolverton, like Miss Hardcastle, came up the aisle in a sheath the color of sea glass shot through with silver threads in a fanciful paisley pattern. She touched a disdainful fingertip to the broad arm of one Lars Gunderson.

“He’s in charge of Wolverton now,” Eleanor explained. “Grant and Delia are taking a very long honeymoon.”

“Where?”

“He’s taking her on an ocean yacht for the next few months. She says they’re going to hunt for Atlantis.” Nancy snorted, but Eleanor shrugged. “If anyone could find it, it would be those two.”

Grant followed his sister, and Eleanor heaved a sigh. She’d seen his charm through the years—those dimples of his had all but closed the sale for her twice—but today he was beaming, his grin open, honest and a bit self-satisfied.

“Lord, El, he looks like a pirate.”

“A pirate who’s gotten his booty.”

“Ellie!”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” She laughed, but of course she had.

The music changed—a catchy little number, something she’d never heard on a harp before. Most of their generation had their brows furrowed in confusion, but some of the mothers smiled as if they recognized the piece. A gruff voice with a divine Scottish accent muttered “Laura Branigan,” but it meant nothing to Eleanor.

And finally came Delia, a dark bird in wispy confection in silver and white. The hem of her tea-length sheath fluttered over her bare feet, and her hair dark lifted and snaked in curls on the breeze. Delia’s smile was as open and joyful as Grant’s, and Eleanor was glad to see it. She was a lovely girl, and she deserved someone who divined what a treasure she was.

Another Hardcastle was listed as giving Delia away. He held her by one elbow and carried a bust tucked up under his other arm. It was awkward going, and once or twice Delia stopped to help him adjust the figure of Athena. Delia leaned down and muttered something, and they both straightened.

“Is she talking to that bust?” Nancy asked.

“Delia does that.”

Delia and Mr. Hardcastle gave up on the escort hold. He folded his arms in front of himself, resting the base of the bust across the now-dusty arms of his blue seersucker jacket. He faced Athena outward so everyone could see her, and she could see everyone else.

“How sweet. The way they’ve placed it, it looks as if that stone hare is giving the bride away.” Eleanor blinked. “Its ear…”

Nancy sucked in her breath. “Heat mirage,” she insisted.

Delia faced Grant and no one could see anything but the love in her eyes and the joy in his. Their energy spread around the perimeter of the circle, reaching from stone to man to stone to child to stone to woman and coalescing in the center in an unvoiced prayer.

“Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here today…”

His words echoed, angel-soft. Eleanor’s eyes were drawn again to the monk.

“What’s with his voice?” Nancy whispered.

“Magic, isn’t it? I think it’s in the water.”

Keri Stevens was raised in southern Missouri and has lived in Germany, Arizona, North Carolina and Kentucky. Along the way she acquired degrees in writing and German, a romance hero of her very own, three sons, and a mutt who licks her when she speaks German.

Her husband gave Keri her first romance novel to read, which unleashed a passion. Several years and a couple thousand novels later, Keri took up her laptop and began writing her own books.

By day, she is a mild-mannered yoga and Oriental dance instructor. By night, she creates mayhem and magic in small-town paranormal romance novels like her award-winning debut,
Stone Kissed
, from Carina Press.

To find Keri online, please follow @KeriStevens on Twitter, fan Keri Stevens on Facebook or visit her at www.keristevens.com.

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