Make a Right (19 page)

“That’s a dress?”

“Cade, kick him for me?”

Shit, he hadn’t even seen Cade standing there. Well. More like hiding back near the refrigerator, a glass of water in his hand, but still.

“Later,” Cade said. Nothing more.

Tuck took a deep breath. Megan still didn’t know, and it looked like Hannah had other things on her mind for now, at least. He had to keep it rolling even if the road did seem destined to go nowhere but downhill. “I’m guessing that, um, dress isn’t anywhere near finished.”

“And I only have two more days to get it done.” Hannah plucked at the bizarrely draped folds of pale cream cloth barely holding on with a stitch here and a safety pin there, and more straight pins than a wino had empty bottles. “I’m going to be up all night with this. Every night.”

Tuck tilted his head. “How come she gets out of dressmaking for herself?”

It baffled him when Cade’s shoulders shook briefly, but he got it when Megan blushed, ducked her head, and mumbled something that sounded like “renting a tux.”

“Tuck, sweetie.” Hannah rested her cheek on her hand. “Between the two of us, who do you think is the butch one?”

“You,” Tuck replied without hesitation.

“Darn right. But Megan’s still a tuxedo kind of girl. I’m the one who likes lipstick.”

That, Tuck totally didn’t get, but they were already rushing on. He had to keep up or get left behind, and he’d had enough of that, thanks.

Megan pushed her glasses atop her head and spread her hands. “Babe, I would help if I could—”

“But she’s worse at this than I am.” Hannah shrugged off the tangled mess of satin and lace and slumped in her chair, the picture of despondence.

Tuck didn’t know how, but… “I could give it a shot.”

“Don’t. There’s no hope for this. I’ll end up walking down the aisle in a toga.”

Megan snorted. “Babe, not that I don’t sympathize, but if that were the worst of our problems, I’d be a happy woman.”

Tuck’s ears pricked. “There’s more?”

Megan tucked a stray pencil behind her ear. “There’s a cardinal law about weddings. Everything that can go wrong, does go wrong.”

“I thought that was Murphy’s Law,” Cade remarked.

“Murphy invented weddings,” Megan shot back. “Problems? Let me name them.” She ticked them off on her fingers, even. “The baker backed out. As of an hour ago. ‘So sorry, our supplier didn’t ship us the right fondant, we’re understaffed,’ blah-blah-blah. Everything you can tell is so much bullshit there’s not a big enough shovel in the world to start digging with.”

Tuck took a seat next to her. “Let me guess. They didn’t know before that the wedding cake was for two women.”

Megan scribbled something algebraic. Very intently. “I went in a couple days ago to check on the cake topper. They’d ordered the standard, one bride, one groom. I might not have been as polite as I could have been correcting them.”

“In other words, you told them to shove it up their ass.” It was
Cade
who’d said that. Tuck stared at him.

Cade shrugged back. Whatever kind of mood he was in now, Tuck wasn’t sure if he liked it or not.

He didn’t understand it, for damn sure.

“Wedding cake. Dress. What else?” Tuck asked Hannah and Megan.

“The caterer. The florist.” Megan joined Hannah in the disconsolate camp. “It’s ridiculous. Not that things were easy earlier, but this? It’s like they’ve all turned against us.”

“Babe.” Hannah settled Megan with a light, firm touch. “Calm down. You’ve almost reached the finish line. Focus on your schoolwork.”

“And how is that fair to you?” Megan retorted.

Hannah leaned over to kiss her fiancée’s forehead. “Because when you’re rich, famous, and winning the Nobel prize, you can tell everyone to kiss your ass. I’m going to make sure that happens. Part of the process is not letting you flame out now. You do your thing.” She raked her hair away from her face. “I’ll do mine. Somehow.”

Tuck made up his mind. “Nah.”

She blinked at him. “Nah, what?”

“You stay here. Work on that, um…I don’t know.” Tuck’s car keys lived in the pocket of his jeans all day, every day. He pulled them out now and tossed them in the air, pleased by their jingling sound. “Got a list of who’s who?”

Megan exchanged glances with Hannah, who returned her puzzled expression, and nodded to a dog-eared folder halfway off the edge of the table. “Right there. Why?”

Tuck grinned savagely. Felt good. “Nobody who backed out gave you a refund, am I right?”

“No.” Hannah had moved from baffled to wary. “What exactly are you going to do?”

“Thought I might show a few dicks why you don’t fuck with anyone from the Bronx. Take out some wedding-related frustrations.” Tuck could
feel
Cade watching him but let it pass. He needed this. Something he could do, could help with, and that he could make right. “Any objections? Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Hannah kept her lips zipped, albeit with a wicked twinkle in her eye. Megan pumped her fist in the air. Cade watched him, expressionless, but in the way that said his brain moved busily behind the surface stillness.

So be it. Getting out for a while would do him some good. Maybe it’d do the same for Cade too. He could but try.

“Be back later,” Tuck said. “Don’t wait up. I might be a while.”

* * *

Just about a grand richer in cash—and seriously, that much for a cake, a few bouquets, and some trays of meatballs?—Tuck left the last merchant in the dust behind him. He shook his head in disgust. Unreal. The dick had even checked out Tuck’s ass as he was leaving. Tuck saw him in the security mirror.

Anyone in the house surprised? Nope, didn’t think so
. North or South, it didn’t matter. Asshats were asshats no matter where they lived.

One more job to do and he’d have put in a good day’s work after all. Tuck hadn’t been this revved-up since before Cade moved out. Kicking ass, taking names, and taking care of what needed to be done for those who needed it.

Damn, but he felt
alive
again. Full of fresh air and hot blood. He felt like himself, and about damn time.

One more job, yeah, as a cherry on top. Tuck knew exactly where he wanted to go too.

See—a good cab driver, one who wanted to earn his tips and then some, noticed the weirdest shit alongside the roads he drove. He had to.

There’d always be a fare who couldn’t say much more than “that, you know, sushi place with the lobster on the sign, and oh yeah, I think it starts with an A,” or the guy who wouldn’t say more than “Twenty-third and Narrow” and expect you to get him to the right damn door on the first try with no waiting at the curb. Tuck had learned how to size up a fare at first glance and make an educated guess: was he a businessman sharp in a suit going to a corporation, or a punk in a ball cap heading for a sports bar?

It was a skill. An art, if you got good enough. There wasn’t a city bar or business or bookstore that wasn’t etched into Tuck’s head. He could find his way back from the good professor’s to his old apartment without needing the map now.

So he knew, for sure, that he’d seen the place he was looking for and had filed it away in his head. Just a matter of searching for the right mental drawer now and letting the car drive him there. Tricky to find. Tucked away in the highest-class part of town.

It was probably petty of Tuck to feel no regrets when he stole a parallel parking spot from an SUV, but he owed Hannah one hell of a lot, and he had fire on his side. Let she who had never tangled with a priest in a temper just try to pass him a handful of flak.

* * *

A delicate crystal chime pealed when Tuck opened the door to Antiquities by Alicia. So much for a discreet entrance. Not, he had to admit, that a guy with an Empire State accent thick enough to cut
wasn’t
going to stand out in a place like this.

Huh
. Not quite as ritzy in here as he’d thought. Worse than. This would be where pseudo-aristos “exchanged” odds and ends that’d been in the family for years for a “small consideration.” Not a five-star pawnshop, no sir.

Jeez. At least the dress he’d come here for, the one he’d remembered seeing in the window as he and Cade drove past—a draped ivory-and-rose-colored thing trimmed with lace even Tuck knew was old, still posed genteelly on the wooden mannequin in the shop window.

The shopkeeper—proprietress, rather—spotted him right away. Tuck shrugged and checked her out as blatantly as she eyed him. And with the same attitude:
there is something stuck to the bottom of my shoe. How distasteful.

“Let me guess,” Tuck said. “Alicia.”

“Mrs. Browning,” she corrected him, stiff and proper and without a trace of a Southern accent.

Asshats are asshats wherever you go; looks like that applies to stuck-up ice queens too
. Tuck smirked.

“May I help you with something?” She gave him an extra rake-down from head to foot. “If you’re looking for the shopping mall, it’s two miles north.”

Oh yeah. Game on
. “Actually,” Tuck drawled, “I’m in the right place, thank you. You can help me. I’m here for that.” He pointed at the window. “I’ll take it to go.”

“I don’t think it’s quite your size, dear.”

Now that took talent, to make “dear” rhyme with “get out.”

“Someone already bought it?”

Her lips pursed. “No.”

Score. He probably shouldn’t be enjoying this as much as he was, but so help him, it felt good. Had nothing to do with her statehood. A bitch was a bitch from sea to shining sea. “So I can let out a few seams. All us fags love our fashion.”

Good God, he hadn’t seen a face like that since the first time Cade tried a tequila shot and bit the lemon. Some of the humor of the situation started to fade for Tuck. He’d come in here for Hannah, and by God, he’d come out with what he meant to bring back for her. “You gonna sell it to me or not?”

“That,” she said, enunciating even more crisply than a nun, “is an antebellum tea gown.” She slipped out from behind the register in her linen skirt and heels and crossed to the window, where she stroked the sleeve of the gown almost wistfully. “It is an antique. I cannot in good conscience allow it to go to someone who won’t respect it properly.”

Well, damn. The second she’d looked from Tuck to the window, her expression had melted right from persimmon to wistful. She actually loved her stock enough to care about it. Would have been so much easier if she didn’t. Why
did
everyone have to have a soft spot somewhere, and why the hell could Tuck not see them?

He guessed not all people wore their hearts on their sleeves. Thinking that, Tuck rolled his eyes at himself. Even he had to recognize the irony there.

He propped his elbow on the glass-fronted counter filled with bits of jewelry and topped by an old-style cash register with a horribly out-of-place credit card terminal attached. She had to hate that. Still, you had to do what you had to do, right?

So did he.

“It’s not for me,” he told her, letting the attitude go, though he did hold it in reserve. “It’s for my sister. She’s getting married this weekend.”

Slight return of the sour face. “A lady buys her gown months in advance. There’s an excellent—”

“The first one met with an unfortunate accident.” See? Look at him try to play nice. “She was going to do some alterations, and her fiancée spilled a cup of coffee over the sleeves.” Tiny white lie but for a good cause. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep the coffee and Megan separated. We’ll treat it right.”

“Megan being the bride-to-be?”

“One of them. The one who’d wear this is my sister Hannah.”

Aaand here we go
. Sour face, with added sharp angles. To the slightest credit, that was as far as it went except for the alum-tightness of her tone. “The lesbians housesitting for Dr. McIntyre, I assume?”

“Yes, ma’am.” She wasn’t the only one who could make politeness match the rap rhythm of
fuck you.

“I see.” She eyed him one more time. No doubt taking in the old jeans, old sneakers, and comfortably worn-in T-shirt. “The dress is three thousand dollars.”

“Excuse me? What, was it worn by a Rockefeller?”

“No.” The sour smile turned into a V. “By the niece of a Vanderbilt.”

Tuck sighed. Maybe she spoke the truth, maybe not. Either way, he’d bet his ass she’d padded the fuck out of that quoted price to put him off. He drummed his fingers on the counter and ran through his bank account in his head.

At least a thousand bucks had already gone into this and that, gas for the drive, and making sure Suzie-Q had her shots up-to-date before crossing state lines. No job waiting for him at Yellow Cab after a week-plus going AWOL. That left him with, what, five thousand? Drop three K here and he’d have gone through almost all he’d saved working the limo job.

Sometimes you had to pick your battles. If he could get Cade back, well. An apartment had suited them fine up until latter days. It’d do fine again if—no,
when
they got through this.

“Done,” he said, no haggling, no fuss, and pulled out his debit card. “Wrap it to go.”

Three thousand dollars versus no dollars. Tuck could see it killed Alicia to give in, but she did it. “It’ll take a few minutes to
box
this properly. If you would wait where you are.”

A few minutes turned into at least ten; Tuck spent most of them listening to the clock on the wall tick. Gave him time to look around and time to take note of how she folded the dress almost reverently into a giant white box. She really did love that thing, and it was eating her alive to sell it to him.

Funny how it got tougher to give a damn about that when she laid the box on the counter as tenderly as a newborn baby and snatched Tuck’s card from him between thumb and forefinger as if it’d been issued by a leper colony. “And will that be all? Sir?”

Why
that
splash of sarcasm got his back up more than anything else, Tuck wasn’t sure. Maybe he’d just reached his personal maximum saturation point, and by God, he hated the fuck out of someone who looked down on him for being who he was, no apologies.

He’d had no intention of giving her any more money. Now?