Susan Mallery - Daughters Of The Bride

She sipped her wine and knew that the right response was that she needed to look good for herself. That she was worth it and all those other stupid platitudes. That if she wanted to feel better, she had to take better care of herself. All of which didn’t get the laundry washed or the bathrooms cleaned.

“You need to get over him.”

Lena’s comment was so at odds with what Rachel had been thinking that it took her a second to figure out what her friend was saying.

“Greg? I am. We’ve been divorced nearly two years.”

“You might be legally divorced, but emotionally you’re still enmeshed.”

Rachel rolled her eyes. “Did you have too much waiting time in a doctor’s office? Did you read some women’s magazine? Enmeshed? No one actually uses that word.”

“You just did.”

Rachel made a strangled noise in her throat. “I don’t want to think about him,” she admitted. “I want to move on with my life.”

“Find a man? Fall in love?”

“Sure.”

A lie, she thought, but one her friend would want to hear. Fall in love? She couldn’t imagine going out with someone who wasn’t Greg. He’d been her first date, her first time, her first everything. The world still divided itself neatly into Greg and not Greg. How was she supposed to get over that?

“You’re so lying,” Lena said cheerfully. “But I appreciate that you’re making the effort to humor me.”

“I want to move on,” Rachel admitted. “I just don’t know how. Maybe if I could get away from him. But with us having Josh together, there’s no escape.”

“You could move.”

The suggestion was spoken in a soft voice, as if Lena knew what Rachel would think. Rachel did her best to remain calm when on the inside she wanted to start shrieking.

Move? Move! No way. She couldn’t. She loved her house. She needed her house and all it represented. It was proof that she was okay. She would take a second job to pay for the house, if she had to.

None of which made sense. She understood that. She also knew she was reacting to a traumatic event in her childhood—the death of her father and the fact that her family had been forced out of their house a few months later.

Rachel remembered hating everything about living at the Los Lobos Hotel. Looking back, she knew she should be grateful that they’d been taken in, that they hadn’t had to live in a shelter. But she couldn’t get over the shock and pain the day she’d come home from school to find her mother sobbing that they’d lost everything and it was her father’s fault. She’d been so scared. Daddy was dead—how could he continue to be in trouble?

When she’d been older, she’d realized their father hadn’t been a bad man—just financially careless. There hadn’t been any life insurance, no savings.

When she and Greg had married, she’d been focused on buying a house. They’d been young and it had been a financial struggle, especially with a baby, but they’d made it. This was her home—she was never leaving.

But the price of that was living with the ghosts of her lost marriage. Greg’s memory still lingered in every room.

“Maybe I could get someone to do a spiritual cleansing of the house. With sage. And salt. Do you need salt?”

Lena briefly closed her eyes. “I love you like my best friend.”

“I am your best friend.”

“I know, so please understand why I’m saying this. The problem isn’t the house, Rachel. It’s you. And there isn’t enough sage or salt in the world to get you over Greg. You’re going to have to decide once and for all to emotionally move on. Until you do, you’re trapped. Forever.”

The truth, however lovingly delivered, could still hurt like a son of a bitch.

Rachel blinked a couple of times, then reached for the wine. “We’re so going to need another bottle.”

4

“YOU LIKE THIS, BABY? I picked the leather to match your beautiful curly hair.”

Quinn Yates waited for his companion to say something, but Pearl only stared at the car as if expecting him to open the passenger door. Which he did. The large standard poodle jumped gracefully inside, then returned her attention to him as if ready for a compliment.

“You look good,” he told her. “Where do you want to go? For a burger?”

“She prefers ice cream.”

He turned to see his grandmother walking down the stairs by the side of the hotel. She was dressed as always in her beloved St. John tailored knits and Chanel flats. She wore her white hair in that poufy old lady bubble style he would always associate with her. He knew she would smell of L’air du Temps and vanilla. He crossed the driveway to meet her and pulled her into a hug. The tension that had been with him on the drive north faded.

“You made it,” she said, wrapping her arms around him as if she would never let go.

He’d always liked that about her. Joyce gave good hugs. When he’d been a kid, she’d been his anchor. When he’d gotten older, she’d always been there, ready to offer advice or a kick in the ass—depending on what she thought he needed. Now she was simply home.

He held on a few more seconds, pleased that she didn’t seem any frailer than she had when she’d visited him six months before. She was well into her seventies, but as vital and sharp as ever. Still, lately he’d found himself worrying.

“Ice cream, huh,” he said, glancing at the dog sitting in the passenger seat of his Bentley. “Then that’s what we’ll go get.”

Joyce stepped back. She barely came to his shoulder and had to look up to meet his gaze. “You’re not taking the dog for ice cream. I don’t know what ridiculousness you get up to in Los Angeles, but here in the real world, dogs don’t eat ice cream.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I’ve been back thirty seconds and you’re already lying to me.”

She smiled. “All right. They do, but at home. We don’t take them out. Besides, if you take Pearl, you need to take Sarge, too. He’ll get jealous otherwise.”

As if he heard his name, a small white fluffball barreled through the open doorway and down the path. Pearl jumped out of the Bentley and ran to greet her companion.

They were an odd pair. The tall, stately blonde poodle and the small, white bichon-poodle mix. Pearl was nearly four times Sarge’s size, yet he clearly ran the show. Now they circled Quinn, sniffing and yipping. He crouched down to greet them both. After letting them sniff his fingers, he offered pats and rubs.

“Your man arrived yesterday,” his grandmother told him.

“He’s my assistant, Joyce, not my man. We’re not living in a 1950 Cary Grant movie.”

“But wouldn’t it be fun if we were? I tried to check him into the hotel, but he said he was staying somewhere else.”

Quinn straightened and closed the passenger door of the Bentley. “He is. Wayne and I work best when there’s some separation between us.”

“You’re not moving back because you think I’m getting old, are you?”

She always did like to cut to the heart of the matter. He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I’ve thought you were old for a long time now, and not everything is about you.”

She touched his face. “You are so full of crap.”

“That is true.” He held out his arm. She tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and he led her back into the hotel.

Quinn’s mother had been Joyce’s only child. He’d spent as much of his childhood with Joyce as with his mom. By the time he’d turned fourteen, his mother had abandoned him and he’d moved into the hotel permanently.

Now as they entered the lobby, he took in the high ceilings, the crystal light fixtures and the big, curving reception desk. The furniture was comfortable, the food delicious and the bartenders generous with their pours. Add in the beachfront location in quiet Central California, and the Los Lobos Hotel had nearly everything going for it.