Web kept his eyes on the road, his hands on the wheel. “Let’s not do anything impulsively,” he said quietly.
Her gaze flew to his face in dismay. “Impulsively? I thought marriage was what we both wanted! Weren’t you the one who said that the longer we put off telling my parents the truth, the longer it would be before we got married? I thoughtyouwere the one who wanted to get married soon!”
“I do.” His voice was even, and he didn’t blink. “But we’re both upset right now. It’s not the ideal situation in which to be starting a marriage.”
“Then what do we do? Wait forever in the hope that they’ll do an about-face? They won’t, Web!”
“I know. I know.” He was trying to sort out his thoughts, to find some miraculous solution to their problem. “But if we rush into something, they’ll be all the more perverse.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this! You were the one who felt so strongly that we were adults and didn’t need their permission!”
He held the car steady in the right-hand lane. “We don’t. And we are adults. But they’re your parents, and you do love them. It’d still be nice if they came around. This all has to be a shock to them. Two days, Marni, that’s all they’ve had.”
“It wouldn’t matter if it were two months!”
“It might. We presented our arguments tonight, and they were logical. I think your mother was listening, even if your father tried hard not to. Don’t you think we owe them a little time to mull it over? They may never come fully around to our way of thinking, but it’s possible they might decide to accept what they can’t change.”
Marni didn’t know what to think, particularly about Web’s sudden reluctance to get married. “Do you really think that could happen?” Her skepticism was nearly palpable.
“I don’t know,” he said with a sigh. “But I do think it’s worth the wait. To rush and get married now will accomplish nothing more than throwing our relationship in their faces.”
“It would accomplish much more. We’d bemarried!Or doesn’t that mean as much to you as it does to me?”
“You’re upset, Marni, or you wouldn’t be saying that—”
“And why shouldn’t we throw our relationship in their faces? We’re in love. We want to get married. We asked for their support, and they refused it. They couldn’t have been more blunt. I don’t understand you, Web,” she pleaded. “Why are you suddenly having reservations?”
He glanced at her then and saw the fear on her face. Reaching for her hand, he found it cold and stiff, so he enclosed it in his own, warmer hand and brought it to his thigh. “I’m not having reservations, sweetheart,” he said gently. “Not about what I feel for you, or about getting married, or about doing all those things we’ve been dreaming about. If you know me at all, you know how much they mean to me. It’s just that I’m trying to understand your parents, to think of what they must be feeling.”
She would have tugged her hand away had he not held it firmly. “How can you be so generous after everything they’ve done to you?”
“Generosity has nothing to do with it,” he barked. “It’s selfishness from the word go.”
“I don’t understand.”
Unable to concentrate on the road, he pulled over onto its shoulder and killed the engine. Then he turned to her and pressed her hand to his heart. “It’s forus,Marni,” he stated forcefully. “You’re right. They’ve done a hell of a lot to me—and to you, too—and for that they don’t deserve an ounce of compassion. I’d like to ignore them, to pretend they don’t exist, and in the end that may be just what we’ll have to do. In the meantime, though, I refuse to let them dictate any of our actions, and that includes when we’ll be getting married.” His voice gentled, but it maintained its urgency, and his gaze pierced Marni’s through the dark of night.
“Don’t you see? Our rushing to get married just because of what happened tonight would be a kind of shotgun wedding in reverse. I won’t have that! We’ll plan our wedding, maybe for a month or two from now, and we’ll do it right. I want you wearing a beautiful gown, and I want flowers all over the place, and I want our friends there to witness the day that means so much to us. I willnotsneak off and elope behind someone’s back. I won’t have our marriage tainted in any way!”
Through her upset, Marni felt a glimmer of relief. She’d begun to think that Web would put off their marriage indefinitely. A month or two she could live with. And he did have a point; the only purpose of rushing to get married in three days would be to spite her parents. “In a month or two they’ll still be resisting,” she warned, but less caustically.
“True, but at least we’ll know that we’ve given them every possible chance. If we’ve done our best, and still they refuse to open up their minds, we’ll have nothing to regret in the future.” He raised her hand to his lips and gently kissed her palm. “I want it to be as perfect as it can be, sweetheart. Everything open and aboveboard. We owe that to ourselves, don’t you think?”
Chapter 9
During the day following the scene with Marni’s parents, Web convinced himself that he’d been right in what he’d said to Marni. Deep in his heart he suspected that her parents would never accept their marriage, and he regretted it only in terms of Marni’s happiness. He had cause to think of his own, though, when he received a call from a friend on Tuesday morning.
Cole Hammond wrote for New York’s most notorious gossip sheet parading as a newspaper. The two men had met in a social context soon after Web had arrived in New York, and though Web had no love for Cole’s publication, he’d come to respect the man himself. When Cole asked if he could meet with Web to discuss something important, Web promptly invited him over.
“I received an anonymous call today,” Cole began soon after Web had tossed him a can of beer. They were in Web’s living room. The studio was still being cleaned up from the morning’s shoot. “It was from a woman. She claimed that she had a sensational story about you. Something to do with an accident in Maine fourteen years ago?”
Web had had an odd premonition from the moment he’d heard Cole’s voice on the phone, which was the main reason he’d had him come right over. “Yes,” he agreed warily. “There was an accident.”
“This woman said that you were responsible for a man’s death. Any truth to it?”
Curbing his anger against “this woman” and her allegations, Web looked his friend in the eye. “No.”
“She gave me dates and facts. It was a rainy night, very late, and you were speeding along on a motorcycle with a fellow named Ethan Lange on the back.”
