Coming to a Crossroads Read online

  He left the bill on the table between them. “Give it to your favorite charity, then,” he told her.

  “Right now, my favorite charity is me,” she answered glibly, thinking of the tuition she was currently juggling.

  “Perfect,” he said. “Problem solved.”

  She didn’t exactly see it that way, although she sighed. “Well, in the interest of not causing a scene and in my getting out of here before it gets too much later, I’ll accept this—temporarily,” she specified, picking up the ten and putting it into her pocket.

  “Good,” he said. He thought about her using the word temporarily.

  “I guess that means I’ll get to see you again.”

  Caught by surprise by his reasoning, Liz was forced to nod. “Yes, I suppose you will.” Holding her things, she began to weave her way out of the café.

  Ethan was right behind her. “Great. How about the Saturday after this coming one?” he asked cheerfully.

  She stopped dead as she was about to push open the café door and looked at him over her shoulder. “Wait, what?”

  “How about next Saturday?” he repeated. Reaching over her, he pushed open the door for Liz and held it until she walked out of the café.

  “Saturday?” Liz questioned, looking at him as she tried to wrap her head around the invitation.

  “Yes.” He gently ushered her out until she was several steps past the café entrance. People were still going in. “You know, the day after Friday and before Sunday, except a week after this one.”

  “That Saturday?” she asked him, feeling a little off center.

  He was getting closer to his subject at this point. “As a matter of fact, yes, that Saturday. And I think I should tell you that it also happens to be the day Joel’s getting married.” He talked faster now. “As it turned out, his fiancée decided to forgive him and go ahead with the wedding. I don’t know if it’s because she really loves the guy or because the deposit on the hall isn’t refundable, but either way, the wedding apparently seems to be on.”

  “Hold it,” Liz cried, putting her hands physically on Ethan’s shoulders to anchor him in place. She caught herself thinking that he had awfully broad shoulders. “You’re asking me to come to your friend’s wedding with you?” she asked, trying to get it straight.

  “Yes, I am.” He looked at her, wondering if she was going to turn him down after all this. “Don’t you like weddings?”

  “They’re a great institution,” she answered. “But that’s not the point.”

  “What is the point?” he asked innocently, hoping she wasn’t going to say anything to completely shoot him down or hand his head to him.

  “The point is...” For a second, she was at a loss for words. Liz stumbled her way through her answer. “Don’t you have someone else you’d rather ask?”

  The man was a doctor and a good-looking one at that. He had to have a woman in his life—most likely several women. Why would he go out of his way to ask her? While it gave her a warm feeling, it really didn’t make any sense to her. They were strangers.

  Ethan’s eyes met hers, and for a long moment, he didn’t answer her.

  Just when she was about to give up and tell him she needed to leave or she was going to be late—Ethan finally answered.

  “No, I don’t have anyone else I’d rather ask. I want to ask you.”

  Chapter Nine

  Liz had doubts about accepting the invitation to attend the wedding next Saturday almost immediately. Not because she didn’t want to attend it with Ethan—she really did. The man didn’t have a single thing going against him. He was tall, handsome, warm and funny. And he was a doctor, for heaven’s sake—which she knew would be the very first words out of her mother’s mouth if she told Ruth about this pending invitation. Her mother wasn’t easily impressed, but Liz knew the woman would see that as a definite plus in his favor.

  No, Ethan wasn’t the problem. The sad truth of it was she was hampered from being joyous about the prospect by several things. First of all, Saturday was her busiest day and an even busier night. Not just as a driver for Chariot, but also as a bartender at Young’s Chinese Cuisine Restaurant.

  People out on a Saturday night had more of a tendency to get tipsy. It had come to her attention that people also tended to tip more liberally the more inebriated they were. By going out with Ethan, she knew she would be giving up a nice piece of change.

  And there was the other problem.

  She didn’t have anything to wear to a wedding. To a funeral, yes. She had that one nice black suit that she had bought to wear to her stepfather’s funeral. But as for having anything that was more suitable to wear to an actual festive occasion, she had nothing.

  Nor was she in any sort of a position to buy anything right now. Every last dime was accounted for, especially if there was nothing coming in for a day.

  It was a catch-22 situation.

  Liz was tempted to say as much to her mother when the latter called her unexpectedly the Thursday before the wedding. But she settled for asking her mother if there was anything wrong. Ruth didn’t usually just call her out of the blue in the middle of the day. For one thing, her mother usually knew she wouldn’t be able to reach her because of her crazy schedule.

  “No, nothing’s wrong, sweetie,” Ruth replied, grateful that her daughter couldn’t see her crossed fingers. “I’m just checking to see how you are and how everything’s going these days for my extremely busy daughter.”

  The truth was Ruth had been doing her very best to contain herself ever since she had gone to Cilia for help and her friend had promised to see what she could do about finding someone for Liz. To Ruth, given Cilia’s track record, that was as good as telling her to start looking for a venue where Liz and her prospective groom could hold the wedding reception.

  Since that day, she had managed to force herself not to call Liz, but willpower only went so far.

  Besides, it wasn’t unusual for her to call her daughter out of the blue, Ruth stubbornly reasoned. They were close—they always had been. Consequently, she had waited as long as she could without exploding, then finally called.

  “So?” Ruth asked cheerfully. “How is everything? Work still keeping you busy?” She thought that was a safe enough question to ask.

  “Oh Lord, yes,” Liz answered. “I can hardly catch my breath.”

  “And school?” Ruth asked, trying to get her daughter to talk about what was really important. “How’s that going?”

  “The same,” Liz replied. “Everything feels like I’m caught in a total whirlwind. With everything that’s going on, sometimes I’m not even sure what day it is,” she confessed to her mother.

  Sympathy instantly flowed out of every pore. “Oh darling, you’re only one person. You can’t push yourself like this or you’ll just burn out. Or burn up,” Ruth added with a warning note. “You have to realize that you need to pause once in a while, have a little fun. Enjoy a little me time,” Ruth urged, trying desperately to provide an opening for Liz to tell her about the young man Maizie had arranged for her to meet.

  “Yeah, well, that’s probably not going to happen,” Liz answered, her voice trailing off as she thought about her barren closet and her thin wallet. It was unrealistic of her to even have considered going out to this wedding with Ethan.

  It was like pulling teeth, Ruth thought. “Wait, back up, dear. What’s not going to happen? Was something supposed to happen?” Ruth asked. She was so desperately eager to move this along she was almost bursting.

  “I got invited to a wedding,” Liz began and got no further.

  “A wedding? That’s wonderful!” Ruth cried. “You are going, right?” she asked as if there could only be one answer to that question.

  “Mom,” Liz said with a soul-scraping sigh, “I have nothing to wear. Really,” Liz emphasized, keenly aware that was the standa
rd excuse that most women said even when they were facing an entire wardrobe stuffed full of choices. Her closet, however, was the exception to that rule.

  Undaunted, Ruth pressed, “But if you had something suitable to wear, would you go to this wedding?”

  Liz sighed. She was usually exceedingly practical—however, this really was a different situation in her view. “Saturday’s my best day when it comes to earning money, but yes,” she admitted, “if I had something to wear to this thing besides jeans, I would go.”

  Strands of the “Hallelujah” chorus swelled and resounded in Ruth’s head. She was going to hug Cilia the first opportunity she had. “Then let me buy you a dress you can go in, dear,” Ruth proposed.

  She didn’t want her mother thinking she was hinting for a handout. That wasn’t how their relationship worked. “Mom, I wasn’t telling you about the state of my closet so that you’d wind up spending money on me. I didn’t mean for you to—”

  “Oh my Lord, Lizzie, you have been there for me throughout Howard’s terrible illness. Helping me, putting your own life on hold to help pay off the bills. Let me do this one little thing for you. Please,” Ruth pleaded.

  Liz could feel herself wavering, even though she knew she shouldn’t. “Well...”

  “It’s settled, then,” Ruth concluded. “Go, buy whatever catches your eye. If you ask me, you’d be the belle of the ball even if you were wearing burlap, but then, I’m prejudiced.”

  Liz laughed. The sound was a mixture of relief, amusement and gratitude. She really did want to go to this wedding with Ethan. If she turned the invitation down, who knew if she’d ever see him again?

  Still, she had to ask, “Mom, are you sure about this?”

  “Never more sure of anything in my life, my love. Trust me when I tell you, you’ll be making me very happy if you go to this wedding with—” Ruth caught herself just in time. She had almost slipped and said Ethan’s name. The jig would have been up at that point.

  So instead, she cleared her throat and asked, “Who did you say you were going with, dear?”

  “I didn’t,” Liz answered. “His name is Ethan.”

  “Ethan,” Ruth repeated as if this was the first time she had heard the man’s name. “Like John Wayne in that movie I always liked to watch. Remember, honey?”

  Liz had to laugh. “Yes, Mother, like John Wayne in that movie you liked.”

  “How did you meet him?” Ruth asked innocently, knowing that logically would be her next question—if she hadn’t already had all the details, thanks to grilling Cilia. “Is he someone from one of your classes?”

  Liz was already busy mentally reshaping her schedule and framing her excuse to Young as to why she was going to need to take Saturday evening off. If she hadn’t been preoccupied, she might have picked up on the fact that her mother sounded a little too innocent.

  “No, Mom, Ethan was one of my fares.” She decided to leave out the part that she had driven Ethan and his friends home from a bachelor party and that his friends had been pretty drunk at the time. She also decided that her mother didn’t need to hear about the near accident that night that had consequently managed to bring her and Ethan closer together.

  “Well, you’ll have to tell me all about it sometime,” Ruth declared in an upbeat voice, “but right now you, my love, need to go shopping.”

  Which she wouldn’t be able to do if it weren’t for her mother’s generosity. Impulsively—something she rarely allowed to govern her—Liz made a decision. “Would you like to come shopping with me?” she asked.

  For a second, there was silence on the other end of the line. And then Ruth all but cried, “Would I—I can be there in fifteen minutes. Ten if the local police aren’t out patrolling the area.”

  The last thing she wanted was for her mother to get a speeding ticket because of her. “Make it fifteen, Mom. I’ll wait.”

  She heard her mother sigh happily on the other end of the call. “Shopping with my daughter. Whoever this Ethan person is, Lizzie, he has my blessings,” Ruth declared just before she hung up.

  * * *

  Liz stared at her reflection in her bedroom mirror. It was almost like looking at a stranger, she thought. It had been so long since she had had a reason to get this dressed up, she couldn’t actually remember the last time that she had.

  Since Ethan had told her this was an early evening wedding, she had opted to get a long dress. Initially, because she was so practical, she was going to buy a street-length dress. That way she could wear it whenever she needed to dress up for an event. But the moment her mother had talked her into slipping on this formfitting light blue gown with its mesmerizing side slit, it had been love at first sight.

  Looking at herself now, it still felt as if she was moving through some sort of a misty dream. It certainly didn’t feel real.

  She half expected Ethan to cancel at the last minute, saying that another emergency had come up or, worse, he had changed his mind about going to something so important as a friend’s wedding with a woman he hardly knew.

  Lost in thought, Liz jumped when she heard the doorbell.

  Terrific, she upbraided herself. A tire blowout and a careening car didn’t make her flinch, but a chiming doorbell made her jump.

  Very smooth, Lizzie. Answer it, for heaven’s sake, before he goes away.

  Taking a deep breath, Liz gathered her dress up and made her way over to the door. Once she reached it, she dropped her skirt and opened the front door.

  Ethan was standing on the other side. Seeing her, he looked somewhat stunned.

  When he didn’t say anything, Liz asked him uneasily, “Is something wrong?” Had she left something unzipped or open?

  “No, everything’s perfect,” Ethan answered in almost a hallowed whisper. He was standing there wearing a tailored tuxedo. “So perfect,” he confided, “it almost doesn’t seem real.”

  He looked exceedingly striking in his tux, she thought. He looked as if he had stepped out of the pages of a magazine, so handsome she nearly ached. She had an uncontrollable desire to run her fingers through his dark brown hair. A man like Ethan had to have encountered a great many beautiful women in his life. There was no reason for him to look so taken with her.

  “You’re making fun of me,” she accused.

  “Making fun of you?” he repeated in disbelief. “Are you kidding? I wouldn’t dream of it.” Then, in case she needed more convincing, he added, “May lightning come shooting out of the sky and strike me where I stand if it even so much as crossed my mind. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare, but—” He shook his head, still very stunned. “Wow.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” Liz said. She had to admit, the way that Ethan was looking at her made her feel exceedingly attractive—and ready to take on the world.

  “It was meant as a compliment,” Ethan confirmed. “I mean, I already knew you were beautiful—inside and out,” he quickly added in case Liz thought he was one of those shallow people who just evaluated what was on the surface and nothing more, “but even so—wow,” he cried again, falling back on the three-letter word, because it did seem to sum up everything for him.

  Relaxing, Liz could feel her smile going up to her eyes as she looked at Ethan. “I believe you already said that,” she teased.

  Her smile widened as she picked up the small clutch purse her mother had insisted on getting for her. She’d said it matched the high heels that she had also insisted on buying.

  “But I didn’t mind hearing it again,” Liz told him truthfully, her mouth curving.

  “That’s good, because I seem to find myself kind of tongue-tied at the moment,” he confided. “You really are a sight to behold.”

  Her eyes crinkled as her smile widened. “You look very nice, too,” Liz told him as she locked her door and then followed him out.

  “Nobody’s going to look
at me,” Ethan assured her. He was having trouble drawing his eyes away from Liz. The gown was adhering to her body like a breathtaking second skin. He’d had no idea when he’d first met her that she was this gorgeous. “They probably won’t even look at the bride once they see you walk in.”

  Liz laughed, slipping her arm through his as they walked to his car. “Now you’re just exaggerating.”

  “I’ll have you know that I’m known for my honesty,” he informed her with a straight face. “Exaggeration doesn’t enter into the picture.”

  He really did seem serious. She slowed down a little before they could reach his car. “If you really think I’ll upstage the bride, maybe I shouldn’t go,” she said seriously. “The bride should always have center stage on her big day.”

  “I agree,” he replied, then added, “We’ll hide you behind one of the tall plants.” And then he grinned. “But you are definitely going to this wedding with me. Now that I’ve seen you in that dress, there is no way I’m going to go and endure this thing on my own.” He looked at her again, an appreciative look in his eyes. “You are absolutely coming with me,” he informed her again, hoping she wasn’t being serious about not going.

  “You sure it’ll be all right?” she asked.

  Because although she enjoyed having Ethan compliment her, if he was even the slightest bit serious about her taking attention away from the bride, there was no way she wanted to be guilty of that. Her sole intent on wearing this clingy light blue dress was to look pretty for Ethan, not to detract in any way from the bride. She had never been one of those women who thrived on being the center of attention.

  To be honest, quite the opposite was true.

  “If it were any more all right,” he told her, “it would probably be illegal.”

  She cocked her head, confusion marking her brow. “Come again?”

  “That’s my awkward way of telling you that you look gorgeous, and if you don’t attend this wedding with me, I’ll be traumatized for the rest of my life.”