Читать книгу Cinderella's Midnight Kiss - Dixie Browning - Страница 11

John Hale Hitchcock quietly hung up the phone and began to swear. He’d finally said yes, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have serious reservations. All his adult life he’d made it a policy to stay as far away from weddings as possible in case they were contagious. Especially weddings that required his active participation. What was it the shrinks called it? A defense mechanism?

Yeah, it was that and more.

He’d always had a feeling his own parents hated each other’s guts, but were far too well bred to mention it. Add to that his mother’s sporadic attempts to pair him up with one of her colleagues and it was no wonder he’d developed a jaded outlook on marriage.

He’d eventually learned to handle such things tactfully. In spite of his parents’ dismay when he’d chosen engineering over law, Georgia Tech over Yale, he wasn’t a barbarian. At least he’d had the good manners not to come right out and admit to harboring a deep-seated aversion to pinstripes, brogans and button-down brains, a description that summed up those among his mother’s younger female colleagues who considered her a role model. Now a highly esteemed federal judge, Janet Hale Hitchcock had never, not even in her junior-partner days, been a hands-on type mother.

Once she’d given up trying to hand over control of her only son to one of her right-minded colleagues, her matchmaking efforts had ceased. Now it was only his married friends who were forever trying to pair him up. Hitch put it down to the theory that misery liked company. His method of dealing with it was both tactful and efficient. Smile politely and run like hell. Having spent his formative years under the thumbs of domineering parents, in a home that had all the warmth of a refrigerator truck, he wasn’t about to get caught in the marriage trap.

Mac’s call had caught him at a weak moment. He’d just come back from a memorial service for another old classmate, dead of heart failure at the age of thirty-three, a year younger than Mac.

Life was risky business.

After pouring himself a drink, Hitch had been wallowing in a rare moment of philosophical nostalgia when Mac MacCollum had called to tell him about his upcoming wedding and ask him to act as best man.

“No thanks, my friend. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m severely allergic to weddings.”

“Aw, come on, Hitch, you’re my closest pal. I couldn’t ask anyone else.”

The two men had gone through four years at Georgia Tech together, Hitch on a football scholarship as his parents, both Yale law school graduates, had refused to condone such heresy. The day after graduation Mac and Hitch had joined the army together. Mac had then tried on half a dozen careers, while Hitch went to Harvard for his MBA. Through it all they’d never lost contact, due mostly to Mac’s friendly persistence.

“You know, Mac,” Hitch had remarked, “whining was never one of your more attractive traits.”

“I’m not whining, man, I’m begging. Begging has more dignity than whining.”

“Do I know the lucky lady?”

“You remember Steffie Stephenson? Lives next door to our house?”

Hitch would never forget the many weekends during their college years he’d spent in the rambling, friendly, comfortable old house in a small North Carolina town. The MacCollums’ place, messy, noisy, filled with the aroma of Mama Mac’s good cooking, was as different from the house he’d grown up in as night from day.

He also remembered the Stephenson sisters next door, Stephanie and…was it Mary? Marnie? Something like that.

And hadn’t there been a third sister? He’d never actually met her, but he seemed to recall a red-haired kid scurrying around in the background.

“Yeah, I remember Steff,” he said, sipping the one drink a day he allowed himself. “Word of advice, Mac. Get out before it’s too late. Women need marriage. Men don’t. Don’t bother to question my logic—logic never was your strong suit—just take my word for it. Get out of Dodge.”

But Mac had talked him into it. Good old Mac, with his big ears, two left feet and ready grin. The guy could talk a dalmatian out of his spots. Hitch had hung up, having reluctantly agreed, and spent the next few minutes wondering how the devil Mac and Steff had ever got together. Unless she’d changed considerably since he’d last seen her, Stephanie Stephenson was a shallow little snob with a cover girl face and a one-cylinder brain.

Could she have finally wised up to the fact that Mac, for all he might act the clown, was a terrific guy? Or was it because, through a lot of hard work and some lucky breaks, he had parlayed the rundown ski resort he’d bought a few years ago into a thriving chain stretching all the way up into West Virginia?

Hitch polished off his drink, rose and stretched. He’d been working flat out for the past couple of years establishing his own business, JHH Designs, a small Richmond, Virginia, industrial design firm with a big future. He could use a break, and where better to take one than with the family who had treated him like one of their own?

That meant he’d be passing close to his parents’ place on the drive from Richmond to Mocksville. Might as well make an effort to mend a few fences. It had been nearly a year since he’d seen them, and that last scene had not been pleasant.

Maybe, he thought with bitter amusement, he could break the ice with a bit of gallows humor. Hey folks, whaddya think, if Mac’s marriage goes south the way most marriages seem to do these days, can the best man be nailed as an accessory after the fact?

Oh, yeah, that would really crack ’em up.

Both his parents were lawyers with strong control tendencies. The trait had caused problems from the time Hitch was old enough to leave small, sticky fingerprints on every polished surface in the somber old house.

His mother, a small woman with iron-gray hair worn in a knot at the back of her head, could get more mileage from a lifted eyebrow than most people could from a loaded gun. His paternal grandfather had been a Supreme Court judge. Most of his cousins were lawyers or judges. Hitch had been slated to follow the family calling, only he’d had ideas of his own.

Major hassle. There was still a lot of residual bitterness, but one thing he’d inherited from both sides of the family was a streak of stubbornness a mile wide. He’d never actually won an argument with either of his folks, but at least he’d learned to minimize the damage by biting his tongue and walking out.

Matter of fact, the driving force behind his present success might easily be his determination to prove something to his parents.

Talk about childish.

“Two things I’ll never be,” Cindy muttered as she carted a stack of bone china to the kitchen to be washed, “are a caterer or a professional wedding planner.”

She’d already broken the handle off one of the cups and had spent far too much valuable time on the phone to Greensboro to see if the china replacement center could match the pattern. Lucky for her it could.

Unlucky for her, it would cost her an arm and a leg, plus a drive to Greensboro at her own expense.

“Cindy, did you call the florist?”

“They’re coming tomorrow to go over final plans.”

“Cindy, is my dress back from the cleaner?”

“Be here in about an hour.”

“Cindy, for goodness sake, I told you to air out my luggage! It smells like mildew!”

“It was cloudy when I got up, so I thought I’d better wait. If it doesn’t clear up, I’ll open all your cases and put them up in my room—that’s always dry.” And hot as Hades, as the attic wasn’t air-conditioned.

The wedding was still days away, and already the guest rooms were filled with family here for the occasion, plus Steff’s two attendants, both former college classmates. Cindy had run her legs right down to the nub trying to get all the rooms aired and made up, and all the china and crystal, which had to be hand washed and dried, ready for the rehearsal party, which had gone from a simple buffet to a combination ball and banquet.

Mac’s folks were supposed to host the party but this was Aunt S.’s first wedding, and she was pulling out all the stops. What had started out to be a small, elegant home wedding was rapidly turning into a three-ring circus, in Cindy’s estimation. A small thing like wedding protocol never stopped Aunt S.

All that in addition to trying to keep up with the ordinary demands of a demanding family, and Cindy was pooped. Just plain frazzled. And it was barely midafternoon, with three days to go until the wedding, after which there would be all the undoing and cleaning-up-after.

It was a good thing she was used to it, else she might have blown her redheaded stack.

“One of these days,” she muttered, catching a glimpse of a cupcake wrapper under the hall table. One of these days she would have enough saved up to move out, and this would all seem like a crazy dream.

Meanwhile, it was a good thing she had the hide of an elephant and the backbone of a—well, whatever had the strongest backbone, which was what it took to survive when you had only yourself to depend on.

“Cynthia, have you been messing with my roses again?” Lorna Stephenson called out from the back parlor, where she was currently nursing a headache with a lavender-water-soaked cloth and a glass of medicinal brandy.

“No, ma’am, I haven’t. I think Charlie was playing ball out there earlier, though. You might mention it to his mother.”

If Cindy had had her way, she would have cut every flower in the yard and begged more from the neighbors, and done the wedding flowers herself. At least that way Aunt S.’s precious roses would be appreciated instead of trampled underfoot by a six-year-old hellion who didn’t know the meaning of the word no.

But Aunt S. preferred the stiff, formal arrangements of the local florist over Cindy’s big, cheerful armfuls of whatever happened to be blooming, all intertwined with wild honeysuckle and flowering blackberry vines.

Three days and counting. The house was gleaming. Cindy unexpectedly felt a surge of nostalgia—either that or the half sandwich she’d grabbed on the run for lunch hadn’t settled properly.

Well, no, it was nostalgia, because while indigestion made her stomach burn, it didn’t make her throat ache and her nose turn red. And after all, it was some sort of milestone, she supposed. The courtesy cousin she had practically grown up with was about to marry and leave home. Even though they’d never gotten along particularly well, she would miss her.

The wedding gown. Oh, yes, she reminded herself as she dashed up the back stairs—she really did need to offer a bit of advice, the thing was so blessed plain!

“Steff, about your gown,” she said, rushing breathlessly into the big corner bedroom that had once been Aunt S. and Uncle Henry’s. “It needs something, don’t you think?”

“Don’t you dare touch my wedding gown! It’s a designer original!”

Steff described it as elegant. Cindy called it drab. “It won’t take much,” she said earnestly. “Just a little dab of lace at the neckline, maybe your something old? Or I have some white velvet roses, the really good kind, not the junk from the craft store. I could sort of arrange them—”

“No.”

“You’ll need something borrowed, and they’d look super at the waist. You probably wouldn’t even need to bother with a bouquet.”

Steff rolled her eyes, and Cindy flushed. She knew what they all thought of her hats, even though she’d explained they were only working designs and that the real models, when she could afford to make them, would be far more beautiful “I just thought I’d offer to…you know. Help perk it up a bit.”

It was probably fortunate that Aunt S. called upstairs at that moment. “Cin-dee!”

“Yes, ma’am, I’m coming.”

It was Charlie again. He hadn’t been invited, but his mother, lacking a baby-sitter, had brought him along anyway. Cindy was right on his heels as he went whooping and hollering down the front stairs. Charlie was quick as a weasel, out the front door before she could grab onto his shirttail.

“Go on outside and don’t come in again until he’s thoroughly worn out,” ordered Aunt S., who was of the children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard school of child-rearing.

Cindy’s sympathies were with Charlie. She’d been only slightly older than he was now when she’d first met her courtesy aunt. Old enough to recognize a dragon in a black silk dress, but not old enough to deal with one. Little had changed since then.

They played ball until Charlie smacked one into the rose garden, then they switched to guess what color car passes by next. It was a slow game. At this time of day, there wasn’t much traffic.

“Hey, a squirrel! I’m gonna catch him and put him in a box and take him home!”

“Charlie, leave that animal alone, he’s got teeth that can—Charlie!”

The car came around the curve so fast there was no time to think. Cindy practically flew forward, tackling the heedless child and rolling them both into the azalea hedge across the street.

“Idiot! You blooming idiot!” she screeched at the driver of the luxury car, which had swerved to the curb and come to a tire-squealing stop. Breathless, she was still sprawled across Charlie’s body when the car door swung open and one long, khaki-clad leg emerged.

“Hey, you’re squashing me,” Charlie protested. At least he was still in one piece. Just to be sure, she quickly felt his arms and legs before allowing him to squirm away from her. “You wait right there. Don’t you dare move an inch from this spot,” she warned, and such was her tone of voice that the child gulped and nodded.

“But you scared that old squirrel away,” he accused. Pale, on the verge of tears, he was determined not to let on how frightened he was.

Cindy, still on her hands and knees, was torn between hugging him and shaking some sense into him. “Good thing I did,” she growled. “He’d have bitten your finger off and likely died of food poisoning.”

Struggling stiffly to her feet, she caught her breath as pain sliced through her from an assortment of minor ailments. Gravelly asphalt and hard, rocky earth weren’t exactly kind to tender flesh, even when wearing jeans. She’d raked the skin off both knees and the heels of both hands.

“You little fool, don’t you know any better than to run out into the street without looking?” a man’s voice said. “Wait—don’t move, you might be hurt.”

Fear caught up with Charlie and he began to sob just as Cindy opened her mouth to let fly with a few choice phrases. She closed it again in deference to tender young ears. Charlie didn’t need his already impressive vocabulary expanded. Fortunately she’d had years of practice in the art of swallowing her temper.

The reckless fool from the car had his hands on her thigh. “Stop that! Don’t you know any better than to drive like a bat out of he—heck in a residential neighborhood?” Eyes blazing, she went to shove him away.

“Stand still. Oh, God, your hands are bleeding.” Manacling her wrists, he lifted them for a closer look.

Cindy peered at her stinging palms, then lifted accusing eyes to his face. “You were—”

Oh, no. Oh, please no, not him!

“You’re right. I was driving too fast. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t tell me, tell that poor child you nearly ran down!”

“Can you bend your knee?”

She’d already flexed both knees. They stung like the very devil, but at least they both worked.

“You didn’t hit your head, did you?” He had the kind of voice that ought to be labeled hazardous to a woman’s health. Or her whatever. It set off nerves she didn’t even know she had, and that was saying a lot, because at the moment most of her nerves were busy registering acute pain.

Charlie was sniffling, clinging to her thigh and wiping his nose on the leg of her jeans. She gave the star of a thousand daydreams one long, glowering look and jerked her hands free of his grasp.

This was not the way she’d planned it. She’d planned to be wearing her yellow cotton, with her hair in a French braid, with eye shadow and lipstick and enough powder to disguise her freckles.

Instead she was standing here in thin, worn out jeans, every trembling cell in her body awash with pain and embarrassment, not to mention fright and the dregs of an ancient crush. “Oh…blast!” she cried. Sweeping Charlie up in her arms, she marched across the street, leaving John Hale Hitchcock staring after her.

Actually, march didn’t exactly describe it. Charlie was a lot heavier than he looked, and her hip hurt. She’d already given it a good workout what with the wedding and all the extra work and chasing after Charlie. A five-yard dash followed by a flying tackle hadn’t helped matters.

Hitch stared after the woman he’d nearly run down. Something about that wild red hair and that stubborn little chin snagged at his memory, but he couldn’t quite place her. Not too surprising, since it had been years since he’d last visited Mocksville. She’d royally chewed him out, and with just cause. He had been speeding. The signs said 35. He’d been doing at least 45. The stop-off at his parents’ place still had his gut tied in knots. After all these years, you’d think he’d have learned how to deal with the doubts, the frustrated feeling of being a kid who’d done something unforgivable. The feeling that he was somehow responsible for the fact that his parents would rather retreat to their separate studies than spend five minutes with their only son.

One of these days he’d wise up and stop trying. They had his phone number, in case they should ever want to reach him.

Hitch sat in the car for several minutes, still shaken, before starting the engine and creeping the remaining few yards to the MacCollums’ driveway. He owed the little firebrand an apology. If she hadn’t been right on the kid’s heels when he burst out of the hedge, Hitch would have struck him, sure as the world. It was a wonder he hadn’t hit them both, driving with his mind on other matters. At that speed, he’d have passed right by Mac’s place without even slowing down.

He’d have to check on her later, to be sure she wasn’t seriously hurt. She’d been limping when she’d disappeared into the Stephensons’ house next door. Mac might know who she was—a pint-size redhead with blazing blue eyes and a tongue like a whipsaw. A wedding guest, maybe. Possibly a baby-sitter. Whoever she was, she deserved a proper apology, and before he left town he would see that she got one.

A day later, Hitch was actually beginning to unwind. In the process of putting in a couple of killer years trying to get his business up and running, he’d nearly forgotten how to relax.

The MacCollums taught him all over again. No way could anyone stand on ceremony in a house that was casual to the point of sloppiness, in which meals were taken in the big family kitchen with everyone wanting to know all about his business, and what it was, exactly, that an industrial engineer did, and how his folks, who lived in Lynchburg, Virginia, were getting along. And incidentally, when he was going to settle down and raise a family. Knowing that the MacCollums’ interest was prompted by genuine caring, Hitch couldn’t resent it.

The friendly inquisition eased off whenever a friend or neighbor would drop in. Someone would bring over a watermelon or a bucket of tomatoes or a basket of figs, and talk would shift to the wedding and Mac’s ski resorts, and where the happy couple planned to live.

Mac spent as much time as possible at the Stephensons’ house with his fiancée. The poor guy was besotted. Steff spent considerably less time at the MacCollums’ place. Hitch wished them both well, but didn’t hold out much hope for a long and happy union.

“Who’s the redhead next door?” he asked Mac after the last straggler had left. “If I remember correctly, Mary—or Marnie?—had dark hair.”

“You mean Maura. Yeah, she does, only she’s got it all streaked up with blond now. Ask me, it was better the way it was, but you know women.”

Actually, Hitch didn’t. At least, not beyond a certain point. “Redhead. About yea high.” He gestured appropriately. “Blue eyes a size too big for her face, freckles, pointed chin, tongue like a machete.”

Mac chuckled. “You must’ve tangled with Cindy. She’s been in high gear ever since Mrs. S. talked Steff into having a simple home wedding instead of using the church and the club.”

From the level of activity next door, all the vans coming and going, simple was the last word Hitch would have used to describe it. “Cindy who? Cindy what?”

“Danbury. Lorna Stephenson was a Danbury before she was married, so I guess Cindy’s some sort of cousin or something. Came to live with them when she was only a kid.”

“That’s why she looked so familiar,” Hitch mused. “I don’t think I ever actually met her until yesterday, when I nearly ran her down in the street.” He went on to describe the brief encounter.

“You wouldn’t have met her, she was only a kid back then, not old enough to hang around our gang. Besides, Mrs. S. kept her pretty busy. Still does. I like Cindy, she makes me laugh, and you know me—I can always use a good yuk.”

Cindy. If Hitch had ever heard her name, he couldn’t remember it. He wondered how old she was. Doing a bit of swift mental arithmetic, he figured she was at least twenty, maybe more. At first glance he’d taken her for a kid, but when she’d raised that heart-shaped little face, so pale her freckles stood out like rust spots, and sizzled him with a blast from a pair of laser blue eyes, he’d realized she was older than she looked.

“Yeah, well…I owe her an apology. Maybe I’ll get a chance to speak to her Saturday during the festivities.”