“I think you should try to smile, Tommy,” Laurant whispered. “We’re supposed to be celebrating tonight.”
“I’m going to order a bottle of champagne,” Nick said.
“What are we celebrating?” Noah asked.
Laurant held up her hand. “Nick and I are officially engaged.”
Tommy did smile then. “So that’s why you got all decked out tonight.”
“I’m not all decked out.”
“And you’ve got makeup on too, don’t you? You never wear makeup.”
She knew her brother wasn’t deliberately trying to embarrass her, but she still wanted to kick him under the table to get him to stop.
“Your hair’s different too.”
“I curled it. All right? Honestly, it’s no big deal. And by the way, if anyone asks, you’re thrilled that I’m going to marry your best friend.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Actually, I may have to marry your sister after all,” Nick said with a grin.
“How’s that?”
“She ran into a friend—”
“Lorna isn’t my friend.”
Nick nodded. “And Laurant will do anything to keep Lorna from saying I told you so.”
Tommy laughed. “Lorna’s always rubbed Laurant the wrong way. I guess you will have to marry her.”
He leaned back in his chair. His gaze bounced from Laurant to Nick, and then back again, and then he said, “You know that wouldn’t be bad at all. You’re kind of suited for each other.”
“She doesn’t want to marry me. I’m not safe enough for her.”
“The wedding’s at seven o’clock on the second Saturday in October, and you’re marrying us,” Laurant said. “I just know Lorna’s going to talk to you, so act happy and don’t forget the date.”
“Yeah, yeah, the second Saturday in October,” he agreed. “I won’t forget. But when this is over, you’re going to have to tell Lorna the truth.”
Laurant was vehemently shaking her head. “I’ll move first.”
“I thought you were going to marry me to save face.”
She shrugged. “I guess I could.”
“Marriage is a holy sacrament,” Tommy reminded them.
“Lighten up, Tommy,” Laurant suggested. “Go with the flow.”
“In other words, lie through my teeth, right?”
She smiled. “Right.”
“Okay, let me ask you this. If I’m marrying you and Nick, who’s going to walk you down the aisle?”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” she admitted.
“I’ve got an idea,” Noah said. “How about if I marry Nick and Laurant, and Tom, you can walk your sister down the aisle.”
“Now that’s a plan,” Nick agreed.
Tommy looked exasperated. “Okay, Noah, let’s go over the rules one more time. You’re not really a priest. You’re just pretending to be one, and that means you can’t marry anyone, you can’t hear confessions, and you can’t date.”
Noah laughed, drawing stares from the other diners. “Damn, it doesn’t take much to get you riled up. We’re pretending that Nick and Laurant are getting married, aren’t we? So I’m pretending I’m going to marry them.”
Tommy looked at Nick. “Help me out here, will you? The abbot went out on a limb for Noah. Pete talked to him and convinced him to go along with this plan. He agreed to tell everyone that Wesson’s a cousin and that he’s letting him stay in the cabin. The man’s being real accommodating,” he added. “But we don’t like people impersonating priests, and Noah promised he wouldn’t do anything to discredit the collar. Five minutes after we leave the abbot’s office, Noah’s winking at Suzie Johnson and calling her darling.”
“I’m pretending to be a friendly priest,” Noah explained. “And I still think priests ought to have one day off a week to go—”
Tommy stopped him. “Yeah, I know. A day off to have sex. That’s not the way it works.”
Nick’s phone rang. He listened for half a minute, then said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up.
“The sheriff just got out of a new, red Ford Explorer. He’s headed this way.”
“Is he alone?” Noah asked.
“Looks that way.”
“The lodge holds its weekly meetings here,” Laurant explained. “The others are probably upstairs in one of the smaller dining rooms.”
“Is Brenner a member of the lodge?”
“I think so,” she answered.
“Maybe after we eat, I’ll go up and say hello,” Nick said. “I’d sure like to meet good old Steve Brenner.”
A minute later the sheriff strutted into the entry. Dressed in his gray uniform and cowboy boots, he didn’t bother to remove his hat when he entered the restaurant. Nick watched the hostess pick up a menu and lead the sheriff up the stairs.
“Brenner’s the local talent, isn’t he?” Noah asked.
“It looks that way,” Nick said.
“What do you mean, ‘the local talent’?” Tommy asked.
“The guy who tries to run the town. The bully,” Noah explained. “There’s always at least one in every town this size.”
“Then that’s what Brenner is,” Tommy said. “He is trying to run the town, and my sister is the only person here who’s willing to stand up to him.” He noticed Laurant was admiring her ring and smiled. “I wouldn’t get too attached to that ring, Laurant.”
“I’m putting on a show, Tommy,” she whispered. “But the ring is lovely, isn’t it? I had no idea Russell’s carried so many beautiful things.” She began to wonder what it would be like to be married to Nick. To know that when she woke up every morning, he would be there? To be loved by—
“What kind of return policy does the store have?” Tommy asked, practical to the bone.
She put her hand back in her lap. “It’s usually ten days, but Mrs. Russell is making an exception for me. She’s giving me thirty days. Do you know what she said to me? ‘Because of your sorry history with men, dear, I’ll allow you a whole month to change your mind.’ ”
Tommy laughed. “My sister’s got quite a reputation in town for scaring men away.”
“Thanks to all the lies Lorna prints in the paper about me.”
“Be honest, Laurant. You do scare men, and just for the record, I think that’s just fine. It keeps the creeps from hounding you.”
Tommy glanced over his shoulder once again when he heard a commotion behind him. Then he smiled.
“That’s Frank Hamilton. He’s the high school football coach, and those other two are assistants. They’ve all been dying to meet you, Nick. Come on. Let’s say hello before they head upstairs.”
“How do they know Nick?” Laurant asked.
“The football tape the sports channel runs a couple of times a year.”
“Ah, hell,” Nick muttered. He tossed the napkin on the table and followed Tommy out of the room.
“Nick’s never going to live that game down, and he hates all the fanfare.”
“What exactly happened during the game?”
“You never saw the tape?”
She shook her head. “No, and Tommy’s never mentioned it.”
“Nick scored the winning touchdown.”
“That’s nice.”
Noah laughed. “There’s a little more to it than that. Nick caught the short pass, then zigzagged his way through the defense, which he was real good at doing. He could turn on a dime, and that’s why he got the nickname Cutter,” he explained. “Anyway, his head was turned and he was looking up at the top of this cement wall. When you see the tape, you hear the announcer asking, ‘What’s number eighty-two looking at?’ That was Nick’s number,” he added. “So then, while the one camera was focused on Nick, there was another camera searching the stands to see what had grabbed his interest, and after the game was over, they spliced those two tapes together.”
He paused to take a drink of water before continuing. “There was this guy leaning over the cement wall. Turns out he was real drunk, and he was shouting like all the other fans, holding a beer in one hand, and a little kid in the other. He had the toddler sitting on the ledge. Can you believe how stupid that was?” he asked. “But like I said, he was drunk.”
“Did he drop the baby?”
“He sure did, but Nick had been watching. He told me later that, when he was running, he saw the man grab at the kid once, but he didn’t pull him back. He just kind of hung on to him and let him dangle half off the wall. Nick was running like there was no tomorrow at this point, and he didn’t have anyone on his tail. He scored the touchdown but kept on running as he was turning. He thought he’d stand under that wall until someone made the father remove the kid, but when he was about ten feet away, the guy lost his grip and the kid came flying down. The fall would have killed him. Nick caught him, and honest to God, it was a beautiful thing to see.”
The story astounded her. She thought of a hundred questions to ask, but Noah turned her attention when he said, “After the game, Nick was suspended.”
“What?”
“It’s true,” he insisted. “After the game was over, the father came into the locker room with the cameramen. He was still drunk, of course, and some of the guys told me he was loving the attention he was getting. Anyway, he wanted to thank Nick for saving his kid, but Nick came around the corner, saw him, and hauled off and decked him. He knocked him out.”
“And that’s why he was suspended.”
“Yeah, but it didn’t last. The public outcry swayed the coach, who probably really didn’t want to suspend Nick anyway. I could understand where Nick was coming from. He didn’t want to hear any excuses from the drunk.”
The waiter appeared and placed a basket of rolls between them. Noah grabbed one as he said, “Okay, it’s your turn. You tell me something.”
“What would you like to know?”
“How come Tommy lived with Nick’s family while he was growing up?”
“My father was opening an office in Boston and had come over to set up a house, and he’d brought Tommy along so that he could get registered at school and start a new term. I was just a baby then, and I stayed with Mother. She was going to finish packing and follow Father. But then everything changed. Father was killed in a car crash, and for a while, Tommy was left in the care of the housekeeper. Mother couldn’t cope with the loss. Tommy was only supposed to stay in Boston until the school year ended, and Mother was supposed to fly over and stay with him until then, but she wasn’t stable enough to go anywhere. Grandfather told me she was drinking heavily and taking pills. Some of the pills were to help her sleep, and some were to help her wake up. She died of an overdose.”
“Suicide?”
“I think so, yes. Grandfather said it was a combination of alcohol and sleeping pills. He wanted to believe it was an accident.”
“That’s a deadly combination.”
She nodded. “After she died, Grandfather was stuck with Tommy and me. He wanted to do the right thing, and he knew Tommy was happy in Boston. Judge Buchanan called him out of the blue and suggested that Tommy live with his family until things settled down. Nick and Tommy had become best friends, and Tommy spent most of his time with the family anyway. The judge can be very persuasive. Like Mother, Grandfather thought it would be for a little while, but then he died.”
“And Tommy got to stay where he was.”
“Yes.”
“What about you?”
She lifted her shoulders. “I was placed in a boarding school. After I graduated from university, I went to Paris for a year to study art, then I came to the United States and took a job in Chicago. I lived there for nine months, and then I moved to Holy Oaks. Nothing razzle-dazzle about my background.”
“You were left out in the cold, weren’t you? Tommy had this nice big family to call his own, but you didn’t have anyone.”
“I was happy.”
“You couldn’t have been happy.”
“Here they come,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. All right?”
“Sure.”
Nick was chuckling as he sat down. “What’s so funny?” Noah asked.
He looked at Laurant before he answered. “The men in town have given Laurant a nickname.”
“Yeah? So what do they call her?” Noah asked.
“Ice Woman, or just plain Ice,” Tommy said.
All three of them laughed, but Laurant wasn’t amused. “You’re a blabbermouth, Tommy.”
“Hey, he asked.”
She gave her brother a look that told him she was going to give him hell later. Then Nick drew her attention when he leaned close to her and whispered in her ear. “You sure don’t kiss like ice.”
The waiter appeared to take their orders, but as soon as he left, the men took turns teasing her. Finally, when she had had enough, she took the upper hand.
“I heard Penn State is going to have a real bad football season. They lost their star quarterback.”
She hadn’t heard any such thing, of course, but that didn’t matter. As soon as she said the word football, their minds clicked into sports mode. It was as easy as getting a baby to eat candy. She leaned back in her chair and smiled complacently.
Nick and Tommy had played ball for Penn State, and Noah, as it turned out, had been a running back for Michigan State, so each one of them believed he was the authority. During dinner they argued about draft choices and pretty much ignored her. She couldn’t have been happier.
On their way out of the restaurant, a family of six called Tommy over to their table. Noah stayed with him, and Nick and Laurant went on outside.
Lonnie was waiting for them. His Chevy Nova careened into the parking lot as Nick and Laurant were heading toward their car. The Chevy came to a screeching halt in the center of the lot, just a few feet from them. Nick pushed Laurant between two cars, then got in front of her, waiting to see what the driver was going to do.
Lonnie wasn’t alone. There were three others in the car with him, all from the nearby town of Nugent, and all with juvenile records. Whenever Lonnie had an important job to do for Steve Brenner, he made sure his friends were included. He gave them only a pittance of the money Steve paid, but they were too stupid to think that he might be screwing them out of their fair share. Besides, they were in it for the fun, not the cash, and Lonnie had another reason for involving them. If things went bad, they’d take the rap. His good-for-nothing father would have to let him go. How would it look if the sheriff’s son were tossed in jail? Being a big man around town meant everything to him, and Lonnie figured he could get away with murder as long as he was careful.