Shotgun Wedding (Sidelined #4)

by Ainslie Paton

  Once he’d gone, Christopher stopped emoting like a spoiled kid. “You need my help.”

  He was the most efficient and trustworthy assistant she’d had. Being helpful was his jam. He kept her and Owen’s days in order and was their first line of defense against time-wasters. He could sniff out a political play at ten paces and freeze out an office narcissist with a single raised brow. The only one who blew past him with impunity was Reid, because Reid. But Christopher craved inclusion and Sarina had kept him at arm’s length where her personal life crossed her professional one. Now that line was so blurred there was no point not confiding in him.

  “I couldn’t tell you before.” He’d have had twisted knickers to know she’d sat here with Reid developing a project plan for her pregnancy and selection criteria for a sperm donor. “Now I need your help to sort my life out and manage an internal announcement.”

  “So you know, I don’t dislike Dev, I thought he was dicking you around. Now I know he’s um . . .”

  “Dicking me.”

  Christopher winced and they both laughed and balance was restored. She told him about the wedding, that it would be a private affair and then plotted what and how to tell Plus staff, which inevitably meant the industry at large. Telling her family would be less complicated and she wouldn’t have Christopher’s precision skill for organization at hand.

  She beat Dev to her folks’ place, but they were all waiting. Even her notoriously late father was on time. Of course, they’d guessed she was pregnant when she’d got off a plane from London on the weekend and started puking over a Rueben sandwich, but she’d needed to take a test and talk to Dev first and then live with the reality of it a little before facing the onslaught of happiness. They had no idea they needed to cancel all other plans for Sunday, especially as her plan had been to be a single mom and they had no reason to think any differently.

  “You are?” said Ro, meeting her in the hallway of their family home.

  “Are you?” said Dad, blocking the doorway.

  “Look at her, of course she is,” said Mom, peering over his shoulder.

  Behind Mom, Brian held his tongue but he was teary-eyed.

  “Can we wait for Dev?” she said, pushing past the knot of family and going through to the kitchen, where something smelled good enough to make her hungry.

  “It is Dev’s sprog?” said Ro, trailing.

  “This baby is going to be so precious,” said Mom. “I hope it takes after Dev.”

  “Mom,” she protested. “Traitor.”

  “He has lovely eyes, and yours are like your dad’s, kind of squinty.”

  “Squinty,” Dad said, affronted. “Have you always thought I had squinty eyes?”

  Ro plucked at hers, fingers to the far edges, pulling so her eyes went to slits. “Are mine squinty too?”

  So much for telling her family, they’d run away with the reality already. They were busy arguing about facial features and skin tones and suggesting baby names when Sarina heard Dev at the front door. Brian was the only one who saw her sneak away to let him in and ran interference by asking where the carving knife was.

  She stepped out on the porch and shut the door behind her. “Hi.” It’d only been a few hours since she’d seen Dev but she lit up inside to have him alone.

  “Everything okay?” He put his hands to her shoulders and kissed her forehead.

  “I haven’t said a word yet and already they’re planning the kid’s future.”

  He smiled, bright and tension free. “I love your family. Left of average and proud of it.”

  “They can be a bit much all at once.”

  “In a good way. Why are we out here?”

  “I needed a minute with you.”

  He pulled her into his arms. “Like the sound of that. I’ll take all the minutes you’ve got spare for the next forever.”

  She grinned into his shirt, breathed him in. The novelty of hearing him say things like that was going to take a long time to wear off. “Did you get a new suit?”

  “It’s boss, not the brand, the look. Does Christopher still have a thing about me?”

  “He’s over it.” She looked up at him. Cradled in the comfort of his embrace she realized her head had been spinning all day. The pace of change, the effects of the pregnancy, the massive new to do list. “Are we rushing this for no good reason? We have our whole lives to get to the details.”

  He held her off, those lovely eyes of his gone big. “I want the details over with so we can get to the fun stuff. We should’ve gotten our act together long before now. Damn Reid being right about us. If you had a wedding dream, if I did, this could be different, and heck, I’ll stop pushing if you want me to slow down, but for me, the sooner we ace the details, the quicker we get to have our lives.”

  She reached up to brush her finger over his lips. She was getting her dream wedding, because her best friend had gotten a promotion and a new portfolio as lover, husband, father. “I don’t have a problem with that.” He nipped her finger, so she hooked him down to her and they kissed, lazy and soft, porch appropriate, but Dev made a sound in the back of his throat and he pulled her body closer and porch appropriate went neighborhood soft porn.

  She pushed him away panting. “We have to get through dinner.”

  He blinked, shook his head and came at her, taking her face in his hand and lowering his lips to hers. “This is the rest of our lives. This is the fun part.” He couldn’t make a kiss stick because she was smiling too hard. She’d watched Reid and then Owen find love and despaired of having that for herself because Dev was scared to ask for more. She’d wanted a family and figured she’d have to make that happen for herself or risk missing out. If it was possible for a heart to burst with emotional overload as their peanut baby gestated, as Dev kissed down her neck, call 911.

  “Stop, stop.” She put her hand over his face and pushed him back. “Keep that up and I’ll need medical attention.”

  He missed her amusement, grabbing for her hands, frowning. “Sarina, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, nothing, except I’m so hungry I could fall down and you’re making me so hot I might combust.” And she never remembered ever being so tired.

  “Oh.” He eye-rolled at his own reaction.

  “And look, if we’re having a wedding Sunday, you have to stop sleeping with the bride.”

  “Not happening,” he snapped.

  “According to Christopher, the bride and groom are not supposed to see each other from the night of the rehearsal dinner till the wedding.”

  “The guy does have it in for me. I’m going to see you at work and we’re not having a rehearsal dinner.”

  Sarina inclined her head. There was a roast cooking behind the door, it was as close as they were going to get to a pre-wedding event. “You need to spend time with Ana, and you need to see your parents, and I’m guessing you’d rather do that alone. Stay with me tonight and then we’ll be together again on Sunday.”

  He pouted, bringing her to his chest again. “I only just got in your bed and you’re kicking me out.”

  “Only this once.”

  He grunted, tipped her face up and kissed her and the door behind them opened.

  “Get in here,” said Ro. “Brian is carving the roast and Mom is going to make herself sick with excitement. Hey, Dev.”

  “Hey, Ro.”

  “So, brother-in-law. How are your straighty-one-eighty family going to cope with all this? Do they know any other families featuring open marriages and lesbian siblings?”

  Dev snorted. “My poor parents, you guys are the least of their concerns. They’re about to get a new daughter-in-law and two grandkids.”

  “Oh fuck, you’re having twins.” Ro disappeared inside, shouting the news and Dev’s breath snagged.

  Sarina patted his cheek. “Welcome to the Gallos.”

  Over dinner they settled the not having twins issue, reminding them about Ana’s pregnancy. The family showed inordinate tact by not asking
for the specifics of how Sarina came to be carrying Dev’s baby and not one from the donor sperm she’d bought. Maybe Dev was buoyed by that, and the joy of a home-cooked meal he hadn’t had to cook himself, but he stopped pretending to monitor what she ate and somewhere between the meal and dessert, he scanned the table and said, “I’d like permission to marry Sarina and join the family.”

  They went off like a bottle rocket.

  There was no moment of silence while they digested that. No shocked expressions or gasps of surprise. The four of them made noise. Forks hitting plates, knives on glassware, chair legs barking, shouts of yes. Mom cried. Brian and Ro hugged. Dad shoved against the table in an attempt to shake Dev’s hand.

  “That’s a yes, then?” Dev said, clasping Dad’s hand. He looked back at her, eyes shiny, smile so broad it almost hurt to see how happy he was. She’d had no idea he was going to do that. The ask permission thing was insultingly retro, packaged as it was with the notion that a daughter belonged to her father before she could be given away to a husband, but the idea of asking her family for permission to be considered one of them was such a gorgeously Dev thing to do, her throat closed up and her eyes stung.

  “It’s absolutely a yes,” said Mom, as Dad appeared to be speechless and then Dev’s arms were around her, pulling her to her feet, giving her his shoulder, and she laughed as much as she cried while he held her and her family carried on as if they were the last couple on earth and marriage was a rare species that needed saving from extinction.

  Who knew joy could be so exhausting.

  There was another explosion of activity when Dev said the wedding was Sunday, but Ro’s voice cut through the discussion about who needed to be invited and what needed to be done in a hurry. “Who is going to marry you?” she asked.

  “We haven’t worked that out yet,” Dev said. “It’s on the list.”

  “Pick me,” Ro said. “Please, please, I can get deputized for the day. I almost did it for friends recently. I know what I need to do and I really want to be your celebrant.”

  “Is that allowed?” Mom asked.

  “Is that what you’d want?” Dad said.

  Dev had her hand in his and squeezed it. That might be a leap too far for him, for his parents. “It’s an option, Ro,” she said. “Let Dev and I talk about it.” Ro grinned, launched into an explanation of how cool California’s Deputy for the Day program was.

  Sarina leaned into Dev, “Is that too weird for you?”

  He kissed her forehead. “I like it.”

  “Sure?”

  “I asked Reid to be my best man. If Ro does this, you miss out on a bridesmaid.”

  “How would you feel if I asked Owen to be my bridesmaid?” He was closer to her than any girlfriends and her best friend after Dev.

  He closed his eyes, but his smile said everything. “He’d look tragic in a dress, but sure, I don’t mind.”

  “Your parents . . .” It would seem like a circus to the Patels, despite the no elephant rule.

  “Will cope, Sarina, stop worrying about them. They’re not quick to adjust to change, but they’re not set in concrete either.” He turned to Ro. “You’re on. We’d be delighted if you’d marry us. Just make sure it’s legal.”

  Ro stamped her feet with excitement. “Thank you, thank you. It’ll be legal and beautiful, I promise.”

  “Honey, I know you won’t want me to give you away, but if there’s anything you and Dev want from your mom, Brian and me, you’ve got it.”

  And with that from Dad, Sarina was full up with feeling and her head felt so heavy she was a face-plant victim waiting to happen. Last time she and Dev had left her parents’ place they’d argued on the street about who was driving. It’d turned into a fight about the decisions she was making in her life, Dev had wrong-footed them with a disaster of a proposal and it’d torn them apart. Tonight, she dozed in the car while Dev drove home, and it was the definition of happiness to fall into bed together, curl up and sleep in his arms.

  It was the definition of love the next morning, when he held back her hair as she tossed her cookies.

  SEVEN

  Cara

  “When you think wedding dress, what’s in your mind?” Cara asked as she ran a tape measure around Sarina’s bust. Three and half days to get a wedding dress made. It wasn’t the Olympics, but it was a challenge.

  Sarina winced. “If I say absolutely nothing, will you run screaming from the room?”

  “No actually, that makes it easier. A wedding dress doesn’t have to be all, you know, bridal.” Which was an odd thing to say, even accompanied with the hand actions to indicate a big puffy skirt and lots of girly froth.

  Sarina laughed. “I think I know what you mean. I’m not into fussy clothing. I figured I’d be better buying off the rack or wearing the red dress I wore to the Plus tenth anniversary.”

  Cara screwed up her face. “Red.”

  Sarina snorted. “Yeah, I guess not. No reason to slap everyone with the scarlet woman already pregnant vibe before I have to.”

  “We can do better than that.” Sarina was a little hippie chick, a little Boho in her style, maybe lace, maybe a vintage feel. Cara ran the tape measure around Sarina’s hips. “Owen said you had morning sickness.”

  “Didn’t expect it. Ask me how good my ability to predict my life has been this last year. I got a lot of things wrong.”

  She moved the tape to Sarina’s waist. “But not the outcome.”

  “The baby, marrying my best friend. I’m in wonderland. Truly, my life could not be—” Sarina blinked and shook her head. “Sorry, everything makes me tear up at the moment.”

  “Hormones, huh.”

  Sarina wiped her eyes. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t function without ’em.”

  Not if you wanted to get pregnant for sure. “Do you worry that having kids will stop you doing other things?” Cara blurted that out, when she already knew the answer. Sarina was supremely confident she could be a mother and a super-successful professional. “No, of course you don’t. Silly question.” Besides that, she’d already made it career-wise.

  “It’s not a silly question. You can only spread yourself so thin and I wasn’t intending to sacrifice my career to have a family. When I decided to do it alone, I knew I was going to need a lot of help. But I can afford it, and my family were totally on board.”

  “If you weren’t you, competent and all I can do anything, and already a big shot, would you still have wanted to do it alone?”

  “Good question.”

  Cara let a breath out. The question felt more personal than touching Sarina to take her measurements.

  “I always knew I wanted to have kids at some point. I didn’t think about having a family as an end goal, I figured someday I would and when that someday didn’t show up, I started to think about how I’d feel if it never did. That’s how I knew what I wanted.”

  Bucking bobbins. Cara pulled out a pad and wrote down Sarina’s measurements. It made sense Sarina would have that certainty, nothing about her was accidental, even the relaxed way she dressed was part of who she was.

  “But I don’t think you have to have kids to live up to your potential as a woman or anything like that. Just because you have the make a baby body parts doesn’t mean you have to use them. And a lot of women can’t conceive despite the science we’ve got to help. Doesn’t make them any less real and valuable as human beings.”

  “No, I know that.” Same way it didn’t make Owen less a man when he couldn’t get hard. But it was good to hear it said, because even her own dad was convinced she’d want to be a mom. Time to move this conversation along. “How do you feel about lace?”

  “Cara, talk to me.”

  She turned back to face Sarina. “I don’t know if I want kids.” There, first time she’d said that quite so directly. Nailed the landing, no wobble.

  “Because you’re ambitious. I get that.”

  Her ambitions were nothing like Sarina’s. She didn’t want
to run a major company or be a billionaire. She wanted to design beautiful things that made people feel good. That was a dream job, but it wasn’t going to change the world or feed starving children and it wasn’t anything like what Sarina had achieved. “Oh, I don’t know about that.” If she was a surgeon or an astronaut, or a presidential candidate, saving lives or kicking asses, maybe she could justify not wanting to have a family.

  “All this looks like ambition to me.” Sarina spread her arms and Cara tried to see what she saw. Her big cutting table, her two machines, the dressmakers’ dummies, the shelving for fabric, the pinboard covered with sketches, the stacked boxes of threads, buttons, jewels and fixings. It looked like craft, a way to make a living.

  “I’m only starting out and I’m not aiming as high as you and Owen.”

  “It’s not a competition. Success means something different to us all.”

  And so did failure, being incapacitated. Some people never got back up again.

  “Maybe I don’t love him enough.” There, she said it. Isn’t that what it meant to lack the commitment to family Owen wanted? “I don’t know that I’m going to feel differently in five years’ time. It wasn’t an issue when he couldn’t. Now it’s me who doesn’t want to and I have to wonder if it makes me the wrong person for him.”

  “It’s not a terrible thing if you don’t know, or if you decide you don’t want kids. It doesn’t make you a failure as a woman, and I don’t think you should doubt that Owen is crazy besotted with you.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Zarley from the doorway, wearing workout clothing. She was an excellent diversion.

  Cara waved her in. “Have you slept at all?

  “I crashed on the couch in my office for a few hours.”

  “By yourself?” This big empty place would be scary at night.

  “No, Reid showed up when he knew I wasn’t going to make it home. We need a bigger couch. Once we open it’s going to be like that. He’ll work days, I’ll work nights.” Zarley looked pensive. “What did I interrupt other than you being little Miss Dumb and Doubtful about Owen?”