Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(11)
The artist, Paul Kettering, and Brad Mason served as ushers, seating everyone before the wedding party walked out from the lodge. Brad, whom Kate had met last night when he finally returned home, resembled Grant but seemed much more edgy, even bitter. Todd McCollum, Gabe and Grant’s friend and the lumber-mill foreman, was also in the wedding party, partnering Char.
To a single violin playing “Wedding March,” Kate started down the grassy aisle behind the flower girl and Char and ahead of Tess and their father. Standing with the pastor, the men in the wedding party waited before the small altar with its cross and big bouquet of yellow calla lilies. Kate saw Gabe looked nervous; when she got close to the front of the four rows of portable chairs with white covers, Grant winked at her.
It was crazy to feel that wink and look from him down to her toes. He had stopped ranting about the loss of his tree and the insult or threat he felt was meant for him, but she knew he still harbored deep anger. Yet he was determined to help make the day special for Gabe and Tess.
Kate held her own single calla lily and Tess’s bouquet while she and Gabe recited the vows they had written and exchanged rings. The old words to honor and cherish were still there. Kate had just learned this morning from Tess that Grant had been married and divorced. What could have happened? Who would not want to stay married to Grant Mason?
Wait! she told herself. She didn’t really know the man, though Carson’s suggestion that she get close to Grant only in a businesslike, controlled way seemed crazy, maybe impossible. Getting closer to Grant...wouldn’t that be an all-or-nothing proposition? She saw him as so much more than just a way to get to that Adena mound on his property.
“I now pronounce you man and wife,” Pastor Snell said in a voice loud enough to be heard over the roar of the falls. “Family and friends, I have the honor of introducing to you Mr. and Mrs. Gabriel McCord.”
There was a big kiss by the bridal couple. Applause, tears and smiles, a quick procession from the front to the back, where the wedding party formed a reception line before the guests meandered toward the lodge where the wedding lunch would be held. Kate froze when Dad hugged her. She just couldn’t hug him back.
*
The lunch was lovely, with numerous champagne toasts. Grant gave a short speech in honor of the new couple, hoping they would always support each other through the best and worst in life. Dad gave a toast about loyalty and forgiving each other in hard times. Recalling how their mother had sobbed for days when he left, Kate stepped out for a breath of air on the wide, covered lodge porch, which wrapped around the log building on three sides.
The front section was deserted, but she heard men’s voices raised nearby, around the corner away from the waterfall. “I don’t care about a bunch of old boyhood oaths at this point!” one man said. “I swear I’m going to do it!”
“Keep your voice down. You’ll open up a whole can of worms if you try that. You’ll ruin everything. I can only loan you a little, but just shut up about that or else! Now let’s get back inside, or we’ll have Brad or Grant out here looking for us.”
“But Nadine’s going to need some long-term medical treatment. We knew we needed insurance, but we were both healthy, and we cut corners. But she’s been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and that will mean a lot of bills.”
Kate knew that voice. It was the sculptor, Paul Kettering. That touch of Southern twang in the other voice sounded like Grant’s friend Todd. She didn’t want them to know she’d overheard them, so she moved down the front veranda and turned the corner so they wouldn’t see her.
And there stood Brad Mason, who was just putting a small flask back into his inner suit-coat pocket. He looked up at her, obviously surprised.
“You’re missing champagne inside,” she told him.
“Not my cup of tea,” he said, walking closer. A twitch at the corner of his mouth might have been a hint of a grin. “Grant’s either a beer or wine man, but I go for the hard stuff, maybe because I’ve been through some hard stuff in life.”
“Haven’t we all?”
“You mean Daddy Dearest in there?”
“Am I that easy to read?”
“If someone’s watching. And I think Grant is.”
She turned away from his avid stare. Brad had evidently been studying her, too. The man had liquor on his breath. Though she wanted to know more about Grant, she’d sensed last night when Brad got home from the mill that there had been tension between the brothers. She decided to “pull a Tess” on him and change the subject.
“I understand you own a mill also.”
“More or less. Foreclosure. Chapter Thirteen. A paper mill. Now if we could convince people here today to use paper products instead of linen napkins and tablecloths, maybe I’d still be in business,” he said with a little snort, not quite a laugh. “I hear even at that wacko Hear Ye compound, they have the words to hymns on a screen, no more hymnals or paper handouts, though I’ll bet that dictator doesn’t let his flock go online.
“So why isn’t Lee Lockwood here at his cousin’s shindig?” he asked. “I knew him in school.”
“Lee and his family, unfortunately, have been forbidden to attend by their creepy leader.”
“That guy’s a lunatic, but you’re kidding?”
“Wish I were. I met him up close and personal when he made Lee’s wife, Grace, come to tell us she couldn’t attend a pagan ceremony. At least they aren’t protesting this event with placards—paper ones—like some off-the-wall groups do. He got me so upset I invoked the pagan dead. At least I didn’t call him the Beastmaster.”