Blissed (Misfit Brides #1) Read online

  He gave her a sideways glance. “After all you’ve done the last few months, I know it’s what your mother would’ve wanted. Fourth generation in the family boutique business. You’ve earned it, honey. Figure it’s about time I get out of your way.”

  The room was shrinking. It was shrinking, and it felt like someone had taken blowtorches to Natalie’s ears. “Now?”

  He gave the floor a halfhearted smile. “I know. Should’ve done it months ago. Truth is, I wasn’t ready to face retirement. Thought I’d have your mother here with me when the time came. Everything we thought we’d do—” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is, the boutique is yours.”

  “But—”

  “Now, don’t worry about Lindsey. I’m heading over to talk to her tomorrow. See who she’d recommend to draw up the paperwork.”

  Worry about Lindsey? Natalie was stuck on the part where Dad thought she could own the shop. His delusions were sweet, but they couldn’t fix Bliss, and they couldn’t magically keep the shop profitable.

  Not as long as Marilyn Elias ran the town. “Dad, listen—”

  “Lindsey’s a logical kind of gal. Got her own thing, doesn’t want the family business. We’ve always known that. But we’ll work it out if she has any concerns.”

  It took effort to push air past her constricted throat. “I’m not worried about Lindsey.”

  For the first time since he’d shut the door, he looked at her, really looked at her. His eyes tightened, his head tilted. “Natalie? What’s going on?”

  Caught.

  She needed more time to put her thoughts together. To explain this rationally.

  To figure out what her future would hold once Knot Fest and the Golden Husband Games were over.

  To come clean, but still make him think this was her choice. “Just getting hungry,” she said. “Makes it hard to concentrate. I was thinking about dinner. How’s Italian sound? Noah keeps asking for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and I make a mean can of SpaghettiOs.”

  “Natalie…”

  She hated that warning note in his voice. She hated worse that her decisions in life meant she couldn’t smooth it away. “I could stop at the store for some frozen garlic bread.”

  Dad’s eyes narrowed to dark slits. “Is someone giving you trouble?”

  Natalie would’ve rather taken a flogging before she had to explain to him that she’d failed him and Mom again. And she’d done that herself. Maybe the QG was behind some of it, but she could’ve tried harder. Sought better advertising. Experimented more. Offered better sales.

  Stayed away from high-profile weddings where she’d known CJ Blue would be in attendance.

  Except the truth was, she’d done most of those things. In a lot of ways, she’d done them better than La Belle and Mrs., the other two boutiques in town. But neither of the others were having problems. The Queen General was still winning her war to keep divorced people off The Aisle.

  Dad’s interference would do nothing more than earn him the same kind of heartburn Natalie had. He’d already served his time on The Aisle. This wasn’t his fight anymore. It was Natalie’s, and the truth was, it was over.

  She stood and moved toward the door. “It’s fine, Dad. Just been a busy week.”

  “That’s not the problem here, though, is it?” His voice crunched through her ears like tires on gravel. It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.

  She’d never wished so hard her mother were still here to smooth things out.

  But Mom wasn’t, and Natalie could never take her place. But Nat could be a grown-up. Accept her place. Own her mistakes. And move on.

  Natalie opened her mouth and forced her dry tongue to form the seven words that would probably make three generations of her mother’s family split the seams of their coffin liners.

  “I think you should sell the shop.”

  Dad’s face turned a shade of gray Natalie hadn’t seen since the summer he coached softball and Kimmie Elias smacked a line drive into his dad parts. He shook his head so hard his hair shifted. The gloss in his eyes turned to brittle glass. “Excuse me?”

  Natalie almost buckled. Just kidding! she’d say. Except she wasn’t. “You should sell the shop.” Her voice wavered with her conviction. “It’s the right thing to do.”

  The heater kicked on, and the first blast of semi-cool air from the vents overhead sent a shiver between Natalie’s shoulders.

  The angry vein throbbing in her dad’s forehead made her knees quake.

  “The right thing for who?” he said.

  Uh-oh. That was the calm voice that came between the warning zone and the danger zone.

  Natalie gulped. “For all of us.”

  “It sure as hell isn’t the right thing for me!” He stood and pounded on the metal filing cabinet by the door, one of the few things that had survived the flood. “You think I spent my whole damn life working your mother’s dream so you could prance around here and tell me this shop isn’t good enough for you? That you don’t give a damn about how we fed you, clothed you and sent you to college? That you want to wash your mother’s legacy down the crapper?”

  Righteous indignation and her own temper snapped Natalie straight. “You think this town will accept me as a business owner? I have to work twice as hard as every other person on this block as it is, and the shop’s not even mine.”

  “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

  “It is not and you know it.” She held up her left hand and pointed to her bare ring finger. “I don’t wear the right accessories to belong here, and I never will. And what about Noah?”

  “What about him?”

  “You and Mom had each other. I hardly see my son as it is right now. What happens if I’m running this place solo? When do I get to see him then?”

  “So hire someone. We can afford it. Dammit, Natalie. There are solutions if you just think about it for a while.”

  “Oh, so now you want to give the shop to someone who can’t think? Brilliant. Just brilliant.”

  “Don’t you turn this on me—”

  “You’re turning it on me! I’m trying to do what’s best for everyone, but you’re too stubborn to consider that maybe it’s time we sell and move on.” She was vaguely aware that the love songs constantly pumped into the shop were getting louder, which meant the customers could hear and the girls out on the floor were trying to cover, but she didn’t care. She wasn’t the bad guy here. She wasn’t the good guy either—that wasn’t a crown she would ever wear in Bliss—but Dad was way overreacting.

  “Do you have any idea what you’re asking me to give up?” he said.

  “You think I want to do this? That I want to walk away? I don’t have what it takes to make this shop work. You think I wouldn’t change that if I could?”

  “I think you quit every time anything gets hard, that’s what I think. Damn it, Natalie, when are you going to grow up?”

  Natalie pointed out toward the floor. “About five years ago, if you didn’t notice.”

  “I noticed.” Dad stalked toward the door, then turned back around. “Should’ve happened to Lindsey. At least she could take care of a child on her own.”

  Natalie sucked an icy breath through her nose.

  Despite everything, Dad still thought she was the same immature brat who’d ignored everyone’s warnings and gotten married because of a ridiculous idea that she could transform Derek into the man she needed her husband to be. She was an Aisle princess; he was a second-generation mechanic from a broken home. He’d been dark and dangerous and bold—no other man had asked her out those first two years after she graduated college. But he’d also shown a soft side, writing her poems and picking wildflowers for her. And she’d decided to save him from his sorry, non-Aisle existence, and finally fulfill her destiny of getting married in the process.

  Turned out, she was the sorry one.

  Still was. Probably always would be. Her own father thought so.

  She blinked back the
cold sting of tears. “You know why I don’t want the shop? It’s because this town doesn’t want us. If they don’t want me, fine. But what about Noah? He hasn’t had a single playdate since Mom died. I had to cancel his birthday party because Marilyn made sure no one would come. I’m doing this for him.”

  “You’re doing it for yourself and using him as an excuse.”

  Natalie flung a hand out and wished she had a filing cabinet to hit. “That’s right. I’m the horrible one. Well, Dad, you raised me. So what does that say about you?”

  A tension hard as granite settled in the room. Natalie’s lungs seized. Dad’s forehead vein visibly throbbed. He lifted a finger to the door. “Get out.”

  Natalie deflated. There she went, screwing up thank you all over again. “Dad—”

  “I said, get out.”

  She needed to apologize, but he pointed harder at the door, his eyes shiny, his throat working overtime.

  She snagged her coat and purse and scurried out of the room before she could make anything worse. Amanda gave her a funny look, and Natalie realized her cheeks were wet. Noah barreled around the high register counter. “Mommy!”

  Her heart squeezed, and she dropped down to his level. Her reason for living shot into her arms, a streak of blue dinosaur shirt and brown hair and love. He must’ve had another growth spurt overnight, because his legs seemed to barely dangle a foot off the floor when she stood up with him. He hadn’t been that tall yesterday. But he was still solid and warm, and he still smelled like little boy sweat. She buried her nose in his dark wavy hair. “Hey, baby boy. Let’s go home. You want some spaghetti?”

  “Can my meatballs be made out of dinosaurs? Because Grandpa says if I drink my milk I’m a cow. So if I eat dinosaurs, I’m a dinosaur, and I want to be a dinosaur. Can I be a dinosaur?”

  “You can be anything you want to be.” And it was Natalie’s job to make sure he could.

  She’d screwed up everything else. She couldn’t afford to get this one wrong too.

  Chapter Three

  THE LIQUOR MIGHT’VE been free at the wedding, but at least it was squawk-free across town at an off-the-wall joint called Suckers. Tonight, CJ’s headache demanded that his frugal side shut the hell up and let him indulge.

  He had fulfilled his familial duties at the wedding reception—made Bob and Fiona comfortable, danced with the obligatory percentage of female relatives, suffered through the requisite number of not-so-subtle inquiries as to his emotional state, warned Dylan of the consequences of mistreating his new bride, spent his allotted hour making sure Gran didn’t goose any of the waitstaff—and now CJ was happily seated on a red leather stool at the steel semi-circle bar breathing guilt- and in-law- and family-free air.

  Several of the bride and groom’s big-shot musician friends had staggered in looking for females who weren’t related to the bride, all dropping names like Toby Keith and Tim McGraw and Billy Brenton to attract the attention of the single women in the bar.

  They could have ’em. CJ was done with women today.

  Feeling like he didn’t fit into his family anymore might’ve been bothering him too. He’d been too slow to keep up with the friendly jabs and inside jokes flowing around him at the wedding, and his mind kept drifting back to the confessional. The more he thought about all of it, the more pissed he got.

  If he hadn’t escaped the reception, his mood would’ve ruined what was left of Saffron’s big day. Too bad he wasn’t able to escape himself.

  One seat over on his right, a tallish older guy with salt-and-pepper hair and a mulish, I-wanna-get-shitfaced expression was concentrating on a full shot glass. CJ had taken himself around the world the last few years, tending bar to pay for his next BASE jump or scuba dive or hang gliding trip, and he had a solid feeling this guy wasn’t where he belonged.

  Made for good odds the guy wouldn’t want to make chitchat.

  Perfect.

  But CJ had barely gotten his own drink from the big tattooed bartender when his privacy got shot to hell. To his left, Basil appeared and inhaled an audible, about-to-open-his-mouth-and-be-annoying kind of breath. “I suppose it’s my duty as your arm man to enlighten those poor young ladies as to the unlikelihood of your bank account supporting your buying them a drink.”

  “Wing man,” CJ corrected without thinking. He lifted his Jameson to his lips, purposely not looking at Basil or the ladies. If he ignored them all, they wouldn’t be there.

  “Might want to check them out,” His Holy Piousness said. “Never know where you’ll find a woman willing to support you in the manner in which you’ve become accustomed.”

  CJ supported himself just fine. Man didn’t need possessions to have a life, and he’d had a hell of a good time the last few years. Lived more in those years than most people did in a lifetime.

  Basil gave a holy sniff. “Can’t recall if you like brunettes or blondes better, but you’ve got your pick over there.”

  It was like having one of his sisters here. Should’ve picked a different bar.

  One four or five states away.

  “The brunette’s naked,” the Holy Annoying One said.

  “Does God approve of setting your brother up with an exhibitionist?”

  “God’s willing to make some concessions if that’s what it takes to nudge you along the path to adulthood.”

  CJ gave a brief thought to slugging Basil, but decided against it. Conduct unbecoming of a former Husband of the Year and all that. Least he could do for Serena and Bob and Fiona was to behave himself, especially so close to their hometown.

  But paying the bartender knock out some of Basil’s pompousness had some merit.

  Or it would have, if CJ could afford it. His bank account was in a valley after his trek up Mount Kilimanjaro and the subsequent plane ticket home for the wedding.

  The Jameson, though, was worth every penny.

  Especially since his plans to leave for Utah tomorrow were now delayed. His sisters had volunteered him to clean Bob and Fiona’s gutters. Bob had looked just pallid enough by the time he and Fiona headed home to Willow Glen that guilt had convinced CJ to stick close for another day or two, see what else they needed done.

  Work in mentioning that he wouldn’t play in the Games. Couldn’t do it without a wife anyway. That would be a reasonable excuse.

  One he should’ve thought of hours ago.

  “If you’re determined to forever be homeless,” Basil said, as if each word pained him, “that room you’re staying in at the rectory is open for the foreseeable future.”

  CJ grunted over his drink. Most of the family would scatter back across Illinois tomorrow or Monday—only a couple of them had moved more than a few hours from the Peoria area in the middle of the state—but Basil’s diocese had sent him here to Bliss a few weeks ago. He liked to gossip and henpeck as much as the girls. Another two nights would probably kill CJ, but a free room wasn’t something he was in the position to mock.

  “My congregation has a soft spot for lost souls, and I could use someone to do my laundry and dishes,” Basil added.

  “Sounds like you could use a wife,” CJ said.

  “I hear they’re overrated.”

  “Your housekeeper’s daughter is single. I’m sure God would understand.”

  “Didn’t you used to be funny?”

  “Were we at the same wedding today? Because hell if anything’s funny after that many hours with that many women.”

  Basil’s cheek twitched, the pious holiness equivalent of a belly laugh.

  CJ shook his head and lifted his glass. “To shitty days, man.”

  “You two don’t know shitty.”

  The guy to CJ’s right was sizing him up as if he were trying to decide whether CJ was worth the effort it took to look at him.

  “Arthur Castellano?” Basil said.

  The older guy dipped his chin in acknowledgement.

  “Our condolences on your wife’s passing.”

  CJ had lost the bow tie a good
while ago, but the prickly heat around his neck came back, along with some extra pressure where he’d once worn his wedding band.

  Arthur looked down at his own finger, and a lost hopelessness blanked his expression. He snagged his shot glass with a wobbly hand and tossed the drink back in one inexperienced motion.

  His face went a nice purple color complementary to the neon track lighting above the bar, and he coughed out a long, dry, tongue-out cough that spoke of a man having his first run-in with bottom-shelf whiskey.

  “Ho-oly fish sticks,” Arthur gasped.

  Basil gave CJ a nudge. “How about you help the man out.”

  “Don’t ever take one on the house unless you know what they’re pouring,” CJ said.

  Helpfully.

  But Basil shot him one of those pompous don’t-be-an-ass looks that magnified when Arthur slapped a fifty down on the bar. “Keep ’em coming,” he called to the big guy.

  The second bartender, a guy so old he probably farted ashes, scowled over at them as if they’d already stiffed him on his tip.

  Arthur wheezed out a chuckle. “Go on, Huck,” he said to the old guy. “Try and throw me out. My money works here.”

  Huck’s rheumy blue eyes bulged, and his hunched chest puffed out. The crowd went noticeably quieter. Not silent—Saffron’s wedding guests didn’t seem to notice the chill descending—but several patrons in non-formal attire stopped to watch.

  The old guy pointed a finger at Arthur. The other bartender stepped between them. He looked about CJ’s age, but the dude could’ve pounded CJ into the ground with just a thumb.

  Said something. CJ wasn’t a small guy either.

  The big dude slid Arthur’s fifty off the bar and gave him an unreadable look. “Money’s good here, attitude ain’t,” he said. “Don’t want to throw you out, so simmer on down.”

  Arthur leaned around him to eye the old guy one more time, then slumped, arms crossed.

  The big dude refilled Arthur’s shot glass from a bottle of Jeremiah Weed. Conversation in the bar went back to normal levels, but Arthur was still getting curious glances.

  “They don’t like my kind in here,” Arthur said to CJ.