Wisconsin Wedding (Welcome To Tyler, No. 3) by Carla Neggers Page A

Nora said, comfortable in her role as confidante, “everyone in Tyler knows you do things in a whoosh. A couple of weeks’ notice for your wedding is about all anyone who knows you would expect.”
    Liza downed half her coffee in a big gulp. “You wouldn’t do it this way.”
    “I’m not you, Liza.”
    But Nora couldn’t help thinking— again —of Byron Sanders. If their short-lived affair hadn’t been a spontaneous whirlwind of lunacy, she didn’t know what was. And there’d been a time when she’d thought nothing and no one could have pulled them apart. But that was over, an incident she didn’t care to repeat because it wasn’t her way of doing things. Whirlwind love affairs—even one that endured—were not her style.
    She went on, “You need to do what’s right for you without—”
    “Without getting myself tarred and feathered and run out of town,” Liza said good-naturedly. “I’m glad Cliff got you to come out here. For one thing, it shows he’s thinking about me—which I know, but it’s always nice to have itdemonstrated. For another thing, it’s a relief not to have to go through these wedding ‘traditions’ alone. I know I have Cliff and Mother—and Amanda and Jeffery, of course, but—”
    “But fiancés, mothers and siblings don’t help when what you really need is a friend.”
    Liza nodded. “Sisterhood, right? Honestly, Nora, from anyone but you that kind of talk’d sound downright radical. Hey, you want to say hi to Cliff? He should be around outside somewhere.”
    “If I won’t be intruding.”
    “Not at all.”
    Nora rose to take her empty coffee mug to the sink, as Liza went on, “If you ask me, Cliff needs more intrusion. People in Tyler have been tiptoeing around him for too long, and there’s just no need. You know, he’d had almost nothing to do with the human race for years and years until I barreled into his life.”
    She seemed quite pleased with herself as, standing next to Nora, she dumped out the rest of her coffee. Liza Baron was confident that she and Cliff Forrester were right— meant —for each other. Any of the upheaval their romance had caused for him and for herself was well worth the struggle, the change, the need to adapt and adjust.
    Three years ago, Byron Sanders could have been smug about having barreled into Nora’s life. But there was a difference. Cliff Forrester’s life had needed stirring up. Nora’s hadn’t.
    And it still didn’t, she thought.
    And, she added silently, there was another big difference: Liza Baron and Cliff Forrester loved each other.
    “Come on,” Liza said, “I’ll take you through the back. There’s a path down to the lake. I think that’s where Cliff went.”
    They cut through a small sitting room off the kitchen and went out onto the veranda, which offered one of the old lodge’s many spectacular views of the lake. With her usual boundless energy, Liza made a beeline to a narrow, beaten path that wound through the overgrown yard down toward the lake, as blue and clear as the autumn sky. The grass, knee-high along the path, was dotted with goldenrod and asters, and there were pale birches, the odd gnarled pine and clumps of sumac. All the more brightly colored leaves—the reds, burgandies and vivid oranges—had fallen to the ground, leaving only those of the more muted colors, yellows and soft oranges, clinging to the trees.
    Nora screwed up her courage. “Have you heard from any of Cliff’s family or friends in Rhode Island?”
    “Oh, I only invited family—just his mother and younger brother. His father’s dead. I don’t know any of his old friends.”
    So Byron Sanders hadn’t been invited to Tyler. The lying fink. How had he found out about the wedding? From the Rhode Island Forresters? The mother or the younger brother must have blabbed to someone who’d blabbed…well, Byron would be on the receiving end of any manner of gossip and news. He was that way. If the reclusive Cliff Forrester did