Wedding Bel Blues: A Belfast McGrath Mystery (Bel McGrath Mysteries) Read Online Free Page A
Author: Maggie McConnon
hadn’t seemed so daunting when I wasn’t half-carrying a 110-pound bride. Now their wide expanse practically mocked me as I stood at the bottom, staring up at the Promised Land above, the second floor and the bedroom where Caleigh had gotten dressed.
“And you’ll never tell Mark, right?” she said, taking each step as if she were a baby calf, just born. Behind us I heard raucous laughter as the strains of a peppy hornpipe drifted out from behind the closed doors of the ballroom.
“Never,” I said. That wasn’t a lie. I wanted to forget what Caleigh had told me the night before and move on. I’m sure she wasn’t the first person to have a fling right before her wedding, but why did I have to know about it? I didn’t know who it was, but I knew that it had happened. I couldn’t unknow it and the thought of that made me queasy with anxiety that I might spill the beans one day, undoing this happy union with my loose tongue.
Maybe I was the one who would have to quit drinking, loose lips sinking ships and all.
We made it to the bedroom. Caleigh fell backward onto the plush bedding, her wedding dress flying up around her in pillow-like clouds of taffeta and silk. “I’m a good girl, Bel.”
“I know you are, Cousin.”
Satisfied with that, she smiled under a film of tulle veil. “I think I’ll take a nap,” she said, exhaling a piece of it off the front of her face, her snores immediate and labored.
“Good idea,” I said, hearing her phone, left on the dresser, trill merrily. I picked it up to silence it but ended up staring at the screen, a message from the man involved in the tryst letting her know how great a time he had had. As I looked at his words, I wondered why, of all the people in the world, Caleigh had to have slept with the one guy who had shown any interest in me since my broken engagement. His name—Declan—was displayed prominently on the screen of her phone. There was no last name, but really, did he need one? The only other Declan at the wedding was an eighty-year-old cousin of Jack McHugh’s, and I felt certain that Caleigh hadn’t slept with him.
It didn’t take me long to figure out her security password, unlocking the phone. “Caleigh922”—September 22 being her birthday. I texted Declan back as my recently betrothed cousin.
Please don’t text me again. I’m married now.
And then I proceeded to delete every piece of evidence that existed on her phone—photos included—of what happened two nights before Caleigh McHugh married Mark Chesterton.
CHAPTER Three
If all weddings were going to have this much drama, I was never getting married.
I had had my fill of my own drama, and now that I was home again I eschewed it like the plague. I had come home to be invisible, to live a life without anyone mentioning what had happened at The Monkey’s Paw in Tribeca, to be seen around town without anyone mentioning Francesco Francatelli, otherwise known as the guy who had won the Oscar for playing the North Dakota farmer with the secret CIA past.
I left Caleigh napping, closing the bedroom door behind me and bumping into Declan Morrison, who, if I didn’t know better, seemed to have followed us up the stairs. Why else would he be standing in the second-floor hallway, close to the room where I had just put Caleigh to bed? The handsomeness I had seen earlier, knowing what I now knew, had drifted away and in its place was an oily suaveness that I hadn’t noticed before.
“She’s sleeping,” I said, keeping my hand on the door, him at arm’s length.
“Ah, just looking for a place to put my feet up,” he said.
I started toward the staircase, turning to ask him one last question. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?” he asked, still lingering by the closed bedroom door.
“Take advantage of someone right before her wedding and then actually attend the wedding?”
A smile spread across his face. “And how do you know it wasn’t the other way around?”
I thought
“And you’ll never tell Mark, right?” she said, taking each step as if she were a baby calf, just born. Behind us I heard raucous laughter as the strains of a peppy hornpipe drifted out from behind the closed doors of the ballroom.
“Never,” I said. That wasn’t a lie. I wanted to forget what Caleigh had told me the night before and move on. I’m sure she wasn’t the first person to have a fling right before her wedding, but why did I have to know about it? I didn’t know who it was, but I knew that it had happened. I couldn’t unknow it and the thought of that made me queasy with anxiety that I might spill the beans one day, undoing this happy union with my loose tongue.
Maybe I was the one who would have to quit drinking, loose lips sinking ships and all.
We made it to the bedroom. Caleigh fell backward onto the plush bedding, her wedding dress flying up around her in pillow-like clouds of taffeta and silk. “I’m a good girl, Bel.”
“I know you are, Cousin.”
Satisfied with that, she smiled under a film of tulle veil. “I think I’ll take a nap,” she said, exhaling a piece of it off the front of her face, her snores immediate and labored.
“Good idea,” I said, hearing her phone, left on the dresser, trill merrily. I picked it up to silence it but ended up staring at the screen, a message from the man involved in the tryst letting her know how great a time he had had. As I looked at his words, I wondered why, of all the people in the world, Caleigh had to have slept with the one guy who had shown any interest in me since my broken engagement. His name—Declan—was displayed prominently on the screen of her phone. There was no last name, but really, did he need one? The only other Declan at the wedding was an eighty-year-old cousin of Jack McHugh’s, and I felt certain that Caleigh hadn’t slept with him.
It didn’t take me long to figure out her security password, unlocking the phone. “Caleigh922”—September 22 being her birthday. I texted Declan back as my recently betrothed cousin.
Please don’t text me again. I’m married now.
And then I proceeded to delete every piece of evidence that existed on her phone—photos included—of what happened two nights before Caleigh McHugh married Mark Chesterton.
CHAPTER Three
If all weddings were going to have this much drama, I was never getting married.
I had had my fill of my own drama, and now that I was home again I eschewed it like the plague. I had come home to be invisible, to live a life without anyone mentioning what had happened at The Monkey’s Paw in Tribeca, to be seen around town without anyone mentioning Francesco Francatelli, otherwise known as the guy who had won the Oscar for playing the North Dakota farmer with the secret CIA past.
I left Caleigh napping, closing the bedroom door behind me and bumping into Declan Morrison, who, if I didn’t know better, seemed to have followed us up the stairs. Why else would he be standing in the second-floor hallway, close to the room where I had just put Caleigh to bed? The handsomeness I had seen earlier, knowing what I now knew, had drifted away and in its place was an oily suaveness that I hadn’t noticed before.
“She’s sleeping,” I said, keeping my hand on the door, him at arm’s length.
“Ah, just looking for a place to put my feet up,” he said.
I started toward the staircase, turning to ask him one last question. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?” he asked, still lingering by the closed bedroom door.
“Take advantage of someone right before her wedding and then actually attend the wedding?”
A smile spread across his face. “And how do you know it wasn’t the other way around?”
I thought
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