Read the book: «The Bride-In-Law»

One

The note was in the sugar bowl, where he’d be sure to find it. Tucker read it through, swore, shook his head and swore some more. It was the last straw in a week that had been filled with last straws.

“Dammit all to hell, Dad, this had better be a practical joke,” he muttered.

The first straw had been Monday, when one of his subcontractors had gone belly-up. Then on Tuesday, right in the middle of Hanes Mall Boulevard at the height of rush hour traffic, one of his trucks had blown a transmission.

To add to the misery, after a solid week of rain, the entire site was a mud hole. The paving was behind schedule, the framing crew, unable to work, had celebrated by getting drunk, starting a brawl and busting up a bar. Now two of his carpenters were in jail and a third was hobbling around on crutches.

If he thought it would help, he’d get cross-eyed, rubber-lipped drunk himself, something he hadn’t done since his freshman year in college. If he thought it might solve a single one of his problems, he’d go out and buy himself a carton of cigarettes and a fifth of whisky and let nature take its course.

But he didn’t smoke and other than the occasional beer, he didn’t drink, and besides, what good would it do to lock the barn door after the horse had bolted?

He reread the note, which was scribbled on the back of an envelope with a carpenter’s pencil, judging from the smudges. It was short and to the point. “Bernice and I are honeymooning at the Blue Flamingo near Pilot Mountain. Don’t forget to deposit my check on the first. Harold.”

“Ah, for crying out loud, Pop,” he growled. You’d think that at the age of seventy-four, a man would know better than to blow his whole damn social security check on one of these new virility drugs, start trawling the senior citizen circuit, and wind up marrying the first female he could talk into his bed.

Tucker wanted to believe he’d behaved with a little more dignity when his own marriage had ended, if working his buns off to fill in the hours until he could fall in bed exhausted could be called dignity. At least he hadn’t done anything seriously stupid, much less dangerous.

“Dammit, Dad, why’d you have to go and mess up now, just when we were getting back on track?”

Tuck had been barely making it, back when his old man announced his decision to move back home. What with the divorce settlement, child support, school fees and the building business in a temporary slump, he’d felt lucky to find an affordable dump to move into.

Shelly had got the house, along with just about everything else he owned. He’d been too numb to put up much of a fight. The anger had come later, when it was too late. By the time Harold had called to ask about coming back to North Carolina, he’d just begun to realize how empty his life was without a family to come home to.

He’d figured that having his father back home would eat up some of the loneliness that crept up on him when he was too tired to work and too restless to fall asleep.

So he’d paid for a one-way ticket and gone to meet his widowed father at the airport, expecting to see the same man he’d known all his adult life. Gray-haired, bushy-browed, wearing the familiar high-rise khakis with an open-necked dress shirt.

That wasn’t what he got. Baggy shorts and a flowered shirt he could’ve understood. His folks had retired to Florida, after all, and the old man had stuck it out for a few years after being widowed, claiming he liked the sun and the shuffleboard, and even the occasional game of geezer softball.

The Harold Dennis who’d walked off the plane had been wearing faded jeans and a raunchy T-shirt. He’d been sporting a gray ponytail, a scraggly gray beard and one gold earring. Tucker had barely managed to turn a snort of disbelieving laughter into a greeting, but he’d hugged the old guy and told him he looked terrific. What the hell, he remembered thinking at the time—at that age, what harm could there be in kicking over the traces one last time?

Obviously, Tucker thought now, his brain hadn’t been hitting on all eight cylinders. He’d be the first to admit he hadn’t offered much in the way of companionship for a lonely widower, but they’d rocked along together pretty well. Once he’d settled in, Harold had looked up a few old friends, made a few new ones. On the nights when Tucker got home early enough, the two men shared a meal, watched the news on TV or a game if Tampa or the Marlins were playing. Harold was partial to Florida teams.

When the old man had taken to staying out late, Tucker hadn’t thought much about it. Once baseball season was over, he’d joined a square-dancing club, started playing a little bingo. Where was the harm in that? Tuck was just glad he’d made a new life for himself after forty-six years of a good marriage. At least the rented house no longer felt so empty when Tucker came home after a twelve-hour day on the site.

The thing was—and Tucker should have thought about it sooner—the rules had changed since Harold’s bachelor days. There were dangers out there a man his age couldn’t even imagine. He should’ve warned him. Should’ve taken him aside for a father-son talk about scams and women and being too trusting. Reminding him to take his blood pressure medicine wasn’t enough.

Instead, he’d worked right alongside his crews, buried himself in plats, blueprints and the never-ending bookwork, not to mention the constant worries over rising interest rates, rising lumber costs, tightening regulations and the shrinking market for new houses. And wondered how his son was getting along and if Shelly would allow the kid to spend at least part of the summer with his father and grandfather.

Once more Tucker read the brief note. Swearing softly, he crumpled it in his fist.

Bernice. The name didn’t ring any bells. Damned if he wasn’t tempted to say to hell with the whole mess. To hell with old gaffers who didn’t have sense enough to keep their zipper zipped and their annuity safe. To hell with ex-wives who played dog-in-the-manger games with vulnerable kids. To hell with the feds and all the petty bureaucrats whose sole purpose was to hamstring small businessmen in red tape.

While he was at it, he tossed in a few choice words for the weather, and for whoever decreed that a man’s responsibility was to work his tail off while everyone else in his family was off having fun.

Tuck’s fourteen-year-old son, Jay, was away on a fly-fishing trip in Colorado with a school group. His ex-wife, Shelly, was busy squandering her settlement while she looked for another sucker. His father was wearing earrings and love beads and letting himself be reeled in by some bimbo named Bernice.

Loathing self-pity, he briefly considered straddling the old Harley and eating some dust and mosquitoes while he worked the frustration out of his system.

Trouble was, he was a worrier. Always had been. He worried about his son, who was at a vulnerable age. He worried about his partner, who was a great salesman, if little more.

And yes, dammit, he worried about the old man. Here he’d thought they were rocking along in a pretty comfortable rut, with Harold cooking breakfast and Tucker picking up pizza or barbecue on the nights when Harold wasn’t going out.

Tonight, as tired as he was, Tucker had planned to stop by and pick up a six-pack, a pizza, rent a movie and indulge in an evening of quiet debauchery. Just him and the old man.

But first the truck wouldn’t start, which meant he’d had to hitch a ride home, which meant no beer, no video, and no take-out supper.

And now this.

Damn.

He read the note again. Honeymooning? Shacking up was one thing, but honeymooning?

He swore. And then he reached for his leather jacket, stepped into his boots and swore some more.

It took a lot to ruffle Annie’s composure. She prided herself on her even disposition, although lately it hadn’t been as easy to maintain. But then, duty was her middle name.

Actually, it was Rebecca, but her parents used to brag on her sense of responsibility, making her all the more determined not to disappoint them. To that end she’d been valedictorian of her high school class, graduated with honors from college, which had pleased her family enormously. Personally, she’d taken more pride in never having had zits or a bad hair day, but that was something she tried not to think about, as it was both immodest and unbecoming and might even invite an attack of both.

Pride Goeth Before a Fall. She’d heard that little homily all her life. It was one of the pitfalls of being a preacher’s kid. Sometimes she wondered how she might have turned out if her father had been a baker, a banker or a bartender.

Probably just as dull. James Madison Summers had been a well-respected Methodist minister. His wife, equally respected, had taken her role as a minister’s wife seriously. Both of them had prided themselves on being perfect role models for the daughter who’d come along at a time in their lives when they’d given up all hope of ever having a child.

They’d been wonderful parents. Strict, but only because they loved her and wanted the best for her. An obedient child, Annie had worked hard to earn the approval of both her parents and whatever community they happened to be living in at the time, by being a credit to her upbringing.

She’d heard that one, too, more times than she cared to recall. “That Annie Summers is a credit to her folks. Might not be much to look at, but she’ll be a comfort to them in their old age.”

Not until years later, after both parents were gone and Annie, still unmarried with no prospects in sight, had moved into the shabby Victorian house her father had bought after he retired, did she begin to wonder if being a credit was all it was cracked up to be. Unfortunately, at this stage of her life, it had become a habit. She didn’t know how to be anything else.

Cousin Bernice was her own personal plague of locusts. If ever two women were born to clash, it was Annie and Bernice Summers. It wasn’t only the age difference. Annie at thirty-six was a mature, levelheaded, responsible woman who wore a lot of beige, who drank one percent milk, ate whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables and flossed every day of her life.

Bernice, at seventy-one, was a ditzy, certified flake, who dyed her hair orange, padded her bra and thought saturated fat was one of the major food groups. She wore purple-framed glasses with turquoise eye shadow, reeked of gardenia cologne and arthritis-strength linament and considered Jerry Springer the epitome of educational TV.

When Bernie’s dilapidated old apartment building had been demolished to make way for a new stadium, Annie had insisted on taking her in because Bernice was a senior citizen and Annie knew her duty. Besides, they were both alone in the world except for each other, and heaven knows, there was plenty of room in the old three-story house on Mulberry.

Since then, Bernice had done everything she could think of to get Annie to set her up in another apartment, which was out of the question. It wasn’t only the money, although that was a definite consideration. The truth was, Annie wasn’t at all sure Cousin Bernie could look after herself, what with all the scams being perpetrated against senior citizens these days. You heard about things like that on the news all the time.

Which was another thing that drove her up the wall. Television. Annie wasn’t an addict. Far from it. She turned on the set after dinner for whatever was being offered on PBS or the History Channel, or occasionally the Discovery Channel.

Bernice watched all day long. She was hooked on MTV and daytime sleaze shows. She bought herself a cheap boom box, and when she wasn’t watching TV she played the thing at full volume with the bass turned all the way up—or down, as the case may be—claiming her hearing wasn’t what it used to be.

Small wonder.

Lately, with the noise going full blast, she’d taken to doing something with her body she called the macaroni. Annie thought it looked as if she were counting off her body parts to be sure nothing was missing.

And she had a cat. A house cat. The Reverend and Mrs. Summers had never allowed Annie to own a pet, claiming a parsonage was no place for animals. Annie had been meaning all along to get herself a nice, quiet cat from the shelter, but that was before Bernie. Before Zen. Bernie’s tomcat, Zen, was a fat, smelly, evil-tempered beast, half Persian, half coon cat, who delighted in doing his business in the indoor window boxes that lined the sun parlor and sharpening his claws on the upholstery.

Now that it was too late, Annie realized she should have laid out a few house rules right from the first, but she hadn’t. Sweet, docile, dutiful Annie had been taught to respect her elders, and with all her eccentricities, Bernice was still an elder.

So she politely fumed in silence, thought bad thoughts about Zen, who obviously thought them right back at her, and wallowed in guilt over her own uncharitable nature.

But this was too much. Annie didn’t know whether to believe Bernie or not. She was obviously up to something, but marriage?

Absurd. It was probably just another attempt to force Annie to find her an apartment and help her pay the rent. Merciful heavens, it was all Annie could do to keep up with the maintenance and repairs on her own house. She’d have sold the thing long ago except for the niggling feeling that it would be disloyal to her father, who’d been so thrilled at finally owning a house of his own, even if it was a relic in a declining neighborhood.

“Oh, Bernie, why did you have to go and do something so foolish?” she asked the cat, who stared unblinkingly from a pair of malevolent yellow eyes.

She would have to go after her, that was all there was to it. After a long day at school, dealing with the usual bureaucratic headaches, Annie had counted on leaving Bernie to her MTV and settling down in her bedroom study with a pot of tea, a little Mozart and a plate of whole-wheat crackers spread with tahini.

Being head of a family was no easy job, even when that family consisted only of a couple of cousins who had nothing in common except for a single ancestor. So far, she hadn’t even found a way to explain Bernie to her fiancé and his mother.

Four and a half years ago, Annie had gotten herself engaged. Since then she’d been waiting for Eddie to work the wanderlust out of his soul, come home and find a teaching position so they could settle down and raise a real family.

Annie read the note again, ignoring the is dotted with tiny hearts. Ignoring the instructions for looking after Zen, who liked pink salmon, not dry cat food, and four percent milk, not one percent.

Somewhere upstairs a loose shutter slammed against the side of the house. Zen whipped his bushy yellow tail around her ankles and smirked at her. “No wonder you’re such a fat slob,” she told the creature. “I hope you get hair balls.” She still hadn’t forgiven him for uprooting her twelve-year-old geranium.

The Blue Flamingo was north of town on Highway 52. Miles and miles north of town. And it was raining. Annie hated driving in the rain. So did her car. Trust Bernice not to make this easy.

Prove you love me.

Is that what she was saying? Like children acting out in wildly inappropriate ways to get attention? To see if anyone cared enough to haul them back into line?

She’d read reams on the subject of behavioral problems, but as assistant principal she’d never actually been called on to deal with them in person. Mostly she dealt with the mountains of paperwork necessary to the operation of a private day school.

Almost everything Bernie did was wildly inappropriate for a woman of her age. She knew exactly how to get what she wanted, which was probably what this whole exercise was all about. It had taken her less than a day after moving in to learn how to play on Annie’s overgrown sense of responsibility.

“One of these days,” Annie muttered as she backed down the driveway and headed north into the teeth of a cold, blowing rain, “I’m going to do something seriously irresponsible, I swear it.”

The motel was even worse than she’d expected. Totally dismal, practically deserted, it made her want to cry. If there was anything more depressing than wet concrete blocks and scraggly, dead azaleas, she didn’t know what it was. Especially when seen in a drizzling rain under the flickering light of a broken neon sign.

There were six units in all. Bernie’s elderly red convertible was pulled up in front of unit five. Annie took a deep breath and reminded herself once more that when children acted up, more often than not it was to gain attention. And as she hadn’t been as attentive as she might have been, Annie accepted at least part of the blame.

With both her temper and her anxiety tamped down to a manageable level, she swung open the driver’s side door and stepped out just as a motorcycle roared into the space beside her.

“Would you please watch where you’re going?” She glared first at the rider and then down at the muddy water he’d splashed on her coattail and pantyhose.

“Lady, I’m not the one who opened a door without looking to see if it was clear.”

“Well, excuse me, but the parking places are clearly marked.” Annie dug out a rumpled tissue and blotted a gray-spattered shin. She knew all about men who rode motorcycles.

Well, actually, she didn’t. Not personally. Her dentist, a perfectly respectable father of three, owned a Harley. He had more pictures of the machine on his office wall than he did of his children.

But there was nothing at all respectable looking about this man. He could have modeled for Bernie’s favorite poster, the one showing a quartet of grungy, angry young men slouching so that their respective pelvises were thrust forward in a way that was unsettling, if not actually indecent.

Not that his was. Thrust forward, that was.

She snapped her gaze back up to his face to find that he was glaring right back at her, taking in everything from her wet shoes to her soggy silk scarf, her rain-spattered glasses, her wrinkled old trench coat and the hair that was dripping down on her face.

His opinion couldn’t have been more obvious.

All right, so she was damp and a bit disheveled, at least she was decent. His jeans were not only wet, muddy and ragged, they showed every bulge on his body. And if that jaw of his had seen a razor in the past three days, she would be very much surprised. He looked like the kind of man parents of impressionable teenage girls warned their daughters against, and with just cause.

A stick figure done in shades of brown. That was Tucker’s opinion of the woman who clumped past him, lifted a fist and banged on the door of number five, which, according to the zombie in what passed for an office, was registered to a Mr. and Mrs. H. Dennis.

If this was the broad who’d sunk her hooks into his father, then the old man had lost his last marble. Coming up behind her, he said, “After you.”

She glanced over her shoulder, not bothering to hide her uneasiness. “My next-door neighbor knows where I am. He’s a deputy sheriff.”

“Yeah, well mine’s a retired dairy farmer. You going to knock again?”

“Bernice doesn’t have any money. I don’t know what she led you to believe, but—”

“Bernice? You’re not her?”

“She. And of course I’m not.”

“She, her—Lady, there’s no ‘of course’ about it. My father’s in that room with some woman named Bernice, and if you’re not her—”

“She. Your father?”

He reached past her and pounded on the door. “Harold, open up!”

The draperies were drawn, but there were lights on inside, and the sound of TV. They waited together, Tucker and the stick figure. She was almost as tall as he was, but then, she was wearing some kind of ugly thick-soled shoes that lifted her a good two inches above the puddle of rain that had collected in front of the door.

His own boots were wet, caked with mud. So were his jeans. Riding like a bat out of hell, he’d taken back roads and shortcuts, splashing through half the mud holes in the county.

The door cracked open. One faded blue eye under a bushy gray brow peered out over the chain. “Tuck?”

“Pop, what the devil—”

“Now, don’t get your shorts in a twist, Son, everything’s on the up-and-up.”

“The hell it—”

“Bernice, are you in there?” the stick figure called over his shoulder. She was practically draped all over him, trying to see through the crack. She smelled like wet wool and strawberries.

Strawberries?

“You must be Bernie’s cousin, Annie.” The eye in the doorway shifted. The door closed a moment, then opened again minus the chain. “Honey, are you decent? Looks like we’ve got company.”

The furniture was bottom-of-the-line motel, showing both age and wear. One of Bernice’s favorite TV shows was just coming on. Annie called it World’s Tackiest Videos. On the lopsided vinyl table was an unopened bucket of fried chicken and a bottle of domestic—extremely domestic—champagne.

Dead silence persisted for all of thirty seconds, then Bernice emerged from the bathroom holding a plastic glass in each hand, and everyone started talking at once.

Harold moved to his bride’s side and laid a protective arm over her shoulder. On the other side of the bed, Annie and Tucker glared at each other.

Annie got in the first shot. I’m warning you, if your father seduced my cousin with any thought of—”

“Seduced! My father never seduced a woman in his life.”

“Now, Son, you don’t know—”

“And you tell your—your cousin for me that if she thinks I’m going to allow some brass-haired bimbo to feather her nest at my father’s expense, she can damn well think again!”

Annie gasped. “Don’t you—you can’t—”

“No? Try me.” His eyes narrowed on a deadly glint.

“Don’t tempt me,” she shot back, forgetting in a single moment the training of a lifetime. “If you think for one minute some thick-necked Neanderthal with a steroid-inflated ego is going to cast aspersions at my cousin, you can just—”

“What did you call me?”

“If the shoe fits...” She glared at his big muddy boots.

“Now, just hush up, you two. Tucker, I taught you better than that. You’ve got no call to go insulting my wife.” The older man turned to the woman at his side. “Honey, I’m ashamed to tell you, but this is my boy. He’s not a bad sort, once you get to know him, I guess we just took him by surprise. Tucker, say hello to your new mama.”

Annie could almost find it in her heart to feel sorry for the man called Tucker, who looked as if he’d swallowed a mouthful of fish bones. Second cousins were one thing. Father and son were another. She didn’t know who was trying hardest to protect whom, but it had been battle stations from the time Tucker and Annie wedged through the doorway, both determined to rescue their respective relatives.

The older man, dressed in navy blue suit pants and a white shirt, looked as dignified as any man could look wearing an earring, a gray ponytail and matching goatee.

Bernice was at her flamboyant best in a two-piece purple silk suit and fuzzy pink bedroom slippers. There was a wilted bouquet of pink roses on the bed beside a man’s coat and Bernie’s best hat, the one with the rhinestones and white fake fur.

There were tears in her cousin’s eyes. Oh, Lord, if they overflowed, so would the layers of turquoise shadow and navy-blue mascara. No bride, regardless of the circumstances, deserved to be seen with makeup streaking down her cheeks to settle into all the creases.

Annie’s shoulders drooped as the fight went clean out of her. “You’re really married, then,” she said with a resigned sigh.

Bernie beamed and nodded, her clumpy lashes glistening like sweet-gum twigs in the rain. Harold’s chest swelled. He looked from one to the other and his gaze returned to his son. “All right and tight. Had it done this morning. You can be the first to wish us luck.”

Annie looked at Tucker, who looked back at her, daring her to speak up.

“Bernie, it’s not too late,” she said. “There’s a new apartment going up near Clemmons. I thought we might drive out this weekend and look it over.”

Bernie’s lower lip trembled. She gave a little sob. Unfortunately it was the same tactic she’d tried when Annie had brought home a ten-pound sack of dry cat food instead of the salmon filet she’d requested for that damned cat.

Before things could deteriorate further, Tucker spoke up, a sickly smile on his face. “Why don’t we all go out to supper somewhere and talk this over?”

The newlyweds glanced at the bucket of chicken and the bottle of champagne on the table. Bernie looked helplessly at the two glasses she’d just retrieved from the bathroom, and Tucker followed her gaze, seeing bright orange nail polish on liver-spotted hands, a gleaming gold band on the third finger, left hand.

“Okay, so maybe we could just go somewhere where there’s more than two chairs and have ourselves a nice, quiet discussion.”

Harold cleared his throat. “Son, I don’t think you understand. This is my honeymoon. I’ve already made plans for the evening.”

Tucker opened his mouth to argue, thought better of it and shut it again. There was nothing to be gained at this point by hurting his father’s feelings and insulting the female who’d tricked him into marrying her. However, if the old bat thought for one minute that she was going to latch on to his father’s social security, his annuity and his life insurance, she could damn well think again.

“Okay, so why don’t we just sleep on it,” he said, and groaned inwardly as he heard his own words.

Annie said, “I’ll call you first thing tomorrow, Bernie.”

“But not too early.” Bernie looked at her bridegroom and winked, scattering a few flecks of mascara on her unnaturally rosy cheeks. “And, honey—fresh salmon, remember? Canned will do in a pinch if you can’t get fresh, but remember about the milk—four percent, none of that skimmed stuff.”

Tucker didn’t even try to figure that one out. He ushered the beige stick figure outside, feeling as if he’d been trapped on the twelfth floor of a ten-story building.

Without an elevator.