Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
She was going to lie.
Despite what Dax said, she didn’t see a choice. If Rob knew where the dress had been, not even Carson and Perry could hold him back from beating Dax to a bloody pulp. She couldn’t let that start up again. Right before the wedding. Right in front of the wedding guests. God only knew what her mother, sisters, and Tiffany would do if they were told where it had been found.
Certainly they’d order him from the wedding.
Maybe have him thrown off the resort property.
She wouldn’t put it past her mother to have him arrested for stolen property.
None of that could happen. She knew her family. He didn’t. She didn’t care that he didn’t like it. She couldn’t tell them the truth. Even if that put her at odds with Dax. It was in her blood to mitigate disasters. She didn’t start them.
She pulled out her phone to text Jeffrey on the sly as Dax drove, his entire demeanor stiff and unapproachable. That she had hurt him she had no doubt, and she hated that.
Except the question remained like a dark whisper in her head. Who else would have hidden Tiffany’s wedding dress? And how could it have ended up in Dax’s trunk?
She had no answers there, and right now, she couldn’t waste her last working brain cells considering the possibilities.
There was a wedding to get done.
Meet me in the parking lot. Stat. We found Tiffany’s wedding dress. I need you to take it to her.
Best Brother Ever
You what? Okay. Whew! I’ll be there with bells on. God, I need a Manhattan.
Then I need you to come back to our cottage and escort Dax to the wedding. Keep on him like a June bug.
Best Brother Ever
She pocketed her phone again and stared out the window until they arrived at the resort. Jeffrey was waiting for them, looking rumpled, although his cravat was freshly tied. The minute Dax parked, she was out the door.
“You really found it?” Jeffrey asked, hugging her quickly before pushing back.
“It was in the back of my Bronco,” Dax confessed as he came around the front.
She wanted to knock her head against the side of the car.
“Someone put it there,” he just had to add.
Jeffrey’s eyes widened. “But who? That’s?—”
When he stopped mid-sentence, she knew he understood the implications. “Jeffrey, I need to change. Will you take Tiffany her dress?—”
“I’ll handle it.” Dax opened the back door, which prompted Ariel to slide under his arm and stand in the way, shaking her head. “Ariel, I am taking that dress to your sister and telling her what we found.”
“No, you’re not.” She put a hand to Dax’s white jacket and gave it a gentle but firm push. “Jeffrey is. You are coming with me to the cottage and helping me get dressed. I need you to zip me up.”
He glared at her. “You are not keeping me from telling the truth and defending my character.”
“Oh, dear sweet baby Jesus in heaven, Captain Hotpants!” Jeffrey cried as he walked to the other side of the car and opened the door, pulling out Tiffany’s dress. “This is not the time to be a good Boy Scout. We need to get bridezilla into her dress and get her married off to your asshole friend lickety-split. We’ve delayed the wedding basically until the bride is ready. The natives are restless, and you’re already sporting a shiner. We’ll deal with this frame-up later.”
He started walking off, but Dax called his name sharply.
Jeffrey only turned and looked down his nose at him. “Honey, I say this with love, but get that stick out of your ass. This is your make lemonade out of lemons moment. Listen to Ariel. It’s her specialty.”
With a flick of his head and a touch of flourish, Jeffrey strode off. Dax glared at Ariel. She glared back.
“So…are you going to zip me up or not?”
His mouth twisted.
She gripped his arm and started walking, aware she was dragging him a little. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Ariel, I don’t like this.”
His voice was flinty, but he was still coming with her, so she wasn’t going to tempt her luck. “Neither do I, but let’s take things one step at a time. We can do crime solving later.”
He turned and gave her a frigid glare. “You’re pissing me off.”
“Good!” The cottage was in sight, and he was still following. “Me too! Personally, I hate fighting with people I love. And I’m a newbie over fighting over something like a frame-up. Although Tiffany did blame me for breaking Mother’s favorite Waterford vase one time, which I couldn’t un-prove. Is that a word?”
“Sorry, but I hate your sister,” he spat. “And your whole family except Jeffrey.”
“We have that in common, then,” she answered, her limbs as heavy as concrete now. “I sometimes do too.”
Sherlock greeted them at the door. She leaned down and put her head against his fur, hugging him. He nuzzled her softly, and she felt rare tears fill her eyes.
“Sherlock, you take care of Dax.” She took Dax’s stiff hand and led him to the couch, pushing him not so gently down. “Sit.”
Her precious dog leaped into Dax’s lap—all one hundred pounds of him. “I thought you needed me to zip you up.”
“Settle down first.” She headed to her bedroom, knowing she should be rushing around, but all the life was drained out of her.
Another Deverell family event.
How could she have imagined it would be any different from the rest?
She pulled on her dress after stripping, glad she’d left it in her closet and not taken it over to the bridal suite. She’d known she couldn’t handle being in there with the others. She’d also been hoping to avoid the makeup. Which she had. She almost laughed at that, but she was worried the laugh would turn into a sob.
God, she hoped everything was in place. Maybe Tiffany would be too elated her dress was back to ask many questions.
Oh, who was she kidding?
The crisis had leached all the color from her face, she noted in the mirror, so she went and added powder and a touch of blush along with the nude pink lip gloss Jeffrey had chosen for her.
Staring at herself in the mirror, she brushed her hair. She looked like bridezilla’s sister with her glazed-over eyes and pale features. Blush couldn’t get rid of that look on her face. And then there was her hair. The curls were sticking out in all directions. She smoothed them with some water and clenched her eyes shut.
Please let this wedding come off without a hitch.
Taking one last look, she tried to smile before heading back to her room and stepping into her heels. Maybe she should go barefoot. Be faster. Then she shook her head. With her luck, she’d step on a nail and end up with lockjaw or something.
Her being hospitalized wouldn’t make Tiffany more compassionate.
Then she remembered how her sister had stood up for her about the wig. Later she’d threatened her with Grandma’s house again. She just couldn’t predict what her sister was going to do. She made a point of strapping on her garter flask. Because she was not going to leave home without it. Not today.
Striding back to the main room, she found Dax where she’d left him, Sherlock in his lap. He stopped rubbing him under his ears and looked up at her, his green eyes missing the warmth and light she was used to. “Your dog has gotten hair all over my dress whites.”
She laughed in a high-pitched tone she didn’t recognize, then pressed her hand to her mouth. “Sorry.”
His mouth gave a twitch before he flattened it. “Can I get up now?”
“Sherlock. Off.”
Her dog jumped from Dax’s lap and came to her side. She rubbed him gently and smiled into his expressive eyes. He gave a whine. Yeah, that’s how I’m feeling, buddy.
“Will you zip me up?” She turned and presented her back to Dax.
There was a pause, and then he kissed the nape of her neck. Slowly. Tenderly. Long enough to make her throat ache. The hiss of the zipper finally rent the silence. A knock sounded on the door. She went over to answer it. Jeffrey stood on the other side, his face red.
“Went that good, did it?” she asked rhetorically, lifting her skirt and taking out her flask and offering it to him.
He gave a sputter of laughter before taking a drink and handing it to her. She took one pull herself before handing it to Dax. He waved his hand, refusing.
“Okay, boys. Let’s go. Sherlock, I’ll see you later.”
With another pat, she was outside, her heels clicking on the path. The rub of the cold metal flask against her thigh was a comfort. When she arrived at the wedding site, she scanned the area. The guests were all seated and talking to each other, happy wedding music playing over the loudspeakers. The sweetgrass baskets filled with flowers, a Charleston wedding tradition, graced the Welcome Table. Everything looked to be in place except for the bridal party, who were likely waiting for their cue.
Then she caught sight of motion in the sky and lifted her head. Pelicans were circling overhead behind the tent.
“Ariel!”
She turned at her name and watched as the event coordinator ran from the tent, skirt flying up as she pumped her arms to reach her.
“What is it?” she asked, rushing toward the woman.
“It’s the koi!” She was panting when they met. “The pelicans are diving into the fountain and picking them out one at a time. I tried to stop them?—”
“Oh my God!”
She didn’t care about lockjaw. Taking off her shoes, she ran for the pond behind the tent where the open bar was situated. Dax was right beside her, she noted, but then she was stopping short at the sight before her.
Eight pelicans were taking turns diving into the clean water tank. Three koi were all that were left, and they were swimming in rapid circles, trying to evade the pelicans’ giant beaks. One dove in, caught a bright orange koi, and then hopped out of the water onto the pool’s edge, lifted its beak, and tossed it into the air, catching it in its mouth and working its throat to gulp the whole fish down. It disappeared before her eyes.
She stood frozen in shock.
Dax flew forward, crying out and waving his arms wildly. The pelicans flew off a short distance, but there were more of them than there were of him, and they seemed to know it. Worse, he was in the way of the best meal they’d had in weeks—to the tune of a few thousand dollars of sashimi—and they weren’t going to let some lone idiot in a white suit shove them off their turf.
“Ariel!” Dax shouted. “Stay back.”
Three of them dove at him, their individual wingspans easily reaching twelve feet. He thrust up at first, but they were coming for him, kamikaze moves in their nature apparently, something Dax clearly wasn’t ready for despite being a naval pilot.
She started running. She wasn’t leaving him. Suddenly the truth in her heart was absolute. He was her wingman, and she was his. She was not leaving him behind, no matter what.
Ariel looked around for something to throw and ran over to the short ice sculpture of a romantic couple sitting on a park bench on the side of the bar Tiffany had insisted on despite the incident at her first wedding. She picked it up, then ran back and hurled it at the closest pelican.
She missed, but the sound of it crashing to the ground sent more of them flying off. She could see their beady black eyes taking her measure.
Running back into the tent, she found the closest place settings and, picking them up, ran back out and started hurling forks, spoons, and then knives into the air at them. Her projectiles struck one pelican, who gave a loud squawk. Dax was still thrusting his arms into the air and yelling like a madman. The pelicans swirled over them before finally lifting up higher in the air. She watched them, gripping rumpled napkins and a single sterling silver fork, glaring at them, hoping they understood she was not backing down.
Not here.
Not now.
They had pushed her too far.
When they’d finally headed off, she looked in the pond, where a lone koi remained, swimming speedily in circles, clearly not certain the danger was over. She walked over to the water, staring at the poor thing. How did one soothe a koi? She knew how to soothe a dog.
“Everything’s okay, folks,” she heard Dax call out to a few people who’d come running. “Get back to your places.”
Right. Because the wedding was going to happen. With only one koi. She stared at it, still in shock.
“Are you all right?”
Dax suddenly stood beside her. His hands gripped her shoulders, and then he was pulling her hard against his chest. She clung to him. And then she started to laugh. Wild laughter. Deranged laughter. The kind that prompted jokes about someone needing to take Valium or be fitted for a straitjacket.
That thought cut off her laughter. Mother might just do it. “God, that was awful!”
He wasn’t laughing. No, he was holding her protectively against his chest. “You shouldn’t have done that! I told you to stay back. They could have killed you.”
“What? Pecked me to death? I’d like to see them try.”
When she pushed back and held up her fist, he cupped her face. “You didn’t leave me.”
She put her hand on top of his, holding his gaze, her heart somersaulting in her chest because the warmth was back in his beautiful green eyes. “No, I didn’t, and I don’t plan to.”
His mouth curved, accentuating the swelling in his jaw. “I’m glad. I was afraid for a minute that Elizabeth and Stephan?—”
She silenced him with a gentle hand to his mouth. The very idea made her ache. “Never! Elizabeth and Stephan are meant to last forever.”
He pulled her to him again, his hands gripping her like he was never letting go. Which she was fine with. “I thought so. Glad the pelicans reminded you.”
“I didn’t need reminding.” She needed to see his face as she said this. “You and I got pissy with each other. It happens. Doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”
“Ditto,” was all he said amidst the tenderness in his eyes. “I want to go on the record and say that I’d do anything to get your grandmother’s house for you, but if it doesn’t happen because nothing has gone according to plan—the pelicans drove that home and then some—I promise we’ll find our own home and make new happy memories there for our family.”
She melted just like the broken ice sculpture lying on the ground beside the lone koi in the pond. “I’d like that.” With that beautiful promise, they were back on firm ground. “And I have no idea how Tiffany’s wedding dress got in the back of your car. Or how the irrigation system at this resort could have backed up. I also don’t know how a…what is a flock of pelicans?”
He brushed his thumb along her cheekbone. “I actually know this one. A squadron.”
“How military of them. Which explains their tactical precision today. Anyway, I don’t know why a squadron of pelicans decided to pick out the koi from our symbolic little wedding pond. Or how any number of things happen at Deverell family functions. What I do know is that you did not do it, and I’m sorry that for a minute there, we were at odds about it. All right?”
Nodding, he cupped her face in his hands. “All right. Since we’re offering confessions, I might have had a stick up my butt a little like Jeffrey said. Sorry about that.”
She patted his very famous ass, the one that had been named the best buns this side of Biloxi. “Everything all right back here now?”
“Elizabeth…” The word was positively electric. “Keep your hand there and find out.”
Then he was lowering his head, and she was rising on her bare feet to meet him and kissing him with an urgency that reminded her love was everything, and life was precious, even in the midst of disasters.
Just like Grandma always said.