An Honorable Man

скачать книгу бесплатно


“Here, let me try,” Roark said.

“You? You don’t have kids, do you?”

“Just an endless stream of nieces and nephews. But I spend as much time with them as I can. Whenever I go home to visit, someone is always teething.” He took the baby, who wore a ruffled pink dress and matching booties, and held her up, looking her in the face. “Hi, Josephina. Can you look at me?” And he proceeded to make faces at her while Tony tried not to laugh.

The baby was so startled by the faces that she did stop crying, at least for the moment. Roark gently swung her back and forth. She stared wide-eyed at him.

“How’d you do that?” Tony asked.

“It’s probably just the novelty of a new face,” Roark admitted. “She might start crying again any minute.”

“Let me try it,” Tony said, holding out his hands. Before he could take the baby, though, Jasmine came running down the steps.

“Dad, wait till you see this. You won’t believe it!”

Moments later, a cloud of florid pink chiffon barely contained in a clear plastic bag descended the stairs, and somewhere behind it was Priscilla—in curlers.

The men froze, and even Josephina, who’d been cooing softly, went silent. She seemed to be staring at the spectacle, too.

“I don’t want to hear anything about cotton candy or Glinda the Good Witch or…or Martians,” Priscilla said as she descended. Carefully—probably because she couldn’t see her feet. “Not one word.”

Tony whistled. “Do you have to get permission from Pepto-Bismol to wear that color?”

Roark bit his lip. He had to admit, the bridesmaid’s gown was a ghastly hue.

He hadn’t expected Priscilla to show up for their first—and possibly only—date in curlers, either. Pink plastic rollers like his mother used to wear. He didn’t see why she had to resort to such extreme measures. Her natural hair, straight and thick and the most gorgeous dark honey color, didn’t need any improvement.

Priscilla finally looked at Roark, and what she saw almost made her miss a step. Roark, holding a baby as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She felt an unexpected contraction in the vicinity of her womb. And the way Roark was looking at her, as if she were a mountain of strawberry ice cream and he was hot fudge, didn’t help matters. She had thought the curlers would put him off.

She pulled herself together. “Hi, Roark. There’s still time to change your mind.”

Roark shook his head. “Not a chance. I want to see you actually wearing that dress. It’s bigger than you.”

“And it weighs more than my turnout gear.”

“I think it makes you look like Cinderella,” said Jasmine, who loved all things pink and girlie. She had begged Priscilla to model the dress when she’d brought it home a few days earlier.

Priscilla spared a smile for the girl. “Thank you, Jasmine. But, remember, it’s not the dress that makes the princess.”

“I know, it’s the inner princess,” Samantha said with a giggle.

Priscilla ruffled the girl’s dark mop of hair, then grabbed a couple of bulging shopping bags sitting near the bottom of the stairs. She looked at Roark. “Are we taking Josephina with us?”

“Oh, um, no.” He handed the baby to Tony, then focused his attention back on Priscilla. “You ready?” He had to raise his voice to be heard over Josephina’s renewed screams.

“I know I don’t look ready. But Marisa has a legion of makeup artists and hair torturers waiting for me at the church.”

Priscilla was momentarily taken aback once again when she saw Roark’s car—a red Porsche. “Quite a step up from the black Suburban.”

“That’s my work car. This is my play car.”

Pretty nice toy, Priscilla thought as she stuffed her shopping bags, containing shoes and other accessories, in the tiny trunk. Where was she going to put the dress? The car didn’t have a backseat to speak of. “We need a sidecar for the dress.”

“I think all three of us will fit.” He gallantly opened the passenger door, then held the dress while Priscilla got herself situated. He gently draped the dress over her, though he had to try three times before he was able to stuff the mountain of pink chiffon inside.

And then they were off, Roark deftly maneuvering his macho machine through the twilight of an early fall evening. The weather was magnificent, with just a touch of chill in the air. Priscilla wished she could enjoy it. But she was too tense. The next few hours were going to be tedious. Marisa and her mother would be walking, talking high-anxiety machines while eight bridesmaids—eight!—tried to do makeup and hair and change their clothes in that tiny bride’s room.

Priscilla didn’t like pandemonium, especially when she had no chance of controlling or organizing things. She would be at the mercy of her family. And Roark would get to see it all.

He would probably run for the hills.

“Okay,” she said when the silence had stretched too long. “I’ve been thinking about this, and here’s the story. In case someone asks how we met, how long we’ve been dating, that sort of thing.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s keep it simple. We met a couple weeks ago, when you were called to a fire that I worked. You asked me some questions about the fire, then you asked me out to dinner the next night and we’ve been seeing each other ever since.”

“Where did we go on our first date?” he asked. “Everyone always asks that.”

“Um…We went out for pizza.”

“I could do better than that. How about we went to Newport’s?” Newport’s was one of Dallas’s best seafood restaurants.

“Too dressy for a first date. How about Havana Nights?” Havana Nights was a hot new Cuban restaurant in Bishop Arts.

“Done. Are we serious?”

“Our relationship, you mean? It has potential to be serious,” she said carefully.

“Do we hear wedding bells?”

Priscilla’s heart skipped a beat. “You don’t have to take it that far. Do you know where you’re going, by the way?”

“To that humongous church in Highland Park? The one that looks like a medieval cathedral, complete with gargoyles?”

“That’s the one. You’ve been there?”

“Actually, I got married there.”

“You’ve been married?” she blurted out. She wasn’t sure why that surprised her. A man as good-looking as he was seldom reached his midthirties without at least one trip to the altar.

“Only for a couple of years, when I was younger.”

“Were there children?” The image of Roark holding Josephina flashed through her mind.

“No.”

She gathered by his clipped answer that she might have touched on a sensitive issue.

“Libby and I wanted different things. We married pretty young and we had some idealistic notions about what marriage would be all about. But we were still growing and changing and figuring out who we were. And in the end…our goals in life were polar opposites. Maybe if we’d gotten counseling or something…” He shrugged. “But we were just dumb kids.”

“It’s still sad.” She processed this new information about Roark, trying to fit it to the man as she knew him. “You don’t seem jaded, like a lot of divorced people are.”

“Cautious would be more accurate. But not without hope.” He smiled enigmatically at her. Instantly her chest tightened in a not-unpleasant way.

“I hope this won’t bring back sad memories for you,” she said.

He shrugged. “I got over all that a long time ago.”

She wondered. Did anybody truly get completely over a divorce? She and Cory hadn’t even gotten to the wedding-plan stage before their relationship had ended, but she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to talk about it as casually as Roark talked about his previous marriage.

She shivered.

“You cold?” Roark asked.

“Maybe a little.”

He inched the thermostat up a bit.

They took advantage of the valet parking that had been arranged—Priscilla didn’t want to drag the dress any farther than she had to. Roark courteously carried the rest of her things, so she could hold the dress well off the ground.

The church did look like a medieval cathedral. Since she’d been attending services here her whole life, she’d never thought about it much. But it was grand to the point of ostentation. Everything was white and gray marble, punctuated by intricate stained glass and pseudoancient tapestries.

The wedding consultant, whose name was Elisha, greeted Priscilla like a long-lost best friend. “The others are all here. Hurry, now, hurry!” Then she gave Roark a quick once-over, gasped daintily and directed them toward the dressing room.

“You want me to go to the dressing room with you?” Roark asked, looking doubtful. “I can just go sit in the church.”

“Oh, no,” Priscilla said, “you have to come with me. My mother is already half-inclined to believe I made you up.” She grabbed his hand and dragged him with her. A few seconds later she realized she had voluntarily touched him. As soon as he appeared to be following willingly, she dropped his hand like a hot coal.

She knocked on the dressing room door, which opened instantly. Her mother stood blocking the entry and looking worried. “Priscilla. Where have you been? I was starting to get concerned.”

Priscilla checked her watch. She was only five minutes late. “Sorry, traffic was bad.” Which was true. Traffic in Dallas was always bad.

“Hang your dress up over there, but don’t get it mixed up with the others. Christina will do your makeup as soon as she gets done with Judith’s. And then Rebecca will do your…” Her tirade halted abruptly when she saw Roark. “Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you weren’t alone. This must be your young man.”

Gawd, where did her mother come up with these archaic expressions? She’d grown up in the sixties. Surely she hadn’t referred to her boyfriends as “young men.”

“Mother, this is Roark Epperson,” Priscilla said dutifully. “Roark, my mother, Lorraine Garner.”

Roark took her mother’s hand and squeezed it. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Garner.”

Lorraine’s attention was so fixed on Roark she forgot she was in the middle of giving Priscilla her instructions. Priscilla couldn’t help but smile. Roark had that effect on women, no matter what their age.

She was sure Roark could hold his own, so she skulked past her mother and into the room where she could properly greet the bride with a dainty hug.

“You look beautiful, Marisa,” Priscilla said, meaning it. Although her cousin was still in a dressing gown, her lush, curly black hair had been piled on top of her head in a style worthy of a Greek goddess. “You’re just…radiant.”

“Thank you,” Marisa said regally. Then she whispered, “The guy is gorgeous. And you let him see you in curlers!”

“Couldn’t be avoided. You know my hair doesn’t hold a curl for more than five minutes.”

“And mine frizzes in the humidity. Remember when we used to want to trade hair?”

Priscilla nodded and swallowed hard. She hadn’t thought she would get mushy—especially because Marisa and she hadn’t been as close in recent years. They’d gone to different colleges, cultivated different friends. But they’d shared a lot when they’d been younger, including their attempts to thwart their pushy mamas.

“Come and meet everyone, Roark,” Lorraine was saying. And she performed introductions. To his credit, Roark didn’t even flinch when seven women, some of them wearing identical hideous pink dresses, all tried to introduce themselves at once. Three of them were already married, yet to a woman they eyed Roark with predatory interest.

Even the prospective bride, who should have had thoughts only for her groom, sparkled a bit as Roark was introduced.

“Thank you so much for coming,” Marisa simpered. “It’s such a pleasure to have you at my wedding. I’ve seen you on TV.”

“The pleasure’s mine.” His voice was low and sexy as he shot Priscilla a look that could melt cold steel.

Again Priscilla was sure everyone in the room read between the lines and knew they’d slept together. This was not what she’d asked him to do.

“Well,” Roark said briskly, “I’ll let you ladies get back to…whatever it is women do before a wedding.” Every female in the room but Priscilla giggled—even her aunt Clara, who was normally about as giggly as a Star Wars storm trooper.

Priscilla walked him to the door. “You’re supposed to be devoted and besotted,” she whispered, “not hot to trot. Try to remember the difference!”