Free Kiss the Bride by Lori Wilde Page A

Lucia.”
    “Lucia it is.” Delaney smiled.
    “Come inside,” Lucia invited. “I can’t wait to see what you think of the house.”
    In true Victorian fashion the rooms were small, but plentiful. While the house was exceptionally clean, and the woodwork phenomenal, it was a little worse for the wear. Fifty-two years of family living jam-packed the house with knickknacks and photographs and keepsakes.
    It looked as if Lucia never threw anything away, and apparently a lot of people had given her many things over the years she felt obligated to display. Her homey style, while wonderful for living in, was too jumbled for enticing buyers. Nothing was cohesive. Not design or color schemes. Not furniture style or window treatments. If Lucia were to show the house in its present state, potential buyers would see it as overcrowded, old-fashioned, and out of step.
    Delaney, however, loved it.
    Lucia’s house presented her first real decorating challenge. Her mother’s friends and acquaintances were the kind of women who redecorated every few years. They were well aware of trends and fashions. Staging theirhomes for sale had usually consisted of little more than rearranging furniture for the best layout or bringing bits of nature indoors to create a breezy feel or simply giving the place a good cleaning.
    “Trudie tells me you’re engaged to be married,” Lucia said.
    “Yes, August fourth.”
    “That’s wonderful.” Lucia beamed. “How did you and your fiancé meet?”
    “We’ve known each other since we were small children. Before that really. Our mothers met in Lamaze class.”
    “So you don’t really have a story about how you two first laid eyes on each other?” Trudie asked.
    “No,” Delaney admitted. As far back as she could remember, Evan had been there. Like a security blanket.
    “It’s almost as if you’re marrying your brother, huh?” Trudie asked.
    “No, no.” Delaney forced a laugh. Trudie’s statement disturbed her because her relationship with Evan
was
more like brother and sister than passionate lovers. “It’s nice. Marrying someone you know so well.”
    “I guess I could see it. Built-in trust and all that,” Trudie said. “But I’d be afraid I’d miss the sparks of really falling madly in love.”
    “This window seat is adorable, Lucia,” Delaney said, purposefully directing the conversation off herself as they entered one of the bedrooms on the first floor that had been converted into a library.
    Bookcases lined the walls. Delaney took a peek at the titles. Georgette Heyer, Jane Austen, Mary Stewart, Daphne du Maurier. Many of the same books that lined her own shelves at home.
    “My Leo made it for me,” Lucia said with a sigh in her voice. “So I could curl up and read and still look outside to keep an eye on the children chasing butterflies in the backyard flower garden.”
    “The window seat is definitely the highlight of this room,” Delaney said, relieved that she’d seemed to have sidetracked Trudie from talk of romance.
    Lucia ushered her down the hallway, Trudie bringing up the rear. “And here’s the kitchen. I raised six children of my own here and then my four grandchildren, after my daughter-in-law died and my son, Vincent, needed help with the little ones. They’re all big ones now, but they come back to visit me often.”
    Delaney surveyed the room.
    The wallpaper was faded. It would have to be replaced. The appliances were all circa the mid-eighties. The dining table was even older than the appliances and bore the scars of too many children banging on it with silverware and toys. The linoleum was peeling in the corner by the refrigerator, and there was a burn mark the size of a saucepan bottom on the Formica countertop.
    “This is the heart of the house,” Delaney breathed, surprised at the nostalgia welling up inside her. But that was silly. How could she be nostalgic for something she’d never had? She wished with all her might she could have grown up