Wrong Dress, Right Guy Read online

  Pulling the reply card forward, Mac looked at the blank line requesting the number in his party. Without hesitation he grabbed a pen and with sure and bold strokes wrote the number two. Twenty-four hours ago he hadn’t the slightest idea who number two would be, but he sure as hell wasn’t going alone.

  Now, out of the blue, he had a date. Immediately her face came into his mind.

  Cinnamon Scott. Mac smiled. She was beautiful, poised and could hold her own. She held it with him. And he was no pushover. Cinnamon would give Jerrilyn a run for her money.

  Mac suddenly felt good. Really good.

  Chapter 6

  The house in Boston reflected the difference between her mother’s world and that of her father. And now that she’d been living in Zahara Lewis’s house for nearly a month, Cinnamon understood more why her parents’ lives would never mesh in a marriage.

  Her mother’s home was modern. The house was one of the old brownstones of Boston, near enough to Copley Square for a good walk and far enough away to give it an old neighborhood feel. But that was the only thing old about it. The inside had been gutted and redone several times. Now the place had an open feel to it that let the light in and was decorated with bold colors and plush furniture.

  Cinnamon had had her own apartment when she lived in Boston. Her hours were strange and she wanted to be on her own. Her mother hadn’t objected. She said she understood and the two had never been enemies. The only subject they disagreed on was Cinnamon’s father’s family. Although her mother was tolerant of Samara, she’d kept Cinnamon away from her father’s family as much as possible. That was why she rarely visited her grandmother. When Zahara had bequeathed her the house, it had been a total surprise, but it was timely.

  Cinnamon led Mac upstairs to the bedrooms. Only in Cinnamon’s room was there traditional furniture. She opened the door at the end of the hall where Mac would sleep. It had a modern fireplace, a platform bed and mirrored drawers on the dressers. One wall had been painted electric blue. The other walls were a soft robin’s egg blue and everything else was white, from the carpet to the bedcovers. Throw pillows picked up the contrasting wall colors.

  Mac turned totally around. His suit bag and suitcase were still in his hands. “No mirrors on the ceiling?” he asked.

  “I drew the line there,” Cinnamon said. “My mother is rather extreme.”

  “What does your room look like?”

  “Very traditional, but you don’t need to see it.” She stopped him immediately.

  “Don’t worry. I wasn’t angling for an invitation.”

  “This is the calmest guest room in the house. Believe me, the others are, shall we say, more colorful.”

  Mac put his suitcase down.

  “I’ll leave you to settle in.”

  “Hey.” He stopped her. “What are we doing tonight?”

  Cinnamon stammered. She hadn’t thought of doing anything. “Nothing in particular. I thought I’d stay in, wash my hair. But don’t let me keep you. If you want to go out, I can give you a key.”

  “It’s early. Why don’t I wash your hair and we could go out to dinner later tonight?”

  Images of them naked in the shower, shampoo lather dripping from her hair while Mac’s hands covered the rest of her body had her tingling with anticipation. But she knew better.

  “Why don’t I wash my hair? And we can get something to eat later.”

  “You don’t trust me with shampoo and water?”

  “In a word, no,” Cinnamon said. Yet it wasn’t Mac she didn’t trust. She could still feel his mouth on hers. The idea of his hands rhythmically massaging her scalp with her being in a virtually helpless position, was something she thought she should avoid.

  “You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said. “I’m very good.”

  “Don’t tell me, somewhere in your past you were a shampoo clerk?”

  “No, I’d just like to get my hands in your hair.”

  Heat slammed into Cinnamon as if she’d opened a hot oven. “Whatever happened to ‘we don’t like each other’?” she asked.

  “I thought I’d put it on hold for the weekend.”

  Cinnamon smiled. “I approve of that. It’ll make the party a lot more fun.”

  “Not to mention the rest of the weekend.”

  Cinnamon didn’t understand what was happening to her. It seemed to happen each time she was in Mac’s presence. And being in a bedroom alone with him was the wrong setting. She took a step back.

  “I’ll make a reservation,” Mac said. He, too, moved a step away from her. Cinnamon wondered if he felt the need to break the invisible connection that seemed to pull them together. “What would you like to eat?”

  “Seafood.” She grabbed onto the ordinary topic of dinner, relieved that whatever was between them had snapped. “Try Docksides or The Sandpiper. The food is excellent at both.”

  “The Sandpiper is a seafood restaurant?”

  “Named after its original owner, Granville Sandpiper. He was a fisherman until he decided to try the land for a while. Bored with inactivity, he opened a restaurant. That was seventy years ago. It’s still owned by the family.”

  Mac nodded.

  Cinnamon went to her room and threw the windows open. The wind burst inside. She’d forgotten how much she loved the flow of the breeze. For a moment she let it trail over her face, taking deep breaths and remembering living here. Although she hadn’t been gone that long, she’d given up her apartment and only spoke to her friends through e-mail or the phone. It wasn’t like they could meet after work for a quick drink. Not that she could do that anyway. She’d been in front of the camera at six and eleven. Drinking in between appearances wasn’t a good idea and by the time she was free for the night, most of her friends were asleep. But she’d lived a pleasant life in Boston except for the wisecracks, bad jokes and glass ceiling she’d faced in the weather room.

  But that was behind her. Pushing herself back from the breeze, she turned toward the room. She no longer had to deal with any of that. Quickly, she unpacked and stepped under the shower. She was humming to herself, smiling at nothing. Then she realized she was thinking of Mac.

  Vigorously she washed her hair. She wondered what he thought of her mother’s house. The place took some getting used to. Her friends in high school used to love to come over. Bold colors were in then and their parents were much too conservative to allow them to have purple walls and furniture that was just fun. While Cinnamon never went in for that, preferring traditional furniture, she liked her mother’s expression of self. She said her home should reflect who she was and she was a happy, colorful individual.

  And she had a totally pink room. Cinnamon laughed. Wait until Mac saw it. She was saving that for later.

  With the length of her hair and the fact that it held water like a dam, it took her nearly two hours to complete the process. Dressed in jeans and a Harvard University T-shirt, Cinnamon left the bedroom and headed downstairs.

  She didn’t know where Mac was. She didn’t hear any sound coming from his room, but it was at the opposite end of the hall from hers. She’d purposely put him as far from her as she could get him. Downstairs was just as quiet. At the bottom of the steps, she turned toward the kitchen.

  “Does it always take you this long to wash your hair?” Mac startled her when he spoke from directly behind her. She turned around in the downstairs hall.

  “Did you miss me?” she teased.

  “Wow,” he said, his eyes opening wide.

  “Thank you. I’ll take that as meaning I was worth the wait.” She tossed her head and pushed her fingers through her hair.

  “You know you’re going to have to stop doing that.”

  “Doing what?” she asked, feigning innocence. She’d never teased a guy before. With Mac it was fun. And the fact that the events involving her “wedding” were laughable to her, but upsetting for him, just made her want to tease him more.

  Starting to walk again, she went to the
kitchen and opened the refrigerator. A shelf full of bottled water, bottled juice, a can of coffee and the usual assortment of condiments, looked back at her. On the bottom shelf was a bottle of wine, but nothing to eat. Grabbing a bottle of water, she turned back. “Want something?” she asked Mac, holding up the water.

  “Yes,” he said in a tone that had her hand stopping in midreach.

  They were here alone and while her body seemed to have discovered the chemistry of his even from a distance, Cinnamon was not planning to reduce the space between them. She’d sworn off men while she lived in this town, and her vow extended to Virginia and to the man standing in front of her.

  “Why don’t we go for a walk?” she said.

  Mac took the water, twisted the cap and drained the contents in one long swallow. Cinnamon carried hers with her as they went outside and headed up the street of houses that had been a deep, dark red when originally built. Time and weather had changed them to an unfathomable purple, a color Cinnamon had never seen anywhere else.

  “Did you grow up here?” Mac asked.

  “You mean in that house with all the color?”

  He nodded.

  “Yes,” Cinnamon answered. “It wasn’t always like that. My mother changed it several times. Once we had an art deco look. It was totally black and white, with all these elaborate sconces and lacquered plaques on the walls. I never knew what the place would look like when I got home from school. My mother liked to move the furniture around. But after I started working, I got my own place.”

  “I take it your mom is a free spirit.”

  “She’s a lot of fun. But she got a daughter like me, old-fashioned, traditional.”

  “Except in the matter of misdirected wedding gowns.”

  “Except that,” Cinnamon agreed. “And my wardrobe. I tend to wear bright colors.” She looked down at her shirt and pants. They weren’t the shocking colors she usually wore. “I suppose I get my clothes gene from my mother and my decorating gene from my father and grandmother. I love the house in Indian Falls.”

  “I do, too,” Mac said.

  Cinnamon remembered he’d wanted to buy Zahara Lewis’s house.

  “You should have spent more time there when Zahara was alive.”

  “I wish I had, but my parents’ divorce was bad and my mother refused to allow me any contact with my dad’s side of the family.”

  “That doesn’t seem very fair.”

  “They treated her badly.”

  “Zahara?” He looked surprised.

  “I don’t think it was her. Mainly my father’s sisters and aunts. They didn’t think she was good enough for him. And knowing how my mother lives, I can believe she wasn’t a breath of free air to the genteel folks of Virginia.”

  Cinnamon turned the corner. Ahead of them were the towering buildings that defined the skyline of Boston. For most people, it was surprising to find it so close. Just around the corner and you were almost upon it. In front of them was a small park with a few benches used for relaxing and taking in the air. Cinnamon walked to one of them and the two sat down.

  “It wasn’t all my father’s relatives,” she continued. “My parents lived here, not in Virginia. The marriage broke up for other reasons. I’m sure it had more to do with incompatibility than anything else.”

  “So has this experience soured you on marriage?”

  She eyed him cautiously. He was the one sour on marriage. She wondered if that question had an underlying purpose, since Mac had mentioned it.

  “I don’t think so. I’m cautious. I mean, when I say ’til death do us part, I want to mean it.”

  “Did you intend to mean it with the guy who went to England?”

  “Wesley Garner? He was strictly…” She stopped, unsure how to go on. Wesley was eye candy, but she didn’t want to demean him to someone who didn’t know him and didn’t know her that well, either. “No,” she ended weakly. “We were friends. We both know Mary Ellen and he asked me.”

  She left out the part about her finding her boyfriend and hopeful fiancé with another woman. Wesley knew about it. Everyone knew. Wesley was between women at the time, as hard as that was to believe, and as friends he’d asked her to the party. Of course, she was a local television personality. She knew that was part of the reason Wesley had asked her, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t seeing anyone and she did like him as a friend. There was no reason why she shouldn’t go with him.

  “So where are we going for dinner?” Cinnamon asked, changing the subject.

  “Sandpiper’s.”

  The restaurant was packed. It was Friday night, the start of the weekend and the place was noisy. Mac had asked for a quiet table, so he and Cinnamon sat away from the main path the waiters took as they served food and took care of the diners. It was relatively quiet compared to the other part of the room.

  Mac tried not to stare at Cinnamon. She was beautiful. He told himself that he understood beautiful women, but he couldn’t keep from looking at her. She wore a simple black dress with a long bright pink scarf that draped over her shoulder and hung down her back.

  They’d ordered and received their food. “How’d you get the name Cinnamon?”

  “That’s very interesting,” she said. “My father gave it to me. I get my coloring from him.” She put a forkful of food in her mouth and ate. “The story goes that when he first saw me, he said I was the color of cinnamon and that’s what they named me. I’m grateful. I could have been Emma. That was the name they had chosen before I was born.”

  “You don’t look like an Emma.” Cinnamon was an unusual name, not exactly exotic, but one that made people look up from whatever they were doing. And then they would see her.

  “How did you become MacKenzie?” she asked.

  “It’s a family name, my grandfather’s. He ran a boatyard in North Carolina. When I was a kid, he used to take me sailing. I loved being on the water.”

  “I would never have guessed that,” Cinnamon said. “You look so comfortable on your television show. I thought you’d have always been interested in reporting.”

  So, she watched him. “I didn’t,” he told her. “Not always. There was a time I wanted to be a doctor.”

  “What happened?”

  “I discovered reporting and knew I wanted to search for the truth more than anything else. What about you? I never would have taken you as holding a doctorate in meteorology, either. It just shows you can’t tell by looking at a person.”

  “That’s true. The first day you came to the house, I thought you were the delivery man. Then when I saw you, I thought you were either FBI or someone from the military.”

  “FBI? What gave you that idea?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. It was something about the way you stand, the way you carry yourself. You looked regimented, like you’ve been trained so well that it’s become second nature.”

  “I’m not sure if there’s a compliment in there.”

  “There’s not. A moment after I opened the door, I realized the stance was anger.”

  He laughed. “I was so stressed that day. Allison had been running me around and everywhere I went someone made a comment about my failed attempt at marriage. The dress was the last straw.”

  “Mac, I’m so sorry. I know I never should have put the dress on, but it was so beautiful.”

  “Forget it. It’s all over now. Allison is married and everything is fine.”

  He raised his wineglass and toasted. “To misunderstandings.”

  “And happy resolutions.” She clinked glasses with him and they drank.

  Mac felt at ease. Cinnamon was the first woman in a long time that he could be friends with. Even though he told her they didn’t like each other, he was quickly finding out she was a very interesting person and he wanted to know her better.

  “Cinnamon Scott? I thought that was you.” A woman, who could have been in her forties but looked younger, came over. She wore a suit of muted violet and silver that reeked of m
oney. Her hair was perfect, with not a strand out of place. Mac recognized the type immediately.

  “Janelle!”

  Cinnamon stood and the woman came over. The two hugged like old friends.

  “It’s so good to see you. Are you back? I never thought you’d make it in a small town in Virginia.”

  “I’m settling in very nicely, thank you,” Cinnamon said. She glanced at Mac. “Janelle, let me introduce you to MacKenzie Grier.”

  They shook hands.

  “Janelle is the owner of a cable station here.”

  “Yes, and I tried valiantly to get Cinnamon to come on board, but she opted for that weather service job in Virginia. Nice to meet you.” She smiled.

  “Would you like to join us?”

  “Well.” She looked over her shoulder. “Maybe for a moment. I’m having dinner with some bankers and they are boring.”

  Mac snagged a chair from a nearby table and assisted her into it.

  “So, Mac, you’re an easily recognizable person, especially to anyone who has a television set. How did you meet Cinnamon?”

  They both laughed. She looked confused. “We were just talking about that,” he answered. Mac went on to explain about the wrong wedding gown.

  Janelle laughed. “That’s precious,” she said. “Too bad you can’t use it on your show,” she said to Mac.

  “I’m a political commentator. And besides, this has already been on cable.”

  Janelle looked over her shoulder again. “I’d love to hear more,” she said, standing. Mac stood, too. “But it looks like the bankers have run out of conversation. Great to see you, Cinnamon. And remember you can always come home.” She turned to Mac and offered a hand. “Good meeting you.” Then she turned and whispered something to Cinnamon before walking away.

  “What did she say?” he asked.

  “Nothing important.”

  “Tell me.”

  “If she wanted you to hear, she’d have said it out loud.”

  “Still, I want to know.”

  Cinnamon stared at him. She wore a slight smile that seemed to grow a little at a time.