Matt Coltrane hadn’t wanted to come to the wedding. Thank God it was almost over. The reception was winding down—mainly because everybody was getting drunk—and Matt could soon go home.
He didn’t believe in love or matrimony. Marriage only led to divorce, as far as he was concerned. He ought to know; he’d handled enough of them in the past fourteen years to make a man think twice and then some before he took that suicidal walk down the aisle. Or in this case, around the corner of his mother’s swimming pool, which was the only reason he was here.
Lucy O’Banyon Coltrane had offered her house and grounds for the wedding of her prim and proper college roommate and sorority sister, Ellie Jones, and she’d asked Matt to be there “in case somebody falls into the pool.”
“That’s a ridiculous reason for me to drive three hundred miles,” he’d told his mother when she called. “Nobody’s going to fall into the pool.”
“Yes, but in case they do, you’ll know how to handle it. And besides, I haven’t seen you in weeks.”
He’d driven up from Jackson, Mississippi, to Shady Grove out of guilt and had stayed out of curiosity. Members of the Foxes, the sorority his mother helped charter, had flown in from all over the country to celebrate the wedding of one of their own. One of them was the U.S. attorney general. Matt had hoped to talk with her, but she’d called at the last minute to cancel.
The entire event was over the top, if anybody had asked Matt’s opinion, on the hottest day of June, all these candles adding to the heat. They knew better, of course. He was not the type of man to withhold his opinions. He was trying hard not to put a damper on the celebration.
God knows, he’d done nothing but scowl since he got there. You couldn’t move without stepping over a bridesmaid. There was a flock of fifteen, wearing those ridiculous hats, no two alike, all dressed in pink.
It was a pure relief to spot a woman dressed in green. She was on the other side of the pool, her shoes kicked off, snapping pictures and attracting a crowd. Men, of course. So many swooning swains gathered around her that Matt had to stand up to see.
His mother slid into a chair at his table. “Lovely, isn’t she?”
He nonchalantly eased into his chair. “Who?”
“The photographer. Don’t think I didn’t see you watching her. I think she’s quite charming.”
“Don’t start,” he said, and Lucy gave him a crestfallen look. “All right. I concede. She’s easily the most striking woman here.”
“See, I told you you’d be glad you came.”
“Now, Mother, get that look out of your eye. I came for you. That’s all.”
“I’m glad you did, Matt. Since you’re here, why don’t you go around the pool and introduce yourself to that delightful-looking woman.”
Matt would rather eat arsenic. Women in general were dangerous, but women of her kind were lethal. They reeled you in with their innocent act then knifed you in the back. That angel’s face didn’t fool him. Inside that sweet little package beat the heart of a barracuda.
“She’s not my type,” he said.
“You shouldn’t let one bad experience color your opinions.”
One bad experience wouldn’t begin to describe the events that had colored his opinions. But he would never tell anyone, least of all his mother.
“Can I get you some more food, Mother?”
Lucy got that same look she always got when she was all set to deliver a rare motherly lecture, but this time Matt stared her down. She sighed.
“No, thank you, dear. I’m on a diet.”
“Why? You look fine to me.”
“I don’t want to look fine. I want to look great. Like Dolly.”
“Where is Aunt Dolly?” She wasn’t really his aunt, but he’d called her that for so long she might as well have been. Of all the Foxes, she was his favorite.
“Quaffing booze and flirting, no doubt.”
“I’d better see if I can find her.”
“She’ll be mad as a hornet if you try to drag her away from one of her little peccadilloes, as she calls them.”
“We’ll see about that.”
As Matt set out to rescue the indomitable actress Dolly Wilder from her baser impulses, a green hat lifted on the breeze, sailed across the pool and landed at water’s edge practically at his feet.
He scooped the hat out of the water and strode around the pool to give it back to its owner.
The wind that had stolen her hat whipped her dress and her long blond hair. She was a beautiful woman, fresh-scrubbed and wholesome. Just like his ex-fiancée. A heartless floozy in disguise.
“My hat! You found it.”
She turned her flutelike voice and innocent-looking green eyes on him, and Matt came within a hairbreadth of succumbing to her siren song. After all, he was human, in spite of rumors to the contrary.
The sooner he got out of there, the better. He rammed the hat into her hand, then watched in mortification as it dripped on the shoes she’d kicked off, leaving huge water spots.
Obviously her shoes were dyed-to-match silk, a fact he wouldn’t have known if he hadn’t grown up in a household with two sisters.
Matt didn’t know whether to kneel down and try to wipe her shoes dry or to let well enough alone.
“Sorry about the shoes,” he said. His cohorts would die laughing if they could hear him. The man known in the courtroom as Bulldog Coltrane was acting like a nervous Chihuahua. His only saving grace was that he hadn’t tried to put the soggy hat back on her head.
“Oh, it’s no problem. I’m going to throw them away anyhow. They pinch my toes.”
Matt didn’t want to make small talk with this woman, but Lucy had tried to teach him to be a gentleman and he guessed some of her lessons stuck.
As he cast about for an escape tactic, he spotted the perfect one: Aunt Dolly sashaying to his mother’s table looking none too steady on her spike-heeled shoes.
Before he could excuse himself, the woman said, “You’re the strong silent type, aren’t you?”
Good God. She was worse than Matt had thought. “No,” he said. “Mainly I’m the surly type.” Then he scowled at her just to prove it.
The woman was not the least bit discouraged. “Look at that terrific hat,” she said.
Who could miss it? It stood out like an oversize hippo in the Swan Lake ballet. He watched as his aunt Kitty O’Banyon made a beeline for his mother’s table, her hat bobbing with every step.
“I wish I had one like that. I wonder where she got it?”
“It came as a gift with the case of tequila she ordered from Mexico.”
“You know her?”
“Yes.” He didn’t bother telling her the family relationship.
“Such a strong, arresting face. I’d love to paint her.”
The next thing he knew, the woman would be wanting to meet Kitty, and since he wasn’t a total cad he couldn’t very well turn her down. Then before he could blink twice, his mother and Aunt Dolly and Aunt Kitty would have her booked for lemon-balm tea on Tuesdays and bad tennis on Wednesdays and arguments over Eastern religious philosophy every Saturday, and there would be no way in heaven or on earth Matt could avoid seeing her again.
He never would have rescued her hat in the first place if he’d thought it all through. His life was well ordered and relatively sane, and he planned to keep it that way.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I have to rejoin my party.”
“I didn’t mean to keep you.” The woman held out her hand, and what could he do but take it? “Thanks for rescuing my hat.”
The scent of gardenia wafted off her skin, his favorite fragrance. “Of course,” he said, or was it You’re welcome?
Before the woman could play any more tricks on him, he hurried off with all his anonymity and most of his dignity intact.
“She’s gorgeous,” Aunt Dolly said the minute he sat down. “Lively, too. You can always tell.”
His mother got right to the point. “Did you get her phone number?”
“I didn’t even get her name.”
“Ellie says she’s a sweet girl.” Kitty adjusted her liquor-advertisement hat. “She’s not only a great photographer, she’s an artist specializing in portraits.”
Matt didn’t care if she specialized in Kama Sutra, he still didn’t want to know her name.
“She studied art in Paris,” Kitty added. “Her name is Sandi Wentworth.”
“I have to be going.” Matt pushed his chair back, then leaned down to kiss his mother’s cheek.
“Don’t rush off,” she said. “Ellie and Sam just got back. He’s fixing to toss the garter.”
“I pity the poor unlucky fool who catches it.”
Matt rushed off and had nearly gained safety, when the garter sailed through the air and smacked him in the back of the head. He kept on going. But not before he noticed that the garter was made of red feathers with something attached that looked suspiciously like a sequined phallus.
Who would have thought Ellie Jones was that kind? And at her age. It just proved his theory: women were a devious lot bent on man’s total undoing.
“There wasn’t a single man at your dad’s wedding who made me tingle,” Sandi told her best friend, and C. J. Garrett said, “Thank God.”
The two of them were sitting in rocking chairs on the front porch of C.J.’s childhood home holding cold glasses of lemonade to their heat-flushed cheeks and trying not to comment on the twenty-nine candles that blazed on the birthday cake beside them.
Every candle burned a hole in Sandi’s heart. It was her birthday, and the only person in the whole world who remembered was C.J.
“You didn’t have to get me a cake,” Sandi said.
“I wanted to.” C.J. retrieved a small gift-wrapped box from the pocket of her sundress and handed it to Sandi. “Happy birthday.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“For Pete’s sake, Sandi. You’re like family to me.”
It was true. The only real home Sandi had ever known was this warm yellow cottage next door to the cold house Sandi had inherited from the grandmother who had raised her, a stern, upright woman who had taught her everything about walking the straight and narrow and nothing about love.
The only real love she’d ever known had come from C.J. and her parents, Sam and Phoebe. She’d basked in the reflected glow for years, and truth to tell, that’s still what she was doing.
C.J. was a newlywed and had been matron of honor as her widowed dad had just married his long-ago sweetheart, Ellie. If Sandi shut her eyes, she could almost smell the sweet scent of requited love wafting on the breeze that ruffled the roses on the trellis behind the swing.
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
Sandi carefully peeled back the paper, folded it into a neat square then opened the little black-velvet box. Nestled inside was a delicate necklace with a filigreed gold heart.
“Oh, it’s beautiful, C.J. Thank you.”
“I put pictures of you and me inside.” Sandi popped open the clasp and on one side saw a photo of two gangly-legged kids with their arms draped around each other. On the opposite side was a close-up shot of them mugging for the camera, their faces smeared with chocolate icing and hope.
“My thirteenth birthday,” Sandi said. She remembered it well. The day she’d turned teenager she’d waited all day by the telephone, certain her mother would call. “You might as well give up,” her grandmother had told her. “Meredith’s too busy with her new husband to bother with you. Take what you’ve got and be satisfied.”
What she’d got was a new toothbrush wrapped in tinfoil and a curt “You can’t be too careful about hygiene” from her grandmother.
Right before dark, C.J. and her parents had burst through the front door bearing a chocolate cake with thirteen candles, a pile of gifts in bright-purple paper and hugs enough to fill the empty spot in Sandi’s heart.
She traced the wistful smile on the face of her younger self.
“Sisters forever,” C.J. said, then fastened the delicate gold chain around Sandi’s neck.
She placed her hand over the gold heart. “Sisters forever,” she said.
“Clint and I are going to name our first child after you.”
“You’re pregnant?”
“Not yet, but we’re hoping. Clint says there’s no need to wait until I finish vet school. He’ll set up a nursery in his newspaper office and take care of the baby while I’m in class.”
Sandi wanted a family of her own more than anything, but first she had to find a husband. And that meant falling in love with somebody who would love her right back.
“I’m happy for you, C.J.” And she was. Truly, she was.
C.J. squeezed her hands. “It’ll happen for you, Sandi. I feel it in my bones.”
“It takes two.”
“You’ve been looking for love in the wrong places. Why don’t you look at somebody smart and successful and steady instead of bullfighters and out of work artists? Somebody like Matt Coltrane? You ought to try to get to know him. He looks like a man with potential.”
“No, he’s not my type.”
“How do you know?”
“I can tell by his uptight behavior.”
“Ellie says he’s very good to his mother. That speaks well of him.”
“He doesn’t jingle my chimes.”
“I give up. Make a wish, Sandi.”
She closed her eyes and wished for babies with sweet pink faces. Then she blew out the candles. All twenty-nine of them.
The jangle of the telephone rousted Matt out of a deep sleep. He never dreamed. Dreams were too messy.
“Matt?”
“Aunt Dolly?” He glanced at the clock. Midnight. With no transition between sleeping and waking, he reached for his pants.
“You’ve got to come home. Lucy’s had a heart attack.”
“I’m on my way.” He did a quick calculation. His bags were still packed, his gas tank full and his affairs in order. “I’ll be there in three hours and sixteen minutes. How bad is it?”
“She overextended herself with the wedding. Kitty tried to tell her, but would she listen? Naturally not, you know how she is. And then, of course, she’s always climbing the stairs when she could take the elevator. I don’t know why she insists on sleeping upstairs when she could have her pick of bedrooms on the first floor.”
“Aunt Dolly…”
“And then, of course, she insisted on having a private party for the Foxes after the wedding….”
“Aunt Dolly, is she dying?”
“God only knows.”
Much as he loved Dolly Wilder, Matt couldn’t help being exasperated with her. Sometimes she carried drama to the extreme. Why hadn’t Aunt Kitty called him? She always cut straight to the point.
He’d hold off calling his sisters until he saw his mother’s condition for himself. No sense in unduly alarming them. Anyway, neither of them could get home quickly. Kat was backpacking in Peru and Elizabeth was filming a documentary in Wales.
“Tell Mother I’m on my way.”
“She’ll be so relieved. I’m staying, of course. I’ve called London to get a replacement for the play. Not that they can ever replace me….”
“Aunt Dolly. I have to leave now. Tell Mother I’m coming home.”
Dolly entered Lucy O’Banyon Coltrane’s bedroom as if it were a Broadway stage. “Matt’s on his way.”
Lucy sighed. “Unfortunately, I’m not dying.”
“Not dying!”
“Ben just left. He said it was nothing but a bad case of indigestion. We shot off the gun too soon.”
“Good God.” Dolly sank into a chair. Naturally she chose the pink-satin chaise longue. “What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to call Matt on his cell phone and tell him not to come,” said Kitty. “That’s what we’re going to do.”
Trust Kitty to be practical. The only thing Lucy hated more than making a fool of herself in public was making a fool of herself in front of her children. Here was Matt, the busiest attorney in Jackson, driving all the way back to Shady Grove to chase a wild goose his mother had turned loose.
“Let me think,” she said.
“What’s to think about?” Kitty said. “For Pete’s sake, you’ve got to tell him the truth.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Whatever plot you’re hatching, I want no part of it,” Kitty said.
Lucy didn’t bother to deny she was hatching a plot. Why should she? She was a romance novelist, for goodness’ sake. “Do you remember my tenth book, Made-To-Order Bride?”
“Tell me you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking,” Kitty said.
“Why not? Here’s the way I see it. Matt’s already picked out a woman.”
“What woman?” Dolly asked.
“The one by the pool. The artist. Sandi Wentworth.”
Kitty sniffed. “He didn’t pick her out. He said she wasn’t his type.”
“Nobody’s his type. My son’s a stick-in-the-mud. If I don’t give connubial bliss a little boost he’s never going to be happy.” Lucy’s best plots always fell into her lap, so to speak. That’s how she knew she’d hatched a humdinger. “Here’s how it will work. I’ll invite her here to paint my final portrait for my children and my fans….”
“You’re not dying,” Kitty pointed out.
“A minor detail.”
“He’ll find out the truth as soon as he questions Ben,” Kitty added.
“Ben will evade Matt if I ask him to.” Ben Appleton was not only the family doctor who had been her husband Henry’s partner in their medical practice, but a lifelong friend. “All we need is a few days. Two weeks at most. When Matt finally finds out I’m not dying, he’ll be so happy he’ll forget the little white lie I told.”
“More like an encyclopedia of lies,” Kitty said.
“We’ve done it before.” They both glanced at Dolly who was busy pouring three glasses of wine. “The garden’s full of herbs. Kitty, didn’t you used to make a little love potion?”
“That was a long time ago,” Kitty protested, but Lucy could tell by the look on her sister-in-law’s face that she had won.
Dolly passed around the wine. “May this rescue be as dramatic and successful as the first.”
They all lifted their glasses. “To the Foxes,” they said.