Second To None

He agreed with one perfunctory nod. “But I didn’t realize that you...”

She looked into his eyes and knew what had brought about this sudden and careful remoteness. Someone had told him about her. Though his apology was chivalrous, she regretted that it placed even more distance between them.

She went past him to put her key in the lock. “Well, it was either let me land on you or let me fall on my backside. I’m glad you chose the former.”

He held the door for her while she tossed her purse in. “I’m sorry I was rude.”

She was determined to put an end to this now. “There’s no need to keep apologizing. I was a nun, but I’m not that delicate.” She spread her arms, forcing him to look at her. “I’ve survived. If we’re going to be crossing paths, you’ll have to stop envisioning me in a black dress and a veil. All right?”

If she’d surprised him, it didn’t show. She guessed there probably wasn’t much that surprised a former cop.

“All right,” he said finally. “When does your day care open?”

“In about a month. Tate’s going to have some partitions put up, and the floor carpeted. Colette thought they’d be finished with that by the wedding. Then I have to paint and paper and move in some furniture.”

“You know, with Tate gone, I’ll be too busy to help you. Will you be able to manage on your own?”

She gave him smile that had nothing to do with mirth. “That’s my specialty. Anything else?”

“Get in,” he said. “I’ll close your door.”

Veronica couldn’t decide if that was courtesy on his part, or an eagerness to get rid of her. In any case, she reversed expertly into the compound, then drove away without a backward glance.

Except one in her rearview mirror, where Mike Delancey was nicely framed, a tall figure standing in front of the beautiful Victorian-style home.

He was not at all what her nicely developing future needed.

“TUXEDOS?” MIKE LOOKED at the sign above the rental shop as Tate, Shea and Armand walked in. “I thought we were wearing suits.”

Tate beckoned him inside. “Changed my mind. Colette was talking about her, Veronica, Rachel and the girls getting dresses they could wear again, and I decided we were being too casual about this. A wedding should be special—particularly a second one, where you get to apply all the lessons you learned during the first. So the ceremony should be bigger, better.”

Shea frowned over a pink cummerbund on a mannequin torso placed on a glass counter. “But there were eight hundred people at your first wedding. This is little country church.”

Tate gave Shea an impatient look.

“He means bigger and better in spirit,” Armand explained, paternally cuffing his shoulder. “In the approach to it.” Then he grinned at Tate. “A man after my own heart. It’s good to astonish women with your sensitivity once in a while. It prevents them from thinking they have the upper hand.”

Shea raised an eyebrow at Mike, as though asking if he understood what Armand was talking about. But Mike returned his attention to something else Tate had said. “Colette talked about her and Veronica getting dresses?”

Tate leaned over the counter, looking at the ties and ascots displayed inside. “Yeah,” he said absently. “Veronica’s her maid of honor.”

As Tate’s best man, Mike was less than delighted with that news. There seemed to be no escape from the woman he was certain would be a problem.

“I didn’t realize she knew her that well.”

“They’ve become good friends in a short time. She’s moving into the loft in the barn.”

Before Mike could comment, a small round man with a tape measure around his neck appeared from behind a curtain at the back of the shop. He eyed the four of them in a clinical way. “No pink or lavender accessories, and no ruffles, am I right?”

“You’re right,” Tate said, shaking his hand. “We’re after morning coats.”

“Fashionable choice. Let me get some measurements.”

Forty-five minutes later, the four men walked across French River’s main street.

“Now where?” Shea asked.

“We’re meeting the girls for coffee. We’re supposed to pick them up at the dress shop by the bank.”

“Don’t call them ‘girls,’” Shea advised him. “They don’t like that.”

“Megan and Katie are girls,” Tate disputed.

“Yeah, but don’t lump the women in with the girls. It gets you in trouble every time.”

Tate and Mike stopped short. Shea’s observation was clearly a commentary on the woman in San Francisco he consistently refused to talk about. “And how do you know this?” Tate asked.

“Experience.”

“With whom?”

“Doesn’t matter, just trust me.”

Tate met Mike’s eyes with a grin. “Thought I had him that time.”

Mike slapped Shea on the shoulder. “Someday she’s going to come looking for him, and we’ll see her for ourselves.”

Shea laughed scornfully. “Her last words to me consigned me to hell. I don’t think she’ll be dropping by any time soon.”

VERONICA STARED at her reflection in astonishment. She could hear giggles and playful banter as Colette helped her daughters into matching yellow organdy dresses in one dressing room. In another, Rachel, who’d been declared mother-of-the-bride for the occasion, was trying on a soft green chiffon with pleats.

But in this narrow cubicle with a mirror and an empty hanger dangling on a hook, Veronica looked at a total stranger—herself.

For twelve years, she’d worn the simple blue jumper, white shirt and blue veil of the Sisters of Faith and Charity. Then in the six months she’d been out of the convent, she’d taught an English-as-a-second-language class in two very plain suits, both navy blue, that had been given to her by the St. Vincent de Paul Society. When she’d moved to French River, she’d bought a few functional clothes at the thrift shop.

It was exciting to see herself in yellow. The dress was the chiffon Colette had insisted they didn’t want, until Tate had changed her mind for her. It had a simple round neck, a short, flirty, three-layered sleeve, a.nipped-in waist emphasized by appliqued flowers with seed-pearl centers and a full tea-length skirt.

The style flattered her tall, slender figure. And the color lent an apricot glow to her completion and a sparkle to her brown eyes.

But something had to be done about her hair. She tugged at the short do that skimmed her eyebrows and her earlobes, then lay in a simple, masculine cut in the back. Under a veil it had never mattered, but now she thought it shattered her fragile aura of femininity.

She heard Colette and the girls leave the dressing room and go into the shop to look in the big mirrors.

“How’re you doing, Rachel?” Colette called.

“I’m coming,” Rachel replied. “Looking like a very large grape leaf, but I’m coming.”

Veronica continued to stare at herself. It wasn’t vanity, but a sort of fascination. Not that she’d be wearing yellow chiffon every day, but this was the woman she could be when the occasion warranted. It amazed her.