The Wedding Favor (25 page)

Goddamn it, he was worse than Vicky, having a fucking panic attack. At least she could deal with them when they came on her. He was helpless, clutching his head like a lunatic. He’d fucking faint if he couldn’t fucking fill his lungs.

“Ty? You okay?”

He couldn’t take it, he couldn’t face Joe. Bolting from the truck, he headed for the house. If he could just get his shoulder under Vicky’s head again, then maybe he wouldn’t faint. She’d do that thing where she traced his abs with her fingertip. It tickled, but he liked it. And he’d be able to breathe.

He found himself outside her door. He sucked a deep breath, the first in five minutes. Pushed it open and stepped inside.

She lay on the bed where he’d left her, face streaked with tears, crumpled tissues on the pillow.

He leaned back against the door, heart pounding, sweat rolling down his sides. “I killed my wife,” he blurted. “I killed Lissa.”

He waited for the sky to fall. For God to smite him. For Vicky to turn away.

None of those things happened. Instead, she opened her arms.

He went into them, let them close around him as he buried his face in her breast. Tears rose up from his heart, from the shreds of his soul, and her arms tightened, fingers threading his hair, holding him close as they poured forth. He sobbed as he’d not sobbed in seven years, since he’d laid his head on Lissa’s breast and felt her breathe her last breath on this earth.

It took a long time to wring himself dry. Eventually, he lay quiet. Vicky’s heartbeat thumped evenly in his ear. The rise and fall of her chest soothed his fever.

Slowly, he sat up, as groggy as if he’d been sick for a week. With a handful of tissues, he blotted his tears from her breasts, avoiding her eyes until she giggled. Then he looked up.

“It tickles,” she said, smiling at him. Her eyes were red too. She’d cried along with him.

He tried to smile back at her, but he couldn’t. “You were right,” he said, “I’m not sure if she asked me to let her go. I used to be sure. But for a while now I’ve been wondering if maybe I imagined it because I couldn’t stand to see her like that. Maybe I made it up in my mind. Pulled the plug on her to make it easier on myself.”

Her smile faded. Compassion filled her eyes. Not pity, he couldn’t have stood pity. But this was understanding, it was caring.

“Tyrell.” She cupped his scorching cheek in her cool palm. “Whether Lissa asked you or not—and I truly believe that she did—letting her go was a kindness. If it lessened your heartache for a time, that was incidental, and nothing you need to feel guilty for.” Her soft voice fell like cool water on his overheated mind.

“What happened to your wife was tragic, but it was over long ago. What’s happening to you is another kind of tragedy, and it’s time for it to end too. You didn’t kill Lissa. Jason Taylor killed her. You released her from the pain that he trapped her in, and whether she actually spoke to you and asked you to do it, or whether you knew her and loved her well enough to understand that it was the right thing to do, either way, you did it for her.”

He wanted to believe her. He wanted it more than his own life.

She must have seen the doubt in his eyes, because she cocked her head and asked him one more question, just one.

“Would you do it again?”

Would he? Would he do it, knowing what he knew now about the sleepless, doubting nights, about the pain in his chest, just under his heart, that never went away? About his inability to move on, to have another relationship, a wife, children? Would he, knowing how seven years of suffering felt, wondering if he’d done the right thing, if he’d killed his wife in a misguided attempt to ease his own pain? Would he risk all of that again?

“Yes,” he breathed out. “Yes, I’d do it again. I’d do it for Lissa. I would’ve done anything for her.”

Chapter Twenty-three

T
y woke up the next morning with a bug up his ass. A bug named Matthew J. Donohue III.

He kicked off the covers, stared sourly down at his morning wood. “God
damn
it.” Vicky could’ve put that wood to good use and started both of their days off right, if Donohue hadn’t locked her in her room in a chastity belt.

True to form, he and Isabelle had shown up at the worst possible moment, when Ty and Vicky were seconds away from epic makeup sex. He’d had to rabbit from her room like a guilty teenager.

It wasn’t quite the end of the world, though, because they had a long, pleasant evening of making eyes at each other, building up to what should have been a long, hot night of scorching sex. But just when Ty was faking a yawn and getting ready to show Vicky to the upstairs guest room—har har—Donohue lowered the boom.

He decreed—that was the only word for it—that Vicky and Isabelle would share the downstairs bedroom, and he’d sleep on the couch at the foot of the stairs.

Ty gave it his best shot, making the case for everybody having a bed. But Donohue was on to him, and he wouldn’t be budged. He crumpled his six-foot frame onto the five-and-a-half-foot couch, and Ty was left out in the cold.

All in all, he’d barely stolen five minutes alone with her since her brother arrived, and that was only when Donohue was in the can. He’d used the time to try to convince her to stay, but she claimed she had business to wrap up in New York, and they’d swapped phone numbers and left it at that.

He hadn’t given up, though. Donohue would have to take a shower this morning, and Ty meant to use that time to lock Vicky down.

Downstairs, he found Isabelle fiddling with the coffeepot. He nudged her aside and got it going, then enjoyed a moment’s satisfaction when Donohue unfolded himself from the couch and limped toward the bathroom looking every bit as surly as Ty felt.

Taking Isabelle’s arm, Ty steered her out on the porch, where he found Vicky on the swing, looking fresh as a daisy in a bright yellow sundress with pink and black flowers sprinkled over the skirt. His day improved instantly.

“Well, hello, beautiful.”

“Morning, Ty.” Her wholehearted smile lifted up his heart and rolled it clean over in his chest.

“Coffee’s on,” he got out past the lump in his throat. “Bring you a cup?”

“Love one.”

He lingered a moment, gazing into her blue eyes with a dopey smile he couldn’t begin to control. Then Donohue pushed through the door, grunted something that might have been “Good morning,” and plopped down on the top step to chaperone.

Ty let it go. Once he had Vicky back here—alone—they’d have sex all the time, everywhere. And little brother could go piss up a rope.

Bringing Vicky’s coffee in one of his mother’s china cups, Ty got another of those smiles in return. “You like pancakes, honey?” He could whip them up from scratch, float them in real maple syrup. “Why don’t you give me a hand?”

Matt started to rise too, but Vicky waved him down. “We’ll be right inside, Matt. You can hear everything we say.”

“Yeah, Matt,” Ty put in. “If I need you to rescue me, I’ll holler.” He let the screen door slap behind him.

Inside the kitchen, Vicky looked like a sunbeam, brightening up the tired avocado decor.

“I’m planning to update,” he found himself saying as he pulled what he needed from the faded cabinets.

“Really?” She did a little spin, flaring her skirt. “Maybe some fresh paint, but I kind of like it otherwise. It feels homey.”

“It does now, honey.” He measured the flour, sifted in the baking powder. “What color paint are you thinking?”

“Yellow,” she said without hesitation. “So it always looks like the sun’s shining in here.”

“I don’t know. Yellow can be tricky.” He heated the griddle. “I’ll need help picking out just the right shade.”

She smiled over her shoulder at him. He smiled back. Forgot about the pancakes for a minute.

Then Isabelle poked her head in the door. “Anything I can do?”

He pulled his gaze away from Vicky. “Not a thing, honey. Go on back out and keep your husband company.”
Before he comes in here.

Vicky must have thought the same, because she picked up the coffeepot. “I’ll top him off.” And she disappeared onto the porch.

Ty whisked his batter. He hadn’t made pancakes in years, not since Lissa died, but he could do it blindfolded.

As he poured perfect silver dollars on the sizzling griddle, a car door slammed outside. Funny, Joe was supposed to be off today. Well, the more the merrier, there was plenty of batter. Spatula in hand, he stepped out onto the porch to call him in.

And the words died on his lips.

In the driveway sat a siren red Mustang, its raven-haired owner on a march toward the house.

For a moment, Ty couldn’t process what he was seeing. He’d forgotten all about Molly. She’d never once crossed his mind. Now he stared at her like a man trapped in a dream, powerless to move his limbs or cry out a warning, as she arrowed like a missile at his fragile new future.

At first her expression was simply curious, wondering who his friends were, pleased to meet them. But as her eyes swept the porch, she did the math, and the numbers didn’t add up to her liking.

Matt and Isabelle had “couple” stamped all over them, so she zeroed in on Vicky. Without breaking stride, she climbed the steps to the porch. “Morning, y’all,” she said, hitting the down-home note. Heading straight to Vicky, she stuck out her hand. “Hi there, I’m Molly.”

“I’m Vicky.” She gave Molly a wide, clueless smile. “Do you work here?”

Molly waited a beat, while dread iced Ty’s veins.

Then she widened stunning green eyes, put surprise on her face. “Why, Vicky, didn’t Ty tell you about me?” She sashayed to his side, curled her arm around his waist.

“Honey, I’m his girlfriend.”

V
icky’s phone chirped. Another text from Ty. She ignored it.

She’d read the first one in the car, his bullshit apology. How does a man
forget
he has a girlfriend? Please.

He was Winston all over again. She was done with him.

Emerging from the bathroom stall, she found Isabelle waiting at the sink. “Our flight’s on time,” she told Vicky, trying hard to sound cheerful. Vicky’s phone chirped again. Isabelle wrung her hands. “Maybe you should answer him.”

“I did.” Vicky lathered her hands. “I told him I hope Matt’s right cross knocked out a few of his pearly whites. And I told him to stop texting me because I’m not going to read them.”

“He won’t give up.”

Vicky rinsed the soap from her hands, dried them under the blower.
Chirp.
“You know, I’m beginning to think you’re right.” She fished her phone from her purse, walked back into the stall, and dropped it in the toilet.

Isabelle gasped.

Vicky flushed. Down it went. She dusted off her hands. “There. Now I’m finally finished with Tyrell Brown.”

Chapter Twenty-four

“Y
our co-op sold already? But the real estate market’s in the toilet.”

“Funny story about toilets.” Vicky gave Maddie the short version of how her phone ended up in the San Antonio sewer.

Maddie boiled it down even more. “Brown’s an asshole. If there’s any justice, Mustang Molly will make him miserable for the rest of his pathetic life.”

Vicky shrugged, refusing to dwell on Ty. “On the bright side, Isabelle felt so guilty that she bought me an iPhone at the airport. And,” she added with a smile, “my mother doesn’t have my new phone number.”

Maddie handed the bartender a twenty, left five for a tip, and clutching their two-for-one happy hour martinis, they inched through the girth of suits circling the oval bar at Maddie’s new favorite downtown haunt. When they’d settled at a tiny table along the wall and Maddie had pronounced her martini as dry as the Sahara, she got back to the co-op.

“How did you unload it so fast?”

“I priced it to move. They’re taking most of my furniture too, and the realtor’s taking the rest. Even so, there won’t be much cash left over, because I bought in the bubble.” Vicky smiled. “Just enough to pay off my Beemer.”

Despite her big talk to Matt about “money” and “stuff,” after much extremely optimistic number-crunching, she’d decided to keep it, even though she’d have to park it at her mother’s house in Connecticut because she could no longer afford a parking space.

“Are you sure about this? Going from the decision to sell to the closing in two weeks seems—”

“Decisive?”

“Impulsive.”

Vicky shrugged. Maybe it was impulsive, and it certainly left a lot of unanswered questions, but she felt lighter already.

“Where are you planning to live?”

That was one of those unanswered questions. “I guess I’ll stay at Mother’s for a few days while I look for a place.”

“Not a chance. You’re staying with me.”

Vicky smiled again. “It won’t be for long. I’ll figure something out.”

Maddie held up a finger. “Hang on, I just remembered something. My trainer’s brother wants to sublet his place until the end of the year. He’s a professor at NYU. Teaching abroad this fall.”

“How much?”

“That’s the best part. It’s NYU housing, subsidized by the university, so it’s dirt cheap. And it’s in a great neighborhood down in the Village.”

“Too good to be true. He’ll have found someone by now.”

“Let’s find out.” Maddie whipped out her phone. Ten minutes later it was a done deal; Vicky would move in next week. She couldn’t believe it had been so easy.

“This must be what Joseph Campbell meant about ‘hidden hands.’ ”

Maddie squinted in puzzlement.

“You know,” Vicky prompted. “The ‘follow your bliss’ guy. He said that when you’re on the right path in life, things fall into place as if you’re being helped by hidden hands.”

Maddie held up her own hands, waggled her fingers. “Some credit here?”

“Point taken,” Vicky said with a laugh. “Thank you, Madeline, for finding me an apartment, and for everything else. When the shit hits the fan, you learn who your friends are. And how sucky life would be without them.”

“Same goes,” said Maddie, warmly. She raised her martini. “To BFFs.” Their glasses clinked. They sipped in unison.

And into that moment of love and good feelings, friendship and warmth, Winston dropped like a wrecking ball.

“Well, well.” He loomed over their table. “If it isn’t America’s Most Wanted Lawyer.”

Vicky’s heart sank. She’d expected to run into him sometime, but why did it have to be now, when she’d been back from Texas for less than a day?

Across the table, Maddie set her glass down with a thump, already morphing into the Pitbull. Vicky warned her off with a glance. She’d handle Winston herself.

Looking up, she recognized at once that he’d been happy-houring for more than an hour. His eyes were bloodshot and his jaw was mean. She acted pleasantly surprised to see him.

“Hello, Winston. I saw your picture in the paper.” She glanced at Maddie. “Did you see it? He was the one with his shirt strangling his armpits.” She wrinkled her nose at him. “You really need a new trainer, or at least some self-tanner. You know what they say, if you can’t tone it, tan it.”

Red flags stained his cheekbones. “You’re a bitch, Victoria,” he snapped back without his usual aplomb. “I hope the committee yanks your license. In fact, I’m going to file an affidavit telling them how you and Brown went at it like rabbits. Until he realized you’re
frigid
.”

His voice had risen, drawing attention. Vicky’s body vibrated with an invisible hum. Maybe she shouldn’t have taken him on, but she was in it to win it now.

She kept her voice sweet and light. “Lenore called me last week.” Her former secretary. “Believe it or not, she was hoping to get her job back. When I reminded her how I found you two screwing on my desk, do you know what she said?” She pushed her voice up for the spectators’ benefit.

“She said that sex with you wasn’t worth losing a job as a Wal-Mart greeter, much less a high-paid secretary. And she said that not once in the
six or seven times
you did it, did she ever have an orgasm.
Not once.
”

She leaned back in her chair, assumed a thoughtful air. “You know, I’m thinking of posting that on Facebook.”

Winston’s hand fell like a slab on the table. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare post one word about me.” His face had gone florid. His lips were pressed flat.

She sat up straight. “Then stay out of my face, you lying, cheating, arrogant horse’s ass.” Her voice rang with authority. “Send whatever you want to the committee, I don’t care. But stay away from me!”

His eyes bulged. His jaw ticked. With a last slap of the table that set their drinks rocking, he whirled and stormed off, disappearing in the crowd.

Maddie whooshed out a breath. “Holy shit. You were amazing.” She looked hard at Vicky. “But who are you, and what have you done with my best friend?”

Vicky managed a shaky laugh. “I can’t believe I’m not having a panic attack right now.”

“Good for you, but you almost gave
me
one. Please,
please
warn me the next time you’re going to rip someone a new one, so I can have my inhaler ready.” Maddie drank off the rest of her martini in one gulp, set her glass down with a thump. “So, did Lenore-the-whore really call you, or did you make that up?”

“She really called, and she really said all of it, even the part about the Wal-Mart greeter.”

Maddie let out a laugh. “That’s classic. You don’t have to post it, because I will!”

Sparkling with high spirits, she turned her attention to their closest neighbors, four thirtysomething MBA types unwinding after a hard day of moving millions. Cuffs rolled up, ties loosened, they had the vaguely predatory air of out-of-town-businessmen-at-large-in-New-York-City.

They’d been openly amused by the scene with Winston; now they zeroed in on the women at the heart of it. Maddie offered an encouraging smile.

“Don’t,” Vicky murmured under her breath. “I’m off men for the foreseeable future.”

Maddie looked appalled. “Are you kidding? You finally unleash your inner slut and now you want to cut yourself off?”

One of the men, tall, with dark hair and a tan that made his crisp, white shirt look whiter, stood and ambled over to their table. “You ladies look like you need more martinis,” he drawled with an unmistakable Texas twang.

Vicky rubbed her temple. What next? Locusts?

Tracking sparkling green eyes back and forth between them, Mr. Lone Star unloosed a devastating smile. “What can I getcha? Gin or vodka?”

Damn all Texans to hell, with their stupid drawls and ridiculous smiles and idiotic courtesy. Why couldn’t they all just stay in Texas?

Even Maddie, whose hard-shelled cynicism she could always rely on, fell hard for the twang. Her long lashes fluttered, and she smiled her wood-sprite smile. “Gin, please. With a twist for me and extra olives for my friend.”

Then, with her foot, she pushed out the extra chair at their table. And, naturally, the rest of the long-limbed, white-toothed, too-polite-for-New-York-City Texans unlimbered their lanky six-foot frames from their chairs and joined them.

C
lancy rolled his chaw from one cheek to the other, fired a stream at a lizard sunning itself by the barn. “I’d give her about a month,” he drawled. “Maybe three weeks.”

Ty’s heart hit the ground. Brescia seemed so much better, he’d been sure she was getting well. He dropped his head, stared at his boots. He couldn’t speak without crying, so he pressed his lips tight.

“Play it by ear,” Clancy went on, “but you want to break her in slow. None of those two-week trail rides you’re so fond of.”

Ty’s head came up. “Huh?”

“I said take it easy on her, let her get her strength back. I figure it’ll be a month before she’s up to anything strenuous.”

“You mean . . . you mean she’s on the mend?”

Clancy looked surprised. “I told Joe that yesterday, didn’t he tell you?”

“Yeah, but I was afraid—” He stopped talking as relief swamped him. Now he wouldn’t have to make the awful decision to put her down. Thank God. Thank you, God.

“You all right, Ty? You’re pale as paint.”

“I’m good,” he got out. “I’m real good.”

When Clancy’s truck disappeared in a cloud of dust, he went into the barn to have himself a little cry and give Brescia the news. She nodded along like Mr. Ed, but he didn’t attach much significance to that. She always nodded when she felt frisky.

Stopping in the office, he told Joe too, then added, “I’m hitting the trail for a few days. Dash could use the exercise.”

“Sure thing, Ty. I’ll round him up.”

Heading to the house to pack his gear, he said a prayer of thanks for Joe. The man never hassled him about riding off for days, even weeks, at a time. He’d been doing it since Lissa died. In the early years, when his grief was still as sharp and hard as a diamond, it kept him sane. Later, when doubt and guilt ate at his mind, it kept him alive.

Now, with Brescia finally recovering, he wasn’t wasting any time. He was in the saddle in under an hour, supplies for a week in his saddlebags, Dash’s nose pointed toward the hills. Up there, he’d be able to listen to the silence, clear his head so he could figure out how to make things right with Vicky.

As the ranch fell away behind them, he started explaining the situation to Dash. The big gelding wasn’t the gentle listener Brescia was, but as they talked it out, Ty started to see things from a different perspective.

“Sure, the thing with Molly looked bad,” he told Dash. “Hell, it
was
bad. But Vicky didn’t even give me a chance to explain. Why, just the day before, we had ourselves an emotional moment, you know? We connected, and it was fucking amazing. And I gotta tell you, Dash, I was getting all kinds of crazy ideas. Romantic ideas, if you want the truth. Then, at the first little bump in the road, she was off and running.”

He lifted his hat, blotted his forehead with his sleeve. “Vicky’s not the only one who’s been done wrong here, you know. If she’d just stuck around, I could’ve explained to her that Molly’s more of a buddy than a girlfriend. Somebody to have a few beers with. Watch the game at the Horseshoe. Hell, Molly and me haven’t even had sex since I got back from France.” He patted Dash’s neck. “I know what you’re thinking, I’m sure you’ve seen her rack. But I wanted to see how we got along without giving my dick a vote.

“Anyway, it’s been clear for a while now that she’s taking things more seriously than I am, and I’d pretty much decided to pull the plug. But what with the hearing and all, I hadn’t gotten around to telling her yet. And I couldn’t exactly break it to her with everyone standing around on the porch, could I? Then Donohue hit me with that haymaker.” He rubbed his jaw. “By the time I woke up, they were gone.”

As they climbed higher into the hills, indignation and the first seeds of anger took root in his breast.

“She should’ve given me the benefit of the doubt. She should’ve let me explain. But do you think she’d even answer her phone? Or text me back?” He snorted. “Oh, she fired off a parting shot, but that was it. Next thing I knew, her number was disconnected. She cut me off completely.”

Stopping for the night by a narrow ribbon of a stream, Ty stomped around, setting up camp, building a fire, all while he worked up a bigger head of steam.

“You know what I think, Dash?” he said over his shoulder as he took a long leak on a flat rock. “I dodged a goddamn bullet. And from now on, I’m staying out of the line of fire.”

T
he professor’s apartment was large by New York City standards, and furnished comfortably, if blandly. All Vicky had to do was move in.

Well, that wasn’t all she had to do. She also had to figure out how to pay for it. Her severance would only go so far. To stretch it, she needed a job.

Sipping a compromise latte—low fat, single shot, no whip—at the Starbucks around the corner, she stared out the window at the people streaming along the sunny sidewalk; students trickling back into the city before the start of the school year, couples holding hands, working stiffs staring straight ahead, intent on getting home.

For once, she wasn’t one of them. She was a bystander, an aimless people watcher with nothing pressing to do and no place she had to be.

It wasn’t as great as she’d imagined when she’d sat at her desk, buried under paper.

She pulled her gaze back inside, where a sign on the counter caught her eye. Without conscious thought, she found herself rising, making her way to the barista at the end of the counter, the one who called out the finished drinks.

Vicky pointed to the sign. “What’re the hours?”

“Morning rush,” the girl said, digging under the counter. “Here. Fill this out and bring it back to me.”

Vicky took the application to her window seat, mentally editing as she filled it out. She omitted her law degree, made it sound like she’d held a clerical job at the firm—not because she worried that her current troubles would keep her from being hired, but because high-priced lawyers didn’t pour coffee at Starbucks. And for good reason. Who’d want to work with them?