Chapter 13
Tiffany didn”t get nervous, but she was nervous now. Despite Ollie”s confidence, bringing somebody he”d just met to any kind of thing related to a wedding was either a baller move, or an act of someone who really did intend to be Just Friends.
The way he looked at her did not make Tiffany feel friendly at all.
No, that didn”t sound right. It made her feel really really friendly. Maybe that was better.
She stared at herself in the hotel mirror, smoothing her dress out, and muttered, ”They”re not friendship feelings,” at her reflection.
Her reflection was not surprised by this revelation. Tiffany smoothed her dress one more time—it was a pretty, summery thing, white cotton printed with tiny strawberries, fitted through the bodice and flared through the short skirt, with a sweetheart neckline and cap sleeves—and slid her feet into the thick-soled clogs she favored in the summer. They made her about three inches taller, which was enough that stepping out of them always felt like a genuine step down. Someday she was going to try five-inch soles, but she was afraid she”d never stop wearing them.
Yeah. She was nervous. Usually she”d be out the door by now, not fiddling with a small purse and making sure she had her room key and everything else she needed.
Tiffany Wright did not fiddle about nervously, she told herself, and marched off to meet Ollie and his entire family at a wedding rehearsal dinner that there was definitely no reason to be slightly freaked out about oh my God.
Ollie was, at least, waiting in the lobby as promised. And, as promised, he wasn”t terribly formal, although he”d traded his shorts and t-shirt for slacks and a button-down shirt. But he wasn”t wearing a tie, and the shirt was open a couple of buttons, and he had the sleeves rolled up to expose strong forearms.
A little quiver went through Tiffany. She”d obviously seen his forearms before. He”d been wearing t-shirts. But the effect of the rolled-up sleeves, whew. It wasn”t even something she was crazy about in general, but on Ollie? Whew.
He glanced up as she came out of the elevator and acquired a flatteringly stupid grin. ”Wow. You look terrific, Miss Wright.”
Tiffany laughed. ”Miss Wright?!”
”I don”t know! You look so pretty I felt like you needed a ”miss” or something there!”
”I”ll take it. You look very nice yourself.” He looked more than very nice, but Tiffany suddenly felt stiff and a little embarrassed, especially as he offered her his elbow. This was all such a bad idea, probably. She”d wrecked his cousin”s wedding plans! They”d probably throw her out the window when she came in!
Ollie offered his elbow, and Tiffany took it, strangely reassured by the gesture. He murmured, ”They”re looking forward to meeting you,” which did less to reassure her than it should have, and then they were in a big, handsome private dining room with terrific old windows and a gorgeous chandelier glittering above the table.
There were also something in the region of twelve thousand people there, and most of them seemed to be huge.
Tiffany actually stopped just inside the door, hit by both the sheer number of people and the amount of noise they were making. It took her a minute to decide there probably weren”t actually more than thirty or forty people, but a disproportionate number of them were really large. Like, the dudes on her construction crew would fit in nicely.
There were a couple of long-haired younger men who might have been twins, and a very large man who looked a great deal like the groom, only bigger. There was the groom, too, of course, and a much older version of himself with a pretty woman who only looked small by comparison to the men around her. Tiffany saw Charlee, the bride, who wasn”t short at all, despite what Ollie had thought. She had several inches on Tiffany, and was much rounder. They couldn”t have shared clothes at all. Good thing Tiffany had had a dress, after all. A tall man with silvering hair was with purple-haired Mabs, the woman Tiffany had met earlier that day, and the retro-wearing librarian was laughing at something they”d said.
Tiffany looked around for Noah, and couldn”t decide if she was disappointed or relieved that the boisterous little boy wasn”t in attendance. There were so many people, and they clearly all knew each other. Tiffany only had Ollie. She felt like Noah would have been an ace in her pocket.
”They”re much less alarming than they seem,” Ollie promised in that wonderful accent of his. ”And they”re going to love you. Should we get the most terrifying part out of the way first?” He began to lead her into the crowd, although Tiffany thought bolting for the door might be a better idea.
”I don”t know,” she whispered. ”What”s the most terrifying part?”
Just as she finished asking, Ollie elbowed one of the large men out of the way and said, ”Mum! I wanted to introduce you to my friend Tiffany!”
It was too late to run, or even to hiss you”re introducing me to your MOTHER?! at Ollie, but for the space of a heartbeat, Tiffany seriously considered just…fainting. That was still a thing people did in times of great stress, right? Probably? No? Well, maybe she could bring it back.
Except she had to shake Lily Campbell”s hand now, which meant it was too late to even faint. Ollie”s mom was tall. Everybody here was tall except Tiffany and Mabs. ”Hi,” Tiffany said faintly. ”It”s nice to meet you.”
”You too!” Lily had an American accent colored by a long time in Australia, and a brilliant smile. Although her hair was silver, Tiffany could see a lot of Ollie in her bone structure. Great cheekbones, terrific jawline. She was beautiful, and said, ”I”ve really been looking forward to meeting you!” with genuine enthusiasm.
Tiffany, more honestly than politely, said, ”I didn”t know I was going to meet you until right now and I would have run away if I”d had the chance.”
Lily laughed right out loud, drawing momentary attention before everybody went back to their conversations. ”Yeah, that seems fair. You don”t usually have to meet the mother on the second date, do you?”
”Third!” Ollie protested.
”How can you possibly have been looking forward to meeting me?” Tiffany asked, mystified. ”Ollie and I only met yesterday.”
”Oh, well, he told us about you this morning,” Lily said cheerfully. ”I knew right away I had to meet you. He said you”re?—”
Oliver lifted his foot, deliberately put it on his mother”s shoe, and put weight on it. Not much weight, but enough to startle her into silence. Then she gave him a look of parental injury that he, apparently didn”t buy. ”You don”t get to steamroll me or Tiffany, Mum. I did tell her about you this morning,” he said to Tiffany, ”but don”t let her enthusiasm scare you off me, okay? I”m perfectly normal and not at all intense.”
For a moment both Tiffany and Oliver”s mother were united in giving him a skeptical look before Tiffany said, ”You”re kind of the most laid-back intense person I”ve ever met, but you”ve definitely got an intensity about you.”
”You see?” Lily said with clear triumph. ”She understands you already! What about you, Tiffany? Are you intense or do you just kind of let things wash over you?”
”Intense,” the groom, Steve, said over Tiffany”s head. ”She was going to pull town hall down around the clerk”s ears if the whole contract situation didn”t get fixed, and now she”s rebuilding the gazebo in like twenty minutes. She”s on a short list of women whose way I don”t want to get in.”
”I”d better be the first person on that short list.” Charlee, the bride, wound her arms around Steve”s waist and gave him a sweetly besotted smile. She was very, very pretty, with curling brown hair and a round face, and, like Tiffany, had visibly muscular biceps, although hers were more padded with fat than Tiffany”s own. Tiffany absolutely would not want to arm wrestle the chef.
”You are, of course, the first woman on that list,” Steve promised her. They both turned smiles on Tiffany, and Steve said, ”Welcome to the fffff, ow!” That was as Ollie stepped on his foot, too, with more weight than he”d stepped on his mom”s. Steve, more credibly injured in his gaze than Lily had been, said, ”Funhouse, Ollie, I was gonna say funhouse!”
Ollie squinted at him suspiciously, and although Tiffany was absolutely sure Steve had not been going to say ”funhouse,” he also maintained the look of outraged innocence long enough, and convincingly enough, that Ollie offered a grudging, ”Oh. Sorry.”
”Come on.” Charlee put her hand out toward Tiffany. ”I”ll introduce you to everybody, and I promise you do start being able to tell them apart after a while. I”m glad you were able to come with Ollie,” she added as she drew Tiffany off. ”I know I was crazy-weird yesterday about the gazebo?—”
”You were not,” Tiffany said. ”You were absolutely not. You were incredibly calm for somebody whose wedding venue just got destroyed. I”m so sorry about it.”
”It”s okay. It”s fine,” Charlee said with an emphatic nod that suggested she might even mean it. ”The truth is, what matters is we”ll get married, and whether we do that at the pub or in the gazebo isn”t that important. It took me a minute to remember that, but now that I do, it”s okay. Okay?”
Tiffany smiled. ”Okay. Now, I”m sorry, but were they all actually, like, 3d printed from the same model or something?” She gestured at Steve, his brothers, and their father, which made Charlee laugh.
”You should have seen Bill the first time I met him. He was bundled up and looked three times bigger than he actually is. So he”s the big one,” as if there weren”t a stunning number of big men in the room anyway. ”He”s really funny and sweet, but super, super stressed these days and it”s making him into Mr. Grouchy Responsibility Guy. They run a brewery in Renaissance, Colorado—do you know it? Yeah, me either, except Steve moved out here from there a few years ago—and they”re having a hard time with the business right now. Their dad just retired, see, and it”s all on Bill, and, you know. Stress. You do know! You own your business, right?”
At Tiffany”s nod, Charlee nodded enthusiastically too. ”Yeah, so you do know. It”s a lot, even with a partner, and his brothers aren”t really partners. I mean, they”re great, they definitely do their part, but they”re not the money guys, you know?”
”Ollie”s a money guy,” Tiffany said. ”Has Bill talked to him?”
”You know what, I don”t know, but he should. Good thinking. I”ll suggest it. Anyway, and you know Steve, right? The other two are the younger ones, Jon and Laurie. Laurie”s the one with the braid right now. They”re not twins, but they play them on TV. Or at least at the Renaissance festivals they do. So what do you think of Ollie?”
”He”s amazing.” The words slipped out before Tiffany could even consider them. ”I”m sure that sounds ridiculous. I just met him. But he”s amazing. It”s like he instantly got me and knew how to step up to help me. That does sound crazy.”
”It doesn”t. That”s how I felt when I met Steve, so I get it. But that means I should definitely let you go back to him instead of introducing you to a million cousins.”
Tiffany smiled at her. ”Charlee? I really am sorry about the gazebo.”
To her surprise, the other woman gave her a quick hug. ”It was an accident and I”m glad your guy is okay. The rest of it, well, I”ve seen how much work you got done today. We can always fix the paint job in the photos with editing software, if it comes to it.”
”Now why didn”t I think of that?” Tiffany went back to Ollie, smiling. Knowing Charlee wasn”t mad at her helped the rest of the evening go well, although she mixed up Jon and Laurie at least twice and never did get most other peoples” names at all. It didn”t matter, she told herself: she wasn”t likely to see any of these people again after the playground job was done.
Or Ollie, once the wedding was over. She”d learned he had plans to fly out to Renaissance, Colorado with the cousins and visit them for a while, then travel around the States, seeing tourist attractions before heading back to Australia.
Those were obvious, fun things to do, if you were visiting the other side of the world, and for some reason, the very idea of him leaving made Tiffany”s heart hurt. It wasn”t like she could blow off her job and follow him around, though.
So she”d better make the most of what time she had.