Daughters Of The Bride (3 page)

Two hours later the last of the guests left. Sienna carefully put away the pledge forms. Not only had the group been generous, they also wanted to challenge other chapters of their organization to match their donations.

“How’s the most beautiful girl in the world?”

The voice came from the doorway. Sienna hesitated just a second before turning. “Hi, David.”

“How did it go?” her boyfriend asked as he moved toward her. “Why am I asking? You impressed them. I know it.”

He pulled her close and kissed her. Sienna allowed his lips to linger for a second before stepping back.

“I’m working,” she said with a laugh.

“No one’s here.” He moved his hands to her butt and pulled her close again. “We could lock the door.”

If the words weren’t clear enough, the erection he rubbed against her belly got the message through. How romantic—going at it on a serving table while surrounded by dirty plates and half-full glasses of wine.

Sienna chided herself for not accepting the gesture in the spirit in which David meant it. Successful and smart. He loved his family, puppies, and as far as she could tell, he was an all-around nice guy.

“Remember you telling me about the time you took a girl home to meet your parents and realized you couldn’t do it in their house?” she asked, her voice teasing.

He chuckled. “I do. Humiliating.”

“Joyce, the owner of the hotel, is a little bit like my grandmother.”

“Ouch.” He drew back. “Grandma is even worse than Mom.” He nibbled on her neck. “Rain check.”

“Absolutely. Thanks.”

He released her and pushed up his glasses. “You heading back to the office?”

She’d kind of wanted to head home after her presentation. She could deliver the pledge forms to her boss in the morning. But if she said that, David would want to make plans. Wow. She would rather go back to work than spend the evening with her boyfriend? What was up with that?

She looked at him. He was about her height, with dark brown hair and dark eyes. A nice build. He wasn’t handsome, but she’d never cared much about that. Once a guy crossed the “not a troll” threshold, she was fine.

David Van Horn should have been the man of her dreams. Lord knew she’d been looking. He was the thirty-five-year-old senior vice president at the recently transplanted aerospace design firm in town. She was pushing thirty and had no idea why she hadn’t been able to find “the one.” Maybe there was something wrong with her.

Not a conversation she wanted to have with herself right now, she thought. Or ever.

“I don’t have to go back to work,” she told him.

“Great. Let’s have dinner here.”

“I’d love that.”

A statement stretching the truth more than a little, but who was going to know?

3

“WANT ME TO
put vodka in yours?” Kelly asked as she handed Courtney a tray of glasses filled with lemonade.

“I wish,” Courtney told her. “Alas, no. I have a meeting.”

“Uh-huh. With your mom. Just give me the high sign and I’ll start screaming. That will give you a good excuse to come running.” Kelly wrinkled her nose. “I’ll have to think of a reason. Maybe a broken ankle.”

“You’d look adorable in a cast. Tiny and broken. Men would be flocking.”

Kelly grinned. “I could use a good flocking.”

Courtney was still laughing as she walked out of the bar and around to the pool area, where Joyce sat with Courtney’s mother, Maggie, at one of the tables on the far side. A large umbrella protected them from the mid-May afternoon sun. Sarge and Pearl lay on the grass a few feet away.

Joyce wore her usual St. John separates—today she had on black knit pants and a three-quarter sleeve black knit shirt. A blue, black and gray scarf pulled the look together. Maggie had come from her office. Her tailored dark green dress brought out the color of her eyes and complemented her blond hair.

As Courtney approached, her mother caught sight of her and quickly scrambled to her feet. Her haste to get to Courtney and rescue the tray would have been comical if it wasn’t a metaphor for their entire relationship.
Assume, no matter the circumstances, that Courtney can’t handle it.
Although given her somewhat predictable ability to create a disaster out of thin air, she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised.

“I’ll just take that,” her mother said with a smile. She carried the tray back to the table.

Courtney hesitated only a second before joining them. Too bad Neil hadn’t come along. He was always a calming presence. Courtney and her sisters enjoyed spending time with him. He was sweet, with a quirky sense of humor. But there was no Neil-buffer today, and as Joyce considered herself as much Maggie’s friend as Courtney’s, there would be no help from that quarter, either.

Courtney sat next to Joyce and reached for a glass of lemonade. As she took a sip, she thought that maybe she should have taken Kelly up on her offer of vodka. That would have taken the edge off the meeting.

“As we discussed before,” Joyce began, “the party is going to be out here.” She motioned to the grassy area in front of the pool. “We’ll have an open tent for dinner, but I’m hoping the weather cooperates and we can have drinks and appetizers out under the stars.”

“Sunset’s about eight ten,” Courtney said, putting her drink back on the table and opening her tablet cover. “We’ll be having drinks and appetizers with the sunset.”

“That will be so beautiful.” Maggie smiled at her daughter, then leaned toward Joyce. “What about the food?”

Joyce turned to Courtney and raised her eyebrows. “What are we having?”

Courtney found the menu in her file. “We’ve talked about a buffet. That gives us the most options. You and Neil both like spicy food, so I suggest you serve barbecue jerk chicken and grilled sweet-and-spicy shrimp as the main entrées.”

She listed the side dishes offered and the appetizers, along with the idea of having watermelon mojitos as the signature drink.

“They’re pink,” she told her mother. “We could do cosmopolitans, too.” The latter was much easier and would make her popular with the bar staff. In theory, the catering department didn’t ever want anything labor-intensive like a mojito as a signature drink at an event, but she’d called in a few favors to get it approved.

“I do love pink,” Maggie murmured, glancing between the two of them. “And Neil would say whatever makes me happy. Oh, let’s do cosmos. They’ll remind me of
Sex and the City
.”

Courtney could practically hear a collective sigh of relief from the bar staff. She made notes on her tablet.

When her mother had first started dating Neil Cizmic, none of her daughters had thought much about it. A widow for nearly twenty-four years, Maggie had dated on and off, sometimes getting involved with a man for a few months at a time. But the relationships had never gotten serious. Then Neil had come along.

On the surface, they couldn’t be more different. Maggie was tall and thin. Neil was at least two inches shorter and much more round. But he’d won her over with his kind heart and honest love. Now they were getting married. Every now and then Courtney poked at her heart to see if she minded that her late father was being replaced, but there had been no reaction. More than enough time had passed. If marrying Neil made her mom happy, then Maggie should go for it.

As for the “until death do us part” section of the vows, well, Courtney wasn’t the one getting married. She was willing to admit she’d never been in love, but from what she’d seen, most romantic relationships ended badly. As for the nonromantic kind of love, well, that hurt, too.

“The cosmos will be so pretty,” Joyce said. “And there’s an open bar for anyone who wants something different.”

Maggie leaned back in her chair. “I’m so excited. I always wanted an engagement party, but my mother said we couldn’t have one.” She looked at Joyce. “I was only eighteen when Phil and I got engaged, and nineteen when we got married. My mother made
all
the decisions. It was awful. We argued every day for a year. I wanted different dresses for the bridesmaids, a different cake. I hated the flowers she picked. So I swear, this time, I’m going to do everything the way
I
want. Convention be damned.”

“You have good taste, Mom. No one’s worried,” Courtney assured her. Something she’d passed on to her other two daughters. Sienna could make a paper bag look like high fashion, and Rachel made her living by doing hair and makeup. Courtney knew she was the only one missing the style gene in their family.

Her mother grinned. “You should be a little worried. I started planning my wedding when I was fourteen. I have a lot of pent-up ideas.” She eyed the pool. “Is that treated with chlorine?”

Joyce looked a little startled by the question. “Of course. Why?”

“Oh, I was just thinking swans would be nice. But they can’t swim in chlorinated water, can they?”

Courtney felt her eyes widen. “No, and swans poop a lot, Mom. Cleaning the pool after the fact would be a nightmare.”

Her mother sighed. “Too bad. Because I’ve always wanted swans.”

Joyce shot Courtney a look of concern. Courtney quickly flipped through the files on her tablet, then turned it so her mother could see the photo on the screen.

“I’ve been playing around with some ideas based on pictures I’ve seen on Pinterest. For example, a champagne fountain before the toast. Kelly, one of the waitresses here, knows how to stack the glasses and is going to help me with it. Won’t that be great?”

She figured it was the adult equivalent of shaking keys at a fussy baby, and her odds were about the same.

Maggie leaned forward and nodded slowly. “That’s lovely. Neil and I would like that very much.”

“Good.” Courtney flipped to another picture. “This will be the table runner for the head table.”

Her mother stared for a second, then her eyes widened before filling with tears. “How did you do that?” she asked softly.

“It was easy. I uploaded the pictures to the website, then arranged them. The company prints out the runner and ships it.”

The custom table runner was made up of a collage of photographs. Most of the photographs were of the sisters as they grew up. A few pictures showed Maggie with her daughters. Interspersed were pictures of Maggie and Neil on their various trips.

“Where did you get these?” her mother asked. “They’re wonderful.”

“Rachel had a lot of them on her computer. I borrowed a couple of photo albums the last time you had us over for dinner. I got the ones of you and Neil from him.”

“It’s lovely. Thank you. What a wonderful idea.”

Courtney was surprised by the praise. Pleased, of course, but surprised. This was good. They were making progress. And no swans would be forced to swim in chlorinated water.

“It sounds like we have everything under control,” Joyce said as she got to her feet. “Excellent. I need to go check on some arriving guests. They’re new and, to be honest, sounded a little shady on the phone.”

Courtney groaned. “Did you take reservations? We’ve talked about this. You need to stay off the phone.”

Joyce, while a lovely person, could be overly chatty with new guests. Most people simply wanted to know availability and price. Joyce wanted them to share their life story, and if they weren’t forthcoming with the information, they were labeled “shady.”

“It’s my hotel. I can do what I want.”

Courtney grinned. “That would be true.” She turned to Pearl and Sarge. “Be gentle with the new people. I’m sure they’re perfectly nice.”

“My dogs are excellent judges of character. Don’t try to influence them.”

“I’m trying to keep you from scaring the guests away.”

Joyce grinned. “Where else are they going to stay? The Anderson House has bees.”

“You’re impossible.”

“I know. It’s part of my charm.”

Joyce waved and walked toward the hotel. Courtney turned back to her mother and found Maggie studying her.

“What?”

“I’m glad you and Joyce get along so well and that she looks out for you.”

Courtney carefully pulled the cover over her tablet and braced herself. In some ways, Maggie was harder to deal with than Sienna. Her middle sister thought she was inept and borderline dull-normal. Her mother feared she was...broken.

“She’s a good friend and a great boss,” Courtney said lightly. “I’m lucky.”

Maggie pressed her lips together. “I know. I just wish you had a little more ambition. I worry about you. Is it that you think you can’t do better or you don’t want to?”

Breathe
, Courtney told herself.
Just breathe.
There was no win here. She simply had to endure the conversation, then she could get back to her life.

“The fact that you’re helping out with my engagement party got me to thinking you might be interested in doing something more than being a maid.” Her mother reached into her handbag and pulled out a brochure. “I know you said you weren’t interested in being a dental assistant, but what about a massage therapist? You like people, you’re very nurturing and you’re physically strong.”

Courtney took the brochure and studied the first page. She honest to God didn’t know what to say. Joyce would point out this was her own fault. She was the one who let her family believe she was working as a maid at the hotel. Well, technically she
was
working as a maid, but only part-time as she continued her education. That was the part they didn’t know.

She supposed she could simply come clean—but she didn’t want to. She wanted to wait until she could slap down her diploma and watch them all stare in disbelief. That was a moment worth waiting for.

“Thanks, Mom,” she said with a smile. “I’ll think about it.”

“Really? That would be wonderful. I’d be happy to help pay for it. I think you’d do well.” Maggie hesitated. “There are so many wonderful opportunities out there. I hate to see you wasting your life.”

“I know and I appreciate it.”

Her mother nodded. “I love you, Courtney. I want the best for you.”

All the right words. All warm, affectionate sentiments. On her good days, Courtney could believe them. On her bad days, well, sometimes it was hard to let go of the past enough to forgive.

“Thanks, Mom. I love you, too.”

* * *

“A glove’s important, Mom.”

“I know it is.”

“I really need a new one.”

Rachel didn’t doubt that. Josh was basically a good kid. He didn’t whine, he didn’t ask for a lot. His passions were simple—anything sports-related and the occasional computer game. That was it. Christmas and birthday presents revolved around whatever sport most had his interest. As they had for the past three years, spring and summer meant baseball.

Los Lobos didn’t have a Little League team, but there was a county league. Josh insisted they sign him up the first hour they could, something she was happy to do. He was eleven—she figured she had all of two, maybe three years before he became a raging male hormone and then all bets were off.

“Dad said he would buy it for me but I had to check with you first.”

At least she was driving and had an excuse not to look at Josh. Because she couldn’t—not without him seeing the rage in her eyes. Damn Greg, she thought bitterly. Of course he could afford to buy his son a new glove. Greg had only himself to worry about.

Her ex-husband made a good living as a Los Lobos county firefighter. He also had excellent medical benefits—something she’d lost after the divorce. Even more annoying, his schedule was a ridiculous twenty-four hours on, twenty-four hours off for six days, followed by four days off. Which gave him plenty of time to play, and play he did. Add in the fact that he’d moved back home with his folks, so he basically had no living expenses, and the man was swimming in both cash and time.

Don’t think about it
, she instructed herself. Dwelling on how good Greg had it only made her angrier. She had to remember that the man paid his child support on time. That was something. But as for the rest of it—she couldn’t help resenting how easy he had it.

Yes, she did well at the salon. She was able to support herself and her son. The child support covered the mortgage, and she paid for everything else. But it wasn’t as if there was a bunch of extra cash at the end of the month. She was doing her best to build up an emergency fund and keep current on household repairs. There wasn’t anything left over for things like baseball gloves.

When she was sure she could speak in a happy, excited tone, she said, “Go for it, Josh. You need a new glove. It’s great that your dad can afford to get it. Do you already know what you want, or do you need to do some research?”

“I know exactly what I need.” And he was off, describing the glove down to the kind of stitching.

Oh, to be that young and innocent, she thought with regret. To trust that everything was going to turn out the way it was supposed to. To believe in happily-ever-after.