Buried In Buttercream

long, might as well hold out and make the honeymoon night special.”
    He snickered into his beer. “I’d be afraid to roll the dice like that. Aren’t you worried that maybe you’ll wait and find out you don’t like him? You know ... what he does ... and stuff.”
    Unbidden, Savannah’s mind replayed some of Dirk’s kisses, a few stolen caresses. No, she wasn’t worried at all.
    “What I’m worried about is having this conversation with my little brother. Change the subject and get that beer drunk before Granny comes downstairs.”
    Tammy reentered, carrying the broom and the dustpan filled with dirt. “Change what subject?” she asked. “Whatever you don’t want Gran to hear ... that’s what I want to hear.”
    “We’re talking about Savannah’s and Dirk’s sex life,” Waycross said.
    “Savannah and Dirko have a sex life? E wwww !”
    “We do not!” Savannah reached across the table and slapped his arm so hard that he nearly dropped his beer. “And you better stop spreading those nasty rumors, boy, or I’ll be the one taking a switch to you.”
    Tammy emptied the dustpan in the garbage can, then put it and the broom away.
    She hurried to the sink and began searching in the cupboard beneath it.
    “What are you looking for?” Savannah asked her.
    “That fabric stain removal spray you have. I got most of the dirt off your chair, but there’s one little spot that I couldn’t ...”
    She’d found the can and was already rushing back into the living room.
    Savannah watched her sadly, then realized that Waycross was watching her watch Tammy.
    “She feels guilty,” he said softly. “She’s trying to make it up to you. And she never will.”
    “She has nothing to feel guilty about,” Savannah said, trying to control the sadness that felt like a squeezing tightness in her chest and her throat. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”
    “But you’ll never convince her of that.”
    “I know. Believe me, I know. And it breaks my heart.”
    Waycross finished his beer and set it on the table. His fingers were tight around the bottle. “Sometimes I wish I could kill that guy all over again.”
    Savannah closed her eyes, trying to blot out the image of her attacker’s face. “Yes,” she said. “I hear you. It’s a good thing for all of us that we can’t.”

Chapter 5
    M ost brides don’t hang out in their garages on their wedding days. Savannah was pretty sure of that. But then, most brides didn’t have a house bursting with Georgia relatives to contend with either on that glorious, most important day of their lives.
    “No, really,” Dirk was saying as she cradled the cell phone between her ear and shoulder and applied mascara at the same time, “where are you?”
    “I told you,” she replied, “I’m sitting in my Mustang, putting on my makeup.”
    She squinted into the mirror clamped to her sun visor as she tried to de-clump her lashes.
    The bright red, ’65 Mustang was her baby, her home away from home, considering the many hours she had spent inside it while on stakeouts. And today, it was her refuge.
    “You want me to come over there and throw them all out of the bathroom, so that you can get ready like a proper bride?”
    “Naw. One of the first things you learn as a youngun with eight siblings is, ‘Don’t hog the toilet.’”
    “How’s about I come get you and bring you over here to my place? You can have the bathroom and bedroom all to yourself.”
    “Believe me, that’s tempting. But there’s the ‘bad luck to see the bride on the wedding day’ business. I figure, with the luck we’ve had, we’d better not tempt fate.”
    “True. So true.”
    She tried to screw the mascara wand back onto the tube with one hand and dropped it into her lap.
    Looking down at the Midnight Black smear on the front of her tan linen skirt, she fought back the urge to cry. “Don’t bawl, gal,” she whispered to herself. “You’ll have to redo your eyeliner, and you don’t have time for that.”
    “What?” he asked. “Why are you about to cry? Are you having second thoughts about marrying an old coot like me?”
    She laughed. “You aren’t old.”
    There was a long pause on the other end. Then he said, “Well ... I’m waiting for you to tell me I’m not a coot either.”
    “I prefer to think of you as a curmudgeon.”
    “Is that better?”
    “In my mind, coots and curmudgeons are both cantankerous, but curmudgeons are better-looking.”
    “Oh. Okay. Thanks, I