Chapter 34
Planning
“Enough serious talk. Let’s get back to party planning. Constance and I can handle the decorating. Nate, can you assist Sophia with the invitations and guest list? Since you know almost everyone in town, you would be best at deciding who to invite,” Matilda says excitedly.
“We can take care of the menu,” Florence volunteers, and Elijah nods in agreement.
“Can I handle the swag?” Danika asks excitedly.
“Swag? What exactly would swag be?” Isaac makes a goofy, confused look.
We girls all laugh, and Danika explains, “Swag is like a loot bag, a party favor bag filled with nice gifts.”
Florence’s smile reaches from ear to ear. “That is a wonderful idea, Danika. I would love to go shopping with you.”
“Mother and daughter shopping spree. It’s a date.”
“I guess that leaves us with the entertainment.” Alexander gives Isaac a nudge.
“Well, alright then. We all have our to-do lists, so we’d best get started. There is not much time.” Matilda jumps up and runs to the other room with Constance in tow.
“So, Nathanial, shall I give you the tour?” I offer.
“Please do,” he says eagerly.
Hand in hand, with our fingers intertwined, I begin to show him the rest of the house. Since we’re in the family room, I decide to lead him to the library next, just off the family room and quite impressive.
Walking through the double doors of the library, we both look around at the room lined with mahogany shelving that slide on rails, revealing even more shelving. The ceiling is about twelve feet high. Every shelf is filled with books of every kind. A lovely hand-carved old wooden rung ladder is available to allow anyone to reach any book in the collection, even from the highest shelves.
“I have never seen anything like this before. It is unbelievable.” Nathanial starts gushing, “I know where I am coming to study from now on.”
I laugh at his enthusiasm. “This is only the second room you’ve seen. Just wait!” I tease.
We move throughout the remaining rooms. The gourmet kitchen, the office, theatre room, game room, exercise room, and indoor pool. We continue on to visit all eight bedrooms, all ten baths, and the study.
“The art room is one of my favorites in the entire house,” I admit as I show him the various instruments, painting, and other art supplies.
“Can you play any of these?”
“Yes. I can play all of them quite well,” I grin. “But I prefer painting.”
“Did you paint any of these?” Nathanial politely asks.
“Yeah, most of them.”
“They are beautiful,” he gushes while examining the wall of art. “Why don’t you play something for me while I look around?”
“Sure. What would you like me to play?”
“Whatever. I just want to see some of your talents,” he replies.
I decide to strum a little tune on my guitar. I begin playing a song I have been working on since my family moved here. “This song expresses all the feelings I had in the beginning until now–hate, love, fear, remorse, and everything under the rainbow.”
Near the end of my piece, it becomes very soothing and caring with a sense of acceptance.
“Wow! That was extremely moving. Who is it by?”
I can tell he feels all my emotion in the song. “I wrote it. It is a compilation of my feelings from our move to Wenham to meeting you,” I admit.
“Well, I could feel how torn you were about us, but I may even understand a little better now.” He leans over and gives me a hug and adds, “I’m sorry I caused you such distress.”
“It wasn’t you that caused the distress and anguish. Being a vampire is what caused it. I didn’t think it was possible to love a mortal,” I assure him.
We head back downstairs and to the garage, a place I know he will enjoy.
“This is my kind of garage.” He begins to examine each and every car.
We have many different sports, luxury, and foreign cars, along with a few classics and average cars. It is any man’s dream, and I knew he would love it here.
“I never knew homes such as this actually existed.” He said flabbergasted.
“Let’s go to my room and start the guest list,” I suggest.
We head back up the grand staircase to my room. It is a large room, painted white with a large bay window and window seats that overlook the garden. I have a hand-carved oak king-sized bed draped with a bright red duvet. Across from the bed is a matching armoire, and on it is perched a beautiful silver frame with a picture of Nathanial that I took that first day in photo shop. The other side of the room is a walk-in-closet and private bath. Just to the side, two small steps lead to my private reading room that boasts a small octagon-shaped window and a small scrapbooking area covered with photo albums, papers, stickers, and so on. Open on my table is my newest project, pictures of Nathanial from our first day.
In typical man fashion, he starts admiring my top-of-the-line electronics and massive music and DVD collections. We both crawl on the bed with a notepad in hand and flip on the TV.
“Groundhog Day? I love this movie. It’s a classic,” I say. He agrees, and we both laugh.
We pile the pillows to prop us up a little, get comfy, and began our guest list, starting with the most obvious first:
Elijah and Florence
Isaac and Constance
Alexander and Matilda
Nathanial and Sophia
“That looks really good together,” Nathanial admits.
Arthur and Nikole McCord
Luke McCord
Matt Barton and Ebony Triggs
Eliza Triggs
Ms. Edwina Triggs
Ben Steel (STEEL (from football)
Mr. Wilson
Mrs. Hunt
We will need to get a list of those from the hospital that Constance and Isaac will want to invite; also you need to do one for your buddy’s from football. The invite will include all of their families as well. Now that we have the guest list ready, we can work on the invitation layout. We don’t have much time to plan, as Christmas is just days away, which means New Years is just over a week away and most people probably have plans already.
We work on making up invitations on my Mac and decide to hand deliver them. We play around with a few of the programs on my computer until we find one we like. After trying various fonts, colors, and background patterns, we decide a classy and formal look is the way to go.
“Okay. I think we can print these off now,” I announce.
“Yeah, I think they look great,” Nathanial replies.
Happy New Year!
Please help us celebrate our first
New Years in Wenham
at the Pierce family residence.
182 Mountain Drive
Six p.m. on December 31
Bring the entire family for
dinner, refreshments, and entertainment.
Children’s room and nanny on hand.
After printing we add ribbons to them, making them as elegant as we can for homemade invitations, before taking them downstairs to show the rest of the family.
“They are really quite lovely. I adore the steel blue paper with the silver ribbon,” Florence admires.
“Thanks. We’ll add some snowflake and champagne glass confetti and then seal the envelopes with our family seal in red wax,”
Nathanial grabs a small basket sitting next to the sofa filled with magazines. “Can we use this to carry the invites in?”
“Yeah, sure. That will work nicely,” I reply.
“Cool. Sounds like a plan,” he says with one of his killer smiles.
Immortal Embrace Page 34