Magical Weddings (137 page)

“Okay?” Dave asked, gently touching her shoulder.

“Of course,” she replied, swallowing hard, feeling a ridiculous prickle behind her eyes. Weddings never made her cry. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. She blinked several times to clear away the sensation.

“Let me take those.” Dave reached for the plates in her hands. He nodded toward their parents. “I’ll be their delivery service.”

She let go of the plates, nodding her thanks, and waited. Lucas and Sylvie weren’t talking. They were just looking into one another’s eyes. Meredith wasn’t fazed. The two of them had always communicated without words. She’d witnessed enough to believe the rumors claiming Lucas was telepathic. She thought perhaps both of them were.

Finally, Lucas looked back at Meredith and said, “Buying. We’re going to buy.”

“It would be nice to be near Akira and Zane,” Sylvie said. “For…” She let the words trail off, but she and Lucas exchanged a glance that seemed weighted with significance.

“… easy visiting,” Lucas continued.

Meredith didn’t comment. Max Latimer had never been shy about some of his more unusual beliefs, so she knew perfectly well that Max believed the ghost of his fifteen-year old grandson, Dillon, lived with Akira. If Dillon’s parents wanted to live near the spirit of their dead son, that was clearly none of her business.

And she might just have the perfect place.

‘Good work, Meredith.’
Meredith thought as she stabbed a piece of macaroni with her fork.
‘Well done. Good job.’

She hadn’t talked to Jan Terrell first. She didn’t have the listing for the house. There was no contract. The damn place wasn’t even officially on the market yet.

Commission? What commission?

And, honestly, that was fair. All she had done was walk Lucas and Sylvie over to Mark and Jessie Terrell. The fact that Lucas had played baseball with their older brother, knew the house, thought it was perfect… hell, anyone at the wedding could have made the same connection.

So kudos to her, she was the realtor of the ages. The one who had just tossed away thousands of dollars of commission by not sensibly saying, “Let’s meet at my office on Monday. I’ll show you some options.”

The mac’n’cheese was still good, even though it was cold. It had been waiting on the table for her when she got back. Dave had made a plate of food for her. Funny choices—the roast beef, yes, but he’d skipped all the seafood. Did he not like fish? She didn’t know, but she appreciated that he’d given her a generous serving of the kids’ pasta.

“Oh, my goodness, I do remember that!” Kaye clasped her hands together. Her cheeks were flushed, Meredith noticed, but she couldn’t sum up the requisite energy to worry about whether her mom might be coming down with a fever.

Besides, Kaye looked great. She and Abe seemed to be having a wonderful time. They were talking about old times, other weddings, stories of when Meredith and Dave were younger.

“So Ellen told Meredith that anything she wanted to do with Dave was okay. She thought maybe they’d go out for ice cream.” Abe leaned forward in his seat, his eyes bright. “When she came home, it turned out that Meredith and Dave had bicycled to Sweet Springs and gone snake-catching. They’d brought home this big—” Abe stretched his hands out as if to indicate a snake as long as his arms could reach.

“Hey,” Meredith protested. “It wasn’t gigantic.”

Her mother laughed. Kaye put her hands about a foot apart. “Meredith always said it was a nice little snake.”

“We could probably split the difference,” Abe offered with a laugh of his own. He looked good, too, Meredith realized. Happy. Not tired. Not in pain. Ever since Ellen died last year, Abe had seemed lost. It was good to see him relaxed and chatty. “But it wasn’t the size that mattered.”

“I didn’t know,” Meredith muttered. She hated this story. Dave would have been… what, nine? She would have been just about to turn thirteen. Taking care of him had been her first ever summer job. She’d wanted to do a good job.

And the snake had seemed like a perfectly nice little snake to her. It was definitely not the enormous monster Abe made it out to be. Poisonous, okay, well, there had been that. But it wasn’t like either she or Dave had gotten bitten. And Dave had wanted a pet.

She’d meant to be nice.

She pushed the plate away. She didn’t want to know how many calories in comfort food she’d just consumed. She was going to have to make time to use her treadmill tomorrow.

As if he’d been watching for the right moment, Mark appeared out of nowhere. He’d loosened his tie and lost his jacket. His hair was attractively rumpled and he had a slightly sweaty glow, as if he’d been dancing. Ignoring Kaye and Abe, Mark said, “Meredith, I wanted to thank you again.”

Meredith forced a smile. “Really, I’m glad I could help.”

“We should talk about a finder’s fee. Maybe tomorrow? Over lunch?” Mark suggested.

“I, uh—” Meredith didn’t know how to respond. A finder’s fee would be lovely. Not as nice as the commissions would have been, but still, it would be a generous gesture. Lunch with Mark, though? Not so lovely. She fell back on an evasive answer. “I’ll have to check my schedule.”

“Of course.” Mark’s voice was warm. “I’m sure my mom will want to thank you, too. Maybe she’ll join us. Or invite you over for some of her pot roast. I’ll call you in the morning and we’ll set something up.”

Meredith didn’t release the sigh that wanted to escape. Damn it, she was going to be stuck. But business was business, she reminded herself. “Sounds good.”

As if he’d read her mind, Mark said, “But we shouldn’t be talking business. The night’s still young.” He tilted his head toward the dance floor, his smile boyish. “Come dance.”

“Oh, I…” Meredith glanced toward her mother and Abe, not sure what to do. How could she politely demur? Should she? She didn’t want to be rude. A finder’s fee could be at stake, after all, and they needed the money.

Kaye’s smile faded. Her gaze was steady on Meredith’s eyes. If she was sending a message, Meredith couldn’t decipher it.

“Oh, go ahead, honey. You’re too young to spend your evening sitting with the old folk. Go have some fun,” Abe encouraged.

Mark held out his hand as if to draw Meredith out of her chair. Meredith avoided it by crumpling her napkin and dropping it next to her plate before she stood. “Sure, let’s dance.”

The sun had set while she’d been eating and it was full dark, but tiny lights sparkled everywhere, in the trees and around the grounds, lining the paths, glittering off the water. The dance floor was crowded, but not too crowded, and the music was perfect. Covers, mostly, but good covers for the audience, a fun mix of fast-moving country and pop favorites.

For the first few minutes, Meredith felt stiff and uncomfortable, but she loved to dance, especially with people she knew, and friends and neighbors were all around her. So she danced, not so much with Mark as in his vicinity, doing her best to ignore him and let the rhythm win, the energy pour through her, for one song, then another, then a third.

Midway through the second song, Mark disappeared and then re-appeared, carrying two drinks. He tried to press one into her hand, but Meredith waved him off and kept dancing. His face looked flushed. As she turned away, she saw him tilt one of the glasses back, draining it. She caught a glimpse of Dave, not dancing, his face somber, and felt a moment of unease, but she pushed that away, too.

Finally, the singer declared that the band was taking a break and that in a few minutes, the bride and groom would be cutting the cake. Breathless and laughing, Meredith lifted the heavy hair off the back of her neck to let a breeze cool her down. She pulled her blouse away from her neck, plucking at the fabric. People were leaving the dance floor, opening up space, as the DJ took his place on the dais.

Mark leaned toward her, opening his mouth just as music, a heavily syncopated version of Jewel’s
You Were Meant for Me
, blasted forth through the speakers. Meredith winced, pressing her hand against her ear. Mark said something.

She blinked at him. Had he just said…

No, he couldn’t have said that.

She shook her head to let him know that she hadn’t heard him, that she didn’t understand.

He gestured toward the path around the spring, away from the speakers, before turning his back on her and heading in that direction. Meredith followed him, her heart pounding.

She had to be wrong.

He led her into a quieter stand of trees, nearer the dark, undecorated forest, and turned to face her. “Yeah, I wanted to tell you, I found those pictures when I was going through my old stuff.”

Meredith froze. Ice ran through her veins, up from her feet, down from her head, every inch of her body going cold. “Those pictures?”

“You know the ones.” Mark laughed. “My dad knew crap about computers. Yeah, he deleted them but they were easy to restore. I had them stashed on a Zip drive. You remember those? Technology of the ‘90s. I couldn’t believe it was still readable.”

“I thought your dad took your camera away.” The ice had broken and Meredith’s blood was rushing through her veins now, loud in her ears, pounding in her chest.

“Yeah, he did. The asshole.” Mark’s handsome face looked ugly in the shadowed light. “Guess I shouldn’t say that now, him being gone and all.”

“Probably not,” Meredith agreed automatically, not thinking about her words. How bad were they, those pictures? She’d seen them only once, so long ago, and the shock, the horrified surprise, left her memory a blur. Were they as awful as she remembered?

“Ha, you would take his side.” Mark lifted the drink he still carried to his mouth and took a gulp. “It sucked that you told him.”

“It sucked that you took them.”

“Aw, baby.” He stepped closer to her, touching her, sliding his hand up her arm. Meredith tensed, but didn’t stop him. “You were gorgeous. I couldn’t resist.”

“Did you plan it?” she asked. “I’ve always wondered. I don’t remember much about that night.”

“Yeah, you had a lot to drink.” The slight slur in his words didn't disguise the satisfaction in his tone.

Meredith slid her arm away from him, turning so that they were standing at an angle. She couldn’t look at his face. She didn’t want to see him. Instead, she looked beyond him, staring at the water. The floating lanterns were casting reflections, making the surface glimmer with light and color.

“I thought I was drinking iced tea.” She didn’t know whether she was saying the words to him or to herself. Had she really not known? Wasn’t there some part of her that identified the taste as wrong? Saw the gleam in his eye when he offered her a second glass?

“Long Island iced tea,” he corrected. “Not my fault if you were too stupid to know what that was.”

“Not your fault?” The sizzle of anger had her looking back at him. “I was sixteen. I’d never even tasted liquor before. I’d never…”

She’d never done anything. Not until that night, anyway. Oh, she’d tried beer, had an occasional sip of her mom’s wine. She wasn’t pure as the driven snow. She’d been a cheerleader, not a nun. And they’d fooled around—hot, sweet kisses that left them both breathless.

But he knew she wanted to wait.

He knew.

But he hadn’t wanted the same.

Maybe he was reading her mind because he responded with confidence. “You wanted it, baby. You did.”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t remember.” The words were cold.

“We should try again.” He stepped closer to her. “I’m staying at the bed and breakfast. You should come by. I’ll show you the pictures.”

“You’ll show me the—” Her voice started to rise and she forced herself to silence, glancing over her shoulder to see if curious eyes were watching them. What was he saying?

 “You were beautiful. Still are. Although I liked you better as a blonde.” He curled a lock of her hair around a finger, dropping his voice seductively. He was so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath against her skin, his presence looming over her.

Meredith pulled her hair free, brushing his hand away. She backed up to put some space between them, stopping on the very edge of the spring. Heat rose in her cheeks and her breath came faster.

“You’ll love them,” he promised, following her.

“I really don’t think so.” She sidestepped, trying to get around him. He was drunk. Had to be. But nothing was going to happen here, not with a hundred people twenty feet away. She was perfectly safe.

 “You wouldn’t want anyone else to see them. Not so many people on the internet twenty years ago, but now…” He let the words trail off. “You don’t want your clients to get a look, do you?”

“Are you serious?” Meredith choked the words out. Bile rose into her throat, blocking her airway as she imagined people looking at the images of her teenage self, sprawled naked and unconscious in the grass.

“I’d hate to do it. But I want you. You be nice to me. I’ll be nice back.” He shrugged and smirked, a lazy, self-satisfied, impossibly sure of himself expression.

Meredith stared at him.

Twenty years ago, he’d been a stupid kid. What he’d done was criminal. He’d deserved so much worse than having his camera confiscated after a scolding from his father. But she’d felt helpless, heartbroken, hurt. Now, though…

Now she felt angry.

Furious, in fact.

“You think you can blackmail me?” she asked, her voice scornful, her eyes snapping. “In your dreams.” She didn’t try to step around him this time, but pushed forward as if she’d go straight through him.

Before she could get away, he spun, grabbing her upper arm, his fingers hard. “I’m not joking. You owe me. My father never looked at me the same way again. My mother can still barely bring herself to speak to me.” He ground out the words through gritted teeth, but Meredith didn’t give a damn.

She brought her fist up, swinging wildly with the energy of a former head cheerleader—albeit one who’d never thrown a punch.

The impact was shattering. Did she hear the crack or feel it? A jolt of burning lightning ran straight up her arm, through her teeth and into her skull. She gave a yelp of breathless agony, tears bursting to life in her eyes, while Mark reeled backward. Unfortunately, he didn’t let go of her other arm.