Page 18 of A Dark and Stormy Night

Gwen wanted to say, No one wants to look up your skirt. Instead she said, “We have never had trespassers.”

With half-hearted enthusiasm, Landon said, “This is really nice.”

Which wasn't the kind of admiration Gwen was used to, but after her pummeling by Cecily, she was grateful for even such slight praise. She waved an arm. "Washington in all its grandeur!" Then she cursed her own nervous, chirpy voice.

Cecily turned back toward the cottage—and promptly stuck her stiletto heel into the crack between the boards on the deck.

Gwen and Landon leaped to her assistance.

Cecily moaned about her joints and nerves, and examined her shoe with ferocious and furious intensity, an intensity she transferred to Gwen when Gwen suggested she put on flats to more easily navigate the rugged Washington landscape.

In a low voice that throbbed with drama, Cecily replied that heels were an important part of her exotic persona.

Gwen didn't have a single doubt that her own khaki trousers, button-up shirt, old-fashioned boat shoes and chin-length brown hair with its streak of premature white did not, in Cecily's estimation, contribute to an exotic persona, or any persona at all.

Gwen announced that dinner would be served at seven and escaped back to the main house.

***

Late that afternoon, Mario found Gwen sitting in the dark in the pantry on a low stepstool, drinking a glass of sauvignon blanc. He flipped on the light. “Things aren’t going well?”

She looked up at him, at her husband who had visited this plague upon them. “Did you meet them?”

Mario had immigrated from Italy after their marriage; he had a warm, deep voice with a marked Italian accent and an Italian's sense of hospitality. “As soon as I got home, I went to the cottage with a bouquet of flowers to welcome our guests.”

Gwen sipped the wine.

“Cousin Cecily seems a bit . . . overbearing."

“I suspect we may find her so.”

“But why are you hiding in the closet drinking wine?”

“I’m trying to kill my liver early.”

Now Mario was truly confused. “Kill your liver? What are you talking about? Why would you kill your liver?”

“I believe it is Cecily's fondest hope that those of us who partake in the evening alcoholic beverage will all die a miserable death.”

Mario left, and in a few minutes holding a glass of red wine. He bumped Gwen's butt over on the stool. “Now. Tell me what she said.”

Gwen told.

Mario groaned. “I’m sorry. When he called and said they coming to visit, I was so taken aback I didn’t know what to say.”

“It’s okay."

"I've missed my family in Italy, and I thought finding Landon through that genealogy service was a good thing."

"Really. It's fine. I wouldn't have known what to say, either." Although Gwen didn't understand Mario's obsession with family. If there was one thing they had plenty of, it was visitors: family and friends who flew in, stayed a few days, entertained themselves, bought dinner once, and left before they acquired that "guests who have stayed too long" stench.

Mario hugged her shoulders. “You should have gone to California, to the condo, and stayed until they left."

“I couldn’t abandon you like that. Now, if this happens again —“

He flipped up two fingers to ward off the evil eye. "I suppose I should have been worried that I hadn't met him."

"Probably,” Gwen said drily.

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