Cathryn Parry - The Long Way Home

Maureen spoke again, but the words were muffled and Natalie couldn’t see her lips behind the veil.

“May I?” Natalie asked. She gently lifted the veil. “This is antique, isn’t it? Does it belong to someone in your family?”

“It was my nana’s.” Maureen’s lips quivered. “She died a year ago.” Then she shook her head. But her tough mask had slipped, and for a moment, Maureen had looked like the vulnerable teen Natalie remembered.

“Will you be my bridesmaid?” Maureen blurted.

“I...” What?

Maureen’s determination had come back, the fighting attitude that made her such a good salesperson. “Here’s what I need you to do,” she said crisply. “You said you wanted to help me, right? Well, this is the help I need.”

She abruptly stood and stalked to the front of the church, and Natalie had no choice but to follow her. They stopped in front of the altar.

Maureen pointed. “Jim—my fiancé—will be standing there. You remember Jimmy Hannaford?”

“Yes.” He was a former classmate of theirs, a skinny, quiet kid who liked computers and reading science fiction. “James was in all my math classes.”

“Yeah, well, he runs Wallis Point PC now. If you want your computer fixed, Jimmy is your guy. His office is two blocks over from your father’s law firm.”

Natalie nodded, but Maureen kept talking. “Jim will have four groomsmen—his best friend and my twin brothers. Bruce is the fourth groomsman, and he’ll be standing here.”

Natalie stared at the spot Maureen had indicated, and could easily see tall, good-looking Bruce Cole standing there dressed in a black tux and white tie. With his dark hair and his dark eyes, he would be heart-stopping.

She swallowed, missing half of what Maureen was saying.

“...then, on my side—” Maureen pointed to the left of the altar “—I have Jim’s sister and my two sisters-in-law as attendants. Plus you.” She suddenly turned to Natalie, and Natalie blinked at the undisguised pleading in her eyes. “If you’ll do it. If you’ll stand up for me.”

Maureen clutched the veil in her fist, and Natalie felt her heart go out to this hard, hurt woman who didn’t have a best friend or a sister of her own to stand up for her on her special day.

Just like me, Natalie thought. Just like me.

“I’m honored you asked me,” she said.

“So will you do it?” Maureen stared hard at Natalie. “Bruce will be paired with you in the wedding party, first for the chapel ceremony, and then for the reception afterward. I won’t have much time to spend with him, so I’d be depending on you to make him feel comfortable.”

Natalie looked again to the spot where Bruce would stand. Then to where she would stand, across from him. They would walk down the aisle together, and later, dance at the reception with the rest of the bridal party.

“Where...where is the reception?” Natalie asked, cringing inwardly because she was sure she knew the answer. Where else did locals host their parties?

Maureen’s eyes narrowed. “The Grand Beachfront Hotel,” she snapped. “Is that okay with you?”

Bruce wasn’t going to like it at all.

“It’s fine with me,” Natalie said. But her knees were shaking and her tongue felt tied. Why had she regressed to a shy, awkward teenager? Maybe she wasn’t up for this task.

“Bruce is single, by the way,” Maureen said. “He’s not bringing a date, so you don’t have to worry about any awkwardness there.”

Lovely. Natalie should say no. She should run away. This could be an absolute disaster.

Then again, if she was able to pull off what Maureen wanted, wouldn’t it be best for everyone? She would help her father and Maureen and the Cole family and Bruce...heck, in a sense she could help the entire town by keeping the law firm local. If she had learned any of the skills she’d claimed to have during those years on her own, then she had to do this, for everyone’s sake.

“Okay,” Natalie said. “I’ll do it.”

CHAPTER TWO

BRUCE COLE STOOD in the rental car office at Boston’s Logan airport and shook his head in disbelief.

They’d assigned him a minivan? Really?

He glanced at the electronic board listing the last names of the arriving platinum-level customers. There he was, “Cole, B.,” assigned to the vehicle parked in spot 367. Here he was at spot 367, and there sat a minivan, which was against the explicit instructions on his frequent-traveler profile.

Bruce sighed. The golden rule of traveling was that anything could go wrong, at any moment, for any reason. Terminal shutdowns, bad weather, airplane mechanical problems, a hotel closed by Legionnaire’s Disease. He considered himself lucky he hadn’t been a passenger in an emergency landing on a jumbo jet in the Hudson River. Yet.

But the corollary to the golden rule was that there were some things a frequent traveler could influence, even control. And road warriors, with their points and their elevated status, had more power than those people who only traveled once in a blue moon.

Civilians, the travel companies could afford to inconvenience. Customers like him, not so much.

He left his suitcase and his briefcase on the pavement and peered inside the van’s window. Fate must be laughing at him, because there was a child seat strapped in the back.

Sorry, fate. That wasn’t ever going to happen. Even though he was only driving back to Wallis Point for this one night—and against his best instincts—this van was the worst vehicle he could show up in. His parents and Mark and Mike wanted him to stick around and be part of the family. Maureen, the headstrong real estate agent, would be trying to sell him a town house right down the street from hers.

Not a chance in hell.

His life was exactly the way he wanted it. He was free. Independent. Unencumbered.

No close relationships.

The only reason he’d made room in his schedule to fly back to Wallis Point to be in his sister’s wedding was that she had nagged him until he’d given in.

Not that going back made any difference to him. He didn’t care what anybody thought of him.

He stayed out of their lives. He stayed out of everybody’s life but his own.

Usually.

He grimaced, visually plotting the trip ahead, and his subsequent escape. After he got a decent car, he’d roll into town, witness the happy event for Maureen, raise his glass in a good-natured toast and then he’d roll right on out.

Be back in the air first thing tomorrow morning on the earliest flight out—that was his plan.

First, though, he needed a car that fit his image. Shuddering, he opened the van door, plucked the paperwork from the visor and then wheeled his luggage toward the customer service counter. A place that frequent travelers avoided like the plague.

The line stretched five deep, with even more people being unloaded from a courtesy bus at the curb. It was Friday evening on the Memorial Day weekend—the beginning of the summer season in New England—what did he expect?

By instinct, he scanned the parking lot and realized that, predictably, the rental service had run out of cars. The wait to snag one could last hours. Bruce was a road warrior by profession, he knew the ins and outs of navigating airports, hotels, car rental services and business conventions—it was his life. Normally he loved it.

Better than anyone, he knew that by flying on a Friday evening—any Friday evening, never mind the Friday before a long weekend—he’d broken a major rule of road warriors: never travel with the amateurs. They didn’t understand the arcane system of U.S. travel—how to make it as smooth and problem-free as possible—and because they didn’t get it, they made life difficult for the people depended on fast entrances and quick exits.

The thing was, road warriors stuck together. They knew all about traveling out first thing Monday morning and home last thing Thursday night. Fridays were for paperwork and telecommuting from home. Bruce did his laundry and errands on Saturday and relaxed on Sunday. Then on Monday he flew to whatever client site he was currently contracted to, fixed the computer systems and was a hero. Or a bum, if something went wrong. Either way, he was free. Nothing held him down. Nothing locked him in place.

Don’t make eye contact.

He walked past the snaking line—caught glimpses of families and old people and young, wide-eyed couples—and ambled up to the counter. This wasn’t his normal rental-car place—he knew the staff in the Fort Lauderdale office personally—so he opened his wallet to get his identification card, just in case. It was tucked behind his gold American Express card, which he removed gingerly. The fragile plastic had been swiped by so many machines that the card was cracked almost in half.

He caught the eye of a clerk on duty. Desmond, the clerk’s nametag read. Bruce nodded at Desmond, and subtly flashed his platinum-colored customer ID.

Desmond nodded back, but continued listening to the customer who was venting at him, a guy about Bruce’s age with a goatee and backpack—and absolutely no power to make anything happen in his favor. A guy who didn’t stand a shot at getting a car.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Desmond said patiently, “I know you have a reservation, but we are absolutely empty at the moment. There is nothing I can do.”

Then Desmond hurried over to assist him. He took the paperwork Bruce offered. “Good afternoon, sir. How can I help you?”

“I need to switch this for a sedan,” Bruce said. “Something smaller and low mileage.”

The clerk glanced at the sleeve of Bruce’s paperwork. “I’m sorry, Mr. Cole, but there are no cars available. We have at least an hour wait. Your best bet is to keep what you have.” He tried to hand back the paperwork.

Bruce smiled slowly. Held Desmond’s gaze. Kept his palms flat on the counter. With an easy look that said he understood, he felt for Desmond, he really did, but he knew the rules—hell, he had his own rules, too—and this was the way it was gonna go down. He’d do it gracefully, without inciting a riot in the line—especially from the guy in the goatee, practically blowing a gasket beside him, but either way, they were going to do this.

“There are always cars,” Bruce said, softly, his body angled away from the waiting crowd.

The clerk swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving up and down.

And then he went to his computer. Bruce tucked his customer ID card back inside his wallet.

Desmond glanced from the monitor to Bruce. Bruce smiled at him. He knew that the computer system—similar to the ones he designed himself—was telling Desmond that Bruce had rented one of his firm’s cars every week, never fail, for the past eight years.

“Excuse me, Mr. Cole,” Desmond said, reaching for the phone. “I need to get an override from management. Would you mind waiting a moment?”

“No problem,” Bruce replied. He went to slide his wallet into his back pocket, when his elbow bumped against something soft.

Actually, against someone soft.

A kid, no more than six or seven years old, had come up beside him. Well inside his personal space. Now what? He raised one eyebrow at the kid, who didn’t take the hint.

Big trouble, he thought. Don’t go there.

“My dad says you’re cutting the line,” the boy said.

Bruce had a niece about the same age. She was a real firecracker, too. Maybe that was why he was considering ignoring his own rules about not interacting with civilians. It seemed nothing was going to be normal about this trip.

“Does he?” Bruce replied. In curiosity, he lifted his gaze past the kid to the guy with the goatee who’d been expressing his irritation to the clerk.