8. Clay
CLAY
“W ould I be jinxing us if I said this is going surprisingly well?”
My head snapped around at the sound of Mira’s question.
I hadn’t noticed her sneaking over to where I was standing, close to the area where the bride and groom would exchange their vows in less than twenty-four hours.
Dante and Eleanor shared a quiet laugh, holding hands, lost in each other.
It was encouraging to see. I would never have considered him a romantic, but then I wouldn’t have seen myself that way until I met Mira.
That didn’t mean I couldn’t scowl at her, albeit playfully. “You need to take that back,” I warned. “There is still plenty of time between now and the final wedding guest stumbling out of the ballroom tomorrow night.”
“You are such a cynic. How in the world did I end up married to such a cynic?” She tapped her chin, narrowing her eyes when snapping her fingers. “Right. Because my papa sort of forced us into it.”
For the moment, it seemed we were unobserved, with everyone involved in their own conversations now that the rehearsal had gone off without a hitch. There was still time before dinner was set to start. We were ahead of schedule.
I turned to her, tucking a dark curl behind her ear and letting my hand trail down the side of her neck. “You don’t regret it, do you?” I asked. “There’s never a moment where you wish you hadn’t gone through with it, is there?”
Her brows drew together dramatically in surprise.
She tended to be pretty dramatic at times, especially when she thought I was acting like an idiot.
“What would make you ask a question like that?” she asked, staring up at me, almost smiling in disbelief.
“Haven’t I shown you how happy I am? You’ve literally heard me thank Papa for bringing us together, especially when Sera was a newborn,” she added.
My heart swelled when I thought back to that day, watching her hand her father his first grandchild.
It was a privilege they might have both missed out on, as he had a close call with his heart shortly after our wedding.
That sort of thing tended to add significance to even the most mundane events, to say nothing of something as monumental as welcoming a new life into the world.
It was a precious memory. I considered myself lucky to have witnessed it.
“I love you,” she told me, her voice firm but heavy with emotion. “It doesn’t matter how we ended up together. It only matters that we are meant to be. And we somehow found a way to build something together that was better than anything we could’ve done on our own.”
That was the truth. I pulled her in for a hug, my lips brushing her forehead. “When I was watching the two of them practice their vows just now, it made me think of us. How glad I am that we redid our wedding the right way. You deserve that much.”
“Excuse me.” We both turned our heads at the sound of Rowan’s voice, watching her almost flee the ballroom with Penny on her heels. Spencer was crestfallen, confused, and concerned.
“Do you think she told him yet?” I asked, watching it all unfold. Mira had sworn to secrecy after Rowan confessed her pregnancy during their girls’ lunch.
“I guess not, considering how upset he looks. Gosh, I wish she would,” Mira whispered. “I suck at keeping secrets.”
“Think she’s worried about how he will react?” The idea was laughable like he wouldn’t be thrilled.
“If anything, he’s probably more worried that she’s so queasy all the time. Remember how I was those first few months with Sera?” she asked with a chuckle.
“Would you do anything differently if you had the chance?” I asked, though I knew the answer before she smirked and rolled her eyes.
Yet she found a way to surprise me. “Oh, please. I would have three more kids… at least,” she decided.
“Is that so?” I asked, intrigued.
“Hold your horses,” she whispered with a soft giggle, teasing, backing away until she was out of my reach. “I’m not talking about you putting another baby in me tomorrow or anything like that. But yes, definitely.”
We would have to come back to this discussion sometime very soon.
For now, I settled for heading over to the adjoining event room, where the table was being set for dinner.
Everything was set using the wedding’s color scheme of silver and black.
When I’d expressed surprise at Eleanor’s choice, she had only laughed it off.
“ My first wedding was a pastel nightmare forced on me by my mother-in-law, ” she’d explained.
“ Look how that marriage turned out. I want something different. ”
As for Dante, he was happy if she was happy. Then again, men didn’t normally care about things like that unless they were hosting the event, the way I was.
Rowan had returned by the time we took our seats around the table. “You’re looking a little pale,” Dante’s mother observed, offering a gentle smile. “Maybe you should go lie down.”
“I agree,” Spencer chimed in despite Rowan’s gentle protests.
“See?” Mrs. West nodded to Spencer. “Listen to the baby’s daddy. Sometimes, men are worth listening to at times like this.”
Oh no.
The table fell completely silent. Even Dante’s friends, who I would assume didn’t have women spilling secrets to them, sat with their mouths hanging open and their eyes wide. I wasn’t sure if anybody took a breath for a beat or two.
“I’m sorry. What did you just say?” Spencer went from staring at Dante’s mom to staring at his wife instead. “What did she just say?”
“This is not how I wanted to tell you,” Rowan whispered, pale-faced.
“Oh no.” Mrs. West covered her mouth with her hands, her eyes bulging from over the top of them. “I’m so sorry! I thought he knew by now!”
“So, wait a second.” Looking around the table, Spencer asked, “Am I the last to know? Who else heard about this?”
One by one we sheepishly raised our hands, Eleanor’s parents included. Rowan sat back in her chair, groaning. “So much for keeping secrets,” she whispered with a head shake.
“You know how it is,” Penny offered while Summer’s had bobbed in agreement. “Significant others don’t count when it comes to things like this.”
“You’re pregnant?” Spencer took her face in his hands, then placed one of those hands over her stomach. “Why didn’t you tell me? Is this what you’ve been keeping to yourself?”
“Maybe we shouldn’t be having this conversation here,” Rowan murmured, glancing guiltily around the table. “We’re stealing focus.”
“Well, hell, it seems like everybody knew besides me now. It’s everybody’s business, right?” he countered.
“For the record, we didn’t know,” Grayson offered from his end of the table. “But congratulations?”
That was all it took to break the tension, and the laughter couldn’t have come at a better time.
“It’s just that you’ve already been worried about me with the firm expansion and everything,” Rowan explained to Spencer.
“I knew you would just worry more, and I guess maybe I felt a little sheepish. Like maybe you’ve been right, and I can’t handle everything. ”
“If there’s one thing I’ll never doubt, it’s how much you can handle.” Spencer mimed wiping sweat from his forehead, chuckling. “There I was, thinking you were ill and didn’t want to tell me.”
“You’re happy?” she asked.
“Fucking ecstatic!” He pulled her in for a tight hug while the rest of us offered faint applause. Mira dabbed the corners of her eyes with her napkin, and tears rolled freely down Penny’s cheeks.
The hug quickly ended, though, with Rowan waving her hands and shaking her head. “Okay, enough of our drama. Let’s get back to the reason we are actually here.”
Dante cleared his throat. “I’m not sure I know how to follow that,” he admitted, and we all laughed again. Spencer looked downright stunned but in a good way—a man who didn’t know what to do with all his good fortune. I could certainly relate.
Standing, Dante picked up the champagne flute in front of his plate the way the others had. I was pleased when one of our servers smoothly and discreetly replaced Rowan’s champagne with a glass of what she quietly announced was ginger ale. We trained our people well.
“We wanted to let you know it means the world to have all of you here with us.” Dante smiled down the length of the long table, acknowledging everyone as his gaze landed on them for a beat at a time. “This wedding represents the continuation of something we started a long time ago.”
His words made me think of Spencer and Rowan, who exchanged a loving look. The timeline of their relationship was a lot like Dante and Eleanor’s, both separating for years before finding each other purely through fate.
“The past year together has been everything I could ever have dreamed of,” he continued with a loving smile down at his fiancée.
“And I consider myself the luckiest man in the world, knowing I got a second chance at loving the woman who was meant for me. I was far from perfect in the past,” he concluded with a frown.
“But I am going to devote every day of the rest of my life to being exactly who you need, Lenny. You deserve nothing less. Thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity to love you.”
Before we had the chance to toast, he held up a finger. “Also, Lenny, thank you for not telling me about Rowan’s baby because I don’t think I could’ve kept that to myself for long.”
“See?” Rowan called out with an exasperated sigh.
“At least somebody knows how to keep a secret around here.” We were all laughing as we lifted our glasses and toasted the happy couple.
The mothers of the bride and groom wiped away happy tears, and Eleanor did the same, kissing Dante when he returned to his chair.
It was damn near miraculous, the sense of peace and satisfaction that settled over me as our meals were served.
We had pulled out all the stops in the kitchen, from a lavish antipasto to the pasta course, which boasted black truffle shavings topping a rich alfredo sauce, to mouthwatering wagyu beef and blackened salmon, depending on our guests’ preferences.
“I need to stop eating this,” Eleanor fretted even as she cut another bite from her steak. I couldn’t blame her. The beef was like butter, melting on my tongue. “If I’m not careful, I won’t fit into my dress tomorrow. Then what will I do?”
I was fairly sure Mira did a full-body cringe at the idea. I squeezed her knee under the table, and we looked at each other, giving our heads the tiniest shake. “And you were worried about me jinxing us?” she whispered.
Dante laughed indulgently. “It’s only a little extra steak. I’m sure it won’t make a?—”
His voice cut off suddenly enough that we all noticed, looking toward the head of the table.
I had known him for years by then after first investing in his club in LA.
He was the first of my friends to learn of my sudden engagement, in fact.
I’d never seen him looking the way he did now, like a ghost had walked into the room.
It wasn’t a ghost. It was a man, probably in his sixties, wearing a button-down shirt and drab gray slacks.
His face was heavily lined like that of a longtime smoker, and there was a distinct nervous energy about him.
He stopped dead in his tracks, pinned in place by Dante’s disbelieving stare.
I was only vaguely aware of Mrs. West’s soft gasp.
Dante rose, his eyes never leaving the man who had caught all of our attention. “Who is it?” Eleanor stood beside him, taking Dante’s hand, looking up at him with concern written across her face. “Sweetheart, who is it?”
He looked completely stunned. Gobsmacked. There was a second when he might have forgotten how to speak. His throat worked, his lips twitched, but nothing came out until he managed to utter two words. “My father.”
His father who had not been invited. “I don’t even know where I’d find him, ” Dante had assured me weeks ago. “And I wouldn’t be interested in seeing him anyway. He made it clear when he walked out on us that I never mattered as much as his gambling addiction. He would only ruin the day.”
Yet somehow, the man stood in front of us now.
I looked toward Mira, whose worried gaze met mine.
Cursed.
The entire fucking weekend was cursed.