Rescued by a Wedding: Texas Wedding / A Marriage Between Friends. Kathleen O'Brien
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CHAPTER FOUR
IT WASN’T EASY to sleep that night. Every noise Susannah heard, even the familiar oak branch that had scratched against her window since she was six, made her heart race. Outside, the night seemed to go on forever, the mushroom-colored moon caught in a soup of gray clouds. Inside, every creaking floorboard, every snap, groan or sigh from the old house, sounded like Trent coming to find her.
Trent, coming to lie beside her in the darkness and, with his angry lips and determined hands, somehow force her to keep her promise.
She woke up feeling wrung out and muddy-headed. And oddly lonely. In some ways, she missed Nikki. It would have been nice to have someone to talk to. But sitting around gabbing was a luxury she could rarely afford—and it wasn’t something Nikki enjoyed much, anyhow. So she tried just to be glad she didn’t have to make breakfast for Nikki and nag her out the door to school.
She did have to get up, though. She was due at the burn center by nine, and there was no way to avoid it. She went in only two mornings a week during peach season, and Rachel, her gung-ho administrative assistant, would undoubtedly have scheduled a dozen meetings, phone calls and interviews.
So Susannah put on her best spring suit and extra lipstick, and made her way across town. She sent up a little prayer that no big problems would present themselves today, and that maybe she could get home early.
No such luck.
“Susannah, thank God you’re here.” Rachel stood up from her chair when she saw her boss. “You’re not going to believe what Dr. Mahaffey’s wife did.”
Susannah moved into her office and put down her purse, trying to refrain from pointing out that she didn’t care what Dr. Mahaffey’s wife did. Obviously, she couldn’t say such a thing. Dr. Mahaffey was the retired chief of surgery for the burn center, and his wife had organized some of their most successful fund-raisers. So what Mrs. Mahaffey did was always important.
Especially to the executive coordinator of donor/volunteer affairs. And that was Susannah.
“What did she do?” Susannah managed a smile, because she knew the answer would be something hilarious. Spunky, opinionated, energetic Maggie Mahaffey was eighty-two, nine years older than her exhausted husband, and most of the time she lived on Mars.
Rachel stood in the doorway between the offices and held out a plate heaped with pie. “She sent in a recipe for the peach book.”
Susannah set down the stack of color-coded phone messages she’d just grabbed and stared at the plate, as if she expected it to explode. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes.” Rachel nodded, her full lips pressed so tightly you almost couldn’t see her signature-red lipstick. “Taste it.”
Susannah laughed and took a step backward. “I’ll take your word for it. What’s wrong this time? Six pounds of sugar? How that woman has managed to avoid diabetes is a mystery to me.”
“No sugar. This time she added mint.” Rachel widened her eyes dramatically. “Mint. And…cashews.”
Susannah’s mouth just hung open, seemingly unable to respond to her order to close. “Cashews in her peach pie?”
“Yes. Cashews.” Rachel wasn’t easily rattled, but this clearly had shaken her. “What are we going to do, Susannah? It’s indescribably gross. I brushed my teeth twice, and I still taste it.”
Susannah sat on the edge of her desk, suddenly tired. Given what she was going through back at Everly, a disgusting peach pie simply didn’t seem important. “I’ll just have to create a typo. The line about the cashews will mysteriously drop off.”
“Again? You did that last year, with the sugar! Mrs. Mahaffey tried to get you fired then. If you do it again, she’ll have your head.”
“She’s welcome to it.” Susannah reached one more time for the phone messages. Red meant “urgent” and the stack was about ninety percent red. “Did the volunteer training session go all right?”
Rachel set the pie down on her desk, giving it one last grimace and a shudder. Then she turned back to Susannah, putting on her professional face. “Yeah, it’s going great. They’re on day two now, and it’s a pretty big group this time. Ten volunteers…no, wait, eleven.”
Susannah looked up. This was unusual. Rachel certainly had the authority to slip a latecomer into the training program without clearing it with her boss, but she didn’t often do it. The volunteer application had a box for Susannah’s signature, and Rachel wasn’t comfortable with empty boxes.
Susannah wondered who the new recruit was. Nell Bollinger had been promising to sign up, but word was the Bollingers had just found pinkeye in their cattle, so this probably wasn’t the week she’d finally decide to follow through.
“Eleven is excellent. Who is the new one? Do you remember her name?”
A stupid question, actually. Rachel was so detail oriented she undoubtedly knew the names, addresses, telephone numbers and shoe sizes of all eleven newbies by heart.
“Yes, of course! In fact, she said she was a friend of yours. Let’s see. That one was Missy Griffin.” She frowned slightly. “No, wait. She said she’d just gotten a divorce and gone back to her maiden name. Missy…Missy Snowdon. That’s right.”
Missy Snowdon…
Her chest suddenly tight, Susannah stared down at the telephone messages. She struggled to keep her face impassive.
Surely she’d heard wrong. Or else Rachel had remembered wrong.
For one thing, Missy Snowdon had left Texas years ago. She’d gone to Hollywood, or maybe Vegas…one of those cities that act like magnets on women who are mostly made of collagen and silicone and bleach.
For another, Missy Snowdon wasn’t the volunteering type. She was a player, not a worker. A taker, not a giver.
“Um…” Rachel tilted her head, obviously unsettled by something she saw in Susannah’s face. “I hope I didn’t do the wrong thing. I never would have let her sign up if she hadn’t said she was your friend. If that’s not true—”
“It’s okay,” Susannah said. “It’s true. We were…we went to high school together.”
She couldn’t bring herself to speak the word friends. Once, she’d thought so, but…
As she’d said, Missy Snowdon was a taker. And what she’d taken from Susannah was Trent.
Rachel still looked worried, her brow furrowed. “Are you sure? The class is observing in Restorative this morning. I could go over and pull her out—”
“No, no, don’t be silly. We don’t have so many volunteers that we can afford to chase one away.”
Rachel nodded. She knew what a struggle it was to fill the positions.
Susannah managed a smile. “I should get to these phone messages, I suppose. I can’t stay long today.”
“Oh, of course, what was I thinking? Call Dr. Grieve first. Then Mrs. McManus. Be sure to leave Des Barkley at the Daily Grower for last. He wants an interview about the peach party, which is good, but you know how he talks.”
Susannah nodded. She knew.
It wasn’t easy, but somehow she got through the stack by noon. Some of it really was urgent. Some of it was downright boring. But at least it kept her mind off other things.
Like Trent.
And Missy Snowdon.
Susannah wished she’d had the nerve to ask Rachel how Missy looked. Back in high school, Missy had been the fairy princess, with a waterfall of blond hair and round, lash-heavy blue eyes. But the looks had been deceiving. Underneath all that innocent beauty beat the heart of a tiger.
For