by Misty Simon
“Bride’s already been in here, too,” Frank said while he brought the sandwiches to the table.
Jack got his first bite in and down before responding. “What did she want, and did you promise it to her?” He drew his clipboard over to mark things down.
“Eh, she wanted to change the prime rib to salmon. I ain’t gonna do that, no matter what, so I put her off. She’s a tough bird, though. Or at least she was until Chelsea came in and ushered her out without a single word. She’s even tougher, and that little girl of hers is following close on her heels. I still can’t believe she took me to task for smoking even when I wasn’t.” He chuckled and shook his head.
Adele also shook her head, her bright red hair sifting out around her rounded shoulders. He’d thought at some point he should have just gone for her. She would have been a perfect person to share the inn with. But there was nothing there between them, unlike him and Chelsea. He shook that thought right out of his head.
“This whole family is something else,” Adele said. “I like them.”
So did he, but that had no bearing on the situation, he reminded himself. “I like them all, too, but we have to keep an eye out for Belinda. We only have a few days left until the wedding, but they are going to be trying if we’re fending her off at the same time we’re meeting our scheduled obligations. I’ll talk to Chelsea and see what can be done.” He made a note on his clipboard.
“Just make sure to have a point to get across again, Boss,” Frank said with a wink.
Jack sighed and settled in for the rest of the meeting. Sometimes family was overrated.
****
A little over sixty hours until the wedding. Chelsea’s mind whirled with all the things that still needed to be done. With her muscles loose and limber from her massage this morning, Chelsea looked into Mazzy’s bedroom and smiled at the little girl’s sleeping form. She had been so excited to do big-girl things that she’d worn herself out.
Which was fine with Chelsea. Lists yards long waited for her in the drawing room downstairs. How was she going to get all this done? There was a whole sheet of paper with scribbles in the margin that needed her attention, and so much to prepare for the wedding. With that thought, she pocketed the companion to Mazzy’s monitor and went down the stairs.
After booting up the laptop, she applied herself to whittling down the list to what was manageable. It wasn’t hard, just tedious—so much like her job back home that she did it without really thinking. Being a corporate secretary was nothing to sniff at, but it certainly had not been her lifelong dream when she’d graduated high school and gone to college.
But she had other dreams now. Watching Mazzy grow up. Providing a good life for her daughter. Making up for being only one parent in what should have been a two-parent home. If there wasn’t room in those dreams for a man, then that was okay with her. She had plenty to offer Mazzy and had been doing a fine job with her. A kiss from an old friend couldn’t change the entire way she had structured her life.
It was changing too much already, in that she was only making short calls to Paige to keep her up to date with the wedding week progress and not spending too much time with her friend, in case she accidently said the wrong thing.
The sound of Mazzy waking up was most welcome. Mazzy was standing on the bed when Chelsea entered their suite, and Chelsea couldn’t help but smile even as she gently reprimanded her.
“Come on, Mazzy, what did Mommy say about jumping on the bed?”
“But it’s so much fun!’ she said, drawing out the last word as she did a particularly big bounce and coughed.
“I asked you to be on your best behavior, though. If you can’t do that, then we aren’t going to be able to do all the fun things I have planned. And we have to cover our mouths when we cough.”
Mazzy’s bottom was planted on the bed and her hand covered her mouth before Chelsea finished her sentence. “Sorry! I want to do fun things!” she said, muffled.
“Let’s get to it, then. I thought we’d go over to Grammy’s and run around for a while.”
“Yay!” And Mazzy was off, washing her hands and trying to comb her bed head. Chelsea helped when she got caught in a tangle the knot fairy had kissed into it. She loved the softness of Mazzy’s hair and she loved spending time with her daughter. One of the things she had sacrificed by taking on these extra jobs was the ability to just hang with Mazzy for a week. But the little girl was having so much fun with everyone else, Chelsea relaxed her biting guilty conscience. She was spending as much time as possible with her.
Once Mazzy was ready, they bundled into Chelsea’s car. Although she hadn’t called to announce their visit, she knew her mom was going to be home all day doing some of her own tasks as mother of the bride.
“Come on in, Chelsea,” Leigh called out through the screen door on the porch.
“How do you always know?” Chelsea finished her journey up the sidewalk with Mazzy’s hand in hers. Her mother was waiting in the four-seasons room Chelsea’s parents had built last year, a glass of tea in her hand and a smile on her face.
After exchanging a hug with her mom, she followed Leigh into the light airy house of her childhood.
She marveled at how clean and orderly her mother’s house was compared to her own. Then again, her mother’s spaces were always clean and orderly whereas Chelsea, while growing up, had had a hard time finding her way out of her bedroom without tripping.
“I have those eyes in the back of my head, dear. Surely you remember me talking about them years ago. Every mother gets them.” Leigh turned and smiled, looking much closer to forty than her fifty-five years.
“How did I get passed over, then? I don’t feel like I have eyes back there.” Taking a seat on her mother’s floral couch, Chelsea tried not to mess up the precise lines of the afghan behind her. Each side hit the arms in the exact same place and the design of miniature sprigs of violets was perfectly aligned in the center of the back. Another skill Chelsea did not possess.
“You have them, honey, they just take a bit to focus. How many times have you nabbed Mazzy out of trouble at the last second?” She folded the blanket she’d probably been using to rest in the wing-backed chair next to the fireplace and put it back on the blanket rack. Chelsea would have left hers thrown over the back of the chair.
“That’s not the same thing as being able to tell which person is at the door before they announce themselves.”
Leigh chuckled. “That’s something totally different and has more to do with the fact that you have a different step pattern than anyone else here. I always know when you’re walking somewhere near me. Which is why you had such a hard time sneaking out of this house when you were younger.”
Chelsea groaned thinking about the two times she had tried it. Both times she’d been caught. But then she laughed. At least she would only have one child to know footsteps for, and they were the only two people in the house, always would be. If she felt a moment of wistfulness at that thought, now was not the time to think about it.
“Okay, I’ll take your word for it, though I always thought it was unfair Belinda never got caught.”
“Oh, she got caught plenty, which was why she got moved into a different room and had everything taken from her. But you were in college at that point, so you wouldn’t have known. However, you didn’t come here to rehash the long ago past.” Another smile, this one gentle at the edges. “Is it my turn to watch my girl again?” she asked eagerly.
Chelsea shut down the immediate flood of guilt. Her mother loved being with Mazzy and had eagerly jumped at the chance to watch her this week while Chelsea helped Belinda. In fact, she had insisted on it before Chelsea had a chance to ask. But Chelsea had been forced to draw the line at having her mother keep Mazzy in their extra bedroom so that Leigh could watch her twenty-four hours a day.
“You’d probably better give me the monitor and get going. I hear your sister tromping up the stairs. You know she’s going to have you in a whirlwind
the second she steps in here.”
Chelsea shook her head, bracing herself for whatever trouble Belinda was bringing with her.
“I want to go hiking tomorrow,” her sister said without preamble or even a hello.
“What?” Chelsea and her mother said at the exact same time.
“Hiking,” Chelsea’s sister said, jerking her arms into a tight crossing against her chest. “I want to go.”
Their mother sputtered in protest, making a ton of valid arguments that fell on absolutely deaf ears. Those ears had been locked down to reason and accompanied eyes that dared Chelsea to say no.
Chelsea stared her down like she would her daughter when she didn’t want to take a bath. “We are not going hiking tomorrow. What if you break your leg or your head? What would I tell Marcus if you can’t come down the aisle on your own power because you’re in a coma?”
Belinda scoffed. “I have never hurt myself hiking. I’m certainly not going to start now. You just don’t want to have any fun.”
Apparently this would be just like getting Mazzy to do something she didn’t want to do, scowling pout and all. Chelsea sighed as a tiny cough came from the next room.
“Look, I don’t have time for this today, Belinda. Perhaps we can figure something else out.” The mutinous expression on her sister’s face didn’t change. “Your wedding is on Saturday and tomorrow is Friday. You can’t go hiking the day before the wedding.”
“I can if I want to.”
“You know what, do whatever you want, Belinda. I signed on to make sure you wouldn’t change the menu or the entire color scheme for the wedding in a fit of nervousness before the big day, but I did not sign on for this. Hopefully you won’t fall.”
And she breezed past her stunned sister, walking briskly to her child. When she arrived in the family room, she hustled toward the couch. Settling lightly next to Mazzy, she laid a hand on her forehead and breathed a sigh of relief when she felt no heat. That was the last thing—besides her sister hiking—she needed. No child was pleasant when they were sick. The little girl coughed again, but it didn’t sound too bad. Maybe she was simply over-exhausted from all they had been doing. Most likely that was it.
She called Adele to let her know she might be a few more minutes than she had planned. After kissing Mazzy one more time, she stepped out of the room to talk with her mom.
“I don’t think she has a cold, but I’m not sure I should leave now. What if she gets sick?”
“Honey, I have taken care of more colds and coughs than you can imagine. I was a daycare worker for years when you and your sister were little. I can handle this.”
“I know, I know, but I don’t feel right leaving if she’s not feeling well.”
“Tell you what. How about if I call you if she starts running a fever? In the meantime, we’ll hang out here and see how things go. You have a ton of things to do, Chelsea.” Her mom rubbed her arm and gave her a smile. “Go take care of them and let me spend some spoiling time with my granddaughter. I’ve been looking forward to having her all to myself for a while now.”
And there went Chelsea’s guilt, again. She’d been working for a promotion over the last six months, and in process had robbed Mazzy of memories in this special house.
“I see that frown, missy, and I want it gone right now.” Her mom smoothed her index finger over the crease between Chelsea’s eyebrows. “We are always happy to come down to your neck of the woods to visit. Your dad and I like to get out of town every once in a while. But it’s going to be so nice to have you here permanently soon. Your dad and I cannot wait!”
“It’s nice to be back,” Chelsea said. There was no changing the past, so she’d make the future better. Although, how much better was she really going to make it when her mother found out there was no engagement and she and Mazzy were not going to be living here? The lie just got deeper. She’d make it up to her mother somehow, once things settled down with her new promotion back in Bettleton. “I’d like to have come up more often. But what’s done is done.” She laughed. “First I have to get through this wedding without letting Belinda kill herself.”
“I heard that!” Belinda yelled from the other room.
“I meant you to,” Chelsea answered.
She hugged her mom again before stopping to glare at Belinda one more time. “Hike if you want, but your dress is going to look funny with a cast under it.”
Belinda stuck her tongue out and Chelsea did the same.
Trooping down the stairs to her car, she mentally reviewed everything to be accomplished before the day was out. Belinda was lucky she didn’t boot her in the butt, or decide not to help if she was going to be so difficult.
She couldn’t stay mad at her sister for long, though. It was fading already as she drove the mile back to the inn.
Belinda had always been headstrong and hated to fail at anything. She did things she knew she could do instead of trying anything new. And marriage probably terrified her no matter how much she loved Marcus.
Entering the inn, Chelsea almost passed right by Jack in her musings until he reached out and snagged her wrist in one of his big hands. She stared down at his warm flesh on hers for a brief second, then shot her gaze back up to his.
The smile on his face was an easy one. He’d been crouched down at the entrance to the coat closet, a close mirror to the linen room on the second floor that she’d used the other night to make the bachelorette party gifts. Thoughts of the party brought a slight blush to her neck and heat to her stomach. She really hoped Jack had not overheard some of the suggestions her cousins and her sister had for what she should do with him.
“Need anything?” he asked, rising but still using his long fingers to lightly encircle her wrist.
“Um, I was looking for Adele to see if she had gotten my voicemail about being late. I need to dive into these lists and told my mother I’d be back later with some cough syrup for Mazzy.”
“I believe Adele’s upstairs. She should be down in a minute.”
But as the words left his mouth, Adele came hacking and wheezing from the back staircase. She looked miserable, with circles under her eyes and her hair thrust untidily into a ponytail.
“Uh-oh,” Chelsea breathed, retrieving her hand from Jack’s.
“Yeah, you’re not kidding,” he said to her before turning back to Adele. “Go back upstairs, Adele. I’m giving you the day off, and probably tomorrow, too. You should not be walking around. I’ll go get you something from the pharmacy, and I can get your stuff, too, Claudia.”
“But we can’t let this wedding be ruined.” Adele’s eyes watered, breaking Chelsea’s heart.
“We’ll be fine.” Jack rose to his full height, gently turning Adele back around by the shoulders. “Just focus on recuperating, lady.”
She gave him a watery smile, then turned and trudged back up the stairs.
Chelsea heard Jack mutter a particularly harsh expletive under his breath as if he’d forgotten she was there. From what she’d seen of Adele, she didn’t seem to be the type to give in easily, so she must have really been sick.
A second later, Jack composed himself and turned to Chelsea. “Apparently, I’m going to the pharmacy, so if you want to just make me a list of the things you want, I’ll get them while I’m out.” After running a rough hand over the top of his head and down his neck, he blew out a breath and shoved his hands into his pockets.
Obviously she couldn’t know what exactly was going through his mind right at this moment, but it had to go something along the lines of “What in the hell am I going to do now?”
And she felt for him. As she would feel for anyone who was in this kind of predicament. As she’d felt for some of the other secretaries in her office when they were overwhelmed and understaffed in an emergency situation. Now she did the same thing she would have done for any of them.
“Tell me what Adele was doing and I’ll fill in for her while she’s recuperating.”
He opened his mouth,
and she could almost see the protest hanging on his tongue.
“Don’t say it. I’m going to help whether you want me to or not. This wedding is very important to my sister, and I won’t have it ruined because you’re too stubborn to accept help.”
His mouth snapped shut at that. He gave her a speculative look. Standing ramrod straight under his narrowed gaze, she waited for him to realize she was right. If he was anything like a lot of other males in and out of her life, she could potentially still be standing here next Monday.
“Fine,” he said grudgingly. “But you aren’t doing a lot. You’re still going to have some fun even if I have to dragoon Frank into coming out of the kitchen to act as hostess.”
She couldn’t help a small smile at the picture he painted. It wouldn’t come to that. This could be a different kind of fun if she looked at it correctly. She had organizational skills out the wazoo and a keen eye for exactly what needed to be done, multitasking as well as delegating. Not that she’d have many people to delegate to, but she had enough. And her mom could take care of Mazzy while Chelsea had more of a hand in creating the perfect wedding for her sister. Not a bad deal all the way around. As an added bonus for those watching closely, it could appear she was getting the lay of the land for when she moved here. The thought sent a flutter through her stomach that she resolutely ignored.
“I want a clipboard,” she said, holding out her hand.
He removed his from the top closet shelf, passing it to her outstretched hand along with the walkie-talkie on his waistband. “I’ll find you one. In the meantime, here’s mine. These are the things I wanted Adele to do.”
The small plastic walkie-talkie was still warm from being close to his body. She concentrated on the clipboard instead. Letting her eyes scan over the paper, Chelsea prayed she had not bitten off more than she could chew. The list was extensive, but she was also capable. She looked up at him, caught his eye, and nodded. “Will do, Boss Man.”