Wisconsin Wedding (Welcome To Tyler, No. 3) (14 page)

“The hell it is.” He tore off his pumpkin’s cap, which he’d failed to cut clean through in places, but what didn’t come easily he just ripped out. “I’ll have you know, Nora Gates, that I wasn’t wondering what it’d be like to kiss you again.”

Now, she thought, who was doing the self-deluding? “You weren’t?”

“No.”

Then she got his full meaning and felt her knees weaken.

“As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “nothing’s done with and the biggest mystery yet remains.”

“I see,” she said primly.

He grinned. “I’m on to you, Miss Gates. You drag out your Victorian virgin act whenever I hit a nerve.”

“Let’s get these pumpkins carved.”

He laughed. “Let’s.”

She turned the radio to a live broadcast of
Madame Butterfly,
which Byron vetoed, so they compromised on jazz. In the time Nora carved three pumpkins, Byron did two. His first wasn’t too bad, just rather uninspired. The second looked like something out of a science fiction movie.

“Kind of grisly, isn’t she?” Byron said.

“She?”

“Looks like a woman to me.”

Her three, of course, were perfect jack-o’-lanterns. They could have been carved from a mold. She displayed them side by side on the counter.

“Mine have character,” Byron said.

“Yours will scare the neighborhood dogs.”

“Count on it. By the way, what time is Liza’s shower?”

“Oh, God, I almost forgot! I’ve got to get ready—would you mind cleaning up? Don’t worry about the rest of the pumpkins, we can just set them out…I’m going to be late, and I promised Liza.”

Byron coughed. “Nora, wait.”

She stopped in the kitchen doorway, listening. All morning she’d felt he had something on his mind, but she decided not to prod him.

“Have a good time.”

Whatever it was, he wasn’t going to tell her now. “Thank you, I’m sure I will.”

She didn’t catch his muttered comment as she raced upstairs to get dressed, wishing she’d kept her promise to Liza to find out what her mother had in store for her. But since Liza Baron was the one who’d thrust her future brother-in-law onto her, Nora figured she’d understand.

* * *

B
YRON KNEW
there’d be hell to pay.

While Nora was off at her bridal shower, he considered all the various things he could do to make his life easier when she got back. There had, of course, been no convincing Liza that the gossips were wrong and he and Nora hadn’t been lovers. Only under certain circumstances—this one qualifying—did Byron consider a strategic, outright lie noble.

“Liza, that’s just gossip,” he’d said. “Nora Gates has never wanted a man in her life.”

Liza was unpersuaded. “She’s never wanted to get
married.
That doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to have a little sex now and then.”

Cliff, judiciously, had kept out of the discussion.

“Lordy Lord,” Liza had gone on, clearly delighted, “now I can’t
wait
for my bridal shower. If anyone can drag the truth out of Nora, it’ll be the quilting ladies.”

Given his role in the gossip in question, Byron had believed it was his duty to warn Nora what she was in for, but with their talk about his family, her parents, Aunt Ellie—with her damned perfect jack-o’-lanterns and her gorgeous, haunting gray eyes—he’d skipped any warning. He could have justified his cowardice by claiming that he’d believed Liza was exaggerating and that the quilting ladies—they sounded like an intrepid lot—would exercise good manners. But the truth was, he’d kept his mouth shut
because Nora, a hothead from way back, had access to too many knives, several newspapers’ worth of pumpkin innards and a whole line of pumpkins. Byron valued his head.

Still, he debated cleaning her refrigerator, making dinner, carving the rest of the pumpkins, even having at the odd thing it might be handy to have a man around to fix. He’d checked for faulty wires to mend, plaster to patch, squeaky hinges to oil, dried up paintbrushes to rejuvenate. But everything in the Gates household was shipshape. Finally he’d said to hell with it and had caught the first quarter of a football game on the ancient television in the study.

At five o’clock the cuckoo was calling the hour and Nora came home screaming bloody murder.

Byron flipped off the game—it was a rout anyway—and pulled his feet off the couch just as Nora stormed into the study.

She looked great. Decidedly annoyed, but gorgeous.

“You heel,” she snarled.

She pulled her handwoven chenille scarf from around her neck and threw it at him. Then came her hat, also handwoven, and her peacoat, which she more or less slammed at him because it was too heavy and bulky to really throw. All the while she screamed, “You bastard, you knew!”

What he should have done while she was out, he decided, was nail down everything in the house, given that sooner or later she was bound to run out of clothes to throw at him.

“You
knew
I’d be interrogated at that shower.”

Off came a conservative black pump, which missed him by a yard.

“You knew half the damned town thinks I slept with you.”

Off came a second black pump, which missed him by a good deal less than a yard.

“You bastard, you knew and you didn’t warn me!”

She was down to her sleek two-piece heavy cotton long-over-short knit outfit and black-tinted stockings. “I have no quarrel,” Byron said, “with your tossing the rest of your garments at me, but I think it’s something you might regret. We do have a certain relentless attraction for each other, you know.”

Her hair was wild. “I’ve been humiliated.”

“How so?”

“Inger Hansen…Martha Bauer…Tisha Olsen, Liza—” She gulped for air. “They all know. The whole town…
arrgh!
”

Byron plucked the scarf off a pottery lamp with wildflowers pressed into its shade. “You’re sure they know?”

“Oh, yes.” Her eyes bored into him; he could feel the holes. “And they do give a damn. They haven’t had such a juicy bit of gossip since the body was discovered at Timberlake Lodge. They haven’t had such an
amusing
bit of gossip since they used to sit around trying to identify the rich guests Margaret Lindstrom Ingalls would invite to her wild parties. They
loved
the idea that I might have slept with a reprobate like you!”

Considering he was president of Pierce & Rothchilde, lived in a house on the Providence Benefit Street walking tour, Byron thought her calling him a reprobate was stretching it somewhat. Probably, he thought, Nora knew this, too. “Nora,” he said, “you
did
sleep with me.”

“I refused to confirm that fact.” She folded her arms over her breasts and panted, her anger having required a good deal of exertion. “No one in this town will ever look at me in the same way.”

“Hoist by your own petard, m’dear.”

She glared at him. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” he said, “if you hadn’t tried to hide our affair, the gossips in town wouldn’t have had anything to find out about you. It’s not as if they’re spreading vicious lies. They’re merely spreading the truth. We
did
sleep together.” He shrugged. “Actually, as I recall, we seldom slept.”

With a panting glare, she blew out of the study.

“So,” Byron called, “was everyone relieved to know you’re human or what?”

The whole house shook when she slammed her bedroom door.

His answer, he figured.

Always one to take his life in his hands, Byron walked down the hall to her bedroom and tried the door, but, no fool, she’d locked it up tight. “I wish I had it in me to feel sorry for you,” he said, “but I don’t. You can be mad at me for not having warned you, but if I had, you wouldn’t have gone this afternoon, which would have been a mistake. And go ahead and feel humiliated if you want. But I won’t feel sorry for you. What people have deduced about us is true.”

She yelled, emphatically, “
Was
true.”

“If you’d unlock your door,” he said, unable to resist, “we could take care of the past tense.”

Something hard struck the bedroom side of the mercifully solid wood door.

“Nora, admit it. Ever since you saw me in your dining room the other night you’ve been thinking about what we had three years ago, how good it was. You wouldn’t have wanted to go through life having missed that chance and you know it.”

He could hear her pounding across her floor. She tore open her door, her hair sticking out everywhere, her breath
coming in gasps. “There’s a tent in my garage. Get it and get out.”

“You’re just upset—”

“No, Byron, I’m not upset. Take a good look at me. Do I
look
upset? No, I look angry. Furious. And not just with you. With myself. You’re right. I set myself up for this afternoon. I should have kept my hands off you three years ago, I should have pretended I didn’t know who the hell you were. I thought…” She gulped in more air, her voice rasping because she’d been yelling so much. “I thought I was above being a subject of gossip. All that does is make me a better target—a juicier subject—if anyone does find out the slightest irregularity about my life.”

Byron leaned against the doorjamb. “I’m not sure I like being called an irregularity.”

She almost smiled. He
knew
she did. But then the anger was back, darkening her face, and she was calling him a bastard and banishing him to the garage for her tent.

It had to be a hundred years old. He could see doughboys camped in it on the Western Front. It stank worse than Cliff’s did.

“If Mrs. Redbacker could see me now,” he muttered. Hell, if the Pierce & Rothchilde board could. This was worse than the dartboard on the mahogany paneling. For three years he’d lived on the road, but his van and tent had never smelled.

The rain had finally ended, but it was still damp and chilly outside, and very dark even though it wasn’t even six o’clock. He was hungry. But he’d endured worse conditions.

Not that he had any intention of letting Miss Nora off scot-free for her bad temper. Was it
his
damned fault people in town were on to them?

He could have gone to the lodge, or found a motel or
roominghouse, or even driven to Milwaukee and stayed in a proper hotel. He did have options. But this wasn’t about options: it was about calling Nora’s bluff. She couldn’t keep hiding behind her hot, secret temper.

Her yard was bordered with flowers and shrubs, and had a nice little birdbath and bird feeders here and there. That left plenty of room for the flea-bitten World War I tent. He held his nose, shook it out and got to work.

In two seconds, Nora’s bedroom window popped open. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Pitching the tent.”

“Not here!”

“Why not here?”

“You’re being deliberately obtuse. I want you off my property and out of my life!”

She’d poked her head out the window, but she’d combed her hair and, he could see, changed into one of her flowing caftans. Her heart just wasn’t in her anger anymore.

“Do you, Nora?” he asked.

“No,” she said abruptly, and banged her window shut.

He figured that was as good as he’d get in terms of an invitation to come inside again.

But on his way back to her garage with her tent, he ran into Liza Baron. “My God, Byron,” she said, startled, “I thought you were a burglar. What’re you doing out here?”

“Checking out Nora’s antique tent.”

“Yuck, it’s disgusting.”

“No kidding. What’s up?”

“Nothing much. Is Nora around? I just wanted to thank her for going out of her way to make the shower such fun. She knew I was dreading it, but she was right on the money—it really was a kick, in large part thanks to her. I’ve never seen her so animated.”

“I was under the impression,” Byron said carefully, “that she didn’t have a good time.”

“Well, that’s news to me. She was the life of the party.”

Byron could imagine such a thing, even if Nora herself never could. “What about the gossip about her and me?”

“Oh,
that.
Well, she was terrifically good-natured. Inger Hansen did rib her a little unmercifully— I mean, the idea of Nora Gates having a torrid affair with anyone is front-page news in Tyler, but with
you
…” She laughed, clearly loving the notion herself. “People will be talking about that one for years to come.”

That, Byron suspected, would come as no surprise to Nora, though not as a fact to be welcomed.

“And I’m not sure Inger really realizes you two actually
slept
together.”

“Now, Liza, you never have heard me confirm—”

She waved him off. “Being a man, Byron Forrester, you haven’t denied it, either. Come on, I’m not stupid. Neither are most people in town. Gosh, Nora can’t think people haven’t been speculating about her sex life for
years.
Even before I left town there was talk—”

“I wouldn’t tell Nora that if I were you,” Byron put in.

“Honestly, Byron, for someone who slept with her, you sure don’t have much notion of what Nora Gates is like. She’s one of the most mature, level-headed people I know. She’s not going to let a little harmless town gossip upset her, especially when it’s true.” She started up the front porch steps. “You coming?”

“Let me get rid of this tent. I’ll be along.”

And when Nora answered the door, he heard her laugh and say, “Oh, Liza,” as if she were the most reasonable person in the world and hadn’t just bombarded her houseguest with half her wardrobe and sent him out into the cold, cruel night.

Byron stuffed the tent back into its place in the garage where it could spend the next hundred years. “Oh, sweetheart,” he said to himself, “you don’t know it, but all you’re doing is raising the stakes.”

And the gossips, he thought, be damned.

M
ONDAY MORNING
Nora did better. Work helped restore her equilibrium. She acted—felt—like a grown-up and the formidable businesswoman she was. She treated employees and customers with her customary respect and reserve, and they responded. There was no indication that the gossip circulating in town had penetrated Gates Department Store.

Until Lucille buzzed her from the book department. “Miss Gates, I have a man here who wants to see you.”

Her tone suggested it was a
man
man, not a salesman or customer. Since she was at work, removed from the trials going on in her home, Byron Forrester didn’t leap onto her list of possibilities. In fact, no one did. For her that was a happy state of affairs. She assumed Lucille herself was reacting to the man’s asking to see the boss.

“Who is he?” Nora asked.

“He hasn’t given me his name. Let me see… Oh, excuse me, sir, Miss Gates hasn’t agreed to see you. Sir!” Lucille sighed. “He’s on his way up. Shall I call Horace?”

Horace was the daytime security guard, and now that she knew it was Byron Forrester bounding up to her office, Nora imagined what he might tell Horace to get him to back off.

“No,” Nora said, “I’ll handle this one.”

“I thought you might want to,” Lucille said, her meaning impossible to miss.

With considerable effort, Nora kept her response profes
sional. Then she buzzed her assistant, Albert Shaw. “Albert, I wanted to let you know that a friend of mine is on his way up. Send him right in, won’t you?”

“Is this the brother of that guy up at Timberlake Lodge, the one who’s staying with you?” Albert asked.

Despite their many virtues, Nora thought, small towns did have their flaws.

She had just enough time to reapply her lipstick before Byron Forrester strolled into her office, breathtaking in his slouchy jacket, shaker-knit sweater and wool pants. The weekend storm had blown out the mild weather of the end of last week and brought in clear skies and winterlike temperatures. Nora herself had worn a smart steel-blue wool suit to the store.

“’Morning,” he said in a drawl that sounded more Georgia than New England.

Nora leaned back in her chair. “Lucille implied that you had an urgent need to see me.”

He grinned. “Oh, I have an urgent need, but it’s not just to see you.”

She sighed. It had been like that since Liza’s brief visit last night. Double entendres, teasing remarks, sexy looks. The gloves were off. Byron was making it crystal clear that he wanted to go to bed with her and all she had to do was give the nod and it was done. She’d decided she must have hit him with something in her rampage after all. Or her banishing him to the wilds of Wisconsin, even if he’d tried pitching her tent in her own backyard, had scrambled his brains. Clearly, her anger had lacked its intended effect. Instead of pushing him away, it seemed only to have drawn him to her. He’d seen her at her worst and now seemed to want her more than ever.

Either that, or he was just rising to the challenge she presented.

Well, let him.

Still, if he weren’t so damned attractive himself, so sexy and easygoing and yet mysterious, resisting him would have been a hell of a lot easier. As it was, it was fast becoming one of the major challenges of her life. She could feel the ache—a physical longing that was so acute, so real it was almost painful—spreading from between her legs to her breasts, her nipples, her mouth, the tips of her fingers. Every part of her was sensitized, electrified.

And he hadn’t even touched her.

“Byron, I’m working. It’s a very busy day. What is it you want?”

“Besides to make mad passionate love to you?” His voice was light and teasing, but his eyes were not. “How ’bout spiriting you off to lunch?”

“I can’t. I have a meeting.”

“In my whole life, I’ve attended maybe two meetings that couldn’t have been postponed or canceled altogether.”

“You must be a treat to work for.”

He walked over to the window and looked down at the town square, still, in these days of shopping malls, an attractive and active downtown. “I can see Narragansett Bay from my office.”

She tried to imagine it. “Must be nice.”

“Yeah, it’s a great view.”

“Do you like your work?” she asked, suddenly very much wanting to know.

“It has its moments.” He hadn’t looked up from the window. “I don’t live for Pierce & Rothchilde. My work is my work, not my life.”

If his comment was a dig at her and her commitment to Gates, she couldn’t tell. “What about your photography?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t picked up a camera in the three
months since I ended my leave of absence and took my place at P & R.”

“Is that a loss for you?”

“Not for me, no.” Looking around at her, he seemed all at once the tall, well-built, well-educated, handsome East Coast blue-blooded executive. “I’ve felt some pressure from critics to continue—so I can trip up one of these days and they can lambaste me, I think. But I chased all the demons I wanted to chase. The rest are going to stick around forever. We’re used to each other.”

Nora recalled the photographs in Byron’s book, the fathers and sons he’d captured on film. In context with his life, they made even more sense to her—were even more heart-wrenching and, in some ways, optimistic. If Byron Sanders Forrester could look back with such love and hope at a relationship that had ended so painfully, so tragically for himself and particularly for his older brother and father, then, surely, others could look beyond the wounds of their own past to the future. Byron had never been the shallow, insensitive cad she’d tried to make herself believe he was.

“Actually,” he went on, “I don’t mind being a publishing executive. I’m just not sure I want to continue as a publishing executive at Pierce & Rothchilde.”

“Because of your family?”

“No.” He smiled at her, moving away from the window. “Because they don’t do technothrillers.”

She didn’t get it.

Byron laughed. “I’ll have to introduce you to Henry—I should now say Hank—Murrow one of these days. All I’m saying is that Pierce & Rothchilde has a tendency to believe its own press, always a dangerous thing. They take themselves too seriously. They need to loosen up. It’s like your place here. Gates has found a nice balance between quality with a capital Q and keeping its feet planted firmly on the
ground. P & R too often focuses narrowly on quality—which becomes elitist. A technothriller, for instance, can have quality.”

“With a capital Q?”

“Absolutely.” He was warming to his argument now. “Why does Gates carry cotton dusters?”

Nora answered without hesitation. “Because our customers—some of our customers, particularly the elderly women—want and need them.”

“And they’re good quality, sturdy cotton dusters.”

“Sure.”

“But they’re still cotton dusters. There, you see? I rest my case.”

Nora thought she knew what he meant, but Byron Forrester, Harvard M.B.A. or not, did have a unique perspective on business.

“Now,” he said, “lunch?”

“I still can’t.”

“A stubborn woman you are, Eleanora Gates the Younger.” He planted his palms on the front edge of her desk and leaned over until his face was mere inches from hers. “Thinking what it’d be like for us to make love on your blotter, aren’t you?”

The thought had occurred to her. “Byron…”

“We will.” His voice was husky, his eyes liquid and midnight-black. “Some night after the place’s closed up we’ll come in here, lock the door and make love until dawn.”

Then he was gone, and it was several minutes before she could breathe again.

That evening, she came home to a quiet, if not orderly, house. Byron had been cooking. In addition to a sink full of pots and pans, he’d left a note.

He hadn’t exaggerated about the soup. It was truly dreadful. The recipe, however, wasn’t the culprit; he’d used homemade puree that he’d cooked insufficiently and, worse, had neglected to drain. The soup was lumpy and stringy, and she found a seed. He’d also put together a salad, however, that was wonderful.

By seven, she was off to a closed meeting of the Tyler town council. As usual, it began with an animated discussion of the latest victories of the high school football team and its chances for a title, then moved on to what was happening with the Body at the Lake, hopes for doing something about the deteriorated condition of the public library, and—the only real business at hand—the problems in the police department. Nora did her best to concentrate.

“Belton’s giving up its police department,” Johnny Kelsey was saying; Belton was a nearby town, also in Sugar Creek County. “They’ve gone to just having a sheriff’s substation. It’s saved them a ton of money.”

Alyssa Baron, who seemed even more distracted than Nora, frowned, her hands twisting together in her lap. Talk of the mysterious body discovered on her father’s land had upset her more than usual. Ordinarily she was sharp-minded, acutely interested in the affairs of her town. “I don’t know if I like the idea of having to rely on the county for all our police protection. Tyler has always been independent. Nora, what do you think?”

At the moment, Nora was working up enough interest to
give a damn. Just a week ago nothing had compelled her more than every little going-on in Tyler, Wisconsin. “I don’t know as we have much choice.”

“With Paul retiring,” Johnny said, “the timing couldn’t be better.”

Paul Schmidt was Tyler’s longtime police chief. Nora nodded, but she had her reservations. “Has anyone talked to Brick?”

Alyssa winced. Johnny sighed. Sometimes it wasn’t easy being on the town council. Tough decisions had to be made. Good people got hurt. Likely enough, Brick Bauer would be one of them. He was the obvious choice to replace Paul Schmidt as Tyler police chief. If Tyler went to a sheriff’s substation, Brick would suddenly be working for the county, not the town.

“He’s a good man,” Alyssa said.

Johnny nodded. “Nobody wants to see Brick get the shaft, but he knows it’s not personal.”

“Becoming a county employee,” Alyssa added thoughtfully, “could actually help his career, I suppose.”

But, as it was with Nora, Tyler had always been Brick’s first love. She remembered when he’d moved to town; he’d been in high school, a Robert Conrad type a couple of years younger than she. He could have gone to Milwaukee or even Chicago to advance his career, just as Nora could have, if she’d been interested in big department stores. But that wasn’t what she’d wanted. What about Brick?

“I know the needs of the town come first,” she said. “I’m sure Brick knows that, too.”

“But,” Alyssa finished, “he’s a part of this town and we need to be open, direct and sensitive.”

Johnny Kelsey sighed, but nodded in agreement. “Sometimes I wonder why I ever ran for this job. How ’bout you,
Nora? You’re a born politician.” He grinned. “Except you have integrity. No skeletons hanging in your closet.”

Obviously, she thought, he hadn’t been privy to recent gossip. Feeling her cheeks burn, Nora refused to meet Alyssa Baron’s eye.

“Going to run for the state legislature one of these days?” Johnny teased.

Nora laughed. “Now when would I do that?”

“Good to see you smile, kid,” he said. “I was beginning to think you were taking this police substation thing too seriously. We’ll work it out. Brick won’t get the shaft.”

The meeting adjourned not long after, the decision on the police department problems temporarily postponed. Alyssa Baron followed Nora outside, where it was dark and downright frigid.

“Can I give you a ride home?” Alyssa asked.

“I don’t mind walking….”

“Oh, you’ll freeze. Look, my car’s right here.”

Sensing Alyssa was reluctant to be alone with herself just yet, Nora climbed into the passenger seat of her sister-councillor’s expensive car. Alyssa pulled on thin leather driving gloves. She was so different from Liza, Nora thought, that it was almost eerie.

“I know Liza didn’t notice yesterday afternoon,” Alyssa said, turning on the ignition, “but I did. Nora, I’m sorry if any of this talk about you and Byron Forrester has caused you embarrassment. Liza…it just doesn’t occur to her that a woman not much older than herself would be less than amused by such gossip.”

Nora was taken aback, but resisted her impulse to deny that anything so silly as local talk could upset her. She was tired of pretending she had no feelings. “Thank you for noticing, Alyssa. You’re right— I was embarrassed, but only at first.”

Alyssa pulled out into the dark, quiet street. “Then there’s no truth to the rumors?”

“About Byron and me? Well, no…I mean, yes, there’s truth to them.”

Alyssa Baron was silent.

“Three years ago,” Nora said, staring out her window, “Byron came to Tyler to make sure Cliff was all right. He didn’t intend to contact anyone in town—he just wanted to check on his brother and get out.”

“But he met you.”

“He told me he was a photographer. One thing led to another and I invited him to dinner. Then he met Aunt Ellie.”

Slowing for a turn, Alyssa didn’t take her eyes off the road. “The pictures.”

Nora exhaled. “For a long time I was convinced he used her.”

“I can’t imagine anyone taking advantage of Ellie Gates.”

“They spent a lot of time together. And I spent a lot of time with Byron. Then he left and a few weeks later Aunt Ellie died.”

“How awful for you,” Alyssa said with genuine sympathy.

Nora looked at her. “I wasn’t thinking just of myself. For the past three years I’ve told myself I should have seen what Byron was and warned Aunt Ellie, spared her….” Shetrailed off, unable to finish.

“Spared her what, Nora?”

“Having to spend so much of her last weeks with someone who saw her as quaint, as a subject for a series of photographs that would advance his career. That’s what I’ve thought for the past three years. I’m not sure I was right.”

Alyssa almost missed her next turn and had to brake hard, at least by her standards. “Nora, you amaze me sometimes. You have a tendency to look at all the wonderful things Aunt Ellie did for you without even considering the wonderful things you did for her.”