When he rang the bell, Tony Veracruz promptly opened the front door. He held a crying baby in one arm and a cat in the other and he was wearing a big smile.
Roark had been to this house before. Tony had invited him over a couple of times to play shuffleboard. He knew that Priscilla owned the house and lived in the upper apartment, renting the main floor to Tony. But he’d never been up the stairs.
“Priscilla will be down in a minute,” Tony said.
They were standing in a small vestibule. A set of steps to the immediate left of the door led upstairs. Roark wanted to see what kind of apartment a woman like Priscilla called home. But she apparently didn’t want him up there.
“Come on in,” Tony was saying. “Sorry about the racket. Josephina is teething.”
Last he’d heard, Tony didn’t have a baby. A nine-year-old daughter, yes. And there was Jasmine, perched on a chair in the living room, holding a baby bottle.
“Jasmine and I are babysitting,” Tony explained. “The baby belongs to Julie’s chef. Her regular sitter is sick.” Julie was Tony’s wife and also the owner of Brady’s Tavern and Tearoom, across the street from Fire Station 59.
Roark could see that Tony and his daughter had been exerting considerable effort to distract the baby from her teething pain. Toys of every description were spread out over the coffee table and a large area rug in the living room.
“Jasmine,” Tony said, “run upstairs and tell Pris her boyfriend is here.”
Startled, Jasmine stared at Roark. “Priscilla has a boyfriend?” She sounded almost scandalized.
“Go,” Tony said.
When she’d gone, Roark asked, “You aren’t giving Priscilla trouble over this fake boyfriend thing, are you?”
“Are you kidding? After all the grief she gave me when Julie and I got engaged, I couldn’t let a golden opportunity like this pass by.” He paused, put the cat down and shifted the baby to his other shoulder. “I shouldn’t do that, huh?”
“It’s a bit of a sore spot with her, I think,” Roark said carefully. “She’d probably never admit that.”
“Yeah, heaven forbid she show any weakness.” Tony jiggled the baby and offered her a teething ring, which she promptly rejected. “Aw, come on, little one.”
“Here, let me try,” Roark said.
“You? You don’t have kids, do you?”
“Just an endless stream of nieces and nephews. But I spend as much time with them as I can. Whenever I go home to visit, someone is always teething.” He took the baby, who wore a ruffled pink dress and matching booties, and held her up, looking her in the face. “Hi, Josephina. Can you look at me?” And he proceeded to make faces at her while Tony tried not to laugh.
The baby was so startled by the faces that she did stop crying, at least for the moment. Roark gently swung her back and forth. She stared wide-eyed at him.
“How’d you do that?” Tony asked.
“It’s probably just the novelty of a new face,” Roark admitted. “She might start crying again any minute.”
“Let me try it,” Tony said, holding out his hands. Before he could take the baby, though, Jasmine came running down the steps.
“Dad, wait till you see this. You won’t believe it!”
Moments later, a cloud of florid pink chiffon barely contained in a clear plastic bag descended the stairs, and somewhere behind it was Priscilla—in curlers.
The men froze, and even Josephina, who’d been cooing softly, went silent. She seemed to be staring at the spectacle, too.
“I don’t want to hear anything about cotton candy or Glinda the Good Witch or…or Martians,” Priscilla said as she descended. Carefully—probably because she couldn’t see her feet. “Not one word.”
Tony whistled. “Do you have to get permission from Pepto-Bismol to wear that color?”
Roark bit his lip. He had to admit, the bridesmaid’s gown was a ghastly hue.
He hadn’t expected Priscilla to show up for their first—and possibly only—date in curlers, either. Pink plastic rollers like his mother used to wear. He didn’t see why she had to resort to such extreme measures. Her natural hair, straight and thick and the most gorgeous dark honey color, didn’t need any improvement.
Priscilla finally looked at Roark, and what she saw almost made her miss a step. Roark, holding a baby as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She felt an unexpected contraction in the vicinity of her womb. And the way Roark was looking at her, as if she were a mountain of strawberry ice cream and he was hot fudge, didn’t help matters. She had thought the curlers would put him off.
She pulled herself together. “Hi, Roark. There’s still time to change your mind.”
Roark shook his head. “Not a chance. I want to see you actually wearing that dress. It’s bigger than you.”
“And it weighs more than my turnout gear.”
“I think it makes you look like Cinderella,” said Jasmine, who loved all things pink and girlie. She had begged Priscilla to model the dress when she’d brought it home a few days earlier.
Priscilla spared a smile for the girl. “Thank you, Jasmine. But, remember, it’s not the dress that makes the princess.”
“I know, it’s the inner princess,” Samantha said with a giggle.
Priscilla ruffled the girl’s dark mop of hair, then grabbed a couple of bulging shopping bags sitting near the bottom of the stairs. She looked at Roark. “Are we taking Josephina with us?”
“Oh, um, no.” He handed the baby to Tony, then focused his attention back on Priscilla. “You ready?” He had to raise his voice to be heard over Josephina’s renewed screams.
“I know I don’t look ready. But Marisa has a legion of makeup artists and hair torturers waiting for me at the church.”
Priscilla was momentarily taken aback once again when she saw Roark’s car—a red Porsche. “Quite a step up from the black Suburban.”
“That’s my work car. This is my play car.”
Pretty nice toy, Priscilla thought as she stuffed her shopping bags, containing shoes and other accessories, in the tiny trunk. Where was she going to put the dress? The car didn’t have a backseat to speak of. “We need a sidecar for the dress.”
“I think all three of us will fit.” He gallantly opened the passenger door, then held the dress while Priscilla got herself situated. He gently draped the dress over her, though he had to try three times before he was able to stuff the mountain of pink chiffon inside.
And then they were off, Roark deftly maneuvering his macho machine through the twilight of an early fall evening. The weather was magnificent, with just a touch of chill in the air. Priscilla wished she could enjoy it. But she was too tense. The next few hours were going to be tedious. Marisa and her mother would be walking, talking high-anxiety machines while eight bridesmaids—eight!—tried to do makeup and hair and change their clothes in that tiny bride’s room.
Priscilla didn’t like pandemonium, especially when she had no chance of controlling or organizing things. She would be at the mercy of her family. And Roark would get to see it all.
He would probably run for the hills.
“Okay,” she said when the silence had