Wildflower Wedding (17 page)

The Things We Do for Love

A
FTER DROPPING LUNCH OFF FOR GABBY AND JOY, REESE
decided to stop in Designs by Diamante on his way back to the restaurant. He wanted something special for Gabby, and his mother had told him that the jewelry in the store was all handcrafted and one-of-a-kind items.

After entering the shop he stood there feeling a little bit lost, but the soft music and cinnamon-scented air put him at ease. Reese was also relieved to see a pretty woman about Gabby's age standing behind the counter. Hopefully, she'd be able to help him pick out something special. Shopping for jewelry wasn't something he did frequently . . . or well, ever. Candy necklaces hardly counted.

The clerk flipped her long dark hair over her shoulder and gave Reese a big smile. “Thank you!”

“I haven't bought anything yet,” Reese responded with a grin.

“Yes, but I'm from Chicago, home of amazing pizza that I've dearly missed until now. You're one of the owners of our new Italian place—am I right?”

“Yeah,” Reese replied, and felt a little surge of pride. “So you like our pizza?”

“Absolutely! Your pizza is delicious, so thank you!” She stuck out her hand. “I'm Bella Diamante. My mother owns this shop.”

Reese shook her hand. “Nice to meet you, Bella.
My
mother suggested your shop for a gift for my girlfriend.”

“Gabby Goodwin, right?”

“How did you know?”

“Small town.” Bella laughed and then shrugged. “Took me a while to get used to it after growing up in Chicago, believe me, but I love it here.”

Reese nodded. “I've been away for a few years. I've forgotten that news travels fast in Cricket Creek.”

“Well, welcome back! And again, thank you for the pizza. Now, let me help you find something special for Gabby.”

“Do you know her?” He wasn't surprised in the least that Gabby had so many friends who cared for her.

Bella smiled. “She's doing the flowers for my wedding. Addison is my wedding planner. I'm having a huge barn wedding out on the Greenfield Farm.”

“Oh, congratulations!”

“Thanks! My fiancé is a pro baseball player, so I've had to do most of the planning myself. Gabby is such a sweetheart! You're a lucky guy.”

“Well, I know that I'm lucky she goes for a guy like me,” he said in a joking tone, but Bella frowned.

“I don't get it? What do you mean, a guy like you?”

“I kinda stand out in this town.” He pointed to his tattoo and winced. “And I was kind of a screwup back in high school.”

Bella chuckled. “Oh, I hear ya. I wasn't a saint in high school either. Gave my single mom some gray hair, for sure.”

Reese chuckled.

“But listen.” Bella nibbled on the inside of her lip for a second and then continued. “I get where you're coming from. Three years ago I showed up for a party at Sully's dressed in stilettos and a cocktail dress. I didn't know that casual attire meant jeans and T-shirts.” She rolled her eyes. “The parking lot was pretty much filled with pickup trucks. I didn't think I'd fit in either.” She raised her palms upward. “I was ready to turn around and leave, but that night I met my fiancé. Ironic, huh?”

“Love at first sight?”

Bella tipped her head back and laughed. “Hardly. Logan and I butted heads for a long time before we realized how we really felt about each other. In case you haven't noticed, I have a strong personality and pretty much speak my mind.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Reese said.

“Good, then I'll go a step further and tell you that Cricket Creek was struggling pretty hard-core when I moved here. But after the baseball stadium was built, the local economy improved and things have continued to get better. They just all kind of banded together and wouldn't give up hope.”

“Tell me about it. None of this was even here. This was just a hillside where we rode dirt bikes when I was a kid.”

Bella nodded. “Well, the reason I'm butting my nose in and telling you this is that in my experience, although there are most definitely some small-town values remaining, Cricket Creek is pretty accepting and progressive. I don't think you need to worry about what you did way back in high school.”

Reese thought that over. “You're probably right,” he said. In truth, everyone who'd come into the restaurant had been supportive and he knew the town had taken care of his mother the years he'd been in Brooklyn. Honestly, though, other than his family the only one he really cared about believing in him was Gabby.

“Now, let's pick out something pretty for Gabby. My mother does custom work when time allows, but if you want something right now we can do that too. Something really fun is a charm bracelet. You can customize one that suits Gabby's personality. And you can keep adding charms to it while you build memories together.”

“I think that's a really cool idea.”

Bella led him over to a glass display case. “Sweet. Let's get to work.”

“I want to do the charm bracelet for tonight, but there is something kind of different that I'd like for your mother to make for me if at all possible,” Reese said when he was hit with sudden inspiration.

“Shoot. Mom is on vacation with her husband, but let me know what you have in mind. I'll take some notes and ask her.”

Reese told Bella the story of the candy necklace and by the end she had to swipe at a tear. “That's the sweetest thing ever. Seriously.”

Reese grinned. “So, do you think she could make something like that?”

“Mom can do just about anything and she loves a challenge. I'll run this by her and get back to you on it. In the meantime let's get the charm bracelet going. I'm thinking something with a flower on it, right?”

“Wildflowers are her favorite.”

Bella brought out a tray filled with charms. After searching she came up with a daisy. “How about this?”

“I like it.”

“Ah! Here's a slice of pizza. Do you want to add that to kind of represent you?”

Reese grinned. “This is fun. I know Gabby is going to love this.”

Fifteen minutes later Reese walked out of the shop with the bracelet in a beautifully wrapped package. As he walked past the quaint shops he caught his reflection in a picture window and shook his head. He was grinning from ear to ear once again and didn't even realize it.

The grin remained when he walked into the restaurant. With the lunch-hour rush over, the main restaurant was almost empty, but they'd be busy later, so he hurried into the kitchen.

“Where've you been, sweetie?” Tessa asked. “I was starting to get worried.”

“It's kind of hard to get mugged in Cricket Creek, Mom. And if you look I did send you a text message.”

“Oh.” She glanced around the room. “I never know where I put the doggone thing. Ah, over by the sink. Sorry. I didn't look.”

“Would have kept you from worrying.”

Tessa shrugged. “I'm a mom. I worry. It's my job,” she said while stirring a pot of sauce. “Oh, what do you have in the package? Something for Gabby?” She tapped the spoon on the metal pot and smiled.

“A charm bracelet from the jewelry store you told me about. I figured we'd be dead, so I stopped while I had the chance.”

“It's a cute store.”

“You've been in it?”

“Eh, once when they had open house a while back. You know me. I'm not much on jewelry,” she said, but something flickered in her eyes when she said it. Reese remembered his dad would bring her unexpected gifts, most often jewelry. Nothing fancy but it always made his mother happy. It really didn't take much to make his mother smile, well, back then, anyway. She wiped her hands on a towel. “I wish I could see it,” she said. “Gorgeous wrapping.”

“Bella did it. She's a cool chick. Loves our pizza, by the way, and that's saying something since she's from Chicago.”

“We've had a lot of folks move here from the Windy City in the past few years. Her stepdaddy is the bigwig who built these River Row shops. We've got a lot of movers and shakers who moved to this little town.”

“I'm a mover and a shaker,” Reese said, and demonstrated by wiggling his ass. He was rewarded when his mother laughed.

“Um, I don't know what you're doing, but it needs to stop,” Tony said from the doorway.

“Just what are you doing here?” Tessa demanded.

Tony put his palms in the air. “Whoa, just hold on. I'm just here to pick up some dessert.”

“And to check on things,” Reese added.

“That too.”

Tessa tilted her head. “Wait. Dessert? Give your sister more information than that.”

“What, a guy can't stop in for some cake? You know I have a sweet tooth.”

Tessa narrowed her eyes.

“You might as well answer her,” Reese said with a grin.

“Okay, well, I sort of rescued Trish from a snake and she's cooking me dinner.”

“Ohhhh,” Tessa said, and wiggled her eyebrows.

“As a thank-you and to keep me off my foot. Nothing more.” At least not until nightfall.

“If you say so,” Tessa said. “But . . . if it were something more, you should stop by Gabby's and pick up some flowers.”

“You need to quit playing matchmaker.” Tony glowered at her, but Reese noticed something different about his uncle's demeanor. He just seemed more . . . relaxed. The brackets of tension around his mouth were gone even when he was trying to frown.

“That's how we do things in Cricket Creek. Get used to it,” Tessa shot back, completely unfazed. They both knew that his uncle was a softie beneath his tough-guy demeanor.

“I have red velvet cake in the fridge.” Reese angled his head toward the stainless steel refrigerator.

“That will do quite nicely,” Tony replied, but when he started to hobble over there, Tessa waved him off.

“Would you just sit down, for Pete's sake? I'll wrap up a couple of slices for ya.”

“What is it with women ordering me around?” Tony grumbled, but he suddenly noticed the wrapped package and looked at Reese. “For Gabby?”

“Just a little somethin'.” He shrugged but couldn't hold back a slight grin.

“You should take lessons from your nephew,” Tessa said. “He knows how to woo a girl.” She placed the wrapped dessert in front of him.

“Hey, Mom, come on. My red velvet cake should do the trick.”

Tony shook his head. “I'm not wooing anybody. I just thought it would be a nice gesture to bring dessert. That's all!
Capisce
?”

Reese exchanged a look with his mother.

“Right . . . ,” Tessa said in a tone that conveyed that she wasn't buying it.

Finally, Tony sighed. “Okay . . . okay, I might be a little bit fond of her. And I'm probably out of my ever-lovin' mind for ever going there at all. You'd think I'd learned my lesson.”

Tessa put a hand on his shoulder. “Wrong. You're out of your ever-lovin' mind if you don't.”

“Speaking of—” Tony began, but the timer on the oven buzzed.

“I'll get it,” Tessa said quickly. “The pizza is for Maggie McMillan. I'll deliver it since when she called she said she wanted to talk to me.”

“You thinkin' about buying some property?” Tony asked.

“No, I love my house. I think it might have something to do with going to the Jeff Greenfield concert.”

“Oh, well, if you want to hang out for a while, I'll man the phones.”

“Just stay off the ankle and ice it, okay?”

“Gotcha,” he said, and gave Tessa a salute, but after she left he turned to Reese. “Well, Tessa dodged that bullet, but we need to talk to her about Mike.”

“I agree,” Reese answered. “Mom's put on a pretty good front, but ever since those damned flowers came, I've felt an underlying sense of sadness that's worse than before. We need to get to the bottom of this and help her to move forward once and for all.”

Tony nodded. “Moving forward isn't easy, but it's the only healthy way to live.”

Reese leaned his hip against the sink and looked at his uncle. “So, you're gettin' along with Trish?”

“Ah, Reese, I tried to keep my distance, but it's pretty damned difficult when she lives in the same house.” He grinned. “And keeps gettin' herself in trouble. When that snake came at her while she was in her garden she freaked.” His grin widened. “Then I had to pretend I wasn't scared shitless of the damned thing when I picked it up with a stick.”

“The things we do for love,” Reese agreed.

“You really love this girl, Reese?”

“Yeah, she's pretty special.”

“You told her yet?”

Reese nodded and then looked away.

“Ah, so she didn't say it back?”

Reese shrugged. “I said it too soon.” He scrubbed his hand down his face. “I shoulda waited but it just slipped out. Man, I'm trying to go slow, but it's not easy when you feel so strongly. She's just still kind of fragile and you were right. I still think she sees me like I was sometimes and it scares her. So going slow is key, I guess.”

“Ah, Reese, the best things in life are the hardest, the scariest. Love, marriage . . . owning your own business. But honestly, I think being burned and betrayed and bouncing back from that is the hardest thing of all.”

“I thought about that. I mean, how do people even do that? Why? I just don't get cheaters.”

“Beats me. It wouldn't even begin to occur to me to cheat on someone. I mean, that's just basic. But hey, we're Marinos. We're loyal to a fault. Your mom won't even look at another man, and Mike's been gone nearly ten years.”

Reese shook his head. “I still don't get it.”

“Hey, I'm sorry to bring it up again.”

“We have to, Uncle Tony. We've danced around it long enough. I don't want Gabby to think I'm a flight risk like my . . . like
him
. I want to get to the bottom of it once and for all.”