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“My father thinks I’m a borderline criminal, my mother thinks I can walk on water, and my brother sees me as a big pain in the ass. Take your pick.”
“What do you think?”
One side of his mouth lifted in a smile that couldn’t decide whether to be boyishly charming or wickedly sexy. “I’m definitely not an angel.”
Goodness, was he flirting with her? Her silly heart raced at the thought. “I believe that.”
“Smart girl.”
Night was falling, shadows deepening across the grass. Candles and torches were lit, adding warm illumination to the luster of a new moon and the light from a sprinkling of stars. The piano player was into waltzes and love songs, and Tiffany longed to be with Philip and away from his brother. Whereas Philip was strong and silent, a man whose patience and understanding added to his allure, this man was all pent-up steam and energy, a man who would have trouble finding satisfaction in life.
“So when’s the big day?” J.D. asked. He fished into his breast pocket for his cigarettes again. Shaking the last one out, he crumpled the empty pack in one hand.
“Excuse me?” She began to pick up empty plates and cups since it was time to shut down the tent.
“Your wedding day. When is it?”
“We haven’t decided.”
He clicked a lighter to the end of his filter tip. “Doesn’t sound like Philip. He has his life planned down to the last minute. He’s probably already picked out his cemetery plot.”
She cringed inside. That much was true. Philip balanced his checkbook to the penny, filled his gas tank when the needle hit the one-quarter mark, wore his suits by the days of the week, and, as far as she could tell, his only vice was that he liked to gamble a little. But just a little.
“Philip would like to get married before Christmas,” she said, then instantly regretted the words as J.D. surveyed her with eyes that called her a dozen kinds of fool.
“For tax purposes?” He sucked in a lungful of smoke.
Because we’re in love, she wanted to cry out. The tent was too dark, too close, and Philip’s younger brother too…male—the kind of male a smart girl avoided like the plague. “It makes sense.”
“Does it?” He gave her a last once-over and tipped his head. “Good luck. I think you’re gonna need it.”
“I doubt it.”
“You haven’t lived with my brother yet. I grew up with him.” He sauntered away and spent some time talking to the bartender while, disdaining his family, he got himself a bottle of beer rather than the traditional Santini glass of wine.
She watched as he found a tree to lean his shoulders against, then smoked and slowly sipped his drink as night fell.
What did J.D. know about Philip? They were eleven years apart in age and light-years apart in maturity. Don’t let him rattle you, Tiffany, she told herself as she blew out the candles under the warming trays and chafing dishes. She knew the entire Santini clan was against her marriage to Philip. J.D. was just up-front about it.
She saw J.D. off and on that summer. Their conversations were brief, cordial and detached. He didn’t bother hiding his disapproval of her engagement, and she bit her tongue whenever she was around him, which, thankfully, wasn’t often. He dated several women, all sophisticated, rich and brittle, none of whom he spent enough time with to justify introductions to the family.
J.D. made Tiffany nervous and fidgety, too aware of herself and his all-too-virile presence. She’d found out through snippets of conversation that he’d finished college and was thinking of applying to law school, though Philip found it ironic that his brother, who had come as close to becoming a criminal as anyone in the family, would want to practice law.
“But there are all kinds of attorneys, I suppose,” Philip had confided to Tiffany. “Some who believe in the system, others who try to use it to their advantage. I’m afraid James is going to be one who bends the law to fit his own skewed perception.”
Tiffany wasn’t so sure, because for all his faults—and there were more than she wanted to count—J.D. possessed an underlying strength. He had his own code of ethics, it seemed. Still, the less she was around him, the better she felt.
She made it through that summer and into fall, dealing with J.D. from a distance, talking with him as little as possible when they were forced together, and generally avoiding not only him, but the entire Santini family. Carlo had made it abundantly clear he thought his eldest son should, for the sake of the family and his children, wait to get married. J.D. thought his brother should forget about walking down the aisle altogether, and Frances, Philip’s mother, didn’t like the fact that Tiffany was fifteen years her son’s junior. “She’ll get used to the idea,” Philip assured Tiffany, but his mother barely tolerated her.
“You can still back out,” her own mother said only two weeks before the wedding. It was early October and Indian summer was in full force. The days clear and warm, t
he nights crisp and bright.
Tiffany was feeling the first twinges of cold feet. She knew she wanted to marry Philip, to be his wife and the mother of his children, but everyone else seemed to be pulling them apart.
The occasion was a dinner at his house, ostensibly to celebrate the upcoming nuptials, but Carlo had drunk too much of his own wine and become surly, Frances had repeatedly touched Philip’s arm and brought up his ex-wife and children, and J.D., seated across from Tiffany, had caught her eye time and time again. His gaze wasn’t openly hostile, nor was it friendly; just intense. He managed a smile or two during the meal but clearly felt as uncomfortable with his own overbearing family as she was.
Philip, Carlo and Mario, Carlo’s brother, were leaving for a convention that night in Las Vegas. Upon Philip’s return, he and Tiffany were to be married. She only had to get through this dinner and the next week, then she’d become Mrs. Philip Santini. Sweat broke out on her forehead as she tried to concentrate on the conversation while picking at her rack of lamb and seasoned potatoes. To make the meal even more uncomfortable, every once in a while Mario and his wife would lapse into Italian, and everyone at the table, aside from Tiffany, understood the conversation. She sensed that she was being spoken about, but never heard her name and silently prayed that the ordeal would be over soon.
