Love You Always (Buttercup Hill #5)

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

E lla

I have a bad habit of getting to destinations early. Maybe it’s years of morning call times on set, but I hate showing up and finding that everyone has been waiting on me.

Today, I’m a full day early for my meeting with Beatrix Corbett, who offered to walk me through the restaurant at Buttercup Hill and kick off six months of wedding planning. I normally wouldn’t show up anyplace twenty-four hours early and unannounced, but I’m here for…reasons.

And I’m really hoping the wedding planning won’t take six whole months. It’s just a party, after all. A spectacle.

Yes, I know women have been getting excited about their wedding days since the beginning of time, but I’m just not one of them. I’m too practical to get caught up in details like whether to start with a soup course or a plated appetizer. And I spend so much time getting fitted into wardrobe for work that choosing between duchess satin and raw silk dresses feels like a snooze .

Yup, instead of a bridezilla, I’m a bride van winkle—just wake me when it’s over.

I’m also a bride who’s currently facedown in a dusty parking lot, trying to figure out whether my skirt is caught or the world has just turned upside down. Probably a combination of the two.

A deep sigh escapes me before I even think about turning right side up. So typical.

It’s not that I’m naturally clumsy per se, but I do see my fair share of the ground, and I have scars on my knees to prove it. Long story, but let’s say it’s a good thing I’m not a model because I’d never make it down a runway.

Fortunately, no one saw my latest brush with gravel. I assume this is true because I’m pretty nearsighted. I only hear the faint chirp of birds and a soft rustle of wind through whatever tall trees are dappling me with sunlight and shadows. Taking a long breath, I tug on my skirt, which responds stubbornly, still stuck to whatever caused me to trip.

I tug harder this time, and my ankle twists to the side.

Oh.

I’m actually caught on myself.

My skirt, a flowy thing with little eyelet cutouts along the hem, is stuck in a love affair with the kitten heel of my slip-on mules. I bought the innocent-looking peach-colored pair because they have a low heel. The high ones cause all sorts of balance problems, so I stick to low ones. Not low enough, apparently.

I feel for the edge of the skirt and free the pointy heel from the fabric. The wind billows my skirt up and over my face, and the sides of my shoes grind against the tan gravel as I flail about. Serves me right for not just wearing tennis shoes.

“Make a good impression. Look cute.” The perennial instructions from my publicist, Nancy, ring in my ears. She doesn’t say these things on repeat because she’s a nag. She says them because otherwise, I’ll show up in gray sweats with my hair in a pile on top of my head. No makeup. Coffee spilling out of my ceramic mug because I’m too stubborn to use the swag from my last two movies. It feels bougie.

The coffee sits half-spilled in a chipped mug, balancing on a notepad in the center console. I ripped the scrunchie from my hair on the way up the Buttercup Hill driveway, but at least I managed to follow her instructions about the rest, putting on a pale peach sweater, a floral skirt, and the dastardly shoes.

Yanking them off my feet, I chuck them at my Fiat. Checking to make sure no one is watching me with a phone, I roll from my side to a kneeling position, fully aware I just flashed my thong underwear at a bunch of bluebirds and cabernet vines. I hope they won’t judge.

My phone rings, so I crawl toward the car to find my purse. My car answers automatically, blasting its caller ID on speakerphone.

“Call from Mom.” The British voice I chose for my navigation sounds like my mother is paying me a social call at Downton Abbey.

“Accept.” I sit cross-legged on the gravel and look toward the car speakers as though my mother can see me through them. “Hi, Mom.”

“Morning, sweetie. Just checking in.” The hollow sound of her voice tells me she’s driving someplace, and I pray she’s actually using the hands-free option because she’s already gotten two tickets for being on the phone. I don’t think the Department of Motor Vehicles has infinite patience for that sort of thing.

“Are you using speakerphone?”

“What? Oh, yes, yes. I’m in the car. How are you?”

“I’m okay,” I say.

“Just okay?’

“No, I’m good. I’m fine. How about you?”

“Well, you know…”

I stifle a laugh and roll my eyes. My mother is the Chicken Little of suburban Los Angeles. She lives in a gated community with my dad in sunny seventy-degree weather and somehow, some way, there’s always something dire about to happen.

“Tell me,” I prompt. At least it will give me a second to dust myself off before I show up unannounced at the winery where I plan to get married. It’s bad enough I came a day early, but now I look like a dusty desert creature with tumbleweed hair.

“I was at Starbucks on Ventura, you know, the one in the mini-mall, not the freestanding one on the corner…” She pauses as though I need to visualize the scene. As though every Starbucks doesn’t basically look the same.

“Okay…”

“I’d taken a walk with Victoria around Balboa Park, and then she had to leave to go to work at the furniture place, and I decided to treat myself to one of those coffee drinks you introduced me to. You know, the ones with the vanilla?”

“Vanilla latte,” I supply.

“Yes. That. And it was the strangest thing—there was a bird in the store.”

I close my eyes. Here we go… My mother, a fearless feminist who started marching for women’s rights in the sixties and never stopped, does not like “unpredictable wild animals” to come indoors. We are long past the time when I can joke that “predictable” wild animals aren’t really a thing. The fear is real, and I’ve seen my mom cower when a pet hamster was on the loose in the house.

“Someone brought a pet?”

I can hear my mother huffing, which means she’s now parked her car and is walking up the driveway carrying a bag of something. She always has a bunch of junk in a bag, whether it’s dry cleaning or a few things from the market. “No, from outside. Apparently, it flew in before I got there, and people were standing on chairs trying to shoo it from the store. The baristas were going to call the fire department. I didn’t stay to see how it all ended. ”

“Well, I imagine the fire department got the bird out, given that they have ladders.”

“I know I’m being silly. It’s just that…” I can almost hear her biting her lip, debating whether to tell me the last part.

“What, Mom? Just say it.”

“I’m thinking twice about my idea that you should have a dove release at the wedding. All those birds flying around, even if they are doves. Especially if there’s a baby…”

And there it is, the real reason she’s calling me. She’s been uneasy about my decision to adopt a baby ever since I told her I was going through with it. Her list of reasons is long, starting with the fact that I’m not married and ending with her worry that I’m too busy with my career to parent a child.

When I told her a couple months ago, I did my best to explain my reasoning. At thirty-three, I want to start making plans for my future. My doctor has concerns about some fertility issues that will make getting pregnant unlikely, and I’ve always wanted to adopt because it breaks my heart to think about kids who need a parent—I want to be that parent.

I’ve always loved kids, and as each of my friends becomes a parent, I play the favorite aunt. But every time I walk away, it leaves me hollow. I’ve dreamed about raising a child for a decade, and once I commit to something, I’m all in. And I want this. I really, really want this.

My mom has “thoughts.” This isn’t new. When I was in the middle of a dating binge of bad choices and big mistakes, she was the first to warn me about getting a bad reputation. Turns out she was right.

That fueled her confidence, so whenever she has a thought about my personal life, I hear about it. Most of her concerns come out as veiled worry about something else—doves, the weather, the migration patterns of birds in general—but at their heart, she’s worried about me.

“There’s no guarantee the adoption will go through before the wedding, and I wasn’t planning on holding a baby up at the ceremony as dove bait,” I tell her.

“Okay, well that helps, certainly. And I suppose a lot could happen between now and the wedding date, so I’ll stop worrying.”

“Spoiler alert. You will not .”

“You’re my daughter. I’m always going to worry about you. Especially when it comes to relationships.”

She has a point. I have a trail of bad boyfriends in my wake. If there was a noncommittal, unreliable bad boy within a fifty-mile radius, I probably dated him. It’s no secret that my mom wishes I’d fall in love with a fabulous man and deliver her a passel of grandchildren so she can babysit to her heart’s content.

My version is proceeding nicely. I’ve filed my adoption application, cleaned up my image as a serial dater who can’t commit, and I’m getting married in six months to a great guy.

Fine. A decent guy.

Okay. A guy.

The wedding has gotten blown up into a spectacle made for Town and Country magazine, who arranged a story with my publicist. But…eyes on the prize. There’s a baby out there who needs me as a mom, and extra cameras won’t kill me. It’s just one day, and I’ll try to think of it like any other media event—I’ll smile and pose in my dress, looking like the America’s sweetheart everyone assumes I am in real life.

At least Buttercup Hill is a pretty place for a media circus wedding. Looking up at the towering trees that line the driveway, I inhale the sweet scent of plants and rich soil. It’s so beautiful that maybe just being here this morning will convince me I’m doing the right thing by marrying Callum Haywood.

Yes, that Callum Haywood, the country music star, who proposed on stage last year at the Stagecoach Music Festival. The story of the lovelorn princess landing the bad boy rocker was pure publicity gold. I wish I could say I fell hard for him, but… it ’s a marriage of convenience, cooked up by our respective public relations teams, that will allow us both to quiet our wild reputations. Mine got particularly bad after an ex with a bruised ego shouted to every social media channel he could find that I’m unstable, reckless, and difficult. Adoption courts don’t look fondly on words like that.

Callum’s record label told him to clean up his reputation as a cheater or they’ll cancel his tour, and my adoption lawyer said my chances of being approved will be better with a stable partner. I’m not proud of the charade, but I’m willing to do it in order to adopt. The fact that I need a man for that bugs the crap out of me, but I pick my battles. He lives in San Francisco and I’m in Los Angeles, but we’ve made just enough appearances together—me flying to see him on tour and him staying with me and grabbing early morning coffee in LA—that we look every bit the adorable couple. Even I almost believe we’re in love sometimes.

But I have a niggling worry that Callum may have gone back to his old ways. A few too many nights when he’s been on tour over the past few months when he didn’t answer my calls after his shows. He always used to answer my calls.

A few too many times when his tour manager made excuses for why I couldn’t come to Callum’s house when I was in town. My best friend lives in Oakland, and I love staying with her, but I don’t like being told what to do.

Maybe I’m just being paranoid because I don’t want anything to derail our wedding.

So I focus on the doves.

“No dove release. Consider it done.” I say goodbye to my mom, and the caw of a bird catches my attention. It’s no dove. More like an angry starling swooping overhead and disappearing in the grapevines that sprawl into the distance.

I slip my shoes back on and take a deep breath. It will all be fine. As I walk toward the brown barn of Buttercup Hill, I step on the hem of my skirt. Again.