Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [69]
From across the room, Adam signaled to Kendra to join him on the front porch.
“By the way, what exactly did you tell these people?” Kendra asked as he opened the front door and stood aside to permit her to step onto the porch.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. They seem to think there’s going to be another wedding in the family.”
“Oh, that.” He nodded grimly. “I probably should have warned you about my aunt Jackie. She can be a bit, ummmm, domineering, at times.”
“Domineering.” Kendra pondered the word. “What a gentle way to put it.”
“Was she tough on you?”
“Naw. But I think now might be a good time to tell me exactly what you told your grandmother about me. About us.”
“Oh, well, just that I was bringing a girlfriend home to meet her.”
“How does that translate into ‘Do you like Hummels?’ and ‘What colors are you planning for the wedding?’ ”
“I guess Gran might have read a bit more into it than I’d intended.”
“The way your family is reacting, one might think you never brought a girl home before and that . . .” She paused. “When was the last time you brought a girl home?”
“A few years ago,” he admitted sheepishly.
“How many?”
He appeared to be calculating. “Well, I guess it must have been, oh, maybe eight, because my mother was still alive, and she had wanted us to announce our engagement to the family at Christmas.”
“You haven’t brought a girl home in eight years?” She almost choked. “And she was your fiancée?”
“That was the only time I was engaged.” He leaned forward and confided, “I haven’t had a lot of other long-term relationships.”
“No wonder they all think this is serious. But I’d hardly call our relationship a long-term one.”
“I’m working on that.” He cupped her face in his hand. “When you consider what’s been happening these past two weeks, there hasn’t been much time left over for romance. Not if one wants to do it right, that is.”
“Perhaps you’d like to share that thought with some of your relatives,” she said, her voice softening, wondering what Adam’s idea of doing a romance right might be. “They’re all under the impression that a wedding is in the near future.”
“I guess there could have been a bit of embellishment between the time I told my grandmother I was bringing you home and the time it passed from her to one aunt, then to another, to my cousins . . .”
“Are you aware that your aunt Jackie has already planned our wedding—Church of the Savior, by the way—as well as the reception, which we’re having at the Union Club? That would be the old, original Union Club, not the new one on Tenth Street.”
Adam laughed at Kendra’s accurate mimic of his aunt.
“She gave me a list of which florist to use, the name of the best caterer, and which of your cousins I should consider for the bridal party. Your cousin Ellie should be included because she’s twenty-six and quote, without apparent prospects and maybe Adam has a friend in the FBI, end quote.”
“I’m really sorry.” Adam put an arm around Kendra. “It never occurred to me that things would get so out of hand.”
With his index finger, he slid a long curl back behind her ear, where it had earlier been.
“You’ve been a really good sport. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”
“How?”
“What would it take?”
Before she could respond, his cell phone began to ring. Frowning, he reached for it, answering with a curt, “Stark.”
Adam moved away from her, almost imperceptibly, the humor now gone from his face. In its place was what Kendra had come to think of as his FBI face. The face he wore when something serious needed his attention.
“We’re on our way . . . a few hours. Where do you want us to meet them?” He leaned back against the porch railing. “Tell them we’ll be there.”
He slid the phone back into his jacket and took her by the hand.
“That was Miranda Cahill.”
“There’s been another one,” she said flatly.
Adam shook his head.
“Not another body, but some new information.”
“What information? Information