Wisconsin Wedding (Welcome To Tyler, No. 3) (9 page)

Cliff raised his dark eyes to his brother. “Don’t be too sure. I saw the way she looked at you. What went on between you two three years ago?”

“Doesn’t matter. Right now she’d like nothing better than to have my head stuffed and mounted on her dining room wall.”

Cliff gave a small smile. “Not your head, I think.”

“Very funny.” But his brother was perhaps more astute than Byron wanted to admit. Nora Gates could have forgiven any number of transgressions, any number of things he might have done to her. But he hadn’t done any number of things. He’d made love to her. With her. He groaned just thinking about it. “It won’t work, Cliff. You and Liza don’t need me here. I shouldn’t have come back until I knew for sure you were ready.”

“I’m ready. Liza knew before I did.” Cliff plopped down in her chair. “The question is, are you?”

Byron didn’t answer. “Why didn’t you stay for lunch?”

“Needed to think. Things are just shy of getting out of hand around here. I needed to get a grip. The wedding’s enough of an ordeal…the crowds…” Expressionless, he looked out at the lake. “I didn’t expect you. Even less you
and Nora.” He looked at his brother. “I had no idea you were here three years ago.”

“You weren’t supposed to.”

“You were protecting me?” he asked bitterly.

Byron shook his head, wanting to explain, but Cliff had already jumped to his feet and was heading off the veranda. “I don’t want to argue,” Byron said.

“Then don’t. Come on, I’ll show you around the lodge.”

Byron didn’t budge. “What about Nora? Cliff, she’ll never agree to put me up. Liza will want to know why—”

“Liza can be very persuasive when she wants something.” Cliff smiled that twitching smile. “Look at me.”

“What is it about Tyler that breeds such women?”

“Long, hard winters, I think.”

“You don’t believe Nora will turn Liza down?”

Cliff shook his head. “If nothing else, she’ll want to save face.”

“Well, you’re crazy.”

“So people say.”

But Clifton Pierce Forrester, Byron could now see, was not in any way, shape or form mentally unbalanced. Which wasn’t to say that his years of suffering and isolation hadn’t taken their toll. So had the recent activity around him—the people activity. Byron guessed that a part of his brother wanted to bolt, and perhaps only his overwhelming love for Liza Baron was keeping him from finding another place to hide, retreating from the world he and Liza were building for themselves.

Instinctively, abruptly, Byron knew that Cliff needed him to stay in Tyler. Just as, three years ago, he’d known that Cliff had needed him to leave. No, not just leave. Never to have come at all. It was a fine distinction, but one that mattered. Whether Cliff would see that or not, Byron wasn’t prepared to say.

He found himself giving in, nodding. “Okay—let’s have the grand tour of where you’ve been hiding all these years.”

“Not hiding,” Cliff said. “Healing.”

I
T WAS LATE
O
CTOBER
in Wisconsin and night came early. Too early as far as Byron was concerned. Parked outside Nora Gates’s house, he checked his car clock. It wasn’t even seven yet. He had the whole damned evening still ahead of him.

“She said she’d be glad to have you over,” Liza had told him victoriously upon her return to the lodge. She hadn’t even been gone an hour. “You’re to be at her house for dinner at seven sharp. See, didn’t I tell you? Gosh, she’s just the
nicest
woman.”

Byron had wondered if he were Nora’s intended main course. Roasted publisher. He knew writers—and a few editors—with Pierce & Rothchilde who’d share such a fantasy.

He thought Nora Gates was a lot of things, but
nice
wasn’t among them.

His brother had been no help. “You and Nora have things you need to settle. Maybe it’s a good idea to throw you two together for a while.”

Byron had laughed. “Cliff, that’s like throwing a spider and a fly together to see if they’ll get along. They just won’t. It’s a matter of nature.”

“Who’s the fly and who’s the spider?”

Byron left his gear—which Cliff had shoved at him when he’d told him to go, confront Nora like a man, not a fly—in his rented car. The wind had kicked up and it was
damned cold on Nora’s pretty tree-lined street. He walked up onto the front porch. It was such a peaceful place. Why the hell was he looking for booby traps?
You made her hate you. Now reap what you sowed.

A tall, skinny boy, probably about thirteen, was shuffling out the door. “I promise I’ll do better next week, Miss Gates. I haven’t had much time to practice with it being footfall season.”

“Lars,” Nora said, “you’re not on the football team.”

From the looks of him, Byron thought, he never would be. “I know,” the kid said, “but I watch practice every chance I get. I want to go out for the team next year.”

“We all have a variety of interests, Lars,” Nora, still out of view, said patiently. “The trick is to find a balance that works. You’re wasting your parents’ money and your time—and, I might add, a considerable amount of natural talent—if you don’t practice.”

“Right, Miss Gates, I understand. I’ll do better.”

As Lars came out onto the porch, Nora moved into the doorway, holding open the screen door. She had on charcoal-gray corduroys and a roll-neck charcoal-gray sweater. With her hair swept up off her face, she looked controlled, in charge of her world and very, very attractive. “I hope you do because—” She spotted Byron and straightened up, stiffening noticeably. “Oh, you’re here.”

All in all, it was the sort of greeting he’d expected.

“Who’re you?” the kid asked boldly.

“My name’s Byron Forrester.”

“He’s my houseguest,” Nora put in, without enthusiasm. “Byron, this is Lars Travis, one of my piano students.”

The kid’s eyes had lit up. “Gee, Miss Gates, I had no idea— I mean, everybody in town thinks you don’t…that you’d never…”

“Mr. Forrester is in Tyler for Liza Baron and Cliff For
rester’s wedding next Saturday,” Nora said, spots of color high in each of her creamy cheeks. “With Timberlake Lodge being renovated, I agreed to have Byron stay here. He’s Cliff’s brother. Now, Lars, don’t get any ideas.”

“No, I won’t, Miss Gates. I just was surprised because I didn’t think you knew any men.”

And he scampered off the porch, all bony arms and legs, before Nora could strangle him.

She watched the kid go with narrowed eyes. “I’m doomed. Lars has the biggest mouth in town next to Tisha Olsen and maybe Inger Hansen, and he has very peculiar ideas about me. You’d sometimes think I’m not human.”

“Isn’t that what you want people to think?” Byron asked casually.

She transferred her piercing gaze to him. “You’re not going to make this any easier, are you?”

“You didn’t have to take me in.”

“I realize that.”

“Then why did you? If it’s just because you didn’t want to disappoint Liza, you can damned well forget it. Nora…dammit, I’m tired of thinking you’ve got a stiletto tucked somewhere and are going to do me in at any moment. I came to Tyler three years ago, I fell for you, you fell for me, I neglected to tell you my real name, and now I’m back. I can’t change history.”

“I’m not asking you to,” she said softly, “and I didn’t agree to take you in just so I wouldn’t disappoint Liza.” She smiled mysteriously. “And I don’t have a stiletto hidden on me.”

“A blowtorch?”

“Too big.”

“Nora…”

“Come inside, Byron. It’s getting cold out. Where are your bags?”

“Nora, I won’t stay if you—”

“I’m doing this for myself, Byron,” she said, cutting him off. “Not for you, not for Liza, not even for Cliff. Nobody manipulated me or talked me into anything. If you’ll recall, I do know my own mind. Now, I’ve got dinner in the oven.”

She walked briskly past him down to the street and reached into the passenger seat of his car, pulling out his disreputable-looking duffel. She made a face. When he was traveling on behalf of Pierce & Rothchilde, he took matching monogrammed bags. Mrs. Redbacker insisted. Nora would have approved.

She carried the duffel back up onto the porch as if it were something dead and smelly she’d found out on her street. Byron didn’t offer her a hand. Some things Nora Gates just preferred to do herself.

“You’ll have to move your car,” she said.

“Neighbors might talk?”

“The street sweepers are doing a special leaf pickup tomorrow.”

“Nora…” He leaned against a porch column. “Thanks.”

In the harsh light of the porch, he could see the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes and where her raspberry lipstick had worn off, but she looked better than she had three years ago. Not as gaunt, not as uncertain of her own future. He’d have told her so if it wouldn’t have infuriated her to have him notice such things. She liked to think men only respected her. And mostly they did. But sometimes they thought about her in other ways, too. Anyway, he did.

He held open the screen door for her. She didn’t complain. “I’m putting you in the front bedroom upstairs,” she said. “It gets nice morning sun.”

“I was expecting the torture chamber.”

She shot him a look, but he thought he detected a hint of amusement in her pale eyes. “A pity I don’t have one.”

“Going to skewer me in my sleep?”

“I’m not going near you in your sleep,” she said, dashing inside before he could see if she’d blushed. Not that there was much chance of that. Their lovemaking didn’t embarrass her nearly as much as it ticked her off, challenging her most cherished beliefs about herself. She
wasn’t
another Aunt Ellie.

She dumped his bag on the bottom step leading upstairs. It was heavier than it looked, and she was breathing hard, as much from the tension of having him there, he felt, as from exertion. “I’ll get dinner on the table. You can find your way?”

“I remember,” he said in a low voice.

“Maybe,” she said starchily, “it would be better if you didn’t.”

“No. It wouldn’t.”

His sincerity seemed to have no discernible impact on her. She marched off to the kitchen, leaving him to fend for himself. The front bedroom was the guest room and always had been, from the time Aunt Ellie had had the house built. Nora had moved into the back bedroom overlooking the gardens and yard when she was thirteen. It was where she and Byron had made love, after Aunt Ellie had gone into the hospital. She’d made it home to die. By then, Byron had left Tyler.

The guest room hadn’t changed, the senior Eleanora Gates’s fussier taste in evidence. The curtains were filmy lace, the bed a four-poster with a lace dust ruffle, lace coverlet, lace pillow shams. There was a tiger-maple bureau with a matching mirror, and an Oriental rug of vivid roses and blues.

Byron couldn’t resist: he went across the hall and had a
peek. Nora obviously had moved downstairs, and her old room was completely different. It was as if she’d wanted to exorcise the girl she’d been there, the woman she’d become. She’d installed two twin beds, covered with utilitarian quilts, and painted chests, a painted trunk and a children’s table and chairs set up with teddy bears at a tea party. Nora had said she’d make a great aunt. Apparently not having any nieces and nephews of her own hadn’t stopped her. What had Liza said? People in town were already starting to call her Aunt Ellie. That was fine, if it was what Nora wanted.

He thought better of tossing his duffel up on the lacy bed and instead shoved it into the closet, which had potpourri sachets hanging from hooks. He’d unpack later, if at all. If worse came to worst, he’d find himself a park bench.

Down in the kitchen, Nora had set the table with a simple but tempting meal of roast turkey breast, baked acorn squash and tossed salad. Byron could smell apples baking in the oven. His stomach flip-flopped on him; he hadn’t had anything like this in his life in years. Ever since his return to Pierce & Rothchilde three months ago, he’d found himself relying on Providence restaurants and take-out gourmet.

“You didn’t have to go to any trouble on my account,” he said.

“I didn’t. I always make proper meals for myself, and I set the table every night. Just because I live alone doesn’t mean I don’t lead a civilized life.”

“Whoa, there. Don’t forget that I live alone, too.”

“In a tent,” she sneered.

Byron raised a brow. “You’ve been keeping track of me?”

“The store carried your last book. Naturally I couldn’t
resist a peek at your bio—which I presume wasn’t
all
lies?”

A year ago, he’d had a slender volume of his photographs published by a small press—he’d refused to pull any strings at Pierce & Rothchilde. The distribution was nil and there wasn’t a chance that it would have been accidentally or casually picked up by a department store with a small book section. It would have had to have been special-ordered. But giving that Nora was putting him up—and had a carving knife in her hand—Byron decided not to press the issue.

“It wasn’t any of it lies,” he said, sitting in the chair she pointed at with her knife.

“Your name—”

“I used Byron Sanders as a pseudonym, that’s all. It’s a common practice.”

“The bio said you’d spent the previous two years crisscrossing the country and some of Canada and Mexico, living out of your van and a tent.”

“Pretty much true.”

She set down her knife and laid slices of steaming turkey on a small platter, which she set in the middle of the table. “Byron Sanders is ‘pretty much’ your own name, too, but it hardly tells the whole story.”

“Do you ever let anything go?”

“Seldom.”

“By ‘pretty much’ I only mean that I also had the family place in Providence.” He lifted half an acorn squash, dripping with butter and brown sugar, onto his plate. “My mother’s away frequently, and it’s…spacious.” Telling her it was a mansion, he decided, would further undermine the myths Nora had created about him and would not, given the timing, be wise. “So it’s not as if I had no place to go but my van and tent.”

“I see. Can’t let life get too tough, huh?”

He frowned. “Nora, if you don’t lighten up you’re going to get indigestion. And give me indigestion while you’re at it.”

But she smiled suddenly, her entire face brightening. It was the way he most liked to remember her, when she was at her most captivating. He’d never really understood what made Nora Gates smile. “Byron, I was kidding. A bit sensitive about this family place, hmm? Must be something. But I don’t care if it was designed by Charles Bulfinch, has the best view of the Atlantic in Providence and is the next fanciest thing to the Ritz on the East Coast. As Aunt Ellie used to say, it makes no never mind to me.”

Byron chose not to tell her how damned close she’d come to describing the Pierce house on Benefit Street in Providence, Rhode Island.

Her expression turned serious. “The book…your photographs were wonderful, Byron. I mean that.”

“Thank you.”

Despite its modest sales, his book had won a couple of prestigious awards, individual photographs other smaller rewards. His subject had been fathers and sons. He’d traveled from small town to big city, in search of the extraordinarily ordinary. And he’d found it, time and time again. His work, his years of being on the road, neither a Pierce nor a Forrester, had helped him make himself whole again.

“When you came to Tyler,” Nora said, sitting across from him, “you weren’t a professional photographer, were you?”

“I’m still not.”

“Then what did you…what do you do for a living?”

She asked the question as if she already knew she wouldn’t like the answer. Anyone else, Byron thought, would have squirmed having to face those incisive eyes.
But Nora Gates didn’t intimidate him; none of the little ways she kept people at a comfortable distance—or men, anyway—worked with him.

Which still didn’t mean she’d like his answer.

“I was president…I
am
president of Pierce & Rothchilde, Publishers.”

She didn’t throw anything. She just leaned back, fork in hand, and narrowed her eyes at him.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Trying to picture you in pinstripes.”

“Oh, pinstripes are much too racy for P & R.”

“But…” She scooped a piece of squash onto her plate, stabbed some turkey. “Then I assume you have a business background or some sort of training.”

He nodded matter-of-factly. “A Harvard M.B.A. Being the great-grandson of Clifton Rutherford Pierce—P & R’s founder—hasn’t hurt any, either.”

She inhaled, and he could see her revising her thoughts. First, she’d had to adjust to his being the younger brother of the reclusive man up at Timberlake Lodge. Now she had to adjust to his not being the disreputable, uneducated, incorrigible heel of a photographer she’d imagined he was three years ago. Mostly it
had
been her imagination; he’d never told her all that much about himself. He hadn’t lied so much as omitted pertinent details.

“You quit to do your book?” she asked.

“I took a leave of absence after I came to Tyler.”