The Wedding Pearls Read online

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The woman looked at Tessa as if she were something that she’d stepped in out in the cow pasture. Tessa should do or say something, but not a single smart-ass remark came to her mind and Frankie’s gun was in the glove compartment of the Caddy.

  A slow, menacing growl came from Branch’s throat. “You told me you lost that ring when you broke it off.”

  “Well, sweetheart, I found it again and figured it was an omen. Give me five minutes to get unpacked and I’ll be ready to talk.” She snarled down at Tessa as if she were something dirty as she headed down the hall. “And Teresa, you can run along to whatever slum you crawled out from. He’s always been mine from the first time he laid eyes on me.”

  “You’re a brazen bitch, aren’t you?” Tessa shook free of Branch’s arm and bowed up to the woman. “What makes you think I’ll sit back and let you move in on my territory?”

  Avery’s brown eyes were stone cold. “Yes, I am, and I always get what I want. It’s a tiring drive up here from the Amarillo airport, so I need a shower and to get into something more comfortable. I’ll call when I’m ready for you, Branch.” She turned her back and disappeared down the hallway.

  “Thank you,” Branch whispered when Avery was gone. “Will you please stay in my room tonight and pretend to be my real girlfriend? I’ll sleep on the sofa and you can have that king-size bed all to yourself.”

  Tessa nodded. “Of course I will. I’ll have to get my things and tell Lola, but that won’t take long. I haven’t unpacked yet. Frankie and Ivy are going to love this drama. It’ll be another story for them to talk about when they”—she paused before she spit out anything about the specialty care facility they were going to—“get home.”

  Branch hugged her close to his chest. “You were thinking about Ivy not having long, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, I was,” she said honestly and took a step back. “I reckon we’d best get my things and get into your room before the hussy calls, and I will be more than glad to answer the phone when she does.” She slipped the key card into the slot and pushed the door open. “Why is Avery doing this? Doesn’t she have a lick of dignity or pride?”

  “She’s a barracuda and she wants to win this game. That’s what it is to her: only a game, and she’s a poor loser. The guy she left me for broke up with her and she’s probably feeling the pinch. She needs to win something to get her dignity back.”

  “Well, since you can’t drown a damn barracuda then I might have to borrow one of Frankie’s guns and just shoot the bitch,” Tessa declared.

  Branch pulled her suitcase out into the hall and into his room. “If she thinks there’s no chance, she’ll go home, lick her wounds, and leave me alone.”

  “Poor thing must have a miserable life,” Tessa said. “But she’s still a bitch and I really don’t like her. She has no right to look at me like I’m trash, so I’m glad to be your pseudogirlfriend for the night. And if she doesn’t take the hint, I’ll buy two shovels tomorrow morning and we’ll bury her somewhere out here in a mesquite thicket.”

  Branch chuckled. “You are a force.”

  She reached up and grazed his chin with her knuckles. “I’ll protect the big old cowboy. After all, he’s trying very hard to cure me of my awkwardness. I do owe him.”

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Lola said when she got off the phone with Tessa. “Mama, you are going to love it.”

  After the story was told, Melody said, “I’ve, like, got to see this woman. Do grown-ups really act like that? I thought only kids like me did stupid stuff like that.”

  “Kids don’t hold a monopoly on stupid,” Ivy said. “She’s two doors down from Branch? Is that right?”

  Frankie reached for the phone but Ivy beat her to it. “You old fart. I wanted to make that call.”

  “What call?” Melody asked.

  Lola giggled. “Just be real quiet and watch two old pros at work.”

  Ivy punched in the room number. “You can make the next one.” She held up a finger. “Hello, is this Avery? This is the front desk and we’ve had a bit of a mix-up. The room we gave you has been reserved and there was a computer glitch. If you will come back down to the lobby, we will reissue you a key to a different room. We do apologize and we will make this right on your bill.”

  Ivy handed the phone to Frankie when she ended the call. “Well, she’s not a bit happy and she’s using some words that me and you don’t let sneak out of our mouths. It’s your turn.”

  Frankie took a deep breath and called the front desk. “Yes, ma’am, you can definitely help me. I have a relative named Avery up here on the third floor and she’s a little”—she paused and sighed loudly before she went on—“deranged. She’s coming down to the lobby right now with some cock-and-bull story about you all having put her in the wrong room. If you will give her anything available on the first floor, I’ll pick up the tab for the room. Tell her it’s a freebie because you made a mistake and maybe she’ll settle down. I’m terribly sorry. We weren’t expecting her to show up here since she’s only been out of the institution two days. Yes, that’s right. Avery is her name, and she should be there any minute.”

  “And I thought teenagers were bad. This sounds a lot like you’ve done it before,” Melody said.

  “This ain’t our first rodeo, Melody.” Frankie nodded.

  “And it probably won’t be our last,” Ivy said.

  Lola pointed toward the door. “Let’s go sit in those chairs by the elevator, Melody. She should be on her way any minute now and I want to see her. I can’t believe Tessa didn’t deck her.”

  Melody was on her feet instantly. “And I thought this trip was, like, going to be boring.”

  They darted out the door in their bare feet and sat down in the two wing-back chairs. Melody picked up a brochure from a pretty little round table separating the chairs and pretended to read it.

  They heard the mumbling a few seconds before Avery turned the corner, suitcase behind her. She poked the down button half a dozen times, tapped her foot, and flipped her brown hair over her shoulder, completely ignoring the two ladies not three feet from her.

  “What gorgeous luggage. Is that AP your initials, or does that mean AP is some fancy brand?” Melody asked in wide-eyed innocence.

  “It’s my initials. Why is this damned elevator taking so long?” Avery snapped.

  “I bet they stand for Annie Phillips. I’m a psychic and I know these things. And I bet you are engaged, too,” Melody said.

  “You’re a poor excuse for a medium. My ring says I’m engaged and my name is Avery Prescott,” Avery said tersely.

  “I don’t wear a size medium. I’m not that fat. I’m a small. What do you wear, an extra large?” Melody asked. “And you are lyin’. Your name is Annie Phillips. Don’t lie to a psychic. It’s bad luck.”

  “This is ridiculous. I’m taking the stairs.” Avery stomped to the door marked STAIRS and disappeared, muttering the whole time.

  “Well, you have a good night, Miz Annie,” Melody called out loudly and then turned to Lola. “Please tell me I can tell Jill all about this. I’m about to explode and I’ve, like, got to tell her.”

  “Yes, tell Jill, but tell first Mama and Ivy. They need to know what happened. I’ve got a couple of things I need to do out here before I come back inside.” Lola fetched her cell phone from her hip pocket and flipped through the icons on the screen. It took less than five minutes to locate Avery’s Facebook page, to figure out that she posted on it regularly and it had no privacy settings, because it was all right there in living color for the whole world to see.

  Miss Avery Prescott had changed her status from in a relationship with Luke Arthur Black to engaged to Branch Thomas in the last two weeks. She liked yellow roses and her precious Luke sent them often to his sugar dumpling, and she had quit her job and was now looking for a job in a reputable law firm.

  “Amazing what people will put right out there for the whole world to see. They
might as well run naked around in an apartment with no drapes or blinds,” she mumbled.

  Her thumbs worked overtime, punching in the toll-free number to an Internet florist that would deliver flowers within an hour if a person was willing to pay the exorbitant fee to get it done.

  “Yes, sir, I want one long-stemmed yellow rose in one of those white boxes tied with a yellow ribbon, and I want it to say, ‘To the love of my life. I’m so sorry, my sugar dumpling. Please come home to me. I’ll be waiting in your apartment with open arms and the rest of five dozen roses.’ Deliver that to Avery Prescott at this hotel. This is the address and there is someone at the front desk where you can leave them.”

  She went back to Frankie’s room to find Ivy and Frankie giggling all over again as Melody told the story. The kid was good with her impression of Avery’s stance and the cold look in her brown eyes.

  “Damn, kid. You should be taking drama classes at school. You’d be a great actress,” Lola said.

  “You think so? Jill said that, too, but I’ve got all these freckles and red hair. Who’d want me?” Melody asked.

  “Think about Nicole Kidman,” Frankie said. “I reckon she’s gettin’ paid a fortune.”

  “Wow!” Melody grabbed her phone and called Jill.

  “So what took you so long to get back in here?” Ivy asked Lola. “This is more fun than the barn was last night.”

  Lola crawled up in the bed between them so they could see the screen on her phone and brought up the pictures she’d seen as she told them about the rose she’d had sent. “Tessa don’t need this right now, so I’m doing my part to get rid of that bitchy woman.” She lowered her voice. “I think Branch kissed Tessa already.”

  “Well, duh!” Ivy said, “We done figured that out, but what you did was genius. Pure damn genius. I’ll pay the bill for the flower. Hey, Melody, in one hour if you’ll go sit in the lobby to do your visitin’ with Jill, I’ll give you a hundred-dollar bill.”

  “Why?” Melody asked.

  “I want to know when that bitch leaves the hotel.”

  Melody said something to Jill and shoved the phone back into her pocket. “Sure thing. I’ll do it for free, though, if I can call her Annie one more time and say something about how I see a room full of red roses in her future.”

  “Lola sent yellow roses,” Frankie said.

  Melody giggled. “I know, but that way she’ll, like, have another one of those fits and, like, leave all in a huff. I think she’s a hoot, all hoity-toity actin’ like that.”

  “You can do whatever you like,” Ivy said.

  “Including tripping her?”

  Frankie held up a hand. “Hell, and I do mean hell, no! If you trip her she might break something and not leave. If anything you can help her to her car and wave until she’s out of sight.”

  “Hey, kid, you want to stay in my room tonight and have a big bed all to yourself?” Lola asked.

  “Hell . . . I mean heck, no! These two might do something wild and I want to know about it. This is way more fun than smoking pot in the bathroom at school,” she said.

  Lola started toward the door. “I’m going to take advantage of that tub in my room. Are we going to tell Tessa that she can come back to her own room?”

  “You do and I’ll kick your ass,” Ivy said. “This could be the start of something wonderful, right, Frankie?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We’ll hope it is for sure,” Frankie said.

  Tessa plopped down on one end of the sofa. Feet propped on the coffee table, she asked the question that had been on her mind since Avery first stepped out of the elevator.

  “What made you fall in love with that woman?”

  Branch sat down beside her and covered her small fist with his big one. The rough calluses gave testimony that he didn’t spend all his time behind a desk. “My mind shut down my heart,” he answered.

  “And what does that mean?”

  “That my heart said she wasn’t the right woman because it didn’t feel anything, but my mind said that we were both lawyers and that made us compatible. She was charming when she got her way, and I wanted to be married.”

  “You wanted to be married?”

  “My brothers were happy. My parents are still in love after nearly forty years of marriage. I wanted what they had.”

  “And now?”

  “Still pretty much the same, but I’ve learned to listen to my heart. And you? What happened with your engagement?”

  Tessa splayed open her fingers and wiggled them until his were laced with hers. “It was my fault, according to Matt. He said I wasn’t passionate enough, that he needed a woman with fire and sass and that our relationship had lost its pizzazz.”

  “Bullshit!” Branch whipped his head around to lock gazes with her.

  “That’s exactly what my mama said, and pretty close to what Frankie said,” Tessa whispered. His eyes were the color of the emerald waters just off the beach in the panhandle of Florida. She could always hear the calming sound of the ocean as she let herself go deeper and deeper into them.

  “They’re right. Anyone who loves like you do has fire and sass. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it. Matt was crazy as an outhouse rat,” Branch drawled.

  “Thank you!”

  His hand moved to tip her chin up. Thick dark lashes rested on his cheeks and his lips found hers in a long, lingering kiss that turned every bone in her body to jelly. She lost herself in the kiss, forgetting everything, everyone, and where she was. None of that mattered and when it ended, she leaned in for more.

  He kissed her on the forehead and pulled her into his lap. “Anyone who says you lack passion, darlin’, really does have rocks for brains.”

  “Maybe it’s the person I’m with that brings out the passion.”

  “I hope so,” he said. “Now, my darlin’, as bad as I hate to say it, we have to break up this party and go to bed.”

  “Alone?” she asked, not knowing for sure if she was teasing or serious.

  “For tonight.” He cupped her cheeks in his hands and kissed her on the tip of the nose.

  “I know.” She untangled her arms from around his neck. “We have to face the rest of the family tomorrow morning, and they’d know if we’d shared a bed.”

  “By the grins on our faces. Hell, Miz Tess, not even suckin’ on a lemon could erase it.”

  She giggled and hopped up off his lap. “You can have first shower. I’ll take a lot longer than you will. Don’t use up all the cold water.”

  Fifteen minutes later he came out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a pair of pajama pants the same color as his eyes. He paused long enough to kiss her on the top of her head as she headed into the bathroom with her arms full of her own nightshirt and toiletries.

  “I left you some cold water,” he said.

  “Thank you.” She rolled up on her toes and touched her nose with his. Later she’d give him a proper good-night kiss, after she’d cooled down enough to trust her hormones.

  But when she came out of the bathroom, he’d already pulled out the sofa bed and was sleeping. She drank in the sight of him lying there on his side and envied the pillow he’d hugged up to. It would be so easy to fall in love with Branch. But . . . God, she hated buts . . . he wanted children and a family, and what if she wasn’t mother material? And maybe this was just a passing fancy for them. Proximity. Not dating since their relationships failed. Too many buts that had to be worked out before she could commit, but he did bring out passion she’d never known she had.

  Unable to sleep, Tessa curled up in the middle of the big bed with her journal. What day was it? They’d begun to run together, and she hadn’t had the privacy or the time to write when they were in the barn.

  Day something: This has been one weird weekend. Each feeling listed under the subtitle of emotions, I do believe I have experienced it in the past few days. First there was that angst at having the tire blowout in the pouring-down rain and then the relief at finding a barn where Branch could change
it.

  Excitement came when we found a bathroom in the tack room in the barn. I couldn’t even worry about spiders and/or mice in the barn because of the joy at finding the bathroom with running water.

  Frankie and Ivy’s attitude toward the catastrophe turned the whole evening into an adventure. If anyone could take lemons and make chocolate cake out of them, those two could do it. I truly want to grow old with the same spirit that they both have.

  Safety was the next emotion that I remember feeling and that came when I slept in the loft and later in the stall with Branch. I wasn’t afraid of him or the surroundings or the future either time.

  Then devastation. I wanted to crawl into the bed, cover my head with a pillow, and go back home when Frankie told me that she was dying. I still have to put it out of my mind or else I’ll cry and everyone will wonder why. I gave my word I wouldn’t say anything, but it’s a burden to carry around and it’s sad beyond what words can describe. In the short while I’ve been with them, I’ve fallen in love with Frankie, and to know that her time is so short is almost more than I can bear.

  The dam let loose in Tessa’s soul as she wrote. She scooted her journal up to her knees so that it wouldn’t have even more water marks on it and sobbed quietly so she wouldn’t wake Branch. Finally, she started writing again.

  I want to scream at life. I want to tell it that it cannot take my newly found grandmother who is so full of spit and sass. I want to find a doctor who can make her well or a brand-new medicine that will take the tumor from her brain. I don’t want her to go to sleep and never wake up. Life is unfair to give her to me and then take her away so quickly.

  Comfort, even though it was small, came when Branch realized something was wrong and simply touched me on the cheek in the produce aisle. I can’t tell him or anyone else about Frankie because I’m sworn to secrecy but it’s so hard to keep it inside. I feel as if my heart is going to shatter into a thousand pieces.

  Then there was anger. Maybe fate sent anger in the form of Avery to me as the last emotion today so that it could override the devastation and the hurt of knowing Frankie’s secret. I have never been so mad that I couldn’t smart off to a person but I was tonight. Hell, I wasn’t that mad at Matt when he told me that I didn’t have enough passion in my life for him and he’d fallen out of love with me.