Summer Spice

by Kris Pearson

She stroked a finger over one of the green orchids in her posy. “How could she make us sit together?” she murmured.

  “How could she do anything else?” Ollie countered. “You and I are ‘it’ as far as I’m concerned, and she knows it. We belong together. I said I’d wait, and I said I’d keep trying to persuade you, and this is one more chance.” He winked. “So get used to it.”

  “Oliver…” God, he’d just demolished her all over again. “You can’t make things come true just by wanting them.”

  “Yes I can,” he said. “I told you things would happen as they were meant to. That Essie would have her hip fixed. That Anna and Jase would have their baby. That Jossy and Cam would get married. And then it would be time for us. Just sticking to the timetable here, Dragon Lady. No escape.”

  Mei buried her teeth into her bottom lip, picturing the tattoo on his chest. Then she remembered her carefully applied lip color and released it. “Do you know what’s happening? Why are we sitting down?”

  “Waiting for the groom?” Ollie asked, raising an eyebrow. “Makes a change from waiting for the bride.”

  She couldn’t help a small snort from escaping. “Did you know Cam’s little boy is here?” she whispered.

  Ollie’s gaze sharpened. “Where?”

  “Riding around on his shoulders. Seeing the goats. Making his jacket all dusty.”

  “Bloody hell. Didn’t see that coming. Is he here to stay?”

  “Hopefully,” she whispered, as Jossy made her way back to them from the bride’s room. She now wore an exquisite garland of fragrant cream flowers on her newly arranged hair.

  “Best to do the finishing touches here,” she said as the girls all admired the effect. “You can’t expect to ride in a convertible without the wind messing you up some, but it was real fun. Cam drove slowly and I stood up and hung onto the windscreen, waving like I was Queen Liz or Meghan Markle.”

  “Did anyone get photos?” Anna asked.

  Jossy shrugged. “People had their phones out, but we’ll have to wait and see if they send anything our way.”

  As she resumed her seat, the marriage celebrant, who’d been consulting a tablet at the front of the room, looked up and nodded. “Excellent,” she said as Cam walked back in with Tristan snuggled on his hip. “If you’d please sit next to your bride, Mr Mackay, we can begin.”

  Cam slowed to a halt, and sat – looking exactly as puzzled as Mei felt. Jossy reached over and tucked a carnation into his buttonhole.

  The celebrant smiled and extended her arms as though she was about to embrace them all. “Good afternoon everyone. I’m Susan Birch and I’ll be conducting this joyful ceremony – the very first wedding at Wildwood. It may come as a surprise to some of you,” she added, “but we’re here to witness the marriage of Magdalena Bianca Caligiani and Hamish Oscar Mackay. Can our couple please step forward?”

  “What the?” Cam said as a rustle of surprise and delight spread around the room.

  “Shush,” Jossy said, smiling first at Cam and then at Tristan who was now perched on his lap. “Enjoy.”

  Ma in her raspberry suit and Poppy in a toning pale pink dress walked to where the celebrant stood. Ma carried a bouquet of pale pink roses bound together with raffia.

  Tall Hamish and his much shorter father, Jock, took their positions close by.

  The celebrant nodded to them each in turn. “It gives me the greatest pleasure to marry two people who have shared each other’s lives for many years,” she said. “Magdalena and Hamish – you have been faithful partners, and loving parents to Cameron and Poppy and Colin, and it’s wonderful you’ll now be man and wife.

  “Well, I’ll be…” Cam exclaimed.

  “Shush,” Jossy said again.

  “I’ll be!” Tristan piped, his treble voice carrying easily and setting people chuckling.

  “Good thing it wasn’t something worse,” Jossy murmured in Cam’s ear. “Watch your tongue there, Daddy-oh.”

  “Who gives this woman to this man?” the celebrant asked once the laughter had abated.

  “I do, aye,” Jock said, puffing his chest out, which didn’t increase his height at all. He reached for Ma’s hand and placed it in Hamish’s. Then he stepped back beside Poppy who now held the bouquet.

  Cam dipped his head and whispered to Jossy; “Did you arrange this?”

  “Helped it along, maybe?” she said, setting her hand on his long thigh and giving it an affectionate squeeze. “I thought you’d like it.”

  “Not as much as I like you,” he said. “Two surprises on the same day. First Sam and now this.”

  Jossy nudged his arm with her elbow and put her mouth close to his ear again. “He was Tristan on all the paperwork.”

  “You can’t be a farmer if you’re called Tristan,” Cam scoffed. “Sam’s much better. He likes it.”

  This time it was Anna’s turn to hiss, “Shush!”

  The ceremony continued until Ma and Hamish were declared man and wife. Along with Poppy, they took their seats at a nearby table with Jock and his little wife, Lizzie.

  “And now,” Susan Birch said, “The wedding you all thought you were here for. Would Cameron please join me?

  Alison reached out for Tristan as Cam approached. The little boy started to grizzle, but Cam tapped him on the nose and said, “Important business, Sammy – see you soon.” He strode off.

  To everyone’s great amusement Magdalena intercepted him with her clothes brush, “My son don’t get married until he’s perfect,” she announced, attacking his jacket with swift strokes. She walked around him, checking her work. “Now you good for the photos. You do it now.” She pushed the brush back into her handbag and closed it, oblivious to at least a dozen people who’d snapped her on their phones.

  “And the music?” Susan spluttered, laughing along with everyone else.

  Seconds later the triumphal strains of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March swelled to the sunlit beams, and the guests did their best to calm down and behave.

  Once Anna and Jason, Becca and Peter, and Mei and Ollie had formed up side by side, Jossy took her father’s arm and the two of them began their slow and smiling walk to where Cam waited for her.

  Wanting to ensure she had the full spotlight on her, the others held back until she’d reached him. Then they all made their way forward and the service began.

  Epilogue

  Mei sat quietly beside Ollie in the gracious sitting room of the old farmhouse Cam had so lovingly restored. Only the closest family members remained now. Ollie’s parents, James and Virginia… Jossy and Anna’s parents, Michael and Ruth… Justice Harry and his wife Davina… newly married Hamish and Magdalena.

  “That wasn’t bad for a first attempt at a wedding,” Cam said, stretching out a hand for his wine and taking a sip.

  “I’m not getting married again,” Jossy protested from her position on his lap.

  He kissed her hair. “Not to anyone else, that’s for sure. Your cake was amazing. All the food was great. It’s a wonder you and Ma aren’t dead on your feet instead of looking like a couple of dewy-eyed sirens.” He set down his goblet and wound one of Jossy’s long curls around his finger.

  Ma blew him a kiss. “Sei un ragazzo adorabile,” she said. “And if my eyes are dewy, is because I’m happy you have your boy.”

  “Or because you’ve had too much Frangelico?” he suggested with an affectionate grin.

  Jossy shook her head. “Don’t count your chickens, Ma. We’re not there yet.”

  Mei could easily imagine Ma as a mother hen, fluffing up her feathers in indignation.

  “He has bruises,” the little Italian woman insisted. “From the boyfriend. Poor little boy is not going back.”

  Cam bristled right along with her. “Hell, no. Never again. Thank God he has no broken bones. His mother’s not there to go back to, anyway. We’ll keep him somehow.”

  “I ask Poppy to put them both to bed in your old room,” Ma said. “Tomorrow when he wake up he see all your pho
tos. The sports and the cars. Good for a boy.”

  Harry Wynn upended the last of his scotch. “As regards getting the Protection Order reversed, I’m happy to help any way I can. We’ll put the combined weight of the practice behind it if need be.”

  Jossy snuggled closer to Cam. “Thank you Uncle Harry, but Alison and I have been working fine together. I don’t foresee problems. Just need to play a waiting game, especially over the holidays.”

  “Good. Good,” Justice Michael Wynn murmured. “Well then, little Amanda-Banana has an unexpected cousin.”

  Jason raised a bottle of beer in a tipsy toast and chuckled. “Amanda-Banana – that’s a new one.”

  “What are you going to name that poor child?” Michael asked as everyone laughed. “And when? You only have two months from the date of her birth to register her name.”

  “I know that, Dad,” Anna said. “I’m a judge’s daughter and my sister’s a lawyer. I’m not going to fall foul of the law, am I?” She glanced across at Jason. “Speaking of which, I’ll be driving us home tonight. Chalk one up for nursing mothers who can barely drink.”

  “I’ll have another little one if there’s any left, please,” Virginia said, holding her empty glass out to Cam and eyeing the nearby bottle of wine. “I liked the way you had everyone seated at their tables from the start. “Saved a lot of shuffling around.”

  “And Tilda’s team of servers did a great job,” Jossy added. “I can’t believe it’s more than a year since I had that big bust-up in the boardroom with you, Uncle Harry.” She slid her hand over Cam’s. “If Ryan Pascoe hadn’t been such a sleazebag with his video, I wouldn’t have resigned in a huff and gone to work with Tilda at the bakery.”

  Harry Wynn lifted his glass again and put it down when he found it empty. Hamish discreetly refilled it from the bottle on the floor by his chair.

  “However vociferously you denied it at the time, my dear, it was plain as day that you were a couple,” Harry said.

  Jossy shook her head. “Not then. Not for quite a while. I was mad as hell at him, actually. There was no ‘intimacy’ like Ryan was suggesting. I really was dabbing antiseptic on Cam’s chest. He overbalanced trying to stop a swerving skateboarder from colliding with me. End of story.”

  “Plain as day,” Harry Wynn repeated. “Body language. I never saw two people so well suited.”

  “You won’t ever believe me, will you?” Jossy asked, giving a long, luxurious yawn.

  Ollie rose to his feet. “I think that particular piece of body language is telling us all it’s time to leave you two alone.” He held out a hand toward Mei. “Come on, Dragon Lady.” Then he turned and faced the others. “If you’re looking for another well-suited couple for a Wildwood wedding sometime, here we are.”

  Mei turned horrified eyes on him. He was doing this to her in front of his whole family?

  There was a chorus of surprise and approval from everyone present.

  “I have yet to convince the bride-to-be,” Ollie admitted. “But we Wynns are tenacious animals. I’ve put fifteen years into the project so far, and I hope I’ll get it off the ground if I stick at it a while longer.”

  “Lovely, Ollie!” Ruth Wynn said. “And how nice that it’s Mei, who we’ve known for all these years.”

  “Nooooo…” Mei protested. But she said it very quietly, and with no conviction at all. “There are problems. My father... umm…”

  “If you’re counting one of those problems as James and your mother all those years ago, forget it,” Virginia said, possibly made voluble by too much wine.

  “How the heck?” James said, staring at her and then bowing his head.

  “James and…?” Ruth asked. “What?”

  “He was very unhappy,” Virginia said through gritted teeth. “We were both just about demolished by that bloody post-natal depression after Ollie was born. Then suddenly James was happy for a few weeks and then he was devastated again. Even through my desperate fog I knew something had happened.”

  “And you were right?” Ruth asked, eyes bulging.

  Mei couldn’t bear the thought that they might re-hash it all again. She sat there frozen, gone from euphoria to dread in an instant, and waiting for the train to plummet over the cliff. Seconds ago she’d had fantasies of Virginia and James as her parents-in-law, Anna and Jossy and Becca as her cousins, Ruth and Michael and Harry and Davina as real aunts and uncles, when she’d never had anyone like that in her life. Not now though, surely?

  “Yes,” James snapped, all the color draining from his face, leaving him looking ashen and destroyed. “For a month, about thirty years ago.” He turned to Ginny and asked softly, “How? I mean, it sounds as though you’ve known for a while?”

  The buzz of surprise fell away as she took a deep breath and tipped her head back. Then she looked at him again with an expression of the purest love. “Annie Denton told me – a few years ago now. She went very odd before she died, poor old thing.”

  James’ jaw dropped. “How the hell did she know?”

  Ginny shrugged. Managed a small smile. “Umm – the campground cabins?”

  James slapped a hand over the lower half of his face. His eyes, as brown as Ollie’s, stayed fixed on hers. “And you never said?” he asked through his splayed fingers.

  “I never needed to. It didn’t happen again.”

  His shoulders relaxed and he leaned over, cupped the back of her head, and pressed a hard kiss on her lips. “No. It didn’t,” he said as he released her.

  Mei’s heart started beating again, and Ollie sat, pulling her onto his lap. “So that’s that problem out of the way,” he said, sliding an arm around her when she tried to stand up. He laid his face against her hair. “What’s your next objection to marrying the rich white boy?”

  The family waited, every eye now turned in Ollie and Mei’s direction, happy to have a diversion after a shock like that.

  “You’re not very white now you’ve been surfing,” she said, moving his tanned hand onto her thigh and laying her much smaller and paler one on top of it. “See. I’m whiter than you.” She sent him a small sideways grin.

  “Not so Chinese, after all,” he teased. “Feeble excuse, that one. Next problem?”

  “Oliver,” she said, starting to giggle at the absurdity of the situation. “If you’re not white, maybe you’re not rich, either?”

  He gave a whoop of laughter and buried his face in her neck. Everyone else joined in, helped along by happiness and alcohol.

  “Rich enough to buy you a nice house once Anna evicts you,” he said, when he stopped laughing and raised his head again. “She said she wants you out of her apartment by the end of January. We’d better start searching for the right place pretty soon.”

  “Need to sell my Cartier watch then,” she said, holding her wrist up so the circle of diamonds flashed in the lamplight. “Might get enough for some furniture.”

  “Is that a ‘yes’? Ollie asked.

  “And is it real?” Becca wondered.

  “She has expensive little souvenirs from all around the world,” Ollie said, pushing her hair aside to show the line of twinkling ear-studs. Then he added just for Mei; “I don’t mind if you sell the big knuckle-duster, but keep the emerald belly-button thing. I love that. In fact, I love you. Have I got around to saying that yet?” He tilted her face back, his big hand gentle under her chin. “Meifeng Chan, I love you. Liked you for years, loved you when I finally had the chance to know you properly. Won’t be stopping anytime soon.”

  “Oliver,” she whispered, looking up into his shining eyes. “Yes. Love you too. Wanted this for ages and never believed –”

  The rest was lost as he lowered his head and kissed her.

  “Oliver Wynn!” she exclaimed, trying to struggle free. “In front of everyone?”

  He swung her up and pulled her in against his chest. “Seemed like the right thing to do today. Hamish kissed Ma in front of us all. Cam kissed Jossy in front of us all. Dad’s just kissed Mu
m…”

  “In front of us all,” the others chorused.

  “It’s that sort of day,” Anna said. “A lovely happy day. Couldn’t have been better. And you can have longer than a fortnight to find a house, Ollie,” she added. “I won’t toss your fiancée out onto the street.”

  Ollie leaned close enough to whisper in Mei’s ear. “Fiancée sound okay to you? We can take as long as you like, but I’m hoping there’s no escape now?”

  Mei turned her head and nipped his ear. “Never wanted to escape,” she whispered back.

  THE END

  *

  A NOTE FROM KRIS

  Thank you so much for choosing to read my book! And thank you even more if you write a review. I wonder if you’ve read the first two in this series – Summer Sparks and Summer Secrets?

  I came to writing through accepting a job as an advertising copywriter at my local radio station. After living in Italy and London I returned to my capital city of Wellington and worked in TV, radio again, several advertising agencies, and then spent happy years as a retail ad manager. Totally hooked on fabrics, I followed this by going into business with my husband as a curtain installer, working for some of the city’s top designers. It was finally time to write fiction. In twenty years I haven’t fallen off my ladder once through drifting into romantic dreams, but I’ve certainly seen some beautiful homes and met wonderful people, some of whom I may just have stolen glimpses of for the books.

  I write sizzling contemporary romance, pure and simple. Well, maybe not that pure! They're sexy stories about modern couples who fall in love and into bed along the way, just like real people do. I’m the author of sixteen novels, three of which were finalists in New Zealand’s Clendon Award. Four have been translated into Spanish, two into Italian, two into Portuguese, and five are under way in China.

  The most widely distributed is The Boat Builder's Bed. I gave away more than two million ebook copies of this to kick-start sales of all my others. Did it work? Beyond my wildest dreams!

  If this is the first time you have read one of my novels be assured they can all be read as standalones with no cliff-hangers.