Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
“What happened?”
Ariel’s shocked cry had Dax lengthening his strides and walking around the women. He’d been hanging back out of courtesy, but Ariel needed him. When he reached them, Tiffany had sunk down in her red heels until she was crouching near the ground, as if she couldn’t stand up any longer. He could see why.
“The maintenance crew said the sprinkler system backed up,” the bride-to-be said hoarsely.
Dax gazed at the wreckage before him, nearly rocking back on his heels, and he was used to watching the wreckage caused in flying incidents. “Holy shit—excuse me, ladies,” he remembered to say by way of an apology.
But like his grandpa said, if there was ever a time to call a spade a spade…
Mud pits were oozing in what had been a grassy area that earlier would have made Augusta and the Masters proud. He knew they were thinking it had to be the curse, and they might be right. Or it could simply be a sign from God that this wedding was not supposed to happen. Wasn’t this coming after Tiffany had disappeared last night and sought out her ex?
“Oh, Ariel,” Tiffany moaned, looking up with bleak eyes. “What are we going to do? The maintenance manager said it would be impossible to fix before the wedding.”
He watched Ariel almost slump in defeat. That he could not abide. He came over to join them, the other women hanging back, their dramatic whispers audible.
Ariel turned to look at him, and she nodded briefly before putting an arm around her sister. “Run us through the situation, Tiffany. Then we’ll figure out a plan.”
Her sister moaned again before practically throwing herself at Ariel, making Sherlock take a few steps off and plunk down on the ground. “They found it like this sometime late morning. After calling in the groundskeeper and then someone from the irrigation company, they told me they still don’t even know where the leak is. They can’t fix anything until that happens.”
Dax knew he should feel relieved. The wedding was looking like it wasn’t going to happen. Except Ariel was pale, and she looked almost as heartbroken as her sister. God, he felt conflicted. “What’s the plan for finding the leak?” he asked.
Tiffany pinched the bridge of her nose. “A crew is supposed to be coming from the company with special equipment, but they said finding the leak won’t matter. The ground will need to dry out, and it would be impossible for that to happen before the wedding. The resort’s event manager tried to call you to explain we might need to move the wedding site—the lodge is too small—but then she clammed up and said it would be difficult to do since it’s so last minute and it’s high wedding season.”
This is what he’d wanted since she’d hit on him, and yet there was no victory in it. “Where’s Rob?”
“He went for a run after talking to both the maintenance guys and the irrigation person.” She pushed her platinum blond hair behind her ear, looking pale and in shock. “He said he was going to punch something if he didn’t run it off.”
Dax couldn’t blame him. This was a shitshow with not much to be done. He glanced at Ariel, who was biting her lip, clearly still trying to think her way out of the impossible.
“Ariel, if there’s anyone who can figure out what to do, it’s you.” Tiffany started crying, and while Dax knew the situation was horrible, he couldn’t help but think he’d never met a woman who cried as much as she did. “You know how much I wanted to get married here.”
The crying grew louder. Ariel comforted her sister. Dax stalked out onto the field, stepping around mud pits, examining the problem. Sherlock followed him, sniffing the ground and making a circle, his tail pointed in the direction of their trouble.
It was bad. FUBAR bad. Why in the hell wasn’t Rob here? Maybe he was taking it as a sign too? He rubbed the back of his neck. Jesus!
Ariel appeared beside him, her little body tight with tension. “Can you believe it? This kind of thing just doesn’t happen to other people.”
He thought of all the weddings in his family. They’d all been happy and disaster-free. Not even a drop of rain to mar them. “What are the chances of finding another venue that’s going to make Tiffany happy?” he made himself ask.
Her blue eyes narrowed. “Zero, although I’ll try, but that’s assuming anything worth having is available. It’s May in Charleston, the wedding capital of the South. Good luck there. We’d have to find a barn last minute on someone’s property to rent and then…”
She left the details hanging. It was Wednesday. They were starting to set up for the wedding on Friday.
“Okay…” he said. “So that’s one possibility.”
“A really far-off one.” She faced him and pressed a hand to her forehead. “I just have to find a solution, Dax. I have to make this work!”
He gently took her by the shoulders. “Honey, maybe this is a sign that things aren’t meant to be. I don’t know a lot about curses, but coming on the heels of Tiffany disappearing last night?—”
“Dax! I won’t get my grandma’s house if Tiffany doesn’t get married.”
“What?”
She lowered her hand slowly, biting her lip. “I didn’t want to tell you because… Oh God! Where do I start? Because you already think badly of her. Plus, how do you spin a story about your sister blackmailing you to be her wedding planner with your grandma’s house? Which was supposed to be mine anyway before Mother gave Tiffany the deed and cooked up this scheme.”
Dax couldn’t believe this. “Wait! Your sister is blackmailing you?”
Sherlock gave a whine as Ariel nodded stiffly. “I know it sounds bad, and it is bad.”
“Bad?” He cupped her face so she could see his eyes. “Ariel, this is awful. Like lower than pond scum?—”
“I know!” She stalked away. “Tiffany thought I could offset the curse or manage the damage. And I’ve worked so hard on this wedding. God! I mean, if I have to pick up a shovel and start digging out this mud, I will. Dax, that’s how committed I am to getting her married.”
And getting her grandma’s house…
The cute white one with the green shutters, the palm tree she’d tried to climb, and the shell chimes that she’d made when she was a girl.
He set his hands on his hips as he studied her. Her chin was thrust in the air, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d raised her fist and given a solemn vow. His heart was raw inside him, he realized, pulsing thickly, and he knew what he was going to do as he listened to its beat. What he had to do.
“Ariel, when I lost confidence in my mission as best man, I realized that you were my new mission. That I was going to do everything in my power to help you. I’m not going to deviate from that now.”
Her lips wobbled slightly before she walked over and wrapped her arms around him. “You have no idea what hearing that means to me, especially knowing how you feel about things.”
“That doesn’t matter.” He gathered her tighter toward him and stroked her back. “You matter. Because I’d do anything for you.”
Suddenly, Rob’s words came back to him. The things you did for…love. Whoa! L-O-V-E. Yeah. Okay. That was… Early. Very early. But not surprising. Especially given how things stood between them. On the water today, he’d looked toward the future and could envision fishing with Ariel over and over again. He knew Gramps would approve of her. His family too. That was the gold standard as far as he was concerned.
He angled back from the woman who’d brought him back to something he loved today. The vibrancy she’d had earlier was nearly gone. He was determined to bring back the light inside her, the one he loved, the one she shared so freely with others.
“You’re the best.” Her voice was hoarse with emotion. “Do you know how much?”
He lifted his shoulder, uncomfortable. “You’d do it for me.”
When she nodded, he knew he’d made the best decision of his life. Her. Helping her find a way out of this. Putting his pride and sense of duty to Rob aside.
“The only way I see this place changing before the wedding is if we find the leak and resod the whole area. It’s going to be a bitch, but it’s doable with the right muscle, and you know I have the right muscles, Elizabeth.”
“That I do, Stephan.” She leaned up, tugging on his shirt, and laid her mouth on his.
The kiss was soft, slow, and sweet, and when she drew back, her eyes were brighter. He also could feel a new and stronger conviction that he would help her through this crisis and any other she’d encounter.
“All right, assuming they can find the leak stat,” she ticked off in a practical tone that called to the military officer in him, “I’d need to talk to the resort about resodding. I don’t know how many staff they have for this kind of emergency. Getting everything done in time is going to be tough.”
Then she shook herself, mentally steeling herself for what lay ahead, and this was something he loved about her too. She was tenacious. He could see why she and Sherlock found people for a living. Putting a comforting hand on her shoulder, he flexed his bicep. “Like I said, you’ve got my muscles and a few others of the Navy’s best coming. I’ll bet they’ll come early to help. We can be grunt labor if needed. Don’t lose faith now.”
Because she had to have that house—if he had to redo the whole area by himself.
“How could I lose faith when I have you by my side?” She stroked Sherlock under the ears when he returned and pressed his head against the side of her leg. “All right, I need to huddle with the event manager. The guy who trained me in disaster recovery’s motto was brick by brick.”
He could see her standing on the site of destruction, assessing the damage, girding herself for what needed to be done. Sherlock would be at her side. Like he was now. “Brick by brick, baby. I’ll go talk to Rob about getting the rest of the Navy guys on board.”
Cupping her face in both hands, he waited until she met his eyes. He held her gaze, showing her his determination and his concern for her. Then he lowered his head and kissed her lightly on the mouth until she sighed. When he leveled back, he was more settled too, one hell of an indicator about his feelings.
She enticed him.
She intrigued him.
She made him laugh.
She made him hard.
She made him calm.
She made him want to give her everything.
What more could you ask for in a woman?
He held her by the shoulders because he didn’t want to let her go. “I’ve got ya.”
“I know.” She blew out a breath. “Thank God. I’ll catch you later.”
With that, he took off for the beach, hoping to run into Rob coming back. He spotted him about two minutes into his own jog, hampered some by his flip-flops. Rob increased his stride when he spotted him and came to a dead halt when he reached him, wiping the sweat from his brow with his forearm. He’d changed T-shirts, thank God, and seeing the simple Navy emblazoned across the front gave Dax the additional punch he needed. Teamwork. He and Rob were trained in that. It would guide them through this mess.
“Thanks for coming,” Rob bit off, wiping his brow, and as a start, it wasn’t bad. “You heard?”
Dax nodded crisply. “It’s a shitshow, but we have a working plan. Ariel is going to talk to the event coordinator or whatever they’re called. If they can find the leak ASAP, we can dig out the mud and resod before the wedding. You, me, Carson, Perry, and the staff here.”
“It’s a good plan.” Rob rubbed the back of his neck. “Jesus, when Tiff first told me about the Deverell wedding curse, I thought she was being dramatic. But now? Shit, it’s been one thing after another. I still don’t even know why she was so upset before. Why she pulled the disappearing act. She wouldn’t say.”
Dax knew a fishing expedition when he heard it. He clamped his teeth together.
“I take it from your stance that you’re not going to tell me.” He turned to fully face him. “Never mind. I probably don’t want to know. I only know that when I told Tiff we could get married downtown at city hall and then have a party at a restaurant somewhere, she lost her mind. This wedding…”
Dax watched his friend kick at the sand and felt his frustration.
“This wedding means more to her than I can understand, but I love her, so I’m…doing the best I can.”
Dax understood that, and he put his hand on his friend’s shoulder to tell him so. “That’s all any of us can ever do.”
He cracked his neck. “One thing I want to know is why you’d help dig out a bunch of mud—and put in fresh dirt, because we’ll have to do that too—and then resod the whole damn thing for a wedding you’re so dead set against.”
Dax’s jaw locked. Sure, he might have decided to help because of Ariel, but as he gazed at his friend, a hundred good memories flashed through his mind. Suddenly he knew he wasn’t only doing it for Ariel, and that was okay too.
“Don’t be a dick. You know why. Now, can we head back and get things going? You clearly need something to do, or you’re going to go crazy.”
Rob joined him as Dax started walking back to the resort. “Thanks, man.”
He flipped him the bird.
When his friend laughed, some of the tightness around his diaphragm lessened.
Maybe he and Rob could get through this wedding and still be friends.