Wisconsin Wedding (Welcome To Tyler, No. 3) by Carla Neggers Read Free Book Online

about it, and ifyou tell him…” She gulped for air. “By God, I’ll come after you myself. So you go on and leave him alone.” She took a breath. “And leave me alone, too.”
    Byron had debated interrupting three or four times, but had kept his mouth shut. “Nora,” he began reasonably, “you don’t understand. I…”
    “Out!”
    “I didn’t come here to bother you or Cliff.”
    “Now, Byron. Now, or I swear I’ll—”
    She didn’t finish, but instead grabbed a huge book of Beethoven sonatas from the gateleg table. She heaved it at him. Byron ducked. The book crashed into the piano, banging down on the keys, making a discordant racket. Nora was red-faced.
    Clearly this was no time for revelations destined only to make her madder. Byron grinned at her. “Bet you haven’t lost your temper like that since I was last in Tyler.”
    “You’re damned right I haven’t!”
    Then a big blond kid was filling up the doorway behind her. “This guy bothering you, Miss Gates?”
    Byron could see her debating whether to sic the kid on him. Yeah—throw him in the oven, will you? But she shook her head tightly, and said even more tightly, “Not anymore.”
    This time, Byron took the hint. As he walked past Nora and through the living room, he heard the kid make the mistake of laughing. “Gee, Miss Gates, I guess you’re stronger than you look. That book’s heavy. ”
    “Chromatic scale, Mr. Travis. Four octaves, ascending and descending. Presto.”
    Byron decided not to hang around. But he had no intention of leaving Tyler. There was his brother to see, Cliff’s fiancée to meet, a body at a lake to learn more about. And there was Nora Gates herself. Piano player, departmentstore owner, would-be Victorian old maid. She was a woman of contradictions and spirit, and as he walked back to his rented car, it occurred to Byron that the past three years had been but a pause—a little gulp—in their relationship. It wasn’t finished. There’d been no resolution. No final chord.
    At least, he thought, not yet.
    * * *
    N ORA DIDN’T CHARGE Ricky Travis for his lesson. In fact, for the first time since she’d had pneumonia six years ago, she cut a lesson short.
    “You okay, Miss Gates?” Rick asked.
    “I’m fine, just a little distracted.”
    “That guy—”
    “I’m not worried about him. Don’t you be, either.”
    He shrugged. “If you say so. I’ll have the Bach down by next week. Promise. It’s just hard with it being football season.”
    “I understand. It’s not easy being both a talented musician and a football player at this time of year. But you’ve had a good lesson, Rick. It’s not you. I’m just…well, it’s been a long day.” She rose from her chair beside the piano. “I’ll see you next week.”
    “Sure thing, Miss Gates.”
    With Rick gone, the house seemed deadly quiet. Foregoing Bach and Beethoven, Nora put on an early Bruce Springsteen tape and tried to exorcise Byron Sanders from her mind.
    She couldn’t.
    She hadn’t forgotten a single thing about him. He was as tall as she remembered. As strongly built and lithe, and every bit as darkly good-looking. His eyes were still as blue and piercing and unpredictable—and as dangerously enticing—as the Atlantic Ocean.
    It would have been easier, she thought, if there’d been things she’d forgotten. The dark hairs on his forearms, for example, or his long, blunt-nailed fingers. But she’d remembered everything—the warmth of his eyes, the breadth of his shoulders, the way he had of forcing her not to take herself too seriously, even how irritating he could be. Especially how irritating he could be.
    How had he learned about Cliff and Liza’s wedding? It wasn’t a secret, but how had an East Coast photographer heard that a Wisconsin couple was getting married? Maybe he did know Cliff—but Cliff had said he didn’t know a Byron Sanders. Perhaps Byron knew the Forresters, the mother and brother Liza had taken the liberty of