by Jane Graves
"Of course you and Carl will join us for dinner this evening," Mona said. "I thought we'd go to Trattoria Romana here at the resort."
"Oooh," Treva said. "That sounds so elegant!"
"The chef used to be at Michelangelo's in Chicago. His cuisine is simply divine."
Before her father could ask if there were barbecued ribs on the menu, or maybe chicken fried steak, Sarah said, "So are you all checked in?"
Treva nodded. "That's what the man behind the counter said."
Carl looked around. "So where are our suitcases?"
"The staff has them," Sarah said.
"Well, the staff better bring them back."
"They'll deliver them to your room," Mona said with a sweet smile.
"I can carry my own luggage."
Mona smile slipped a little. "That's what bellhops are for."
"How do I know they won't rummage through it?”
"Rummage through it?" Mona said.
"Dad," Sarah said, "It's okay. You don't have to worry about them doing that here."
“They said they might go through it at the airport."
"This isn't the airport."
"So what's the difference?"
Mona drew back with a look of horrified disbelief. "Carl, dear, this is a five star resort."
"Dad! Mom!" Sarah said. "How about I walk with you to your room? I bet your luggage is already there." She turned to Randall, intending to ask him if he'd like to come with them, but he wore that bored, distracted expression she knew all too well. What was the point of dragging him along when he'd only stand there and sigh?
Instead, she gave him a kiss and told him she'd see him later. He told her he was going back to his suite to relax before dinner, which meant he intended to work. She swallowed her annoyance at that and began to herd her parents toward the door. Then she looked back over her shoulder at Mona. "Thank you so much for greeting my parents. I appreciate it."
"I was delighted to."
"We'll see you at dinner tonight."
"Yes, of course. I'm so looking forward to it."
No, she wasn't. And neither was Sarah. About a million things could go wrong when her parents didn't recognize half the silverware and the menu was mostly in another language.
When they reached her parent's suite, Sarah demonstrated how to unlock the door with their key cards, and when she opened it, her mother's jaw nearly hit the marble floor. She hurried to the huge picture window that looked out on the ocean. “Oh, my gawd! Carl! Look at this view!”
“Looks just like the South China Sea. I’ll pass."
"Will you stop? That war's been over for forty years!"
"See, Dad? Your luggage is already here."
He immediately unzipped one of the bags. "I don't care if this is a hundred star resort. I paid $29.95 for my electric razor, so it better still be in here."
"Rich people come here," Treva said. "They wouldn't stand for somebody messing with their luggage, would they?"
"You can say that again. I'm betting Mona would make them sorry they ever touched her stuff."
"What do you mean?"
"She seems kinda pushy to me."
"Carl! Don't you talk like that about Mona! She's gettin' ready to be family. We don't talk bad about family!"
"You talk bad about your cousin Crystal."
"That's because Crystal dumped a perfectly good husband and ran off with the UPS delivery man. She deserves to get talked about."
"And you've said a nasty thing or two about your brother, Ronnie."
"Only when he drinks."
"And then there's your Aunt Eileen. You once called her a—"
"Carl," Treva snapped. "Mona's a very nice woman, so I don't want to hear another word!"
Her father verified that his electric razor was still in the suitcase. Then he went into the bathroom, only to stick his head back out. "There are two johns in here. Why are there two johns in one bathroom, stuck inside those little rooms?"
"It's his and hers, Dad," Sarah said. "One for each of you."'
"Like a person can't wait their turn?"
"Carl," Treva said. "That's called luxury."
"Wasteful," Carl said. "That's what it's called." He disappeared around the door again.
"Sorry about your father," Treva said. "He's always crabby in places he's not familiar with. But don't you worry. I'll do my best to make sure he keeps his mouth shut.” She opened one of her suitcases and glanced inside with a look of indecision. "I'm not sure what to wear to dinner tonight. Something comfy, or a church dress?"
Sarah cringed. Either one of those things could be wrong, wrong, wrong. "I'm just wearing a summer skirt. Dressy top. Sandals."
"Okay. I've got something kinda like that. I went to Target in Houston and bought a few things before we came here."
Target? She only hoped her mother hadn't picked up flatware for the wedding, too.
“So tell me, honey. Are you excited? The big day is almost here!"
"Of course I'm excited."
"Randall is the man you've always dreamed of, isn't he?"
Sarah smiled, even as she wondered why it didn't come easier. "Yes. All my life."
"And you're getting married in this pretty place." Then the smile left her mother's face. "I wish we could have helped out with the wedding. If you'd wanted to get married back home, we could have managed it. But at a place like this…"
"I know. But Randall's parents were happy to do it."
"I'm glad about that. You have the man you've always dreamed of, and now the wedding you've always dreamed of."
"I'm just sorry more of the family couldn't make it."
"Now, don't you worry about that. I just told them that it's all about being married, not getting married, so missing the wedding was no big deal. But at least Liz will be here. She’s family, right?”
Liz was Sarah’s cousin and maid of honor. She had always been a little…unique. And full of mischief. And impulsive in ways that boggled the mind. She and Sarah had spent their childhood jumping rope and playing Barbies, then commiserating over boys, then betting which one of them would lose her virginity first. Liz thought the tiny town of Big Fork was entirely too boring, so she moved to Miami and got a job tending bar, which was the perfect occupation for someone as nosy and intrusive as she was. She’d mellowed somewhat over the years, but Sarah knew her tendency toward raising hell hadn’t left her entirely.
“Yeah, she’s family,” Sarah said with a smile. “But we’ll have to keep an eye on her, won’t we?”
Treva smiled back. “We’ve always had to keep an eye on her. When are she and Kelsey going to be here?”
“Tomorrow morning. They all ended up on the same connecting flight in Miami.”
Sarah couldn't wait for them to arrive. The longer she was there, the more she was dying for a drink and a chat with her girlfriends.
"I'm going to let you get settled," Sarah said, heading for the door. "Randall and I will meet you and the rest of the family at seven-thirty outside the restaurant tonight. It's the one closest to the lobby."
Carl stuck his head out the bathroom door again. "Since when does it take three shower heads to get clean? What are we supposed to do? Invite the neighbors in?"
Sarah sighed. Seventy two hours, and it would all be over.
Nick sat on a stool in the lobby bar, shooting the breeze with Gregory the bartender, who appeared to welcome the chance to chat during the slow part of the afternoon. Nick welcomed it, too. Anything to fill the gap between now and the time he had the chance to see Sarah again.
Earlier he'd watched at a distance as Sarah greeted her parents. From the looks on their faces as they gazed around the central atrium adjacent to the lobby, they'd never been anywhere as elegant as this resort. To Randall, that meant they were rural, backwoods nobodies. To Nick, they were refreshingly real, even if that meant they didn't fit in at a place like this.
Especially if they didn't fit in at a place like this.
"Hey, Gregory," Nick said, as the man set beer number two down in front of him. "Got a question."
"Yah, mon?"
"Ever been in love?"
Gregory's face split into a teasing grin. “Mi never not been in love."
Nick smiled back. "Then you're an expert."
"Oh, yah."
"What if the woman you loved thought she was in love with somebody else? What would you do?"
“Dat’s an easy one. Ah yuh de betta mon?"
"Why, of course I am."
"Den you take de gal away from him."
"Just like that?"
Gregory gave him a sly smile. “If yuh can't, den maybe yuh nah de betta mon."
Nick figured he probably had a point about that. Randall most definitely would have an opinion about who the better man was, but his opinion didn't count. Only Sarah's did.
The question was, what should he do next?
Nick decided the answer was to to stay as close to her and Randall as possible. Randall thought he was marrying a woman as stuffy and uptight as he was, while Nick loved her for the woman she really was. Maybe the more she saw them together, the more Sarah would see just how wrong Randall was for her and how right he was.
At seven twenty five that evening, Sarah looked across the atrium and saw her mother and father approaching. Her mother wore a flowered dress and a pair of chunky sandals that were far from elegant, but at least she wasn't wearing anything from JunktoJewelry.com. Somehow she'd managed to get Sarah's father to wear a tie with his striped short-sleeved shirt and khaki pants, but he kept yanking at it as if he was choking to death.
A moment later, Mona sauntered up wearing a swishy chiffon skirt and a silk tank top, highlighted with pieces of jewelry that had quite obviously not begun life as soft drink cans.
Sarah leaned toward Randall. "What about Nick?"
Randall frowned. "What about him?"
"Is he coming to dinner?"
"No."
Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. "Are you sure?"
"He doesn't dare."
Thank God. She needed all her wits about her to make sure backwoods Texas and Chicago society shared a meal together in a way everyone was comfortable with.
"We have reservations," Mona said. "Shall we?"
When the host led them into the restaurant, Treva leaned in and whispered to Sarah. "Good heavens. Look at all this silverware. How do we know what to use for what?"
Sarah gave her the solution she'd used herself more than once. "Just watch Mona and do what she does."
"I will. But I can't say for sure what your father will do."
"It doesn't matter," Sarah said, even though it really kinda did.
"Wait a minute," Mona said to the waiter. "I asked for a table for five."
"Mr. Baxter called and added one person."
Mona turned to Randall. "Did you add one more?"
"Of course not."
They looked at each other, then simultaneously slumped with dismay. "Oh, no," Mona said under her breath. "Nicholas!"
"You said he wasn't coming," Sarah whispered to Randall.
"I didn't think he had the nerve."
No, no, no! Why was he doing this to her? Why?
"There he is now," Mona said.
Sarah turned to see Nick walking toward them, his hands shoved casually into the pockets of a pair of khaki shorts, which he wore with a flowered shirt.
"Hey, everybody! Sorry I'm late." He walked right up to Carl and stuck out his hand. "Hi, there. Nick Baxter. Nice to meet you."
"Baxter," Carl said. "That makes you related to Randall and Mona."
"Yes, sir. I'm Randall's brother, although most of the time he denies it. And you must be Sarah's father."
"Carl Renfro," her father said, shaking his hand. “And this is my wife, Treva."
Nick likewise greeted her mother, giving them both a big, welcoming smile. "So let's have a seat, okay? I'm starving."
Randall and Mona couldn't say a word about him coming to dinner without making that scene Mona was so afraid of, so they gritted their teeth and kept silent. As they moved to the table, Sarah tried to do a two-step to avoid Nick, but he did a little dance of his own that left her in front of the only open seat, which just happened to be the one next to his. When he went so far as to pull out her chair before Randall even thought to, she could already feel her stress hormones lining up to send her blood pressure through the roof.
What if Nick had a beer or two and slipped and said something even close to the truth about when they'd really met? What if he did it on purpose whether he'd had alcohol or not? If nothing else, Randall was right about one thing. It was impossible to predict what Nick might do, and now he was sitting so close to her she swore she could feel the electricity he exuded leaping right off him.
I'm going to catch fire. I'm going to go up in flames and die right here, right now.
Randall reached to her lap and took her hand, yet every molecule in her body was tuned in to Nick. She tried to tell herself it was just that age-old fight or flight instinct kicking in—when danger is close, stay on your toes—but what accounted for the heady, euphoric feeling layered on top of it that made her ears buzz and her toes tingle?
She took a deep, cleansing breath. Let her shoulders droop in relaxation. Willed a pleasant smile to her lips. Ah. There. She picked up her menu, perused it casually, and told herself that in spite of everything, this was going to be a very nice dinner. A very nice evening. A very nice wedding. And absolutely nothing was going to stand in the way of—
"Surprise!"
Sarah's eyes sprang open wide. Who in the world had just shouted that? She spun around to find something she'd never expected to see in a million years.
Four of her family members, straight from Big Fork, Texas.
7
As Sarah's gaze panned over the new arrivals, her stomach twisted into a knot of apprehension. There was crazy Uncle Murphy. Chatty Aunt Marva. Loony Aunt Imogene. And—oh, God—her oversexed, skirt-chasing cousin, Dickey. And all of them were grinning wildly. They wore Bermuda shorts and flip flops, carrying tote bags and cameras and otherwise looking like tourists on their way to the Grand Canyon.
"Look at her face, Marva!" Murphy said. "We surprised her, all right!"
Surprised didn't even begin to describe how Sarah felt. "I-I can't believe y'all are here!"
Oh, God. There it was. Y'all. She'd said y'all. Ten seconds in the presence of her extended family, and already she was returning to the Texas accent she'd tried so hard to lose.
"We decided we had to come to your wedding, even if this place cost a fortune," Imogene said. "And then Murphy got the idea to make it a surprise!"
Sarah turned to her mother. "Did you know about this?"
"Of course!" Treva said, all smiles. "By the time they booked their flights, our flight was full so they had to come on the next one. But here they are!"
Sarah had no choice but to introduce them one by one to Mona and Nick. Nick looked happy to meet them. Mona looked appalled, particularly when Murphy gave her a handshake that just about dislocated her arm.
Sarah loved her family. She truly did. And she was happy to see them. But she knew what they must look like to the cultured, sophisticated people who came to a resort like this. Her parents were one thing. They were quiet and nonintrusive. Not Murphy. And once Imogene and Marva geared up, their voices carried all the way to Mars. And Dickey had his own issues, most of which revolved around his inability to grasp that no matter how much he thought otherwise, he was not God's gift to women. Turn him loose at a resort like this full of hot girls in bikinis, and all kinds of bad things were likely to happen.
"So have you had dinner yet?" Nick asked.
"Nope," Murphy said. "Unless you count those itty bitty sacks of peanuts on the plane."
"Great! We haven't ordered yet. Would you like to join us?"
Sarah said a silent prayer. Please say no, please say no, please say no…
&n
bsp; "Oh, hell yes!" Murphy said. "We didn't fly a gazillion miles to miss out on all the fun, now did we?"
Sarah almost groaned out loud.
"Of course we'd be delighted to have you join us," Mona said quickly, "but there's a problem. It looks as if the restaurant doesn't have a table big enough for all of us. So I'm afraid we won't be able to—"
"Nah, it's no problem," Nick said. "See that empty table over there? All we have to do is push it up next to this one. If everybody just shoves over a little, there'll be plenty of room. Randall, why don't you hop up and help me move it over here?"
Randall just stared dumbly at Nick, as if he'd spoken another language.
"Hey, Randall!" Nick said. "Don't just sit there. Nobody's getting any less hungry here."
Randall had no choice but to do as Nick said to avoid making that scene Mona was so afraid of. Waiters hurried over, and considerable moving of napkins and clinking of glasses ensued.
"Sarah, dear?" Mona whispered, with a smile of horror plastered on her face. "You said your family wasn't coming. Just your parents."
"I thought they weren't."
"I planned for twenty two guests. Twenty two, not twenty six!"
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I had no idea they were going to surprise me."
"Surprise someone by attending a wedding without an RSVP?"
Mona made it sound as if Sarah's family had conspired to commit murder. Then again, that probably would have been more acceptable to her that abusing the RSVP protocol.
"Well," Mona said in her best long-suffering voice, "we'll just have to make the best of it. I once dealt with seventeen unexpected guests at the Sapphire Charity Ball. I can certainly handle this."
But she still wore that look of veiled distress that said she was sure the Beverly Hillbillies had left southern California and landed in Montego Bay. Randall had met all of them before in Big Fork, but his expression now said he would have much preferred it if they'd stayed there. And at the adjoining tables, people wearing the latest designer clothes and spray tans gave them sidelong glances that screamed, You don't belong here. Kindly go away.
Finally everyone sat down, and the waiters handed menus to Sarah's family. Randall tightened his hand against Sarah's, and not in a loving way. When she looked at him, he widened his eyes. Do something about this!