by Tessa Clarke
The man had disappeared amongst the crowd, and she felt a faint sense of loss.
Alissa and Jolene emerged from the hairstylist, their beautiful locks swept up into elaborate updos. Alissa’s mother, Elaine, trailed them, also looking beautiful with a more casual style.
Zoey rose, and Alissa linked her arm through Zoey’s. “Ready to get on the gondola?” Alissa asked.
Zoey thought it was so cool that Cade and Alissa were getting married on the top of White Peak, the biggest mountain at the White Peaks Ski Resort. Some of the guests would even be skiing down together at midnight, she’d heard, although she planned to take the gondola herself.
“Absolutely,” she said. They were going up early to put out some of the special wedding favors that Alissa had hand made.
An older but still extraordinarily beautiful woman with a sleek and athletic body rounded the corner. She’d been frowning, but plastered a smile on her face when she saw them. She approached and placed a kiss on Alissa’s cheek. “Alissa, darling, you look lovely. Just make sure you’re on time for the rehearsal. It’s in an hour and a half.”
Zoey bristled a bit at the woman’s tone, but Alissa only smiled. “Of course, Renate. We wouldn’t dream of being late. Don’t worry, I have the schedule.” She patted her pocket.
The woman’s body tensed fractionally, but then when she realized that Alissa was being sincere, gave a small, tentative smile, and nodded.
“Zo, this is Cade’s mother, Renate,” Alissa said. “She was the master wedding planner.”
Zoey grinned and extended her hand. She’d heard all about Renate’s wedding planning. The much taller woman took Zoey’s hand with the tips of her fingers, and as she approached, Zoey picked up a strong scent. Not surprising, since Renate, as Cade’s mother, was quite likely a shifter herself. But the scent surrounding Renate was of male shifter, and the scent made Zoey’s heart start to pound and a trill of excitement run down her thighs.
What was she doing? The scent she smelled was probably that of Renate’s mate. She drew back abruptly, which caused Renate to give her a strange look.
The older woman turned her attention back to Alissa. “I’m going in to get my hair done. I’ll see you at the top, dear. Please make sure that the poppies have arrived, and that they’re not damaged. And also if you can check on the cake—I was a bit worried about the caterer’s ability to get it in the gondola.”
Alissa nodded and started reassuring the woman. Zoey wandered a few feet away to stare up at the craggy white peak that they would soon be climbing. She had to get away from that scent that surrounded Renate. It rattled her, and made her strangely hungry. Maybe she could find a time to slip away and shift after the ceremony. Maybe she could go run free in the snow.
The energy in the gondola was high as they rode up through the winter wonderland of sparking snow and mystical white trees.
“Are you nervous, Zo?” Alissa asked.
Zoey snorted. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”
Alissa smiled. “I’m just getting married to the man of my dreams. I have nothing to be nervous about. You’re the one who’s singing in front of three hundred people.”
Zoey looked at the steep snow-filled slopes. It hadn’t occurred to her to be nervous. She was just singing. She did it as automatically as tumbling. She sang in the shower, she sang while she cleaned her house, and she sang while she cooked. The fact that she almost always did those things alone had escaped her notice until now. When Alissa had asked her to sing at the wedding, she’d said yes. She did have a bit of a tendency to be impulsive and consider the consequences of her actions later. Now she was realizing belatedly that perhaps she shouldn’t have been so casual about it. It would be fine. She knew her voice was clear and pure, and it was a wedding. Nobody would be expecting her to be a professional singer. Still, a little knot of alarm formed in her stomach.
The Timber Wolf Lodge, where the ceremony and reception would be held, was a vision of red, pink, and white flowers, tulle, and satin bows. Sparkling lights hung from the massive timber rafters, and the view of the ski hill below was stunning. A band was already setting up their equipment on a raised dais, and the white draped tables were set with white china and fluted glasses.
Zoey blinked in surprise as she took it all in. How much was this wedding costing? She’d expected a rustic old lodge with some ski boot-scarred floors and benches. She turned her head sharply to Alissa, who seemed to know what she was thinking.
“Cade is part-owner of the ski hill with some friends,” Alissa explained. “He likes to keep that quiet. Renate insisted on a big affair, but it’s okay. We can afford it.”
Zoey wandered around the room in awe. An adjoining room with a view of some crazy, steep chutes was set up for the ceremony, and the raised platform at the front was festooned with a waterfall of red poppies. She looked at the three hundred empty white chairs set up expectantly, and the knot in her stomach became a bit more rock-like in formation.
Back in the other room, Jolene and Alissa had already started putting out the handmade favors—little origami butterflies with personalized messages for each family and set of friends. They chattered away, calling shared jokes, remembrances, and exclamations of excitement across the large room.
Zoey joined them wordlessly. She would be fine. The rehearsal was in forty-five minutes, then it would be up to Alissa and Cade’s suite for their makeup. Zoey could have a drink then. She was sure the champagne would be flowing at that point, although a fifth of whisky was in fact a bit more appealing. A drink would calm her nerves, and she would be fine.
Cade and Dylan arrived in their ski gear a few minutes before the rehearsal was scheduled to start, their shocking good looks and broad, cut chests undeniable. Both men greeted their respective others with roguish smiles and deep passionate kisses and then were trotted over to be introduced to Zoey, the odd one out.
Zoey had only met Cade before, in passing, while he helped Alissa pack up her Denver apartment. He and Dylan crowded around her, invading her sensitive senses with their scent of wild and magnificent cats. They were both charming to a fault, asking her about her flight, the gymnastics meet, and whether she would be skiing at the resort. Then a few of Cade’s relatives arrived with the little flower girls and a ring bearer, the guitarist walked in, and the minister showed up, and Zoey was lost in the call of greetings and general mayhem.
After everyone was greeted, they all assembled in the room where the ceremony would be held. Alissa kept watching the door.
“Where’s Flynn?” she said finally to Cade. “And your mother?”
Cade snorted a bit. “Flynn’s always late. We did leave him in charge of the resort today because of the competition and the wedding, so if there’s a major problem, he’s handling it. I’ll text him, but I think we should just proceed without him. I’ll coach him. How hard can it be?” Cade winked and pulled out his phone.
“And what about your mother?”
“Knowing her, she’s scheduling some skywriters or military flyovers or something,” Cade said.
Alissa’s eyes widened a bit. “You’re kidding, right?”
Cade dropped a kiss to her lips. “Yes. But she’s probably be dealing with some wedding thing, or getting her hair done in some elaborate style that will awe everyone.”
Chapter Four: Flynn
Flynn stared at the cages of doves that had been delivered to his office while he was out taking care of some last minute issues with the freeski event after-party happening in the lower lodge that evening—white doves in fact, a hundred of them, with a note attached from Renate that read: Since you like to do things yourself.
He was supposed to be up in the lodge for Cade and Alissa’s wedding rehearsal. He was running late as usual and had planned to hop on the gondola before his tardiness was too over the top, but instead he was managing doves.
The lifts had already shut down for the day and the lift attendants and sk
i patrollers had headed home, many to get ready for the wedding. Bryan, the general manager of the resort, was overseeing the freeski after-party, and Ed, the lift manager, was operating the gondola to get wedding guests up to the top of the mountain. Most of the other staff members helping with the wedding were already up in the Timber Wolf Lodge.
And he had doves. A hundred of them, cooing in his office.
Suddenly his, Cade, and Dylan’s policy of running a lean administration without a lot of assistants and managers didn’t seem so hot.
He wondered what happened to the doves after they were released, if they would know their way home, especially from the top of the mountain. He looked at the white birds all huddled together regarding him with beady black eyes. He shook off the slight shiver that seeing any animal in a cage gave him. Being caged was the stuff of his darkest nightmares.
It was Cade’s wedding day. Cade did not ask for much as far as friends went, so Flynn supposed he could put up and shut up on one day. He might as well just get on with finding the dolly, loading the bloody birds on the back of a sled, and carting them to the gondola. It would take at least two gondola loads to get them up there. Maybe he would catch sight of that woman again, the one with the ponytail who had so entranced him, and his cock, earlier.
A text from Cade appeared on his phone. < Where are u buddy? Rehearsal, remember? Whoever she is I hope she’s hot. >
< She’s white and cooing and there’s more than one of them > he texted back.
< ??? > texted Cade.
< Doves, Cade. Doves. >
“You’d all make a delicious dinner,” he said to the doves.
He headed down the stairs and out of the front doors of the lodge. Astrid was making her way across the snow in a very short flared pink dress and very high heels. Flynn watched her as her heels sank into the snow causing her to wobble precariously.
“Astrid,” he called.
She whirled and a brilliant smile lit up her face. She wasn’t an unattractive woman in a skier kind of way, with broad shoulders, a solid frame, and a goggle tan. Not Flynn’s type at all, but a lot of fun at parties when she kept her drinking under control.
She started mincing across the snow toward him immediately and in her heels, towered over him. All lynx shifters were on the short side. Flynn was good with that. It hadn’t affected his luck with the ladies in the slightest. But there was tall, and then too tall, and Astrid was definitely too tall.
“Are you heading up to the wedding already?” he said.
Astrid shook her head. “I thought the gondola didn’t load until five for wedding guests. I was going to go have a drink with the freeski guys.”
“It doesn’t. But I have something that I need your help with, for the wedding. Do you mind?”
The way Astrid’s face lit up should have caused him concern. In fact it did cause Flynn concern, but he ignored it in favor of having someone to help him with the doves.
Astrid started cooing herself when she saw the doves, pressing her face against the bars and giving him a very generous view of ass.
“Oh the poor little things,” she said. “We’re not really going to take them up the mountain, are we? They’ll get lost in the dark. Doves can’t navigate in the dark… I’m studying biology,” she added a tad defensively when Flynn just stood and stared at her. It occurred to him that the doves might be a Renate-thing. That he might not be ruining his best friend’s wedding in the slightest if he didn’t show up with a hundred doves in toe.
He pulled out his phone. < Doves? > Cade had texted back.
< Are doves important to Alissa? > Flynn replied.
Cade’s reply only took a few seconds. < No. >
Flynn smiled broadly at Astrid. “What do you say we go let some doves loose on the deck? Think the freeski guys will like it?”
Astrid raised a surprised eyebrow and then laughed. “It would certainly be a freeski first.”
The impromptu dove release went well, although Astrid clung rather tightly and unnecessarily to Flynn’s chest just after he opened the cage. Some of the freeski guys had even emerged from the lodge, beers in hand, including Chance Trainor, the weekend’s victor, to watch the white birds flutter away. Now Flynn needed to get his ass up the gondola and get his tux on stat.
< Hey buddy > Cade’s text appeared. < You still at the base? >
< I’m coming. Now. > Flynn replied.
< I was hoping you could help my mom > Cade texted. < She’s locked out of her room >
Flynn gritted his teeth. < Can’t someone else deal with it? >
< She’s in her underwear and feeling a bit embarrassed. I think she’s more nervous about this than we are. Just go let her in. You can still make it. >
Of course she is, thought Flynn.
“One day, Cade. One day.” Flynn muttered, leaving Astrid to ride up the gondola with Chance, who was dressed in his best facsimile of a wedding suit and looked like he’d just rolled out of bed.
Chapter Five: Zoey
The fifth of whiskey that Dylan had procured for her after the rehearsal had helped to settle Zoey’s nerves. The run-through of her song with the guitarist had gone well enough, but that was in front of fifteen people, not three hundred. Now as she added a little bit more lipstick, she realized her hands were shaking. She was singing Alissa and the rest of the wedding party in to “At Last,” instead of the usual wedding march. It was a short song, and it would be over soon. She repeated this over and over to calm her frayed nerves. Was it the prospect of singing that had so rattled her? Or the scent she’d picked up on Cade’s mother, the scent that had invaded her senses and put her instincts on overdrive.
She stepped back from the mirror in the luxe suite that Cade and Alissa would be occupying tonight. The men were getting ready in a smaller room next door where Dylan and Jolene would sleep, which left her to go back down in the gondola alone. She wondered why there weren’t three rooms, why Flynn didn’t have one as well.
The photographer had finished with her and Jolene and was now taking a few final photos of Alissa alone. The wedding was about to start, and Alissa had reported a few minutes ago that Flynn and Renate hadn’t yet arrived, so perhaps Zoey would be walking up and down the aisle alone too. She wondered if another fifth of whiskey would be entirely inappropriate.
She twirled carefully in the dress. It was a lovely pale pink chiffon with a fitted torso that was snug over the hips falling to a long flared skirt. It set off her and Jolene’s hourglass figures perfectly, and it was one of those rare occasions when Zoey was grateful for her curves. The pink seemed to make her nut-brown hair and tanned skin glow, and the makeup artist had put dramatic sweeps of eyeliner on their lids so that they all had all flirty cat eyes, which seemed like a bit of a funny inside joke. At least, if she totally screwed up her singing, she’d still look good. She stared outside at the white snow, now glittering in the lights from the lodge. What she wouldn’t give to go for a quick run in the dark.
“What’s Cade’s dad like?” she said carefully to Jolene.
Jolene elevated an eyebrow and drew her full pink lips into a puzzled knot. She too looked gorgeous in the pink dress with her pale blond hair and sky blue eyes. “Cade’s dad is dead,” she said. “Killed in an avalanche a few years ago. Why do you ask?”
Zoey shook her head. “No reason.” So perhaps that scent on Renate wasn’t her mate then, but definitely someone with whom she had intimate relations. Zoey wished a shiver didn’t go down her spine at the thought. She didn’t go after other women’s men.
A knock came at the door. Alissa ran into the other room in case it was Cade. Jolene opened the door carefully. Dylan stood on the threshold. “Flynn’s here, finally,” he said after an appreciative and hungry stare at his mate. “He’s just getting dressed, but we need to get started, so I’ll walk Zoey down the aisle for her song. It’ll buy him a few more seconds.”
Then it all seemed to go so quickly. The w
alk down the curving staircase, through the beautifully decorated reception room to the room where the ceremony was happening. Three hundred people sat talking quietly amongst themselves, and the guitarist strummed a romantic melody. Dylan nodded to the man, who nodded back and shifted into the transition music they had selected. Suddenly Dylan was walking Zoey down the aisle and everyone was watching her, and her lips felt utterly frozen.
Dylan escorted her to the microphone and then smiled encouragingly and left. Zoey blinked at the assembled sea of people in dresses and suits, their expressions expectant and faces wreathed in wedding smiles. Several people craned their necks to see if they could get a glimpse of the bride, and Zoey could see the flower girls lined up beyond one of the huge timbers ready to go.
The guitarist began to strum the first few bars of “At Last,” and the minister, Cade, and the groomsmen emerged from a side door and filed to the front.
Zoey’s senses exploded. The second groomsman—Flynn— was the man she’d watched bob and weave down the street earlier, and the man whose scent she’d smelled on Renate. With his finely cut suit, shoulder-length blond hair, grey eyes, and short but perfectly proportioned body, he was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen.
He was also, without a shadow of a doubt, her mate.
Zoey opened her mouth to sing and nothing came out.
Several horrible seconds ticked by. The crowd sat hushed but expectant, and the guitarist strummed through the first few bars that she was supposed to be singing before shooting her a quizzical look and deftly looping back to the opening bars to give her another chance. Zoey’s mouth had gone completely dry, and she couldn’t take her eyes off Flynn. She wondered if she might faint.
Flynn’s eyes had gone wide and surprised when he saw her—did he know too, or was it because she was supposed to be singing and wasn’t, or looked like she was about to have a coronary? After a second, and a few more terrifying guitar chords, Flynn stepped away from Dylan and Cade and walked confidently over to the microphone across the room from her. What was he going to do? He reached the microphone just as the guitarist hit the notes that were to be her cue to start again. Then she heard Flynn sing the opening words of her song in a gravelly, entirely sexy, voice, looking directly at her. After two lines, she found her voice and joined him.