“Aw, Mandi,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m not the real Lee Santori.”
“I’m happy enough with the real Fleck,” Mandi said.
“And my daughter certainly seems delighted with the real Santori,” said Saguaro, Azure’s mother, balancing a glass of champagne with one hand and restraining a rambunctious small boy with the other. “Although I do wish she had let me bake the wedding cake. We’re doing such fun things with wedding cakes these days. Why, I decorated one for a couple in Sedona that left little to the imagination. I ran out of flesh-colored icing, it was so big.”
Azure broke away from Lee in order to cut off this direction of the conversation. “Come with me, Mom, Karma wants to talk to you. She says she’s been troubled with morning sickness lately, and I told her you could clue her in to the right herbs to cure it.”
“Oh, of course. Just think! A baby already!” And Saguaro trotted off with Azure to dispense motherly advice.
“The tarot cards showed all this, you know,” Goldy said to Azure’s father in all seriousness.
Eamon O’Connor raised both bushy eyebrows. “All what?”
“That Lee was powerful and rich. That he had a secret. That he would soon find his soul mate. I told Azure. The one thing the cards didn’t tell me was that I would profit from their engagement. They both gave me their lottery tickets, and I won sixty-three dollars and seventy cents.”
Isis came over and took her father’s arm. “Goldy, what was Azure telling me about the chicken?”
“Oh, it’s our new attack chicken at the Blue Moon. I wish I could have brought Fricassee to the wedding, but something tells me that she wouldn’t like the ocean any more than she likes Old Spice.”
Azure, back from making sure her mother found Karma, grinned. “Fricassee certainly sent Paco packing, didn’t she?”
“Did I mention that Paco has started wearing English Leather since that little incident in the lobby of the Blue Moon? It makes him slightly less charming, in my opinion,” said Dorrie.
“And Tiffany? How about her?”
“Still a 40DD, and she’s moved to Minneapolis.”
“Good riddance.”
Leah, Uncle Nate’s wife, descended upon them. “Azure, this was the most elegant wedding. You O’Connor girls certainly know how to do things right.”
“Stop your kvelling, Lee-Lee,” Uncle Nate said affectionately. “I’m the one with bragging rights to these young ladies.”
Karma, looking radiant in a flowing cerise dress, joined them and slid an arm around Azure’s waist. “You’ve got to agree, Uncle Nate, that we O’Connors know how to pick great guys. Even though,” and she nudged Azure in the ribs, “it takes kissing a lot of frogs to find one sometimes.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Paulette. “How about giving Rent-a-Yenta some credit?”
“Sure, Paulette,” chorused Azure and Karma, exchanging a look of extreme patience.
“So what do you do?” an attentive Joe Santori was asking Saguaro over near the stern railing.
“I bake cakes in the shape of body parts,” she said brightly, smiling up at him in her most flirtatious manner.
“How interesting,” he said. “And where do you live?”
“In Arizona.”
He moved closer. “I’m visiting there next month. Perhaps we could have dinner.”
“Why, what a good idea,” Saguaro said.
Azure pulled Karma into an alcove in the main salon. “Did you see my new father-in-law chatting up Mom? What if—”
“—if they get together? It’s fine with me.” Karma smiled broadly.
When Azure found Lee explaining how the Samoa’s dining room table in the main salon used a hydraulic system to lower into the floor to become a coffee table, she joined him.
“There are lots of fun things about this boat,” she said to the group of wedding guests. “Like the gold faucets in the shape of swans. Like the complete exercise facilities and the onboard masseuse.”
“An onboard masseuse? No wonder you don’t want to come back to Boston, A.J.,” Harry Wixler said glumly. “No wonder you want to sail around the world on this tub.”
“It’s not all going to be vacation time,” Azure informed him. “Lee and I will be working together to get the Grassy Creek franchises up and running.”
“You lost him as a Wixler Consultants customer,” said Harry. “For that I would have fired you if you hadn’t already quit.”
“Never mind,” Azure said consolingly. “Lee’s dad will be calling you on Monday to consult on one of his overseas businesses. And Dorrie is looking forward to handling the account.”
“Azure, when are you going to throw your bouquet?” It was Dorrie, who nurtured great hopes of catching it.
“In a minute,” Azure told her, and when she positioned herself in front of the bandstand on the aft deck where a dance floor had been set up, she honestly thought that Dorrie would. To her surprise, it was her mother who caught the bouquet, much to the delight of her daughters.
“Like I said, I’ll be in Arizona next month,” Joe Santori said with a suggestive gleam in his eye, and Saguaro had the good grace to blush.
It was later while they were dancing that Lee said to Azure, “Do you still feel like Alice falling down the rabbit hole?”
“More like Cinderella with her prince,” Azure said, and he laughed.
“Who enjoyed pretending to be a frog.”
“I only hope you won’t turn back into one if I kiss you again,” she said, smiling up at him.
“Let’s try it,” he said, and he stopped dancing and took her in his arms.
They kissed, taking their time about it, to the accompaniment of enthusiastic applause from the wedding guests.
“Am I still a prince?” he asked tenderly afterward.
“Yes, and I am overjoyed, my love, to be your frog princess,” she said, kissing him once more.
ISBN: 978-1-474-02534-8
LIFE IS A BEACH
Life Is a Beach © 2003 Pamela Browning
A Real-Thing Fling © 2003 Pamela Browning
Published in Great Britain 2014
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited
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