LITMIR.BIZ

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anger. “This waiting around is getting on my nerves!”

      “It’s getting on mine, too,” I said sharply. “But unless we want to end up in a holding cell, we have to go through with this charade. We all agreed on that last night, remember?”

      “Was that before or after we learned you were a vampire, sweetie?” she retorted sharply.

      “After,” Tash butted in. “First Mikhail did his mind-thing with us, then he and Megan got into a big argument in the hall, then Grandfather Darkheart went all Carpathian on their asses and they shut up. Then we sat down and talked about how we were going to handle this whole situation.”

      “Meg, I’m sorry.” Kat’s expression was stricken. “I don’t usually shoot off my mouth after a couple of drinks. You were right to toss the booze.”

      “Especially since if she is a vamp, you don’t want to get her pissed at you,” Tash advised. “Just joking, sis,” she added over her shoulder to me as she turned back to the mirror.

      “Don’t blame the martinis, Kat,” I said coldly. “I’ve seen you tipsy a time or two. I even recall holding your hair back when you got up-close and personal with a toilet at the country club the night of our engagement parties. Alcohol might loosen your tongue, but it’s never put words into your mouth you wouldn’t think of otherwise. You’ve bought into this whole stupid Kiss of the Vampire crap that our long-lost grandpa and his mangy sidekick shoveled at us last night. Has it occurred to you that it might be total fantasy?”

      “Like I’ve said before, the Queen of Denial,” Tash mumbled at the mirror as she blotted the fresh lipstick she’d just applied. “So we’re back to the our-fiancés-didn’t-really-turn-into-vamps-it-was-just-the-appletinis thing again?”

      “No,” I conceded, “I accept that they were vampires and we staked them.” I tossed my bouquet onto a small side table and sat down on the sofa. Folds of tulle rose up on either side of me like frothy surf and I beat them down, feeling overwhelmed. “I’m even willing to accept that Boris is our Grandfather Darkheart and our mother was a Daughter of Lilith or a vampire killer or whatever. What I can’t believe is that one of us is going to turn into—”

      “Yoo-hoo, ladies, it’s show-time!”

      Without warning, the door opened and Grammie Crosse burst in, her plump and powdered face beaming at the three of us. Even at such an inopportune moment, I felt my heart swell with affection for her, and I wished I could spare her the upset that my ruined wedding was going to cause her.

      Unfortunately, my wish immediately came true with Grammie’s next excited words.

      “I just got the word that a car with three tardy males in it has pulled up to the curb, darlings—such a relief! Not that I ever doubted they’d show, of course. Megan, dear, let me straighten your veil. Kat, shake out the creases in your sister’s dress. Your grandfather was all set to march outside and give Dean a piece of his mind for almost making us think he’d stood you up but I said, Edward Crosse, in a couple of months when all three of those young men are your sons-in-law, you can ream them out all you want. Megan, love, you look like an angel. You all do, darlings. Oh fudge, I promised myself I wouldn’t start crying before the ceremony!”

      She was wearing a periwinkle-blue mother-of-the-bride dress with a chiffon overlay that floated around her as she flitted from one to the other of us. Abruptly, she stopped flitting and the chiffon stopped floating. “Oh, dear,” she said in a suddenly non-fluttery voice, looking at us.

      I could understand why she was staring. Beside me, Kat looked the way she had the night at the country club seconds before I’d caught back her hair and she’d gripped the porcelain rim of the toilet. By the mirror, Tash had gone the same color as the pearls around her neck and I felt as if I’d just stepped into an empty elevator shaft.

      “Toddie’s here?” croaked Tash. Her tone was thick with horror. “Wha-what does he look like?”

      “Very handsome, I’m sure. I didn’t watch them get out of the car,” Grammie said, her gaze still encompassing us. “But those young men could be Robert Redford and Paul Newman all rolled into one, and I still wouldn’t expect any one of you to go through with her wedding if you were having second thoughts.”

      I was so rattled that I almost reminded Grammie that Redford and Newman, as dishy as they’d been in her day, were Popsie’s age and definitely out of the running as suitors for her twenty-one-year-old granddaughters. Then I focused on the relevant part of her comment. “Second thoughts?” My voice was as hoarse as Tash’s.

      Grammie took a breath. “It’s only money, darling, and your grandfather’s got oodles of it, so if you’re thinking about how much everything cost—the catering, the flowers, the cases of Cristal—then don’t. And as for Dean’s parents, it wouldn’t bother me in the least to tell them my granddaughter’s decided their son isn’t good enough for her. When they deigned to fly out from Philadelphia to meet us at the engagement dinner, they spent the whole evening making sure Edward and I knew their connection to every important Main Line family. I wanted to tell them that the only good thing I’d ever known to come out of Philadelphia was cheese steak—”

      She was on a roll and I didn’t like interrupting her, but I knew if I was going to, sooner was better than later. “You think I’ve changed my mind about marrying Dean?” I asked in the cawing voice that seemed to be the Crosse triplets’ new and permanent method of communication.

      She shook her head. “I’m simply saying that if you have, tell me. Nothing means more to me than the happiness of you three girls and I don’t intend to stand idly by and let any of you walk into something that might take away that happiness.”

      That’s our Grammie Crosse—a slightly stout, cashmere-twinset-and-tweed-skirt-wearing lioness when she thinks her cubs are being threatened. In return, her cubs would do anything to protect her, as Kat immediately demonstrated.

      “Meg hasn’t changed her mind, darling, and Tash and I intend to go through with our weddings later this summer, too.” Her desperate gaze strayed to the window I’d thrown her liquid courage out of, but then went back to Grammie. She gave a laugh that sounded like the noise a rusty cemetery gate might make if you pushed on it. “It’s relief you see on our faces, that’s all—shaky, enormous relief. We were a teensy bit worried that something might have happened to our hubbies-to-be, weren’t we, girls?”

      “Yeah,” I agreed hollowly, “that’s it, Grammie. When they didn’t show up on time we began to think something terrible had happened. Like a car accident.”

      “Or like an accident with a piece of wood.” Tash caught our glances. “Or a car, like Meg says,” she corrected swiftly. “I can see how a car accident would be more likely.”

      “So now that we know they’re okay, we’re just…” Kat looked beseechingly at me.

      “Relieved,” I ended unoriginally. I gave Grammie a smile that felt like a bad facelift and must have looked just as plastic. “So relieved that we’d like to take a second to say a prayer of thanks. Can you tell Popsie we’ll be out in a second?”

      Grammie’s no fool. She knew there was something off-kilter about our reactions, and even if she hadn’t she definitely would have been alerted by my request for a moment of quiet communion with our Maker. I saw the questions in her eyes and didn’t know how I was going to answer them, but just as she opened her mouth to put them into words Tash saved our bacon.

      “Oh, Lord, we most humbly thank Thee for what Thou has wrought,” she intoned, sinking to her knees in a cloud of yellow and closing her eyes. Kat and I hastily followed suit as she went on. “I mean with Todd and Dean and Lance. We were all like, omigod, maybe they’ve been in an accident, but then You were like, don’t worry, Natashya, your fiancé and those of your sisters, verily they hast—”

      The door clicked softly closed behind Grammie. The three of us scrambled to our feet, Tash finishing off her

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