"Laurell K. Hamilton - Anita Blake 12 - Incubus Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Laurell K)

look that Tammy’s father gave Larry. It was not a friendly look. Tammy was three
months, almost four months pregnant, and it was Larry’s fault. Or rather it was
Tammy and Larry’s fault, but I don’t think that’s how her father viewed it. No, Mr.
Nathan Reynolds definitely seemed to blame Larry, as if Tammy had been snatched
virgin from her bed and brought back deflowered, and pregnant.
Mr. Reynolds raised Tammy’s blusher on her veil to reveal all that carefully
made-up beauty. He kissed her solemnly on the cheek, threw one last dark look at
Larry, and turned smiling and pleasant to join his wife in the front pew. The fact that
he’d gone from a look that dark, to pleasant and smiling when he knew the church
would see his face, bothered me. I didn’t like that Larry’s new father-in-law was
capable of lying that well. Made me wonder what he did for a living. But I was
naturally suspicious, comes from working too closely with the police for too long.
Cynicism is so contagious.
We all turned toward the altar, and the familiar ceremony began. I’d been to
dozens of weddings over the years, almost all Christian, almost all standard
denominations, so the words were strangely familiar. Funny, how you don’t think
you’ve memorized something until you hear it, and realize you have. “Dearly
beloved, we are gathered here today to join this man and this woman in Holy
Matrimony.”
It wasn’t a Catholic or Episcopalian wedding, so we didn’t have to kneel, or do
much of anything. We wouldn’t even be getting communion during the ceremony. I
have to admit my mind began to wander a bit. I’ve never been a big fan of weddings.
I understand they’re necessary, but I was never one of those girls who fantasized
about what my wedding would be like someday. I don’t remember ever thinking
about it until I got engaged in college, and when that fell through, I went back to not
thinking about it. I’d been engaged very briefly to Richard Zeeman, junior high
science teacher, and local Ulfric, Wolf-King, but he’d dumped me because I was
more at home with the monsters than he was. Now, I’d pretty much settled into the
idea that I would never marry. Never have those words spoken over me and my
honeybun. A tiny part of me that I’d never admit to out loud was sad about that. Not
the wedding part, I think I would hate my own wedding just as much as anyone
else’s, but not having one single person to call my own. I’d been raised
middle-class, middle America, small town, and that meant the fact that I was
currently dating a minimum of three men, maybe four, depending on how you looked
at it, still made me squirm with something painfully close to embarrassment. I was
working on not being uncomfortable about it, but there were issues that needed to be
worked out. For instance, who do you bring as your date to a wedding? The
wedding was in a church complete with holy items, so two of the men were out.
Vampires didn’t do well around holy items. Watching Jean-Claude and Asher burst
into flames as they came through the door would probably have put a damper on the
festivities. That left me with one official boyfriend, Micah Callahan, and one friend,
who happened to be a boy, Nathaniel Graison.
 They’d come to the part where the rings were exchanged, which meant the maid
of honor and the best man had something to do. The woman got to hold Tammy’s
huge spill of white flowers, and the man got to hand over the jewelry. It all seemed
so terribly sexist. Just once I’d like to see the men have to hold flowers and the
women fork over the jewelry. I’d been told once by a friend that I was too liberated
for my own good. Maybe. All I knew was that if I ever did get engaged again I’d
decided either both of us got an engagement ring, or neither of us did. Of course,
again, that not getting married part meant that the engagement was probably off the