Jean Barrett - White Wedding

The pale moon wheeled overhead, then went dark.

Lane knew that the setting was something she was supposed to be enjoying, not fearing. It had all the elements of a perfect Christmas card: a dazzling blue sky on a late-December afternoon. Snowy, wooded bluffs hugging the shores of Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula. And tucked between those bluffs the village of Ephraim, as charming as any traditional New England village.

But Lane was unable to appreciate the appealing scene as she stood at the foot of the dock gazing out over the vast, frozen expanse of Green Bay. The prospect of crossing all that ice in an open sleigh was making her increasingly anxious.

The five other members of the holiday party gathered with her at the dock apparently didn’t share her concern. They were busy exchanging a lively dialogue as they waited for the arrival of the sleighs. But then, she thought, they weren’t struggling with her painful memory.

You don’t have a choice, Lane reminded herself sternly. This whole weekend is necessary, and that means enduring the ice.

Among the company was an individual who threatened the happiness of someone she loved. She had promised that, if it was possible, she would find a way this weekend to ease the critical situation. The promise worried her, however. After all, this was not her prime reason for being here.

“There,” said an affable male voice close behind her. “Can you make it out?”

An arm extended over Lane’s shoulder. Its hand, wearing a distinctive silver-and-onyx ring, pointed helpfully toward a smudge far out on the horizon.

“Thunder Island,” he said.

He had misunderstood her preoccupation with the view, regarding it as anticipation for their destination. He didn’t know about her fear of the ice. She wanted to keep it that way.

Lane turned her head, summoning a smile for the man at her elbow. He had a kind but unremarkable face, except for a pair of alert gray eyes and a quiet humor that seemed to perpetually hover around the corners of his mouth. Judge Dan Whitney was the bride’s cousin.

“Looks pretty far out,” Lane observed, hoping her casualness masked her worry.

“About six miles,” he indicated. “Wouldn’t you say, Allison?”

The bride, to whom Thunder Island belonged, joined them. The presence of Allison Whitney, a striking, elegant blonde, reminded Lane of her main purpose for being here. She was to be her friend’s attendant at tomorrow’s ceremony.

“At least,” Allison agreed. “But don’t let all that remoteness fool you, Lane. The lodge has every modern comfort, including a phone.”

Lane considered Allison and decided she wasn’t mistaken. There was a definite quality of overbrightness in her quicksilver smile. Of course, every bride was entitled to a degree of nervousness on the eve of her wedding, but this seemed to be something more. She could swear, too, that Allison had been sneaking anxious glances at her ever since their arrival at the dock.

Something was up, but Lane had no chance to question it. Allison captured their attention by declaring enthusiastically, “Oh, look, my caterer!”

A young couple had emerged from a rambling old inn directly across the highway and was headed toward them.

“Dick and Nancy Arnold,” Allison explained as the couple approached the dock. “He opened the place last summer. Cooks like a dream. We’ll eat royally this weekend.”

She performed quick introductions all around as the Arnolds reached the group.

Nancy Arnold greeted them and said, “Just came to extend our best wishes to the bride and groom.”

“And,” Dick added, “to assure you, Allison, that all of the meals you ordered were picked up by your help this morning before they drove out to the island.”

“The wedding cake is to die for,” Nancy promised, obviously proud of her husband’s accomplishment. “Dick outdid himself.”

“Don’t oversell me, sweetheart,” he cautioned, grinning as he slid an arm around his wife.

It was then that Lane noticed Nancy Arnold was radiantly pregnant. She had never seen a happier couple. Allison must have been equally aware of their joy in each other. She hooked an arm through her fiancé’s arm and drew him close, as though to prove her own happiness.

Her small action troubled Lane. She eyed the groom standing silently beside Allison. Hale McGuire was tall and classically handsome, but there was something about him that lacked substance. What bothered Lane, however, was Allison’s determination about him. It struck her as missing a natural conviction. She hoped she was wrong.

Allison thanked the Arnolds, then asked, “Do you know if Teddy Brewster finished the flowers on the island?”

“The florist?” Nancy nodded. “Must have. He rented a snowmobile from us for the crossing, and it was back in place this morning and his car gone.”

Dick frowned. “The funny thing is, though, he never stopped in to collect his deposit. Made me wonder.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Allison assured him. “Teddy is unpredictable, definitely an eccentric, but his arrangements are award winners.”

An impatient Hale interrupted the exchange. “Here comes our transportation,” he said, indicating a pair of horse-drawn sleighs cutting along the edge of the ice in the direction of the dock.

“Bells and all,” Nancy observed with an expression of envy. “A Christmas wedding in a marvelous old lodge on a winter-wonderland island, and with horse-drawn sleighs to get you there. Now, you can’t get much more romantic than that.”

Dan Whitney chuckled. “Not to mention slightly impractical, considering the place was meant chiefly as a summer retreat, but our Allison here has been stubbornly insistent about this weekend.”

Rather mysteriously so, Lane thought, agreeing with him. In fact, there were too many little intrigues connected with this whole situation. Including her own involving that promise, she supposed. But Nancy Arnold was right. The concept of Allison’s Christmas Day wedding on the island tomorrow was wonderfully romantic. She just wished it didn’t require crossing the ice.

But she was not, Lane promised herself, absolutely not going to be a coward about it. Anyway, not an obvious one. Allison deserved to have her special holiday wedding without anything spoiling it.

The Arnolds wished the company a pleasant crossing and then retreated to their inn as the sleighs, decorated with wreaths for the occasion, arrived at the landing. The drivers began to load the luggage.

The fifth member of the party, silent and bored until now, muttered, “ Finally we get to go. My cheeks are frostbitten standing around on this dock. And I don’t mean the ones on my face.”

Lane wasn’t surprised. Along with triple earrings in one of his earlobes and a badly scarred bomber jacket, fifteen-year-old Stuart Bauer wore the regulation torn jeans of a rebel teenager. The denim was so faded and thin that it barely covered his backside.

Veronica Bauer, mother to both Stuart and Hale and the sixth member of the group, favored her younger son with an indulgent smile. “I wouldn’t count on that, Stuie.”

Lane eyed the woman in her expensive mink coat, sensing she wasn’t the type to be concerned in the least about political correctness. Ronnie Bauer amazed her. She had to be well past fifty, but artful makeup and a head of glorious black hair took almost two decades off her age. That and a few surgical enhancements, Lane suspected. There was a flamboyant, hungry quality about Ronnie. Hale was plainly embarrassed by her, his much younger half brother barely tolerant.

“Yeah?” Stuart challenged his mother. “How come?”