The Bastard Takes a Wife (11 page)

“Hope it wasn’t all bad,” he chuckled, his
eyes twinkling naughtily at me.

“No. She only has good reports.”

“Well, she never told me how young you were.
I can see where Millie gets her ravishing good looks. Even with the
few extra kilos you could pass as sisters.”

Mum blushed like a schoolgirl.

“Sam!” Clearly, tonight was going to be one
of those ‘open and honest’ nights for my fiancé. Maybe we needed to
have a little chat before dinner?

“It’s alright, darling,” Mum said, “I
understand what he means. Now, why don’t we all sit down here, have
a drink and get to know each other a bit while we wait for Adele
and the family. I’ll pop these flowers in water.”

After being shown where the powder room and
cloakroom were and divesting themselves of their coats, the
Brocktons lined themselves up along the modular lounge. Uniformly
dressed in black, they looked about as comfortable as three crows
sitting on a power line waiting to be picked off with a rifle. Kent
dived into a conversation with Dad about the weather and boating on
the Swan River while Mum went back to the kitchen to bring out a
few plates of nibbles to ‘keep us going’ until we ate.

“You don’t have help?” Patricia asked, as if
trying to fathom the unspeakable.

“Not usually. If it’s a big ‘do’ we hire some
in.”

Amanda’s face had frozen in a look of shock.
“So, you’ve cooked everything tonight? From scratch?”

“Mum’s a great cook,” I said. “Unlike
me.”

“Lucky for you Sam can afford a housekeeper
then, isn’t it?”

How was I supposed to answer that? God, I
hated that she could put me on the spot and I had no clever
retort.

“Did you like the wedding invitations,
Patricia? Now that you’ve seen the actual ones?” I asked, changing
the subject.

Alex and I had given up two Saturdays to
attend a calligraphy course and then stayed up till three a.m. the
other week scribing the names from the guest list so slowly that
they could be deemed nothing less than perfection. I was convinced
I’d given myself some sort of repetitive strain injury because of
it and Alex had been grumpy for the following two days due to sleep
deprivation. But after the arguments over the design, I was
determined Mrs. Brockton would have nothing more to complain about.
I was happy with the result. I thought Sam’s mother would be
too.

“They were adequate. But considering the
budget, I would have thought you’d have chosen something a little
more expensive or at least sent them to have the names
professionally printed.” Patricia looked down her nose, as if the
mere thought of receiving an invitation that was not courier
delivered was distasteful.

“I didn’t want them to be expensive. I wanted
them to be stylish and pretty.”

“And you couldn’t have achieved that within
my directives?”

God, where was Mum? And what the hell was Sam
talking about to Josh? I was being stuck on a skewer and barbecued
here.

“Um, not really. The changes you wanted would
have been a step too far. They wouldn’t have conveyed the mood we
want for our wedding.”

“Then the sooner you realise this wedding
isn’t about what you want, the better.” Patricia picked up her
champagne, giving it a cursory sip. Then she looked over my
shoulder and into the dining area, ignoring me.

I felt sick. I’d tried so hard to be pleasant
and bow to what Patricia wanted but she was such a rude cow. I
couldn’t understand how she’d managed to give birth to a marvellous
man like Sam. His generous heart was one of the reasons I loved
him. With a sigh of resignation, I sat and stared out the window at
the view. I didn’t see it though.

Reappearing, Mum sensed the tension. It would
have been difficult not to with the entire room of people looking
different ways except Dad and Kent, who’d moved on to a discussion
of AFL versus Rugby Union.

“Everything alright?” Mum asked, as she put
the food on the coffee table.

“Fine. Thank you,” Patricia replied, curtly.
“Millie and I were talking about the invitations.”

“They’re quite unusual, aren’t they?”

“They’re not what I would have chosen for a
wedding of this magnitude. Which reminds me, have you had any
further thoughts on changing the cake, Millie? Or at least the
detail on the top? It really is quite unsuitable.”

I pressed my lips together. “No. I like the
cake idea as it is. Sam does too. He thinks it’s cute.”

“Koalas are cute but they also bite.”

I had no idea what she was talking about.

A small crinkle of annoyance dipped between
Mum’s brows. I could tell she was dying to give Sam’s mum a piece
of her mind but good manners dictated she would never speak rudely
to a guest in her own home. Plastering a smile on her face, she
motioned for Dad to top up the glasses. She took a deep breath and
rose from her chair, picking up a platter. “Would you like some
more antipasto, Patricia? The olives are locally grown and quite
delicious.”

Sam’s mother peered at the platter. She
picked up one of the oval shaped balls and inspected it. “Well,
yes. Thank you.”

*****

“How long did your family live next door to
the McIntyres?” Sam asked Josh as we sat down to dinner.

The young ones, as Mum called us, were seated
together at the end of the dining table, a whole smorgasbord away
from Sam’s mother and her disdain, which was cause for a
celebration in itself. Sam relaxed at the end of the table. He’d
pulled his chair closer to mine and had his arm slung carelessly
over the back of it. His fingers curled through a couple of stray
bits of my hair. I liked it when he touched me like that. It made
me feel loved. On his right, Josh played with his cutlery, a habit
he’d had since giving up smoking at the age of twenty-three. He
hadn’t looked at me since Sam had arrived. I wasn’t sure if he was
angry at me, or trying to digest the news of my impending marriage.
Whatever, it was quite disconcerting not to have him joking and
acting the fool.

“Since we were little,” Josh answered. “I
think I was about four when the McIntyre’s moved next door.”

I could see straight into Sam’s devious mind
and where this was heading. “You must have a whole lifetime of
serious dirt you could dish about what she used to be like.”

Josh appeared to brighten. “You bet. There
was this one time, when we were about seventeen….”

“Josh,” I warned. I had no desire for him to
explain how I had lost my virginity.

Ignoring me, he continued, “Me, Millie and
one of her school friends went to this party up the road from my
house. The girls had a little too much cheap wine and well…” His
eyes began to sparkle with mischief.

Oh my God. He’d promised never to tell what
happened that night and I’d had to pay dearly for that silence. It
cost me months of doing his homework to keep the incident buried
where it belonged. I glanced down the table to where Mum had
managed to engage Patricia in some sort of pleasant conversation.
If Josh insisted on going there, I could only pray they were
getting hard of hearing in their old age.

“Josh, please.”

“What?” he asked, brimming with feigned
innocence.

If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought he
was trying to make me suffer in front of everyone.

Sam put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
“Don’t listen to her, Josh. Go on. I’m dying to hear about the
seventeen year old Millie.”

Only so he could rub it in my face later.

“So they’d had a bit much to drink at the
party and we were walking home. It was foggy and I thought it might
be fun to dare the girls to strip down to their underwear and run
down the road. It was late and the street was deserted. There
wasn’t any harm in it.”

“Not until the car came round the corner,” I
muttered, attempting to slink under the table. This was not going
to end well, I could tell.

Sam was fully engaged in the story now. Any
hint of tomfoolery brought out the boy in him. “Millie and her
friend got naked and were running down the road in their underwear
at midnight, drunk as skunks?” he clarified.

I could hear the amusement in his voice. I
could imagine the furnace he would throw me into as he spread the
story around the club and Perth at large. I wanted to die with the
humiliation of it all.

“Yeah, but the funniest part was that I saw
some headlights coming up the road, so I dared them to do a dance.
It was a bit of bad luck that the car belonged to my parents. They
were on their way home from a dinner party and thought they’d stop
by and give us a lift. I’d already texted them to say we were
leaving. They drove round the corner to be greeted by a half naked
Millie dancing on the traffic island in front of them.”

Sam let out a rumble. It turned into a
guffaw, which then turned into a laugh so raucous he had to put his
beer down and take deep breaths to stop himself from snorting it up
his nose. I’d given him so much flack over his naked run through
Bunbury there was no way he’d ever let me live this down. “What
happened then?”

“Do we have to talk about this?” I whispered,
glancing out the corner of my eye to where Mum was now giving Mrs.
Brockton a run down of the food on the Queen Mary II. “Can’t you
wait till later?”

“But I want to hear the rest, Babe,” Sam
smirked. “This story is really interesting.”

Josh continued. “The girls ran to hide behind
the rose bushes in someone’s front yard but the security lights
came on giving their position away. Then Mum yelled at us to get in
the car so we climbed in the back of the wagon with Millie as red
as a beetroot and apologising profusely for such infantile
behaviour. It was hilarious, especially when she discovered that my
little brother, who she’d been tutoring in English and had a
massive crush on her, was sitting in the next seat forward. He’d
seen her in her knickers.”

Tears were rolling down Sam’s face and he
wiped them with his napkin. “Mill’, you dark horse,” he
chuckled.

“What in heavens is going on down there?”
Patricia asked. “Did I hear you say Millie was running naked down a
road?”

Trust her to have sonic hearing.

“She wasn’t naked. She was wearing her
knickers,” Sam piped up.

“Without clothes on top?”

“Well, yes but it wasn’t my fault.” I glared
at Josh. I was going to kill him. And Sam.

“Josh dared her, Mum,” Sam explained.

“You were there too, young man?”

“Yeah. I was holding the clothes.”

“How vulgar,” Amanda said. “I can’t believe
anyone would actually do that.”

“It was a dare. Millie would never turn down
a dare that could net her a few dollars. ‘Specially if it involved
showing everyone her knickers,” Josh replied.

This was getting worse by the minute and the
only person, other than Josh, who seemed to think it was funny was
Sam. Mum had gone silent ~ a sure sign of horror and disappointment
~ and Sam’s mother was glowering at me like Josh had announced I
was a pole dancer in my spare time. Her opinion of me was low
enough as it was. I didn’t need it to get any lower.

“Can we change the subject please?” I begged.
“It was a silly prank that happened when I was seventeen. And one
I’d like to forget about.”

“But you ran down a road naked. For money!”
Amanda gasped.

“It’s not like Sam hasn’t done exactly the
same,” I cried, trying to justify my actions somewhat lamely.

“Sam’s would never do anything like
that!”

Yeah. Right.

Amanda turned to her mother. “Honestly, can’t
we put a stop to this wedding?”

“Hmm,” was all Patricia said before she
descended back into the stony silence she’d brought along in her
purse.

Could this night get any worse? I mean,
seriously, could it?

It was approximately an hour and a half later
when we were sitting back in the living room that I realised indeed
the evening could get worse. Paige had taken the twins into Dad’s
study to watch a DVD on his flat screen. She loved Dad’s flat
screen because it had earphones for every listener, which meant she
could watch without Tori and Michael’s incessant chatter about the
goings on in the movie. Every time I’d taken them to the old house,
she’d gravitated to it the way I did to the Pandora shop. She’d
even asked Adele to buy her earphones like them for her birthday.
To which Adele had responded she wouldn’t be needing them because
she wasn’t allowed to watch TV at home anyway. Unless it was an
approved educational program, of course.

After the kids had gone, Dad went around
topping up the glasses and making sure every one was happy.
Patricia seemed to have gotten over her initial shock at my teenage
escapades ~ maybe she’d realised how alike and thus suited Sam and
I were. She was now discussing catering with my mother and Amanda.
I could hear them talking about rehearsal dinners, an event that
was not part of Australian wedding tradition but she seemed keen to
introduce. Mum was nodding and agreeing but the tight grip on her
glass told me she wasn’t happy about Patricia’s over the top ideas.
Hopefully, she’d be able to scale them down without me having to
get involved. I was fast getting sick of trying to make everyone
happy. A happy day for Sam and I was all I’d wanted and that was a
distant memory.

On the sofa next to me, Sam was chatting to
Josh. I sat watching them, noticing the similarities in their
height and looks. Though Sam was dark compared to Josh’s fair
complexion both men had round laughing eyes. You could see straight
into their hearts through them but Sam’s deep green ones sparkled
just a hint more than Josh’s blue.

“So, Josh,” Sam asked, “what did Millie look
like when she was seventeen? Was she a hottie?”