Two Weddings and a Fugitive (The Chanel Series Book 4) (7 page)

‘You must be Chanel,’ she said. ‘I’m Tara.’

‘Oh. The bride. Ummm, thank you for letting me be a part of your wedding.’

She laughed. ‘I think the thanks go to you.’ She looked over her shoulder as if to assess whether the others could hear us and then said, ‘Oh, I’m no good at this subterfuge. They already know why you’re here.’

A beautiful blonde lady raised a glass of champagne in my direction. ‘I’m Nat,’ she said. ‘And that’s Elaine.’ She pointed at the lady having her dress altered.

‘And I’d wave hello,’ Elaine said, ‘but if I raise my arm at the moment Celeste here will box my ears.’

‘I’m Dinah.’ A short, pretty lady stood up, moving towards me with the grace of a dancer. ‘And that’s my girlfriend, Gloria.’ Another petite woman, with wild, tumbling, curly hair, waved at me from the seat next to Nat.

Two small hands shoved me in the back and I stumbled further into the room. Nick strode in through the space I had made. ‘I’m Nick,’ he said, bowing low over Tara’s hand. ‘It’s a rare pleasure to meet so many lovely ladies at once.’

Tara giggled and he let go of her hand and made a beeline for Nat. He vaulted onto the seat next to her that Tara had just vacated.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ I said gesturing at him.

‘Your bodyguard?’ Tara asked.

I burst out laughing. ‘No. He’s one of the local cops on the protection detail.’

‘Oh. I thought Matt said…Oh, never mind.’ She pulled a face. ‘What with everything going on at the moment I’m surprised I remember my own name.’

‘So,’ Nick said, ‘what’s a beautiful woman like you doing all alone.’

Nat let out a low throaty laugh and lifted up her left hand, showing off a giant diamond ring with a simple gold band next to it. ‘Not alone, Romeo.’

‘And I also am not alone,’ I said to Tara. I gestured through the door at Martine. ‘I hope you don’t mind but my friend has come as well.’

‘You must be Martine,’ Tara said. ‘Matt told me all about both of you.’

‘He did?’ Martine said.

‘About how brave you both were, and how they couldn’t have cracked the case without you.’

I could feel a blush start up on my cheeks. ‘You wouldn’t have thought we were so brave if you had seen us in action,’ I said.

‘There.’ Celeste stood back up. ‘Turn around so I can unzip you.’

Nick sat up like a dog waiting for a treat.

‘Nick Junior,’ I said. ‘You can wait outside for a minute.’

He dragged his feet all the way to the door, giving Elaine one last wistful look over his shoulder before he exited.

Elaine stepped out of the dress, revealing a body of a twenty year old.

‘Wow.’ The word was out of my mouth before I even realised it.

‘I know,’ Tara sighed. ‘And she’s got 18 month old twins. I’m far too fond of cake.’

‘You look great.’ I eyed her up and down. ‘But I’m with you on the cake thing.’

Martine sashayed over to Nat and sat down next to her. Nat plucked a bottle out of an ice bucket and Gloria held up two glasses for her to fill.

‘Not for me.’ I pulled a face. ‘I’m on duty.’

‘I’m not,’ Martine said taking a glass.

‘We got you non-alcoholic,’ Gloria said, gesturing to another bottle.

It was so stupid, but I felt tears prick the back of my eyes.

Yeah, yeah, I know I’d been crying at the drop of a hat lately, but this was different. I didn’t have many female friends. Becky had been my only real friend growing up, and since she and her long-term boyfriend, Bobby, had eloped, they’d been travelling Australia in an attempt to avoid their families. And now I had Suzie and Bianca, but the rest of my friends were men, except Martine, and well, she was in a category of her own.

So to be so readily accepted by a whole group of women when I was crashing a wedding was a sweet surprise.

‘Thank you.’ I took the glass from Gloria.

‘Not yet,’ Celeste said. ‘Into your dress first.’

Tara pulled a face. ‘She’s a genius, but she’s also a tyrant.’

I put the glass back down on the table and walked over to Celeste as I eyed off the dress she held up. ‘What if it’s too small?’

Tara let out a laugh. ‘My sister is seven months pregnant. I doubt that’s going to be a problem.’

I pulled my dress off and held my arms up for Celeste to lower the bridesmaid’s one over my head. ‘Her first?’

The other women started laughing. ‘Try number eight,’ Tara said.

‘Seriously?’ I emerged from the top of the dress.

‘Yeah. They had planned to stop at the last one.’ Tara shrugged her shoulders. ‘But this one’s a boy.’ Her face broke out in a radiant smile.

‘The rest are girls?’

She nodded her head and took a sip of her drink.

‘That’s going to be fun when the hormones kick in.’ I remember what
I
had been like during
my
teenage years.

‘It’s started already,’ Nat said.

‘Are you chicks decent yet?’ Nick hollered through the door.

In answer, Tara opened the door for him. I waited for him to give her some sort of smart-arse comment, but he smiled sweetly and made his way back to the seats. Martine copped a glare when he found her in the seat he had vacated but he didn’t give her the lip I had expected. Seemed he was trying to behave himself.

Celeste finished tugging the dress into position and stepped back. She cocked her head to the side as she stared at it and then she took a pin from between her lips and crouched down in front to adjust the hem.

The dress felt perfect.

‘I thought you said she was seven month pregnant.’ I gestured at my waistline.

‘Billy gave us some measurements,’ Tara said.

‘He did?’ I could feel my eyebrows riding up my forehead.

‘We thought we might need to make some more adjustments but looks like his guesses were accurate. You look amazing.’

‘Excellent design,’ Nick said. ‘I mean if it can make
her
look good, it would have to be.’

‘And you were being so charming.’ I poked my tongue out at him and he let out a chuckle.

‘Oh.’ Tara smacked herself in the head. ‘I forgot to bring your shoes. You’re a size seven right?’

‘How did you…Billy?’

She nodded.

He knew my shoe size?

‘So,’ I looked at all of them, ‘you all know why Nick and I are here, and yet none of you seem worried.’

Elaine sank onto a seat and crossed her long, lean legs. The cream silk of her blouse set off her tan beautifully. ‘We’re not unconcerned,’ she said. ‘There is a reason none of us brought our children with us. But if this is the best way to protect Matt, by luring the threat to him so it can be neutralised, then we will do what needs to be done.’

Wow. This was a really close-knit set of friends.

‘And who else knows.’

‘Just us, and our partners,’ Nat said. ‘We will be the ones who will be with Matt and Tara the whole time. We thought it best not to panic the parents.’

‘It’s not a very big wedding,’ Tara said. ‘Just us, our immediate families and closest friends.’

Billy had said there would only be about thirty people at the wedding. It would certainly make things easier.

‘And you didn’t think about cancelling the wedding?’ Martine asked.

Tara shrugged. ‘It was so hard to pin down a date as it was, what with Matt’s schedule. And if this is going to happen, I would prefer it to happen like this, where we can all watch each other’s back, and not at home where we could be picked off easily.’

When Celeste had finished, we made our way down to the pool area where we were having lunch with Tara’s Mum, Bet. She was already there with a heavily pregnant woman I assumed was Tara’s sister, Lily.

Nick let out a low whistle as he saw Lily. ‘I’d climb that pole even with a bun in the oven,’ he said so that only I could hear him.

‘Behave,’ I growled at him.

He smiled up sweetly at me and I resisted my urge to whack him over the head. Somebody might think I was abusing a small child and call the authorities.

‘Mum,’ Tara said, ‘this is my good friend Chanel and her friend Martine. Chanel will be standing in for Lil at the ceremony.’

‘My dear,’ Bet said. ‘It’s so lovely to meet you. Oh and you’ve bought a wee, child with you. You look too young to have a son.’

Lil picked a set of glasses off the table and handed them to her Mum. ‘Take another look,’ she said. She shook her head and said to us, ‘She refuses to wear them.’

Bet slipped on the glasses. ‘Young man, I do apologise.’ Her cheeks coloured ever so slightly to a faint blush of pink. ‘My eyes aren’t what they used to be.’

‘It must be awful to be losing your sight at such a young age,’ Nick said in a charming voice. ‘You couldn’t be a day over fifty.’

Bet let out a chuckle and patted the seat next to her. ‘You can come and sit by me. I love a man with a silver tongue.’

She was going to regret
that
decision once he started eating.

I checked the area as I walked towards the table. We looked out over a pool to panoramic views of the ocean. The back of the hotel was all glass to make the most of that view. There was an entrance to the pool area through a fence at either end, as well as the entrance we had come through via the restaurant. That was a lot of glass and a lot of entrances. It didn’t make me feel very secure.

Nick was positioned toward the ocean, so I sat facing the back of the hotel. We could both see the entrances on either end. It was the best we could do in a very exposed situation.

‘So Tara,’ I said, ‘where is the ceremony?’ I was hoping it was more secure than here.

‘There’s a little chapel up on the hill.’

‘It’s got the most amazing views.’ Nat picked up a bread roll from the little basket in the middle of the table.

I started to make mental notes about checking out the chapel after lunch but was interrupted from my planning by Nick’s voice raising as he told a joke.

‘And then she said, “I don’t need a garden gnome,”’ Nick said, ‘”I’ve already got a dwarf.”’

Bet and Lily let out screeches of laughter.

‘And the reception will be right here,’ Tara said. ‘It’s going to be perfect.’

‘No dancing?’

‘They board over the pool and use it as the dance floor.’

Great. The day Matt was going to be his most vulnerable and we were having a garden wedding reception. Hadn’t they ever heard of a nice reception room with oh, I don’t know, say
bullet-proof glass
?

A pasty-white man with jet-black hair sat down at the table next to us and picked up a menu. He crossed one long leg over the other and twitched his eyes toward us for the briefest of moments.

‘I think you should have the pasta
and
dessert,’ Nick said. ‘Surely, with a figure like yours you don’t need to worry about what you eat.’

Bet let out a tinkle of a laugh. ‘Chanel,’ she said. ‘Where on earth did you find this charming young man?’

I resisted an urge to stick my finger down my throat and turned back from my observation of the surrounding area. ‘
He
found
me
,’ I said. It was the only thing apart from, ‘In a dumpster,’ that popped into my head, and I was thinking, given how nice he was being to them, that they wouldn’t appreciate that.

And what was with that? He couldn’t speak a civil word to Martine or me, but with them he was all la-di-da and telling funny, ‘sizest’ jokes that would get me a golf-ball-sized hole in the side of my head.

‘Yes,’ Nick chortled, ‘she can’t seem to keep a boyfriend. Poor Chanel had to bring me to the wedding with her.’

At least he didn’t use the words ‘too pathetic’, but I couldn’t help but wonder exactly how hard I would have to throw a golf ball to make a dent in
his
head. His skull looked pretty thick.

I let myself fantasise about that for a few seconds. Ahh, who was I kidding. I couldn’t hit him with a basketball let alone a golf ball. My aim sucked.

The man at the table next to us glanced at us again over the top of his menu. It was fast, and if I hadn’t been looking for it I wouldn’t have noticed.

Looked like Billy’s FBI buddies had showed up. I felt tension I hadn’t even known I’d been holding, ooze out of me.

‘I mean look at me,’ Nick continued, ‘I’m the best she could do.’

‘But you’re so nice.’ I smiled at him. ‘And such good company.’ I may have agreed to it but I was still going to make him pay for that.

‘Yes,’ Martine said, ‘and you’ve got such a generous nature.’

‘I do?’ He looked between the two of us.

‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘When you said that you wanted to donate a couple of thousand dollars to an animal shelter I nearly cried.’ I could tell by the wild look in his eyes that he had also read Tara’s brief the night before.

‘Oh.’ Bet Babcock looked like she was going to cry as she clutched her hands to her chest. ‘If you haven’t yet decided on which animal shelter is going to be the lucky recipient of such a generous donation, perhaps I could interest you in mine.’

Tara saluted me with her glass and whispered, ‘Touché.’

I was sure if Nick’s legs had been long enough, he would have been bruising my shins right then. But seeing as how they didn’t touch the ground, he didn’t stand a chance. It seemed hanging out with a midget had some advantages after all.

***

‘I swung by the chapel on the way back from lunch.’ I held a hand above my sunglasses and looked over at Billy.

Matt and Tara were spending the afternoon at the hotel dealing with last-minute wedding plans. We were sunbaking on the little deck at the front of our apartment. Sal was at the gym and Nick had disappeared in a huff as soon as we had arrived home. He wasn’t taking parting with two thousand dollars very well.

‘What do you think?’

‘It’s pretty exposed, but the angle of the hill is quite steep. A sniper would have to be out at sea to get the angle they would need. And the nearby bushes are too small to hide somebody. There’s only that one pine large enough for someone to hide behind, and even then they’d be pretty exposed.’

‘So the reception then?’ Billy took a sip of his icy water.

I tried not to notice how some of the condensation dribbled off the glass onto his chest. I had been trying not to notice his chest for a while now. And the water running down between his pectoral muscles was not making my job any easier. It just
asked
to be licked.