Ghosts that Haunt—27
To Casey's relief, Sandra Kirkwood's bosses were easily convinced she could be an asset in their Finland bureau. He was fairly certain both his boss and V. H. Adderly had put pressure on the network and on their local station to sideline her somewhere other than Los Angeles.
Life wasn't quite as quiet as it had been, and it made Casey uneasy as hell. Even Walker was getting a little twitchy. They both invested a lot of time trying to figure out who and what the Ring were, but neither had much success. Bartowski still flashed, they still dealt with the bad guys.
In the meantime, wedding plans were beginning to make Casey crazy.
Casey braced himself every time Riah went shopping. Her mother was pushing her hard to find a wedding dress, and he had to give Riah credit for trying. She spent nearly every day she had off shopping, and each time she came home empty-handed and more depressed.
When Ariel turned up for Riah's birthday, she dragged her out to find a dress. Riah came home furious and ready to murder her mother. He carefully considered the need for body armor since V. H. had turned up as well, when Casey found himself seated next to Riah and across from her parents at a restaurant. He refused to let her mother talk about the wedding because Riah was still mad about the shopping excursion. It wasn't easy, and he might have owed V. H. since every time Ariel attempted to raise the issue, her ex either said something that distracted her in unpleasant ways or simply picked a fight.
Unfortunately, the armed verbal combat between her parents had Riah so tense she couldn't unwind even after they declared a truce when they saw their daughter's distress, and Casey couldn't exactly employ his usual tactics to get her to relax—at least not until they were home alone. Even then, the last thing he expected was for her to burst into tears before things got interesting. As he held her, hoped this was more about the hormone sea she swam in than anything he had done or hadn't done, he considered offering to kill her parents for her.
When she finally finished crying, she told him mournfully, "I hate birthdays."
He couldn't help the amused snort.
"Seriously," she told him with a sniff and a thick swallow. "You just had a front row seat to how nearly every special occasion from my childhood was celebrated."
He pulled her closer, kissed the top of her head.
"If it ever goes wrong between us," she said quietly, a slight hitch to her voice, "promise me we won't behave like that in front of our child."
It was on the tip of his tongue to promise it wouldn't go wrong, but he knew better than to do so. His line of work often led to mistrust and deceit, and that was assuming he continued to manage to stay alive—or she did. He agreed wholeheartedly with her, though. "Not that I think it'll go wrong," he said, "but I promise not to fight like that in front of our child."
She lifted her head from his shoulder, studied him. "Even if it goes right, let's not fight like that, John. God, I used to just want to run away every time they were in the same room with one another. Each time, all I could think was that at any moment the bickering would start, and then it would escalate to shouting. I guess I'm lucky they never hit one another. Threw stuff—usually things that wouldn't do much damage, like my birthday cakes or Christmas dinner—but they didn't hurt one another."
"My parents always had their arguments outside," he told her. "They weren't shouters, and they didn't throw things. There'd just be these low voices that carried but not enough to hear what was being said. Then they would come back in and pretend there had been no argument. Dad would drink the rest of the night, barely say a word, and Mom would just go ahead and do whatever needed doing."
"That's the first time you've mentioned your father," she said quietly.
Casey realized what he'd said and what it must sound like to her. He hadn't told her anything but that he was dead, he recalled. "Dad served in Vietnam," he told her quietly, "with Paul Patterson." He could still see his father in his head, remembered how he had looked in his uniform when he left. He equally remembered the broken man who came back, who was never completely there afterward, who left the Corps and tried hard to be an insurance salesman, who tried hard to forget he'd ever served his country, but who, in the end, remembered every single minute of it and couldn't cope. "He never quite forgave me for choosing the path he most despised," Casey told her.
She propped herself on her elbows, studied him a moment and then leaned down to kiss him softly. "Surely he must have been proud of you, John."
He lifted a hand, cradled her cheek and stroked the bone beneath her skin with his thumb. "No, Riah, he wasn't." She frowned, so he told her the short version. "I became the one thing he never wanted me to be, and I compounded my sin by not only liking it but by being good at it. He spent his life trying to forget who he'd been and what he'd done, and every time I came home, he was forced to remember."
Funny that he'd never said any of that out loud, he thought, as she lay back down beside him and wrapped herself around him. He might as well say the rest, he supposed. "I quit going home, after a while," he told her. "Mom and my sisters came to visit me, but I didn't go home again until he died." He ran a hand up her naked spine. "It was easier on all of us."
"I seriously doubt that," she said quietly.
It hadn't really been, but he'd learned how to miss his family without being overtaken by the pain of it. It had made his absences easier for all of them, especially when he went to work for the NSA and often found himself thousands of miles from home with no hope of leaving his assignment for holidays or family milestones. It made walking away from those he loved a little easier, and he supposed that in most people's eyes, that wasn't exactly a good thing. "It was easier on me—probably on him, too." He sighed. "It was easier on Mom not have to deal with the arguments and the aftermath."
He rolled her gently on her back and kissed her. Then he opened his mouth over the tight mound of her stomach and whispered goodnight to the baby.
As he slid into sleep, he wondered what he'd do if his child chose a life he found hard to accept, one that challenged his beliefs. He hoped like hell he wouldn't be like his father, hoped like hell he could find a way to accept whatever he or she chose to be, and hoped like hell they could find a way to not hurt each other or Riah in the process.
A few days later, two wedding dresses were delivered to their apartment. Riah let out an enraged growl when she opened the package. She sealed it back up, arranged to have it sent back, and then blistered her mother's ears for about fifteen minutes before hanging up on her. Casey knew not to say a word, simply kissed her, offered to fix dinner.
It really shouldn't have surprised him when Ariel called later. Riah had gone over to see Ellie after they ate, and when the landline rang, he expected the inevitable telemarketer. Instead, Ariel's voice came through the handset. He was tempted to hang up on her as well. If he did, she'd simply call Riah, so he crushed the handset in his fist and gritted his teeth.
"Mariah needs to make some final decisions, Casey, and I need your help to get that done."
He unclenched his jaw. "Riah needs you to ratchet down the pressure on her a little bit," he told her softly. "In case you've forgotten, she and I are the ones getting married here, so if you want your dream wedding, find some moron stupid enough to marry you and have it."
Undoubtedly, it had been the wrong thing to say, especially since they had been playing well together of late, but he'd always known that wouldn't last.
"Listen, Casey—"
It was her turn to listen, so he cut her off. "No, Ariel, you listen. Your daughter is afraid to say no to you, but I'm not. She's miserable because you keep insisting on changes without asking if she wants those changes. We wanted simple, and you're turning it into the kind of production that's got her tied up in knots and losing sleep."
Silence stretched, and Casey wondered what would happen when she finally found her voice.
"All she has to do is tell me to back off," Ariel snapped out. "She hasn't, and she won't talk to me about arrangements."
"Have you bothered to ask her rather than tell her?" he asked between tightly gritted teeth
"If she has other ideas, she only has to say," Ariel returned, and he noticed there was less heat there.
"Would you even hear her if she did, Ariel?" He sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I've heard her side of several conversations," he reminded her tightly. "It always sounds like you just run right over her, talk until she gives in to what you want."
"And you don't?"
If she wanted to play juvenile, he could channel Morgan Grimes, but he wasn't interested in toying with her. "No, Ariel, I don't. I listen to Riah, and I try not to railroad her." She didn't respond, and he remembered something else. "By the way, you and V. H. ought to think about her and how she feels before you do any more rounds in front of her. When we got home the other night, she was so miserable she cried."
"Don't be silly, Casey. Mariah doesn't cry."
"No," he corrected, remembered her father telling him she hadn't cried since she was a child, "Riah doesn't let either of you see her cry. I'm counting, Ariel, and I can tell you exactly what you cost her every time you go into your mother-knows-best routine."
"I don't have to listen to this," she growled.
"No," he agreed, "you don't. Nor does Riah have to listen to you. She's thirty,
Ariel, and more than capable of making her own decisions. If you don't like the ones she makes, just shut the hell up. It's her life, her wedding."
Another silence stretched, and Casey supposed he ought to be glad she hadn't hung up on him. "Alright," she finally said. "You're right, I suppose." Instead of getting another shot in at her capitulation, he waited to see if she would have anything else to say. He heard a hard sigh, and then Ariel said in a more even tone of voice, "Do you have any idea why she can't choose a dress?"
"She's worried that if she buys one now it won't fit when we get married."
Ariel sighed again. "I suppose it's the damage to her back that's making it so hard for her to find something. The current styles are almost all sleeveless and low-cut in the back."
"She's determined to cover them," he agreed.
"Do you think you could convince her to visit Martin Mandeville?" she asked.
Casey nearly asked who that was, but then he remembered—the designer from whom she'd bought that gold dress she wore to the gallery. "I can try," he agreed gruffly.
"Martin owes me several favors," she told him, "and he'll work miracles for her."
As it edged closer to their wedding date he had to admit that Ariel kept her word—for a while. She backed down, listened to her daughter, and let Riah make her own decisions regarding the wedding. Riah still couldn't find a dress, but she still doggedly shopped for one.
He knew why this was so difficult for her, but he mostly held back the comments he was increasingly tempted to make. She'd made what he thought was a sensible decision—to delay buying something until she was close enough to the date that she was unlikely to have to have the dress altered or to have to buy something else entirely if her waistline expanded too much.
Of course, that was the other thing making her nuts. Lydia Pentangeli was worried about the fact that Riah wasn't putting on enough weight. The truth was Riah was eating well. She was paranoid about eating healthily, and while neither he nor her aunt could complain that she was eating empty crap, what she ate wasn't putting very much weight on her. She was showing more, her body was ripening enough they had finally had to tell Big Mike, and she had had to start wearing looser clothes, some of which were actual maternity clothes. Nonetheless, Casey was worried about his wife.
Riah, for her part, was getting pissed off at his constant vigilance about her weight and her blood pressure in particular.
Not that offering advice on dress shopping was any less a landmine. He finally suggested he go with her, which only made Riah snap at him that he could take her mother, but she wasn't going shopping for her wedding dress with him in tow. He pointed out they were already married, so it didn't really matter if he saw her dress before the wedding.
Part of her problem was the scars on her back, and she was once more obsessing over them. It was unlikely they would ever disappear entirely, but they didn't look nearly as bad as they had when he first saw them. Admittedly, a backless dress would expose them, but her hair was long enough to cover them, so he didn't see that as a great problem. When he said so, though, she'd narrowed her eyes and told him, "Formal dress, formal hair."
If that meant something in girl-speak, he didn't know what. He hadn't learned that one growing up with his sisters, and he wasn't entirely sure what it meant. When he finally asked—after hearing it for the sixth or seventh time—she'd explained that with a formal wedding dress, she had to wear formal hair, and that meant wearing it up. Casey wisely said nothing further, though he was tempted to point out that unbound hair was the norm long ago, but he suspected he'd get a lecture on feminism, women as property, and virgin brides if he said so. He thought the "formal dress, formal hair" rule was a stupid rule, but he resigned himself to watching her torture herself.
Ellie tried to help as well, but Riah didn't want her to go shopping with her, either. Casey understood that. She would have to explain why certain designs were off limits, and she knew as he did that Ellie might recognize what caused those scars if she saw them. Riah couldn't tell her the truth without exposing what she was. His suggestion that she invite Emma out to visit fell on deaf ears.
There was a vicious argument one night when Casey made the apparent mistake of asking if she'd found a dress over dinner. Riah's face had flushed, and her jaw clenched. Then she burst into tears. He suspected those tears were likely due more to her pregnancy than her inability to find a wedding dress. They retread the same ground they always did. Impatient with her failure to make a decision, he finally told her to just pick one—surely a dress was just a dress.
Riah's eyes were angry slits, and she shot right back, "All you have to do is dig out your uniform, John, so just shut the fuck up."
"Just buy something that fits," he snapped back. "Does it really matter what you're wearing?"
He realized he really should have more carefully considered the possible ramifications of that before he said it when she growled, "Only a man would say something that stupid." It wasn't a characteristic response from her, so he knew this was a much touchier subject than he thought. He blamed Ariel for that.
"Wear what you wore the first time," he told her. He liked that dress.
"You insisted on white for this," she ground out, "and Mum's made it formal, so it's going to be goddamn white. Besides, my mother insists on white, too."
Much as he hated being on the same side as Ariel, he had no argument for that. He wanted to see her in the white dress, but if it was going to make her this angry and this upset, then he was willing to surrender. Lydia was concerned about Riah's stress level, and each time she came home without a dress, that level rose.
Truthfully, he suspected he was on the receiving end of her frustration with having to fight her mother every step of the way on the wedding. Ariel had begun insisting once more that Riah change things, and Riah sometimes reacted badly to that pressure. Casey thought she ought to just have the knock-down drag-out fight he suspected she'd have to have with Ariel before her mother backed off. He was about to try and placate her, despite being equally pissed off, when Riah shoved back her chair, and slammed out of the apartment.
Casey sat there for a few moments, stunned that she had run away. It wasn't really like her. He went after her, intent on finishing the argument. When he opened the door, though, she stood in the courtyard outside. She wasn't far from their door, faced away from it with her arms folded over her stomach and her shoulders hunched forward. He hoped there weren't going to be more tears. It was getting harder to deal with the emotional rollercoaster without causing very real hurt or harm. He breathed in deeply, stepped out and quietly closed the door.
She must have heard him since she looked over her shoulder at him. He stood in front of the door and watched her. The anger left him as he took in her miserable face. This apparently went deeper than not being able to find a dress. He wondered if it went deeper than dealing with Ariel the perfectionist. "Riah," he began.
"I wish we could just tell everyone we're already married and be done with it," she said in a quiet rush.
He snorted and reached for her, pulled her back inside. Determined to make her relax if nothing else, he drew her close. "I wouldn't mind," he agreed, "but you have to be the one to tell our mothers."
Her face went ghostly pale. "Not on your life," she said faintly. "Couldn't you just kill them?"
"I love my mother," he said with a laugh, knew she didn't really mean it. "I thought you loved yours."
She wound her arms around his waist and leaned her cheek against his chest, her ear over his heart. "Some heartless assassin you are," she grumbled.
That made him smile. Of course it wouldn't do his reputation much good if it got out that he loved his mother—might even prove dangerous for her—but he did. He felt Riah sigh. "I can't take much more of this," she told him. "It seems like every time I turn around, there's something else to decide or something else has gone wrong or something else has to be changed." She snuggled closer to him. "Let's just have a big party and tell everyone we got married without them."
Casey tipped her face up, studied her troubled expression. "If it bothers you this badly, just let your mother have her way."
She scowled at him. "It's our wedding, not hers."
He cocked a brow. He'd told Ariel that, but it had only made her back off for a brief time. Perhaps Riah could have better luck. "Then tell her that." He would never understand why she had so much trouble standing up to her mother. Ariel was hell on wheels, admittedly, but she loved her daughter, and after that conversation with Ariel, he was pretty sure that if Riah simply asserted herself, her mother would back down. He leaned down and kissed her. "Meanwhile, I'll take over part of the list." He paused, considered, and then offered, "I'll give you a gun if you think it will help."
That made her laugh, and since that was what he intended, he was pleased. He wasn't sure what he would have done had she taken him up on the offer. Maybe he would have offered to shoot Ariel after all. Then again, he might enjoy at least threatening his mother-in-law. "I don't think it will help at all," she confessed. "You've met my mother."
He grunted agreement then let her go long enough to lead her to the couch. He sat, pulled her into his lap. "Riah, I know this is making you crazy, but I want to stand in front of our families and our friends and claim you." He did, too, which surprised him a little. He would have preferred it just be family and a handful of friends, but he could live with a little bit of pageantry. What he didn't like was how unhappy it was making Riah. Perhaps he should have another talk with Ariel. He decided to feel Riah out, see if she really wanted him to put a stop to this, force her mother to scale back. "Maybe we shouldn't have given in to your mother about having a big wedding, but I didn't want you to feel cheated out of that."
That had been one of their first arguments over their wedding, when he had agreed with her mother on expanding the number of wedding guests over Riah's objections. She pulled him down, kissed him, and he wondered why. "I don't mind the big wedding, but if we had insisted on a small wedding, I wouldn't have felt cheated. Truthfully, I far prefer the first one when it was just the two of us."
So did he, but he wasn't going to tell her that and give her something else to obsess over. As he did more often than not when he held her, he slid his hand over her abdomen. She was a little over four months along, and he knew part of her anxiety stemmed from the fact that when they had their wedding, she would be approximately five months along. He suspected it wasn't just the pregnancy that was causing her problems with the dress, though. It probably wasn't even that the current styles would expose her back. He asked quietly, "You've never seemed to care much about clothes before, Riah, so what's really bothering you?"
"I don't want to embarrass you, John," she said thickly.
He folded her closer, tucked her head against his shoulder. Casey thought he'd made it more than clear her pregnancy didn't cause him embarrassment, but apparently not. "I don't think you could ever embarrass me, Riah," he said. "It's not like you got yourself pregnant. As you said the night we found out, we're both in this, and I'm more than happy to stand beside you, even if you were at the end instead of the middle of the pregnancy." She kissed him, and apparently his reassurance helped since she relaxed a little. He considered how to get her to fully relax. He leaned down and kissed her. "Think of it as obvious proof I'm a man," he teased.
She snorted, and a mean little smile tipped her lips. "So having your bride visibly pregnant is good because it shows you're a real man?"
"Works for me," he said with a brief flash of a grin. He sobered and returned to her usual complaint about finding a gown, hoped he didn't set her off again when he said, "I've told you before that I doubt anyone will notice your back. Won't the veil cover it?"
"I won't wear it the entire time," she told him, "and before you tell me again, I'm not leaving my hair down." He could hear her unsaid formal dress, formal hair. "The problem is that every dress I find that covers my back is ugly."
"Make your mother happy and let her help you find something to wear," he suggested again. Ariel, he knew, would throw herself wholeheartedly into the task, and once the dress was bought, Riah could relax.
"I'll wind up looking like a meringue," she said. She narrowed her eyes at him, silently dared him to say something or laugh at that. Casey really wanted to laugh at the image that created, but he kept his stone-face in place. She sighed. "Mum likes the big skirts with the huge crinoline. I don't want that."
Now, he thought, they might finally be getting to what really bothered her. "What do you want?" he asked softly.
Riah eyed him. "If it weren't for my back," she said, "I'd go for one of those strapless low-backed dresses with the cathedral train, but I can't." He wouldn't mind seeing her in something like that, was about to say so, but she gave him her own glare, so he said nothing. "Honestly, though, I always wanted Julie Andrews's dress from The Sound of Music."
That surprised him. He took a moment, pictured it, but he had to admit that despite the fact it would cover enough of her that it would likely to keep Paul Patterson from drooling, it had pretty clearly outlined Julie Andrew's figure. On the other hand, it did violate his only requirement. "It isn't white," he finally said.
Her lips twitched. "Does it really matter?"
"It does to me," he growled.
"John, I'll be going down the aisle five months pregnant," she reminded him. "I don't think white is the most important part of the equation."
It probably wasn't, but he wanted to see her in a more traditional wedding gown. He remembered then what he'd promised Ariel. "Doesn't your mother have some dress designer friend out here somewhere?"
She nodded. "She's already suggested I just talk to Martin."
"So tell him you want The Sound of Music dress and see what he can do."
Riah covered his hand on her swelling abdomen. "You really need to see the movie again," she told him with a wry grimace. "It works on Julie Andrews because she's thin. I've got a bump. The lines won't work on me. It'll just maximize the girth." He opened his mouth to object, but she stopped him by giving him a hard stare and pointing a finger at him, "And don't you dare say something cavemanish like I look good like this or that it ups your he-man cred, or I will go down the aisle with a big pillow up the front of my dress and barefoot."
As threats went, it made his sometimes perverse sense of humor kick in, but she backed it up with an even harder stare before he could make the obvious joke that barefoot and pregnant was as she should be, so he held it back. He wasn't going near her slightly expanded size. He liked it, liked thinking about how she came to be that way, but she was hypersensitive to it.
"I'll find something. If I can't, I'll call Mum and surrender."
He pulled her astride him and pulled her close. "I really could care less what you wear, Riah, as long as it's white. It isn't about the dress, no matter what your mother says, and it isn't about how you look. It's about I love you, and I plan to make sure everyone we know knows that, too."
Leaning toward him, she slid her arms around his neck. "It is about how I look, John. That's how I'll be judged, right or wrong. I don't want to reflect badly on you."
"I don't think you could ever reflect badly on me," he assured her.
She didn't smile as he'd hoped. She did, though, kiss him rather thoroughly. Just as he began to get ideas, she asked, "Have you chosen a best man yet?"
It was possible she was getting a little revenge by zeroing in on his own indecision, but he had a clear conscience there. "Bartowski," he grumbled.
"Not Paul?" she asked, and her surprise was obvious.
Casey wasn't at all sure how to explain his choice. He and Paul Patterson were friends, but Patterson was his superior officer and had been a surrogate father. That latter made choosing him a little awkward. Choosing Bartowski, on the other hand, had just felt right. He was loath to call the kid his friend, but he supposed there was an element of that there. Paul Patterson would be his groomsman.
Riah smiled and raised her brows. "Promise me he won't throw you a bachelor's party like the one they threw Devon."
"Thanks," he said with a heavy dose of sarcasm. "I had finally just about wiped that out of my memory." He really didn't want to think about that night—even the part with the 49b in the skimpy cop suit. Especially not about Agent Forest doing the dominatrix pole dancer routine. "I told him I didn't want one."
Linking her hands behind his neck, she met his eyes. "Have one, John, just not at the Buy More, and don't let Jeff be in charge of entertainment."
The groan was pained, and she laughed. She'd seen the pictures, after all, and that was a whole other part of the night he'd like to permanently erase from his brain. "He'll invite Grimes, probably Woodcomb, and I'd far rather just have a quiet night with some good scotch and good cigars." He cocked his head. "I assume Emma's plotting on your behalf?"
She shook her head. "We agreed on a baby shower later."
"At the risk of pissing you off again," he said, "we have to do something about buying you a wedding ring."
Her brows rose. "What about you?"
Casey wasn't known for sentimentality, so he could feel the heat ride his skin. "If it's alright with you, I'd just as soon we used the one you already bought me."
"Something simple will make me happy, John." She gave him a mischievous look and added, "And I promise not to pay the bill this time."
He growled and rolled her onto the couch. He'd gotten over that, but it still irked him. He let her pull him down and kiss him then suggested they finish dinner.
With three weeks before the wedding, she finally gave in and went to see the designer. Casey, meanwhile, paid a visit to Tiffany's in Beverly Hills. He took a printout showing her engagement ring from the company's website, and when he finally got the attention of the snooty bastard behind the counter, he handed the man the sheet and said, "I bought this for my fiancée, and now I need a wedding band to go with it."
All of a sudden, the man was considerably nicer.
When he left with the distinctive blue-green box tied with a white ribbon, it held what the salesman had called a platinum band with channel set diamonds. The diamonds were emerald cut and ran the entire circumference of the ring. Casey was also nearly ten thousand dollars in debt, but he didn't mind. He stashed the box when he arrived home, and Riah turned up not long after. From her smile, he figured she'd finally found her dress. She confirmed that, told him it was exactly what she wanted and Mandeville promised to deliver it on time despite the short notice. All he cared was that there was now one less thing to make her crazy.
Unfortunately, the things that would make him crazy before this was done were only just beginning.