The Marriage Conspiracy. Christine Rimmer
over and everyone’s gone home.”
“You know that’s going to be good and late.”
“It’s okay. I’ll be available.”
“Thank you,” she said. Even if he hadn’t been a brand-new multimillionaire, the look she gave him then would have made him feel like one.
“Joly?” DeDe knocked again.
Joleen pushed herself from the chair and smoothed out her skirt. “Come on in.”
The door swung inward and DeDe demanded, “What are you doing in here? I have been looking all over for you.”
“Well, you have found me.”
DeDe glanced from her sister to Dekker, then back to Joleen again. “What’s going on?”
Dekker laughed. “None of your business. What do you need?”
DeDe wrinkled her nose. “Oh, it’s Uncle Stan. He wants some special coffee.” In the Tilly and DuFrayne families, special coffee was coffee dosed with Irish Cream and Grand Marnier.
“And?” Joleen prompted.
“I can’t find the Bailey’s.”
“Did you look in the—”
DeDe groaned. “I looked everywhere. Would you just come and find it?”
“Sure.”
“And it’s almost eight. I think I should throw the bouquet pretty soon.”
“Good idea.”
“I want you to stand about ten feet, in a direct line, behind me when I do it. Understand?”
“DeDe.” Joleen looked weary. “The whole idea with the bouquet is that everyone is supposed to get a fair chance at it.”
“Too bad. It’s my wedding. And my big sister is catchin’ my bouquet.”
Chapter 4
Joleen did catch the bouquet.
It wasn’t as if she had a choice in the matter. DeDe, after all, had made up her mind that Joleen would be getting it. And there was just no sense fighting DeDe once she’d made up her mind.
Cousin Callie Tilly, one of Uncle Stan’s daughters, who worked at a bank and had just hit the big three-oh with no prospective husband in sight, was a little put out at the way DeDe went and tossed those flowers at the exact spot where Joleen stood. Callie grumbled that she was older than Joleen and she needed that bouquet more.
But her own father told her to quit whining and have herself a little special coffee. Which cousin Callie did. And then one of Wayne’s friends, a handsome cowboy in dress jeans and fancy tooled boots, asked Callie if she would care to dance. Her attitude improved considerably after that.
Joleen put Sam to bed upstairs in her old room at a little after nine o’clock. When she went back outside, she did some dancing herself. She danced with Uncle Stan and Bud and Burly. And with another friend of Wayne’s, a tall, broad-shouldered fellow who ran an oyster bar in Tulsa. He told her she had beautiful eyes and that she knew how to follow. He claimed there were way too many women who tried to lead when they danced. Joleen smiled sweetly up at him and wondered if he was casting some kind of aspersion on modern women as a whole.
Then she decided she was just too suspicious. A guy called her a good dancer and she started thinking of ways to take it as an offense.
But then again, after what had happened with Bobby Atwood two years ago and with Bobby’s father just this evening, well, was it any wonder she had trouble trusting men?
After the oyster bar owner from Tulsa, she danced with Dekker. Thank God for Dekker. Now there was a man that a woman could trust. She was so very fortunate to have a friend like him, who came straight to her aid anytime things got tough.
Of course, she would never take the money he insisted he would give her. But it meant the world, that he would offer—and that he always came through for her and her mama and her sisters, too.
Anytime any one of them needed him, he was there.
And did she ever need him now. She needed his clear mind and his steely nerves—not to mention all he knew from being first a cop and now a private investigator. Dekker saw all the angles. Yes, he was way too cynical—but right now she needed someone who looked at the world through wide-open eyes. Someone to show her how to fight Bobby’s father at his own game.
Joleen closed her eyes and laid her head on Dekker’s broad shoulder.
“It’s going to be all right, Jo,” he whispered against her hair.
Something in his tone alerted her. She lifted her head and looked up at him. “You’ve thought of what to do. I can hear it in your voice.”
“Could be.”
She couldn’t read his expression. “What are you thinking?”
“Later.” He guided her head back to rest on his shoulder. “After everyone’s gone home. We’ll talk about it then. About all of it….”
At eleven DeDe and Wayne took off for Wayne’s house. They’d spend their wedding night there and then leave in the morning for a twelve-day honeymoon at a two-hundred-year-old inn on the Mississippi shore.
Wayne’s new peacock-green SUV had been properly adorned for the occasion, with Just Married scrawled in shaving cream across the rear window, Here Comes the Bride on the windshield and tin cans hooked to the rear bumper by lengths of thick string.
Joleen had the bird seed ready, wrapped in little rose-colored satin squares and tied with white bows. She passed it around and DeDe and Wayne ducked through a rain of it as they raced for the car. Then everyone stood on the sidewalk beneath the Victorian-style lamps that lined all the streets of Mesta Park, waving and calling out last-minute advice.
“Good luck!”
“Don’t do anything we wouldn’t do!”
“But if you do, take pictures!”
Wayne revved the engine and pulled away from the curb. The handsome SUV rolled off into the night, tin cans rattling behind.
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