Read Online Wisconsin Wedding (Welcome To Tyler, No. 3) by Carla Neggers - Free Book Online Page A

Don’t let her fool you. She needs your sympathy about as much as a badger does. You know what she eats for breakfast, don’t you? A five-pound bag of nails. Guaranteed. Check it out yourself.”
    Cliff frowned. “She’s not that kind of woman.”
    “That, Brother, is what she wants everyone in Tyler to believe. She has the tongue of a witch.”
    Overhead, in the distance, he could hear the seemingly chaotic honking of a flock of Canada geese. Winter was coming to Wisconsin. The geese knew when to clear out. Pity, Byron thought, he lacked their good sense.
    His brother’s mouth twitched in what Byron decided passed for a smile these days. “Do you care about her?”
    “Cliff, I have to warn you, you’re treading on thin ice even bringing up the subject. What did or didn’t happen between Nora and me three years ago is between us. I can’t talk about it. If I did, she’d hunt me down like a rabid weasel and put me out of her misery.”
    His brother’s smile almost blossomed, then faded abruptly. It seemed suddenly as if he’d never smiled before and never would again.
    “Are you and Nora friends?” Byron asked.
    “Not in any normal way.”
    And Cliff’s eyes, hinting of the years of pain and self-imposed isolation and loneliness he’d endured, reached Byron, reminding him that his brother had come a long, long way from where he’d been five years ago, ten years ago. And there was healing still to be done—for him, for Byron, for their widowed mother. Had Liza Baron made his tortured life a thing of the past? But if Cliff encouraged Byron to talk, listened intently, he avoided himself as a topic of conversation. Cliff was guarded about his upcoming marriage, the life he’d been leading, where he planned to go from this point, even the body that had been dug up not too far from where they now sat. Byron knew he needed to continue to be patient.
    And he wanted to hear Cliff’s views on Nora Gates. It was crazy, he thought, but there it was.
    “You could say,” Cliff went on, looking out at the glistening lake, “that Nora’s one of the people in Tyler I’ve admired from afar. Until yesterday afternoon, I’d never even spoken to her. But I’ve seen her around town, heard about her from time to time from Alyssa Baron, read about her in the newspaper. She’s her own person. She sits on the town council and is active in various local charitableorganizations. She has strong views on certain issues and she’s direct, but she manages to be gracious at the same time. People listen to her, even when she’s saying something they don’t want to hear, because they know she cares about them and Tyler.”
    Byron knew his brother spoke the truth, but couldn’t help recalling that saintly Nora Gates had thrown a book of Beethoven sonatas at him. If she’d had any kind of arm, she’d have knocked him out.
    “I doubt she takes to liars,” Cliff added.
    The geese were directly overhead, flying in picture-postcard formation against a sky as clear and blue as any Byron had seen, from Maine to Florida to California to Alaska. He could think of worse places to end up than Tyler, Wisconsin. His mahogany-paneled Providence office, for one, he decided wryly. He drank more of his coffee, the warmth of the plastic cup finally penetrating his fingers. It had been a chilly night. He was used to camping out in every type of weather, although there’d been something eerie about pitching his tent not far from where a body had been mysteriously buried for who knew how long. And his memories of Nora Gates, both past and current, hadn’t been conducive to sleep. But it was simpler to blame the weather.
    With the sun climbing higher, sitting outside wasn’t so bad. Anyway, Cliff hadn’t invited him into the lodge.
    “I lied to Nora about who I was,” Byron said, “because I was afraid of what would happen if word got out that Cliff Forrester’s brother was in town.”
    “If I found out, you mean?”
    Cliff’s tone was