Muriel Jensen - New Year's Wedding

“Do you want to be warm and dry, or do you want style?”

“Life should allow you both.”

He turned her around and opened the door. “I’m sorry, but today it doesn’t. Let’s go.”

* * *

GRADY WAS AMUSED, even charmed, by watching Cassie shop. The Beggar’s Bay Boutique had to be far less interesting than the places she usually patronized, but she really seemed to be enjoying herself.

The clerk, a twentysomething whose badge read Molly, ran to the dressing room to take garments Cassie handed out and then brought her more pants, dresses, sweaters. She scoured the racks with avid intensity while Cassie shouted suggestions from behind the curtain. “The jeans are still too short!” Cassie called.

“That’s the longest I’ve got in women’s! What about the smallest, longest pair from the men’s department?”

There was a moment’s hesitation then, “Sure.”

Cassie emerged twenty minutes later with dark jeans from the men’s department that were sparely designed but seemed to fit well. She’d pulled a bright yellow sweater over them and dropped everything else on the counter. She stood still while the clerk cut tags off her outfit.

“Why didn’t you buy a jacket?” Grady asked. “Or slippers?”

“The jackets are all too short for me. So, it’s back to the tomato plant cover. And my feet are too big for the size range here.” She pulled on the green raincoat, looking bright and happy. That made him feel better. She grinned. “Good thing I brought my boots along.”

“You going to wear those to the wedding?”

“No, I’m going to have something sent to me One-Day Air.”

Of course. Whatever her problems were, getting whatever she needed wasn’t one of them.

The clerk took Cassie’s card and swiped it. Then as she studied the card, her fingers began to tremble. She looked up at Cassie in astonishment. “I thought it was you,” she breathed.

Cassie smiled as he imagined royalty would smile. “Thanks for not outing me. It was fun to shop in peace.”

“No wonder you seem to know what you want. And can pull it together out of odds and ends and look fabulous.”

Molly packed everything into two shopping bags, and Grady took them.

“Thanks, Molly,” Cassie said, leading the way to the door. “You were so much help. You’re an excellent sales associate.”

The young woman beamed.

* * *

CASSIE OPENED THE door for Grady, who walked out ahead of her.

His phone rang. “Do you mind getting that?” He raised his left elbow so she could reach into his hip pocket to retrieve it.

She ignored the warmth of his body through the pocket and took out the black iPhone. Ben’s face lit up the screen.

“It’s Ben,” she told Grady.

He moved toward the truck. “Ah, they must be home. Answer it. My keys are in the right side pocket. Want to get the door?”

She answered the phone as she dug for keys.

“Grady’s phone. This is Cassie.” She was distracted again by how warm he was. For someone who was perpetually cold when the weather dipped below 70 degrees, she felt the absurd desire to crawl inside that cozy pocket.

“Cassie!” As she aimed the key remote to unlock the car, she heard Ben’s voice as he apparently handed off the phone and said, “Corie, it’s your sister.”

“Hi, Cassie. You escaped the press?” She loved the sound of the word. Sister. She had a sister. She was a sister. Cassie opened the truck’s passenger door and watched Grady put her bags on the seat. She wondered for a minute if she was going to have to ride in the truck bed.

“We did,” she told Corie. She swallowed and asked, “Did you see me on the news?”

“Yes. How cool that you’ve started a trust for women needing clothing and transportation to job interviews. I can contribute clothes.”

Cassie couldn’t help the little glow that started in her heart. Sisterly support. “I meant the scene—”

There was a smile in Corie’s voice. “I know what you mean. I’ve made a few scenes myself, so it’s hard for me to criticize anybody else’s. Don’t worry about it. Nobody cares.”

Except for the millions of people who probably now saw her as a bratty diva and an abuser of the deaf. “You’re not embarrassed?”

Corie laughed. “No, we’re not embarrassed.” Cassie heard Ben’s laugh. “Listen, we’re all meeting for lunch at someplace called...uh...”

“The Bay Bistro,” Ben shouted into the phone. “Grady knows it. Can you be there in ten minutes?”

Cassie went to Grady, who was now placing her packages in the jump seat. “Can we be at the Bay Bistro in ten minutes?”

He straightened and tried to smooth his hair, mussed by the tight quarters in the back of the truck cab. “Sure.”

“Sure,” Cassie relayed, helping bring order to Grady’s hair with her free hand. It was thick and coarse. She resisted the impulse to run her fingers through it one more time.

His gaze collided with hers, seeming to ask her to. She dropped her hand and had to look away to concentrate on what Ben was saying.

“Great. Tell him he’s paying,” Ben said. “See you then.”

She smiled at Grady. “He says you’re paying.”

“Tell him he still owes me for the night I went into the river after a DUI and he watched me.”

She tried to but Corie had reclaimed the phone. “Cassie?”

“Yes.”

“We all think it’s fun to be related to someone the press is making a big deal over. So don’t worry.”

“But it’s a bad big deal.”

“This family will turn it into something good. It’s what we do. See you in ten.”

“Right.” Well, right on the “seeing her in ten” part. Turning this press nightmare into something good was going to require a miracle.

* * *

GRADY DROVE THE three blocks to the edge of downtown, then turned down a side street to the old mill that had been converted into shops and a restaurant. The Bay Bistro was on the third floor. Cassie, he noticed, looked worried.

“Forget the news,” he advised gently. “They’re your family. They don’t care.”

She turned to him with open disbelief. “That’s what Corie said, but of course they care. How can they not? When I met them in Texas, I kept everything to myself, hoping it would just go away. I didn’t know then that someone had recorded it.”

“Again, I’m sure it’s not a big deal to them.”

“Jack has to be disappointed. He worked so hard to get us all together again, and his little sister turns out to be a monster diva who yelled at a deaf woman! And the whole world knows about it!”

“Big fuss over nothing.”

She huffed a breath. “Grady, I’m the piece of the family that’s been missing and I...”

He heard something in her voice somehow deeper than the words she was saying. He turned to her as he pulled into a spot right in front of the mill and shut off the engine.

“What if I’m a disappointment? What if they’ve been waiting all this time to get me back, they’re impressed to learn than I’m a model, then find out...I have all these...issues?”

“You have nothing to fear here, Cassie. The Mannings and the Palmers are the best people you’ll ever meet. Everybody’s got their issues, so they’re all tolerant of everyone else’s. Jack came back from Afghanistan with nightmares. Corie’s life was sometimes so awful that she became a thief. Just relax. All they care about is that the three of you are together again. Come on.”

He went around to her side to help her out, then caught her hand and hurried her so she wouldn’t have time to relive the cell phone video that had taken up permanent residence in her head.

He escorted her before him into the old mill’s elegant downstairs with shops off of a central atrium, then caught her hand again and ran for the elevators, doors closing as they hurried. If he could get her upstairs before the family arrived and distract her with the spectacular view and a glass of wine, she might get over her nervousness.