Wisconsin Wedding (Welcome To Tyler, No. 3) Page 4

  He exhaled slowly, trying to look on the positive. The shattered man his brother had been for so long—too long—seemed mostly a bad memory. For that, Byron was thankful. But Nora…

  Before he could change his mind, he popped open his seat belt and jumped out of the car. She’d already gone back inside. Except for the masses of yellow mums, the front porch was unchanged from his last visit, when Aunt Ellie had still reigned over Gates Department Store. She’d been a powerful force in Nora’s life. Maybe too powerful. Ellie had sensed that, articulating her fears to Byron.

  “The store will be Nora’s,” she’d told him. “It’s all I have to give her. But I don’t want it to become a burden to her—it never was to me. If it had, I’d have done something. I never let my life be ruled by that store. Nora knows, I hope, that I won’t roll over in my grave if she decides to sell. The only thing that’ll make me come back to haunt her is if she tries to be anyone but herself. Including me.”

  A perceptive woman, the elder Eleanora Gates. Byron remembered feeling distinctly uncomfortable, even sad, although he’d only known the eccentric Aunt Ellie little more than a week. “What’s all this talk about what will happen after you’re gone?”

  Gripping his hand, she’d laughed her distinctive, almost cackling laugh. “Byron, my good friend, you and I both know I’m on Sunset Road.”

  It was her self-awareness, her self-acceptance, that had drawn Byron to the proprietor of Gates Department Store—what he’d tried to capture in his photograph series on her. Aunt Ellie had been a rare woman. Her grandniece was like her—and yet she wasn’t.

  The front door was open.

  Byron’s heart pounded like a teenager’s. Three years ago, Ellie Gates had greeted him with ice cold, fresh-squeezed lemonade and a slice of sour-cherry pie. What could he expect from her grandniece?

  A pitcher of lemonade over his head? A pie in his face? Nora Gates didn’t forget, and she didn’t forgive.

  Hard to imagine, he thought, reaching for the screen door, that she hated him as much as she did. She didn’t even know who he was.

  “Well, my man,” he said to himself, “here’s mud in your eye.”

  And he pulled open the screen door, stuck in his head and called her name.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “NORA,” HE CALLED softly, only half-fearful for his life now that he was putting it on the line. “Nora, it’s Byron.”

  He left off the Sanders and judiciously didn’t add the Forrester. First things first. Remembering the screen door had a tendency to bang shut, he closed it behind him. Nora didn’t come screaming out of some dark corner. So far, so good.

  The small entry hadn’t changed. To his right, the cream-colored stairs wound up to the second floor under the eaves. Three steps up, where the stairs made a right-angle turn, a window seat was piled with chintz-covered pillows, musty-looking library books and a well-used afghan. It was the sort of spot where Nora would like to curl up with a murder mystery on a rainy Sunday afternoon. Her idea of bliss. Until he’d come around, anyway. Then, for a little while, she’d preferred to curl up with him.

  Calling her name again, Byron moved carefully into the living room, which had changed. The neutral colors, the informality, the American art—they were Nora’s touches. Aunt Ellie’s tastes had been more Victorian. She’d have been comfortable in the formal parlor of the Pierce family’s Providence town house. Nora would have been stifled, even if the late-eighteenth-century mansion had been in Tyler. Of course, Byron had learned early on not to point out the differences between Eleanora Gates the older and Eleanora Gates the younger. Nora much preferred to hear of similarities.

  The living room was separated from the dining room by a curved archway. There Nora had added a baby grand piano, definitely her own touch. He vividly recalled Aunt Ellie’s happy amazement that her grandniece had any musical ability whatever. “Didn’t get that from me. Do you play piano, Byron?”

  He did. So did Cliff. There’d been years of required lessons. He hadn’t touched a piano in ages. Wondering if he were completely mad instead of just half, he played a C-major scale, right-handed, one octave. As he’d expected, the piano was perfectly in tune. He added his left hand and went up another octave, then down two octaves, chromatically. All that drilling when he was a kid came back to him.

  “Ricky?”

  It was her voice. Even as his heart lurched, Byron snatched his fingers from the keyboard and readied himself for skewering.

  “You really have been practicing, haven’t you?” She sounded pleased and delighted, a mood due to end as soon as she caught sight of who was playing scales in her dining room. “That was wonderful! You’re lagging a bit in the left hand, but—” She stood under the archway. “Oh, no.”

  Short of a knife at the throat, it was the sort of greeting Byron had expected. He moved back from the piano. “Hello, Nora.”

  If she’d changed, he couldn’t see it. She was still as trim and quietly beautiful as she’d been three years ago, her hot, secret temper smoldering behind her pale gray eyes. She must have been upstairs changing. She had on purple tennis shoes, narrow, straight-legged jeans and an oversize purple sweatshirt—neat and casual, but nothing she’d ever wear to the store. She was, he thought, a very sexy woman, all the more so because she didn’t try to be.

  He didn’t fail to notice how she’d balled up her hands into tight fists. Apparently he still possessed the uncanny knack for bringing out the aggressive side of her nature—which she’d deny.

  And he didn’t fail—couldn’t fail—to remember how very much this woman had once meant to him.

  “You really are a bloodsucker,” she said through clenched teeth. “Did you come here to photograph us small-town folk all aflutter over the Body at the Lake?”

  “The what? Nora, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Always so ignorant and innocent, aren’t you, Byron?” If her voice had been a knife, he’d have been cut to thin slices. But that was her way, at least with him, of repressing emotions she distrusted even more than anger—emotions like fear, love, passion. “Well, this time I happen to believe you. I think you’re here for an even more despicable reason: Liza Baron and Cliff Forrester’s wedding.”

  Byron almost choked. So she’d figured it out. She knew who he was. Now there’d be no explaining, no chance to plead his case…just his marching orders. Get out and don’t ever come back. Damned without a trial.

  But Nora went on in her chilly voice, “Another Rhode Island boy’s getting married, and with his being a recluse from a big East Coast family, you thought you’d nose around. You’re a leech, Byron Sanders. Pure and simple.”

  A bloodsucker and a leech. He was getting the point. First, she hadn’t forgotten him. Second, she hadn’t forgiven him. Third, she didn’t know his photography days were over and he was president of Pierce & Rothchilde, Publishers. And fourth, she didn’t know he was Cliff’s brother. He had a chance—if a slim one—of getting out of Nora’s house intact after all.

  And an even slimmer chance of making her understand why he’d done what he had three years ago.

  “Nora, I’d like to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”

  “I don’t have a second for you, Byron Sanders. If you think you can march into Tyler and into my life and expect anything but a frosty welcome, you’ve got your head screwed on upside down. Now get out before I…” She inhaled deeply, and her eyes flooded—which had to irritate her—and he could see the pain he’d caused her. “God, Byron, how could you come back here?”

  Might as well get started by coming clean. “I was invited to Cliff’s wedding.”

  “You were invited? By whom? Why?”

  She was looking at him as if he’d just told her Cliff and Liza had invited a gorilla to their wedding. Byron didn’t appreciate her incredulity, but he realized he’d set himself up three years ago to have Nora hate him. He could have told her everything. About Cliff, their father, his own demons—he hadn’t
done enough, hadn’t saved his father, hadn’t saved his brother, hadn’t been able to stop his mother’s suffering. Probably Nora would have been sympathetic. But she’d had her own problems—Aunt Ellie’s impending death, what to do about the store, and about staying in Tyler. And there’d been Cliff. Three years ago staying in Tyler hadn’t been a option for Byron, any more than leaving it had been one for Nora. He’d come uninvited into a world where his brother had finally found stability. Byron couldn’t destroy that stability. It wasn’t the only reason he’d left, but it was an important one.

  Still, he hadn’t explained any of this to Nora. He’d told her he was moving on, let her think he was nothing more than an itinerant photographer, a bit irresponsible, wont to loving and leaving women. So she’d called him a cad, a bloodsucker, a leech and the rest. Because at the time that had been easier—for him and for her—than admitting they’d broken each other’s hearts. Three years later, he’d chased away the worst of his demons, but he wasn’t about to risk hurting Nora Gates again. If she needed him to be a cad, fine.

  “This is just a courtesy call, Nora. I’m trying to be nice—”

  “The hell you are.”

  “You know,” he said calmly, “for a woman who prides herself on being something of a Victorian lady, you have a sharp tongue.”

  She raised her chin. “I want you out of my house.”

  Byron sighed, leaning one hip against the edge of her piano. “Nora, you have an attitude.”

  “Byron,” she mimicked, “you have a nerve barging into my house after what you did to me.”

  “What I did to you?” he repeated mildly.

  She got the point and flushed clear to her hairline, almost making him believe she was a maiden lady. “What we did to ourselves,” she corrected. “Now get out.”

  He switched tactics. Not that he wanted to prolong this scene and have her attempt to forcibly remove him, but he did have a nonrefundable return ticket to Providence for the Sunday morning after the wedding. If he was to survive until then, he needed to neutralize Nora Gates as a potentially explosive force.

  Of course, the truth wasn’t going to help that process. “Look, Nora, I know it must seem presumptuous of me to walk in here after all this time, but I knew if I rang the doorbell you’d never let me in.”

  “I never said you were stupid.”

  So far, reason wasn’t working with the woman. “Then we’d have ended up having this discussion on the porch,” he added, “which I know you wouldn’t want. As I recall, you’d prefer to be a receiver of gossip than a subject of gossip—”

  It was a low blow. He could see his words scratch right up her spine. “Leave, Byron. Slither out of my house and out of Tyler the same way you slithered in. I can’t imagine that Cliff Forrester needs a friend like you.”

  Probably he didn’t, but they were brothers, and that was something neither of them could change. “I haven’t seen him in five years.”

  That wasn’t strictly true. He’d seen Cliff three years ago. From afar. They hadn’t talked. Byron had sensed that Cliff wasn’t ready yet, might never be, and for his brother’s sake he’d left.

  Nora’s clear, incisive gray eyes focused on him in a way that brought back memories, too many memories. Of her passion, of her anger. Of how damned much they’d lost when he’d left Tyler. “Did he invite you?” she asked, her tone accusatory.

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? No—no, don’t tell me.” She dropped her hands to her sides, then pointed with one finger toward the front door. Her precious self-control had abandoned her. “Out, Byron. Right now. You’re worse than a cad. I don’t know what your game is, but I’m not going to let you crash Cliff and Liza’s wedding. Cliff’s pulled himself together after an ordeal probably none of us in Tyler can imagine. He’s happy, Byron. You are not going to play games with the man’s head. You both might be from Rhode Island and maybe you do know his family or something, but you’re not his friend. I know you’re not. Cliff didn’t even invite his own mother and brother to his wedding—Liza did. He doesn’t even know about it, and if you tell him…” She gulped for air. “By God, I’ll come after you myself. So you go on and leave him alone.” She took a breath. “And leave me alone, too.”

  Byron had debated interrupting three or four times, but had kept his mouth shut. “Nora,” he began reasonably, “you don’t understand. I…”

  “Out!”

  “I didn’t come here to bother you or Cliff.”

  “Now, Byron. Now, or I swear I’ll—”

  She didn’t finish, but instead grabbed a huge book of Beethoven sonatas from the gateleg table. She heaved it at him. Byron ducked. The book crashed into the piano, banging down on the keys, making a discordant racket. Nora was red-faced.

  Clearly this was no time for revelations destined only to make her madder. Byron grinned at her. “Bet you haven’t lost your temper like that since I was last in Tyler.”

  “You’re damned right I haven’t!”

  Then a big blond kid was filling up the doorway behind her. “This guy bothering you, Miss Gates?”

  Byron could see her debating whether to sic the kid on him. Yeah—throw him in the oven, will you? But she shook her head tightly, and said even more tightly, “Not anymore.”

  This time, Byron took the hint. As he walked past Nora and through the living room, he heard the kid make the mistake of laughing. “Gee, Miss Gates, I guess you’re stronger than you look. That book’s heavy.”

  “Chromatic scale, Mr. Travis. Four octaves, ascending and descending. Presto.”

  Byron decided not to hang around. But he had no intention of leaving Tyler. There was his brother to see, Cliff’s fiancée to meet, a body at a lake to learn more about. And there was Nora Gates herself. Piano player, department store owner, would-be Victorian old maid. She was a woman of contradictions and spirit, and as he walked back to his rented car, it occurred to Byron that the past three years had been but a pause—a little gulp—in their relationship. It wasn’t finished. There’d been no resolution. No final chord.

  At least, he thought, not yet.

  * * *

  NORA DIDN’T CHARGE Ricky Travis for his lesson. In fact, for the first time since she’d had pneumonia six years ago, she cut a lesson short.

  “You okay, Miss Gates?” Rick asked.

  “I’m fine, just a little distracted.”

  “That guy—”

  “I’m not worried about him. Don’t you be, either.”

  He shrugged. “If you say so. I’ll have the Bach down by next week. Promise. It’s just hard with it being football season.”

  “I understand. It’s not easy being both a talented musician and a football player at this time of year. But you’ve had a good lesson, Rick. It’s not you. I’m just…well, it’s been a long day.” She rose from her chair beside the piano. “I’ll see you next week.”

  “Sure thing, Miss Gates.”

  With Rick gone, the house seemed deadly quiet. Foregoing Bach and Beethoven, Nora put on an early Bruce Springsteen tape and tried to exorcise Byron Sanders from her mind.

  She couldn’t.

  She hadn’t forgotten a single thing about him. He was as tall as she remembered. As strongly built and lithe, and every bit as darkly good-looking. His eyes were still as blue and piercing and unpredictable—and as dangerously enticing—as the Atlantic Ocean.

  It would have been easier, she thought, if there’d been things she’d forgotten. The dark hairs on his forearms, for example, or his long, blunt-nailed fingers. But she’d remembered everything—the warmth of his eyes, the breadth of his shoulders, the way he had of forcing her not to take herself too seriously, even how irritating he could be. Especially how irritating he could be.

  How had he learned about Cliff and Liza’s wedding? It wasn’t a secret, but how had an East Coast photographer heard that a Wisconsin couple was getting married? Maybe he did know Cliff—but Cliff had said he di
dn’t know a Byron Sanders. Perhaps Byron knew the Forresters, the mother and brother Liza had taken the liberty of inviting. Nora wondered if she should warn Liza about Byron.

  Singing aloud with Bruce, she made herself another pot of tea and dug in her refrigerator for some leftovers for supper. If Sanders had shown up before Cliff had, she’d have pressed Liza’s reticent fiancé a little harder about his fellow Rhode Islander.

  Well, she thought, pulling a bit of brown rice and chicken from the fridge, someone was lying.

  She made a tossed salad and warmed up her dinner. Really, what a terrific old maid she’d make. A pity the term was démodé.

  The Spinster Gates.

  It sounded deliciously forbidding. She turned off Bruce and tried to put her former lover—arrgh, why couldn’t he be less appealing?—out of her mind. Sitting at her kitchen table, she found herself staring at her hands. They were ringless, still soft and pale. She remembered Aunt Ellie’s hands in her final days: old, spotted, gnarled. Yet they’d possessed a delicacy and beauty that suggested she was a woman who’d lived her life on her own terms, a life that had been full and happy. She’d relished her family, she’d had many friends. She’d been generous and spirited and frugal, a model of independence and responsibility.

  Once, over a similar supper of leftovers, Nora had asked Aunt Ellie if she ever got lonely. “Of course,” she’d replied immediately, in her blunt, unswerving way. “Everyone does. I’m no different.”

  “But…I meant, did you ever wished you’d married?”

  She’d shrugged, not backing away from so personal a question. “At times I’ve wondered what it might have been like, but I’ve no doubt a married woman at times wonders what would have become of her if she hadn’t married. But I have no regrets, any more than your mother had regrets about having married your father. I know and have known many wonderful men. I just didn’t care to marry any of them.”

  “What about children?” Nora had asked.

  Aunt Ellie had laughed. “My word, Tyler’s filled with children. Always has been. You know, I believe sometimes when you don’t have children of your own you’re better able to appreciate other people’s. You can do things for them and with them that their parents simply can’t. You can enrich their lives. You don’t worry about the same things. To be honest, Nora, I’ve never had the urge to bear children myself. I know that’s hard for some people to believe, but it’s the truth. But I’ve enjoyed having children in my life.”