Blame It on Your Heart (27 page)

Molly raised her hand. Instead of slapping his away, as Ellie expected, she wrapped her hand around his wrist and firmly pushed his hand away from her mouth. "I like my life exactly as it is. I don't need to try anything new."

For a few seconds their eyes locked, and Ellie felt like she was about to witness a battle of wills of epic proportions as Brady's eyes narrowed and his lips pulled into a knowing smile.

Then the moment was over as he laughed and pulled his hand away with a shrug. "Suit yourself," he said and popped the bite in his own mouth. He closed his eyes and made an exaggerated sound of pleasure. "You have no idea what you're missing."

"Pretty sure I'm better off for it," Molly retorted with a glare.

Brady gestured for them all to pick up spoons and start assembling. "The most important thing," Brady said, "is that once you fill a tray, get these back in the walk in as quickly as you can. These have to be chilled until right before serving, and anything that doesn't get eaten while passed gets dumped. We don't need it going around that Jane Decker got food poisoning at her husband's birthday party."

Ellie tried to focus on getting her tuna perfectly mounded, but all she could think about were the odds on how long it would take for Molly to give into the unabashed hot and heavy vibes Brady was throwing her way.

As obsessed with Damon as she was, Ellie would have to be blind not to notice Brady was walking, talking, sex on a stick.

Molly pretended not to like him, but Ellie didn't miss the sidelong looks Molly shot his way, lingering on the roughhewn features of his face, on his butt when he bent over to retrieve a heavy metal pot, down the long tanned arms, muscles standing out in stark relief.

If Josh didn't get his act together...

In truth, Ellie sort of hoped he didn't. All the fun Molly could have with Brady aside, she shuddered inwardly at the thought of her sister tying herself to the self-absorbed blow hard. Molly had spent every day since her sophomore year of high school trying to chase Josh down. Didn't she realize it wouldn't change, even after they were married?

Unless something major happened, Ellie noted glumly as she moved on from the tuna to assemble the asparagus spears wrapped in prosciutto, Molly was going to spend the rest of her life bending over backwards, never really feeling secure in how her husband really felt about her.

Every woman should know what it felt like to be adored.

And unlike Ellie, every woman should be smart enough not to throw it away once she found it.

As if on cue, Damon came into the kitchen. "We're exactly one and a half hours from when guests start showing up. How are we doing?"

"Excellent," Brady said. "Thanks to my kitchen elves all that's left is to plate this stuff up, which we don't want to do until JT tells us the shuttle has left the ranch."

"Great. Dylan went home to shower and pick up Deck and Jane from the airport about an hour ago. Assuming they'll want to clean up, they should be here right around six, as planned. This is all coming together really great, Ellie," he said, flashing her an appreciative smile.

It should have warmed her from the inside out, but right now all she could think about was the way he used to look at her. Like she held the moon and sun and the secrets to the universe in her hands.

She forced a smile and nodded, unable to speak past the constriction in her throat.

"I vote we all go shower," Molly said. "If I'm going to be serving Hollywood A-listers, I'd rather not smell like raw fish.”

Brady raised his eyebrows and looked like he was about to say something. Damon caught his eye and gave a curt shake of his head, his eyes narrowed. Obviously some guy secret code, she thought, and pursed her lips around a smile as she imagined what Brady might have been about to say as they all filed out.

After a quick shower, Ellie dressed in the outfit she'd picked out weeks ago for the occasion. Though she wasn't a guest at the party, she wanted to look nice but not too dressed up. Her light blue chambray sundress fit the bill perfectly. Paired with cowboy boots that were so worn in they were as comfortable as slippers--absolutely necessary with how much she'd be on her feet—it had a western flare that would complement the pearl snap shirts and denim the rest of the servers were going to wear.

She applied more makeup than usual—nothing like knowing a few
of Maxim Magazine's
sexiest women alive would be there to make a girl step up her game—then reached for her hairdryer.

It would take a full twenty minutes to fully straighten her hair. Cutting it close, she thought as she glanced at her watch.

But as she pulled her brush through a section of hair and started to pull it straight, Damon's voice echoed through her head. "I like your hair like this," he'd said one night after she'd taken a shower and let it dry into its natural waves. "You look more like the Ellie I remember."

Though she told herself she was silly, that she should wear her hair however she thought it looked best, she put the brush down, rubbed in a little styling cream and dried her hair into soft waves.

It went better with the western casual vibe anyway, she reassured herself as she pulled the sides back and let the rest fall loose down her shoulders. She wasn't dressing to please Damon, not at all.

Still, that didn't stop her from getting a little thrill when she got to the restaurant where he was already waiting. His eyes lit up at the sight of her, and she felt the warmth of his gaze as it trailed down her bare shoulders, the vee of skin left bare by the neckline of her dress, and the section of leg between the hem of her skirt and the top of her boots.

Her eyes ran over him just as hungrily. In his pearl snap shirt, jeans cinched with a hand-tooled leather belt, and worn but polished cowboy boots, he looked just country enough without looking like he was wearing a cowboy costume.

She walked over to him, pausing here and there to straighten a table linen or pinch off a dead blossom from the arrangements. They walked outside together where Ellie did a last check of each table to make sure everything was as perfect as it could possibly be.

"Everything looks great," Damon said, reaching out and staying her hand when she went to move a mason jar full of silverware one more millimeter to the left.

He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and lifted it to his mouth. The hot kiss he pressed in the center of her palm was enough to make any thoughts of table settings vanish from her brain. "And so do you."

Ellie felt her mouth pull into what she knew was a dopey, dreamy smile as he bent his dark head.

"Uh, sorry to interrupt."

Ellie jerked her hand from Damon's grasp and took too steps back at Molly's chipper voice.

"JT called. The shuttles just left the ranch so they should be here in about twenty minutes."

Showtime. Appetizer trays were assembled and wine was uncorked as they anticipated an influx of sixty-two people all at once. While Molly oversaw service from both bars, and Adele and Brady managed the kitchen, Ellie and Damon stationed themselves at the front of the restaurant to meet and greet and help everyone find their seats among the tables.

She watched as the first of four shuttles rounded the corner and approached. Already anxious, Ellie felt a fresh wave of anxiety roll over her. Her heart started to pound in her chest so hard she was convinced it was going to crack through her ribcage. Her lungs felt squeezed tight, unable to get enough oxygen.

A cold sweat beaded on her lip as she struggled to get her panic under control. Thoughts swirled in her head, making it impossible to calm down. I should never have agreed to this.
These people know who I am, everything that's happened. They'll spend the entire night whispering about me and wondering why Jane Bowden would ever trust someone like me with an event like this.

The van pulled to a stop in the parking lot, and Ellie knew she had to get out of there.

She took one step back but was stayed by a solid, warm pressure on the small of her back.

"It's okay, El," Damon reassured her while his thumb traced gentle circles along her back. "Nobody cares about what happened with you and Troy. They're just here to have a good time."

Miraculously, her anxiety dropped, as though Damon was pulling it all out with the gentle press of his hand on her back. By the time the first guest emerged from the van Ellie's pulse was at below heart attack rates and she was no longer hyperventilating.

It helped that one of the first people out was Laura, who rushed up to greet Ellie with a huge hug. "It hasn't even started yet and already this party is awesome. Do you know who I met out at the ranch?" she whispered conspiratorially.

Ellie smiled and nodded when Laura mentioned one of her favorite authors. "Jane is working on an adaptation of her latest book. Cool, right?"

"Uh, yeah," Laura said, sounding exactly like she had at sixteen. "I know you're hostess so I won't hold up the line. Mark, stop yapping and grab our place cards," she said to Mark, who was telling Damon about meeting a leading action star that Deck regularly worked with.

"Funny thing though," Rob was saying as he leaned in so his voice wouldn't carry, "this guy, he looks so huge on the screen, but he's barely taller than Laura."

Laura shushed him and pulled him away by his arm. "We'll catch up later," she said with a little wiggle of her fingers.

Though there were a few high profile celebrities on the list, Ellie was relieved that for the most part, the guests were Deck's friends from either high school or the army or people he worked with behind the scenes on movies. The fact that the crowd was made up mostly of regular humans—many of whom she already knew—made her stress level lower that much more quickly.

"How's everything going?" Once the guests were greeted and knew where they would be sitting, she went to check in with Molly.

"Great," her sister, who was busily pulling corks on more wine at the bar inside, replied. "Janelle and Sadie are passing wine while Sean and Connor are doing a great job with the mixed drinks," she added, flashing a smile at Sean who was busy muddling mint and sugar for a mojito for the guest at the front of the line.

"Thanks again for helping us out tonight," Ellie said. Sean and Connor were friends of Sadie and Molly's who worked at a popular spot in Bozeman and were used to slinging drinks for bigger crowds.

"My pleasure, ma'am," he replied with a grin. "I can always use the extra money, and it's not every day I get to serve drinks to real live celebrities."

"I thought you told me John Mayer came into the bar all the time," Molly teased.

He covered the glass with a cocktail shaker and shook it like a maraca, then pulled off the shaker, topped the drink off with club soda and garnished it with a sprig of mint before handing it to the guest.

He shrugged. "He does—he comes in to creep on all the college girls. That's nothing like getting to meet Jane Bowden." Ellie laughed at the starry look in his eyes. Though she had the wholesome, blonde good looks of the girl next door, Jane had done enough bikini shots to get any straight male thinking about more than hand holding and ice cream socials.

And even she had to admit, Ellie thought as she made her way to the kitchen, after speaking to Jane only by phone for the past several weeks she was excited to meet her in person.

As she made her way through the crowd, she shoved away the feeling that she was being stared at and remarked upon. She fixed a friendly smile to her face and stopped to chat with several of the party guests.

"Are you having a nice time?" Ellie said to a petite blonde women with the kind of perfect Barbie doll-like features that would have made it easy to hate her if her wide smile hadn't been so sincere.

"We are," she said enthusiastically as she reached out to take a tuna tartar bite from the tray Sadie was passing. "Everything is so fun, the decorations, the layout. And the food is incredible," she said, gesturing with the little bit of jicama. "I'm Julie Dennison, by the way."

At the name, Ellie felt her spine go a little straighter with pride. Julie and her husband were proprietors of two of the most exclusive resorts in the Caribbean, and highly sought after venues for high profile celebrations. Julie was often featured in lifestyle magazines, offering advice on how to throw the most successful parties. If she liked what Ellie had pulled together, it meant something.

"...and this is my husband Chris," Julie said gesturing to the tall, broad shouldered man next to her. With his sun-streaked brown hair, dark blue eyes, and chiseled features he was a perfect strapping Ken to her diminutive Barbie, though based on the body language between the pair, Ellie was guessing Chris had more than a smooth plastic bump going on downstairs.

"It still blows my mind that Jane and Deck are married," Julie said, wide eyed when she swallowed the last of her tuna. “You know," she said, leaning over to Ellie, glancing around as though she didn't want to be heard, "we first met Jane when she was getting married at Holley Cay to that other guy, and Deck was in charge of security. And, oh my God, was she ever a pain in the ass—"

"Jules," Chris interjected in a lightly scolding tone.

"What? It's not like she won't admit it herself," Julie said, blinking innocently. "Anyway, funny how—"