The Castellano women went for blood.
“Lindsey!” Kimmie hissed.
“Legitimate question. You all want him to play, but you haven’t asked if he deserves to.”
“Of course he does,” Kimmie said. “Deserve it. Loved her. Love her. Pumplegunker.” Her face went splotchy again. “Don’t listen to her,” she said to CJ. “Sometimes she forgets to leave the divorce lawyer part at the door.”
“I’m asking,” Lindsey said, “for the good of Bliss. Your mother would be highly embarrassed to put all this effort into making CJ her publicity stunt only to discover in the middle of the Games that he didn’t love her.”
She was goading him. On purpose. Were she one of his sisters, he’d hit right back or walk away, depending on which sister and how much he deserved it.
But he couldn’t brush Lindsey off or fight back.
Because she had a point.
He sucked in an unsteady breath and leaned into the bar. “Bad breakup?” he said to Lindsey. “Got a cure for that. Called Jeremiah Weed. On the house.”
Her good-natured laugh set his teeth more on edge. “Not necessary, but thanks.”
“Don’t let her get to you,” Kimmie said. “We believe in you. Right?” She looked at Basil, who had been remarkably unopinionated thus far.
There went the Holy Constipated Squint of Pain.
CJ pushed back from all of them. He had other customers to tend to. A paycheck to earn. Places to go. “God can hear you thinking,” CJ said to his brother.
“But it’s so painful to admit when you do something right.”
The one time His Holy Perfectness got something wrong, CJ couldn’t call him on it.
Basil heaved a holy sigh. “I suppose I can make an exception, though, if it will nudge you on the path toward doing something respectable with your time in Bliss.”
“Not playing,” CJ said.
Huck hmphed on his way past. “Damn shame.”
Jeremy shook his head. “Won’t get another chance, man.”
“Final answer. No.”
“My mom’s gonna scramble somebody’s eggs when she hears about this.”
“I’ll tell her your good friend here talked me out of it,” CJ said. “Anything else, ladies?”
Kimmie’s face pinched tighter. “Can I get an orange juice with piña colada mix and that cherry stuff in a martini glass?” she said in a pained rush.
“You sure?” CJ said.
“It’ll be worth the weird dreams. Well, weirder dreams.”
He doubted the pie and the drink were the root causes of her issues, but if she hadn’t figured that out for herself yet, wasn’t his business to enlighten her.
He had enough problems of his own.
Like that lingering question over whether Serena would’ve wanted him to play. Wouldn’t find the answer here.
Wasn’t sure he’d find it anywhere.
NATALIE HAD ATTENDED Knot Fest committee meetings in the ballroom of the Rose and Dove Country Club nearly every Sunday night this year. But tonight, the scent of roses and the sound of “The Wedding March” piping through the building gave her stomach an extra turn as soon as she opened the heart-etched door to the building.
She’d heard her counterattack on Heaven’s Bakery was successful, but that was all she’d heard. She also felt more guilt at the work she’d caused Kimmie than victorious that she’d thrown something in the QG’s life out of whack.
And since it hadn’t rained since Tuesday, nor had any earthquakes struck or tornadoes plowed through Bliss Bridal, Natalie was very, very nervous about the retribution that probably awaited her inside these walls.
She was also sneaking in to the front half of the ballroom forty seconds late, being conspicuous when she needed to blend in, just in time to hear the Queen General’s normal meeting opener.
“By the power vested in me as chairperson of the Bliss Knot Festival Committee, I now pronounce this meeting called to order. If anyone objects to this proceeding, speak now, or forever hold your peace.”
Natalie eased the door shut with the precision of an overprotective mother, but heads still turned. The room was set for a sit-down dinner reception of about two hundred, but the Knot Fest committee took up only the front quarter of the room. Near the back of the populated tables, Kimmie and a few other members of the janitorial committee subtly waved or nodded. By virtue of Nat’s mother’s position on the Knot Fest committee, the QG hadn’t made a fuss over Kimmie’s friendship with Natalie and Lindsey since they’d all come home from college. That would probably come to an end once this year’s Knot Fest was over.
Yet one more disappointment. Natalie liked Kimmie. And not just because she was the only other single woman in the room besides the QG. Marilyn had been widowed by a car accident before Kimmie was out of diapers. As far as Natalie knew, that was the last time fate had successfully interfered in Marilyn’s life.
Natalie tiptoed in her flats to the white linen-draped round table. She pulled her chair silently over the rich red diamond-patterned carpet and swung her seat to face the front. Kimmie handed her an agenda. “Are you okay?” Kimmie whispered. “I had this dream last night that you got swallowed by an armadillo and then had to mud-wrestle my mom in a vat of liver-flavored cake batter. So when you weren’t here, I got worried.”
“Sitter problems,” Natalie whispered back.
Dad had disappeared after catching her calling the health department. Lindsey said he was back at his cabin. He’d bought the little structure on a pond aways beyond Willow Glen when Lindsey hit her teen years, claiming he needed an estrogen-free zone. Bonus for him that it didn’t get cell reception, and he rarely remembered to check the messages on the landline.
Not that Nat had called to ask for help.
Kimmie snapped her fingers. “Sitter problems! Right. I should’ve warned you. I got this fortune cookie—”
“Sshhhh!”
Kimmie slunk back in her chair, her expression crushed like tulle beneath a runaway groom’s getaway bike. Natalie glared at Elsie and Duke Sparks one table over. Duke whispered to Elsie during the meetings all the time. They could shove their sshhs up their telephoto lenses.
The Queen General cleared her throat and sent them all a warning glare that probably could’ve made a Marine crap his pants. Natalie joined Kimmie in slinking back into her chair. Respectfully. As if she’d meant to slouch.
She seriously needed to stay off the QG’s radar.
Marilyn motioned for the minutes.
Vi, long-standing Knot Fest secretary, stood. Her husband Gilbert grunted and thwomped his cane every time Vi read Motion Approved.
Max Gregory, sandwiched between his parents at the table in front of them, sent a sympathetic smile back Kimmie’s way, then gave Nat a subtle nod. He’d put Bliss Bridal’s information back up on the Bridal Retailers Association Web site for her this week.
And the QG could have that fixed again in seconds if she figured out the health department inspection was Natalie’s fault.
Vi finished the minutes. The QG started roll call for the Knot Fest subcommittees. All the Knot Fest subcommittees. Knot Fest came one week a year, in June, but the committee—which, like the Bridal Retailers Association, was composed nearly exclusively of couples who owned businesses on The Aisle—ran other events throughout the year as well. The bachelor auction with proceeds going to the QG’s favorite charity of the moment, generally women’s shelters or a children’s charity. The Snow Bride Expo to draw attention to winter weddings. The Battle of the Boyfriends every Valentine’s Day. And that was just the winter months.
Bliss never stopped working toward those happily ever afters.
Of all the Knot Fest committees, the Golden Husband Games committee was most important. The Games brought the most publicity to Bliss, and their revenue was second only to the income from the Bridal Expo.
Bliss needed the Games to be a success. Especially this year. The golden anniversary of the Games, and the firs
t year they had promise to be as big as they’d been before the flood.
The QG called on the janitorial committee. Claudia and Wade stood and reported. Clean-up plans were ahead of schedule, garbage cans and Dumpsters had been reserved, the other committees had been reminded to keep potential waste with their giveaways and products to a minimum. And when the QG murmured a “very good,” afterward, Natalie felt the sting of vindication.
She’d done everything Claudia had just reported.
She wasn’t here for the recognition, but it wouldn’t have been unappreciated.
The QG called for the Golden Husband Games report. Natalie’s heart cramped.
Bonnie and Earl Phillips stood. Bonnie was a pleasantly chubby lady in her late fifties dressed in floral print, Earl a squat, balding man trying out this year’s beard fashion.
And until they’d been named successors for the Games, Nat had thought them nice enough.
Bonnie consulted her flower-decoupaged clipboard. “Madame Chairman,” she said, “all’s going well.”
Earl nodded, and the two of them sat down.
Natalie’s shoulders hunched with the effort of suppressing an outraged howl. Formal invitations should’ve been sent two weeks ago. The husbands couldn’t just show up and play. Other years they could, but not this year. To compete for Husband of the Half Century, they needed to design team logos for T-shirts and commemorative merchandise. Sell tickets to the Games and the reception. Do interviews for publicity.
But first they needed to say they were playing.
And then there was everything else—trophies, supplies, advertising, and on and on and on—and it was all barely getting done.
Claudia and Wade shot Natalie an alarmed look. Other couples at other tables cast covert glances her way. Max Gregory coughed behind his hand, and a couple tables over, Luke Hart—Gabby’s boss at Indulge Chocolates and another single son on The Aisle—stifled what looked to be a laugh.
This was a disaster.
Marilyn gave a regal nod and called for the Miss Flower Girl and Junior Miss Bridesmaid subcommittee reports.
“Mom’s gonna flip their pancakes,” Kimmie whispered.
Natalie buried her head in her hands. “She needs to make them do their damn job instead.”
Dammit. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cuss tonight.
After another hour of old and new business and announcements, the Queen General tapped a spoon against her water glass. “If anyone knows of any reason why this meeting should not be adjourned, speak now or forever hold your peace.” She paused a moment, then looked right at Natalie. “Miss Castellano. A word after the meeting.” She dinged her spoon against the glass once more. “I now pronounce this meeting adjourned.”
The couples around Natalie stood, giving her a wide berth. Even Claudia and Wade took the long way around the table toward the door. “Janitorial committee meeting tomorrow at nine,” Claudia said to the table at large.
They all nodded. The few willing to make eye contact with Nat gave her the maybe-we’ll-see-you, maybe-we-won’t eyeballs of doom. The rest of the couples—including Bonnie and Earl, who deserved Knot Fest Committee Detention far more than Natalie—gathered their things and headed toward the door, calling greetings and making plans with their other friends around the room.
Kimmie paused and squeezed Nat’s hand. “Watch your pancakes, okay?”
“My pancakes need a drink.” Natalie’s head ached. Worse, though, her rebellious, I’ve-had-enough side was clawing its way out of that nice little bag she kept trying to suffocate it with. Again.
“Mom’s looking this way. I’ve gotta run.”
Yep, they were the target of the Queen General’s attention. As if the tingly sensation of Nat’s humanity being sucked out of her pores wasn’t clue enough that they were being watched. “Meet me at Suckers if I survive,” Natalie said to Kimmie, even though she desperately needed to spend time on Gabby’s dress. “And if I don’t, tell Noah I love him.”
Nat had this coming. All things considered, she was lucky Bliss Bridal’s walls were still standing.
And she couldn’t think about that whole ordeal where CJ had kissed her a week ago. And then rescued Cindy the dinosaur.
Because the Queen General would read her mind, and then Natalie’s pancakes would be toast.
Kimmie hesitated, but then nodded quickly. “Sure.” She made a dash for the door.
Natalie gathered her notes and stuffed them in her messenger bag, then sent a quick text inviting Lindsey to join them. She approached the Queen General’s table as the last few couples escaped the room, their voices disappearing down the hallway.
“Good evening, Mrs. Elias,” Natalie said.
“Natalie,” the Queen General said in that commanding way that made Natalie wonder if she’d been Attila the Hun in a previous life, “is there any particular reason you’ve been interfering with the Golden Husband Games planning committee?”
Natalie opened her mouth. Closed it.
A slow fuse ignited the long trail of injustices she’d endured from this woman since her mother died. Her shoulders snapped back, and she swallowed the nasty bitterness that would’ve otherwise colored her words. “I’m sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“So you deny coordinating security for the Games with the Bliss Police Department?”
Relief swept hard and fast through Nat’s shoulders. Maybe too fast. This, she’d prepared for. “The Bliss Police Department was assisting me in making arrangements so that cleanup from Knot Fest will count as community service for anyone court-ordered to serve hours. While I was discussing the details for the janitorial committee, the chief inquired about when they might expect to hear from the Husband Games coordinator. I merely told him what my mother had shared with me before she passed.”
Marilyn’s hard-as-diamonds expression didn’t waver. “I expect you’ll refer any future inquiries to Bonnie and Earl.”
“Of course. I mean, I did.” Her brain telegraphed shut up now, but Natalie’s mouth was already well on its way to opening for her foot. “I get the impression they’re not doing their job though.”
“It’s not your concern,” the QG said.
“It’s all of Bliss’s concern. Do you know what people are telling me? Questions about the voting software are getting no answers from them. The hospitality tents for the husbands and wives? Not reserved yet, and there’s a big political rally in Willow Glen that day.” Natalie’s heart raced so fast, it could’ve beat a lion in a footrace. There was a line. A thin, fragile thread between improving the Games and destroying her own work to make sure the Games still happened. And Natalie was riding up to that line with an out-of-control chainsaw. “The sunflower field? They don’t even know where it is.”
Marilyn’s chest puffed. It was a slight movement, but it made her look eight times more intimidating than normal. “Once more, Miss Castellano, the Games are not your concern.”
“The Games bring in more tourist revenue than almost any other single Knot Fest event,” Natalie said. “They make Bliss unique. Bonnie and Earl are ruining them, and you don’t care.”
“I suggest, Miss Castellano, that you remove yourself from my business.” The pointedness in the QG’s cold blue glare took on a know-all, see-all, hear-all quality. “All of my business.”
Nat swallowed her own tongue.
She knew.
The Queen General knew Natalie had been the one who called the health department.
“I understand you were seen with CJ Blue at the wedding cake monument,” the QG continued. “I believe I made my expectations of you clear.”
Hearing his name, hearing the reminder that Nat wasn’t worthy of his company sent a wave of conflicting emotions through her veins. She’d done a decent job of not running into him again since Monday, which had her both frustrated and relieved. And then worried about why she was frustrated that she hadn’t seen him.
She had issues.
“Pardon me,” Natalie ground out, “for not having the powers of premonition about where a grown man might be every minute of every hour of every day so that I can appease your ridiculous expectations.”
Marilyn’s expression went hard enough to crush diamonds. “For conduct unbecoming of a Knot Fest committee member, I’m placing you on probation from the committee. One more misstep, Miss Castellano, and I will remove you. Are we clear?”
I quit.
It was all she had to say. Give the Queen General exactly what she wanted so Natalie could live in peace. No Knot Fest committee meetings where she didn’t quite fit in anymore. No more putting off finding whatever it was she’d do after Dad sold the shop. No more crossing this damn woman’s path.
But Natalie couldn’t walk away from the Games. Not when they were still her mother’s legacy, and not when that legacy was on the brink of falling apart. She could still do something to make her father proud, and she could still do something good for the people of Bliss who weren’t irrational, pain-in-the-ass Queen Generals.
She gulped down the Bite me rising in her throat, and gave a tight nod instead. “Yes.”
The flick of the QG’s finger dismissed Natalie. Nat knew better than to give her any more excuses to talk. She swallowed the lump of cotton in her throat. “Have a nice evening, Mrs. Elias,” she said instead.
Because her mother taught her to have manners, even when she didn’t mean it.
Chapter Eight
NATALIE WAS FUMING so hard her windshield was fogged over by the time she arrived at Suckers. At the door, Lindsey gave Nat a once-over. “That bad, eh?”
Beside her, Kimmie nodded emphatically. “On the epic badness scale, it’s like a forty out of ten to be called to stay after a Knot Fest meeting.”
Natalie was too occupied picturing the Queen General dying a slow, painful death of suffocation by her own righteousness to do much more than just breathe.
Lindsey linked her arm through Natalie’s. “Nat? You okay?”
“No.” She couldn’t stop shaking her head. “She put me on probation. Because I was publicly seen with C—with you know who. Bonnie and Earl are letting the Games fall apart, and I’m on probation for something that’s not my fault.”
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