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The Long Way Home

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2018
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“Come into the reception with us,” Maureen pleaded. “I have someone I want you to meet.”

Nope, sorry. He wasn’t being introduced to anyone. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.” He nodded to Jimmy. “You two go on. I’ll meet you inside.”

They nodded—Maureen reluctantly, Jimmy with more force, and they left for the ballroom, Maureen’s train dragging along the carpet. Bruce watched them until they disappeared inside, then he headed in the opposite direction down a short, musty back hallway.

One of the advantages of working here in high school was that he knew the floor plan of the rambling old hotel. Rounding a corner, he ducked inside a doorway and climbed rickety stairs until he came to a balcony of sorts.

Years ago, during the hotel’s big-band heyday, this had been the pit where the orchestras were set up to play. The bands were gone, but the dusty space still gave a great view of the dance floor.

He stood near the railing with a bird’s-eye shot of the conga line that snaked around the room. The men wore dark suits and the women black dresses. He remembered the invitation Maureen had sent: black-and-white informal. Maybe that was the latest style. Maureen was always up on design. She had started out being interested in fashion, then interior design, and now she’d morphed into staging and selling beach houses. Hard-nosed and practical, that was always Maureen’s thing.

He crossed his arms and glanced down. He knew roughly half the people—Maureen’s half, and they were relatives. As for Jimmy’s half, he didn’t know many in that crowd. They were younger than him. Still, he couldn’t be sure they didn’t know who he was.

Damn it. He had done his job. He’d shown up, he’d greeted Moe and made her happy, now why couldn’t he quietly escape through a side door, for her sake?

And then he saw the leggy blonde. Standing alone by the windows, she was the only person besides him who seemed out of place.

Sure, she was dressed like everybody else, in a black cocktail dress, but in every other way, she stood out from the crowd. She was...self-contained, for one. A real stunner, but in a fresh-faced, natural way, with little, if any makeup or jewelry. Her thick, honey-colored hair was long, loose, undone. It made her look sexy without even trying. But most of all, he liked that she wasn’t driven to snake around the room in the communal conga line, or to belly up to the bar, joking with the families, or even to sit at the cleared dinner tables, drinking coffee and chatting with the more subdued relatives, because she was disconnected from them, too. That much was obvious.

And then she calmly pulled out her phone to check her messages.

He liked that. He liked that...a lot.

“Who are you?” he muttered aloud.

Jimmy spoke up behind him. “That’s Natalie.”

Bruce swiveled to face his new brother-in-law. “Is she a relative of yours?”

“No.”

“A friend of Maureen’s?”

“Yes.”

His heart sank. Messing with a friend of his sister’s was a terrible idea. Unless...

“Is she an old friend that Moe hasn’t seen in a while, or a work friend she sees every week around town?” Because the former wasn’t too bad, but the latter would be fatal.

Jimmy blinked and stared at him. Bruce waited.

“No,” Jimmy said.

“No?”

“No.”

Bruce waited some more, but Jimmy added nothing. Like so many of the hard-core engineers and techies Bruce knew, getting Jimmy to open up was like pulling teeth.

“How does Maureen know her?” Bruce asked patiently, figuring an open-ended question was his best bet. Enough of the yes/no conversation.

“They went to school together.” Jimmy blinked at him. “I have to take you downstairs now. Maureen wants you in the ballroom with her.”

“Right.” Bruce swept his arm forward for Jimmy to precede him. “Don’t worry, I’m right behind you.”

As Jimmy traipsed down the creaking stairs, Bruce hung back for a last look at pretty Natalie. With her thumb on her phone’s screen, she was scrolling through her messages, unruffled by the music and the dancers in the wedding reception swirling around her.

Like an oasis of calm.

He needed calm. He needed an oasis, too, since it was clear Moe wasn’t going to allow him to escape until the very end of her reception.

Would it cause problems for Moe if he approached Natalie? If she and Maureen had gone to school together, then that meant Natalie had attended the state university where Maureen had majored in business. She couldn’t be a high school friend because he’d known all her friends before he’d left home. Knowing Maureen, Natalie was a dorm-mate invited to the wedding as courtesy. She would be out of Maureen’s life just as quickly as she’d been invited back in.

Like he would be, too.

No. It was too risky.

He was about to leave, when Natalie glanced up at him. He froze as she studied him from head to toe. Then she calmly met his gaze.

And smiled.

He felt hot inside. Maybe he was nuts, because suddenly, the course of action he was imagining seemed like the only possible one to take.

* * *

ONE MOMENT, NATALIE was checking her messages. Her father had sent her a text—all in caps, but still, it was progress in getting him to switch from his habit of phoning her all the time. She had felt the phone vibrating in her purse, and since she was just sitting there watching everybody dance, feeling disconnected and out of place, she’d read his message.

Tenant called. Check the mousetraps at 3 South Street before you come home.

She’d groaned inwardly. He wanted her to cover for him at the rental apartments above the building that housed the law firm. She’d tried to tell her father she was a lawyer, not his building supervisor, and that furthermore she had her own maintenance-needy cottage to worry about, but he was under the impression that she was at his beck and call, part of the package deal of her insisting on coming home to Wallis Point to work in the family firm.

Just rebait the darn mousetrap for him.

She’d suppressed the shudder. She hated mice.

You have to do it. Besides, you’re at a wedding. Think romantic thoughts.

But Bruce Cole hadn’t shown, and her pie-in-the-sky fantasies had lost their wings and fallen to earth.

Sighing, she’d tossed her phone into her purse and prepared to leave to find a hardware store open at this hour, in case the mice had escaped and she needed new traps. She’d almost made her escape, too, until she’d glanced up at the old balcony where the orchestras used to play.

And saw...him.

She’d blinked and gaped. She must be hallucinating.

But no, it was Bruce Cole. And he looked even better than she’d remembered. The sight of him still made her stop in her tracks.

Her heart had seemed to grow in her chest, squeezing her tight. He seemed taller than before. He was broader in the shoulders and he stood straighter. Then again, he’d been a navy lieutenant, although now he was dressed in a black tux with his tie undone. His dark brown, almost black hair was swept off his forehead in a tousled nonstyle that made her want to run her hands through it and gave him the old, passionate air she remembered. His jaw was edged with a five-o’clock shadow that looked sexy and dangerous.
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