Chapter 1 #2
Then we all saw a flash of ivory chiffon behind the crowd.
The bride was on her way. A confusion of colors followed.
The female portion of the wedding party.
Two flower girls, dressed in aqua blue. My daughter Holly, and Red’s little sister Reggie, both eleven.
They held big baskets full of flower petals.
Red had chosen sea-foam green for her color, since I had asked her to.
I still dreamed of the green ball gown she’d worn the day she saved my ass from certain death.
My eyes sought for it and saw nothing else.
I couldn’t wait to rest my eyes on her. When she was around, everything made sense. Everything could be okay.
When I was looking at Red, I regretted nothing that had happened to me, because it had brought me to her.
I stood there, clutching the box that held Ethan and Kat’s rings, counting the seconds until I could see her, and actually breathe again.
Cass
“Cass! Cass!” Reggie grabbed my arm, her face alight with excitement. “Angela said that we could bring Circe and Calypso up to the Mountain House while Ethan and Kat are in Italy!”
“And they’ll probably be there for almost two months! That’s most of the summer that we get to play with the kitties!” Holly added, jumping up and down.
Freya, my new sister-in-law, currently adjusting flowers in Kat’s sleek blonde updo, turned to smile at them. “Did you really think that Angela would resist your wicked wiles?”
“I think the kitties will enjoy having the girls to play with while we’re gone,” Kat said.
Holly hooted in delight. “Yes! Circe and Calypso are the best.” She looked up at me. “You know they’re the great-great-great-grandnieces of Kat’s sister’s kitty, from when she was a kid!”
I was taken aback, knowing the horrific tale of Kat’s sisters, and their unlucky cat. It was not a thing one would choose to dwell on, particularly not on a woman’s wedding day. “Oh. I, ah…”
“It’s okay,” Kat said, seeing my discomfort.
“They actually are descendants of Penelope, my sister’s Raffi’s cat.
I reconnected with the woman who gave Penelope to Raffi years ago, and she had a litter of kittens from the same line.
It was Ethan’s idea, and it was a really good one.
It makes me feel connected to Raffi, somehow. ”
“Life just keeps on trying, no matter what,” I said.
“Exactly,” Kat agreed. “Plus, I love cats. I don’t know how they’ll feel about being moved from the town house, but I’m sure the hunting will be better at the Mountain House, and that will be fun for them.
Ethan’s town house has slim pickings when it comes to rodents. Poor deprived rich bitch kitties.”
“You look like a princess in that dress,” Reggie said reverently, gazing at Kat’s starkly beautiful gown.
Kat gave her a radiant smile. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
“Uncle Ethan said maybe if you guys decide to buy one of those houses on the coast in Italy, we can come this summer!” Holly said. “After you guys get tired of being on honeymoon, of course.”
“That’s never going to happen, so just come when you come,” Kat said, laughing. Tears flashed down her cheeks, and she lunged for a tissue. “Oh, damn it,” she muttered. “My makeup.”
We all clustered around her. “What is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s not what’s wrong. It’s what’s right.
I keep thinking it’s going to melt away, and there I’ll be, alone in some shitty apartment, eating a can of beans, wondering when the Petruzzis were going to find me and put me down.
And here I am, with all of you.” She gestured around herself, sniffling. “Ethan. The girls. My dojo.”
“Your cats,” Holly chimed in.
“Of course!” Kat dabbed her eyes with a tissue, smiling through her tears.
“Of course, my precious kitties. And I’m getting married, I’m surrounded by people I care about.
I’m going to Italy for my honeymoon with a man I love.
I’m buying a house on the beach in a lemon grove.
Where we can dock a freaking yacht. Like, seriously? ”
“I know how you’re feeling,” I said, dropping a careful kiss on her perfectly coiffed hair. “But you deserve it. And I’m so glad.”
“You, too,” she reminded me.
We gathered around her; Freya and I and the little girls, along with Milla and Rose and Kat’s friends from the dojo, Joanna and Danica. All of us trying to keep from crying, but it was no use. Tears were as inevitable as the dawn. Everyone dissolved. Mascara began to melt and run.
“Ladies? Are you ready?” Angela’s commanding voice cut through the sniffling and murmuring and tissue dabbing. “Ethan and the boys are all out there waiting, looking extremely handsome, I must say.” She registered the tears, and her eyes widened in alarm. “Is everything alright?”
“Everything’s amazing,” Kat assured her. “We’re just emotional. Which is great. I’m loving being all emotional. We’ll be right there, Angela. No worries.”
We got ourselves into line. Kat had insisted on marching alone down the aisle, in spite of the bombastic opinions of Colonel Hobart, Ethan’s ex-commander from the Rangers.
He’d gotten his back up about it, but Kat held firm.
She belonged to herself, and she was giving herself to Ethan, thank you very much.
I could relate to that. Shane and I had skipped the whole wedding circus spectacle by getting married quietly in the garden at the Mountain House, with only family, the Drakes, and Milla and Rose in attendance.
Frey and I followed Kat, being matrons of honor, and then came Angela.
Then Milla and Rose, then Danica and Joanna.
Holly and Reggie were in front with their big baskets of petals.
The music began. Plaintive, tenderly plucked guitars.
The song they played was an instrumental version of one of my Nighttime Visitors favorites.
Sweet Refuge, a song that the two band members had written for Kat and Ethan.
My eyes met Shane’s, where he stood at his brother’s side.
His gaze caught me, and held me. The raw intensity of his emotions blazed out at me, and the world began to waver and swim and blur.
I was as gooey as a pan of hot melted taffy these days, and I kept getting less and less embarrassed about it as time went on. God only knew where it would end.
The ceremony was charged, poignant. I made it through the ceremony without breaking down, but I wasn’t going to be able to deal with the receiving line. No one wanted to hug a woman whose nose was as full of goop as mine.
I signaled Shane with my eyes and a flick of my hand, and slithered through the crowd toward the Greeley Manor, a newly renovated venue that was the latest go-to venue for society weddings and parties.
It was a gracious relic of the Gilded Age, lavish and gorgeous, but I ignored all the beauty of house and grounds and hustled through the rhododendron bushes toward the back entry.
Shane and I had already sussed this escape route out.
I could feel without even turning to look that he was following me.
I avoided eye contact, hurrying to the back entrance.
I peeked behind myself. He was twenty yards back, and he still had that burning look that I knew all too well, having felt it often on my own face.
We were both being naughty, bailing on the receiving line, but we had talked about this with Kat and Ethan.
The two of us were fresh off the trauma and mortal peril thing, so our stress levels were still ratcheted up through the roof.
We got a special dispensation. If the emotional noise of the wedding got to be too much for us, we could just slip away and rest our raggedy nervous systems in the quiet privacy of a suite at Greeley Manor.
As long as we didn’t run away during the vows. Which seemed fair enough.
I paused just long enough to give him a come-hither smile, then ran up the staircase.
He was catching up. I was handicapped by those ridiculous heels.
He overtook me on the first staircase, and grabbed me, and my breathless giggle cut off against his ferocious, hungry kiss, which unleased all my hunger and ferocity.
Things might have gotten quite sweaty and wild right there on the stairway if we hadn’t heard a burst of voices above.
We froze, shaking with suppressed laughter. The two people were arguing, and they did not come down the stairs, which was good, because my spaghetti straps had fallen down, and my nipples were popping right out of my dress. We were as bad as as a couple of randy teenagers.
We snorted with laughter. “The room,” I said.
“Fuck, yes,” he agreed, twitching my dress straps back up over my shoulders.
I took a moment to slip off the damn shoes so we could sprint to the suite, which was at the end of the hall.
He got the key fob out, and the second the door clicked shut, he’d pushed me up against the fancy flocked wallpaper, kissing me like a madman.
I clutched at him, yanking him closer, like I was drowning, and he was air. His hands were all over me.
I murmured in protest when he slid down to lavish some love on my tits.
I was naked to the waist, the bodice of the mint-green dress pulled all the way down, and his hot mouth felt so good on my breasts as he stroked and sucked and nibbled on them.
After a few minutes of that I was whimpering and shivering, pushing back against his mouth.
The emotion felt huge, momentous. Like there was an enormous star, blazing in my chest, and his sweet sucking and coaxing and caressing was drawing it out of me.
We were bathed in that star’s light. We glowed like bioluminescent creatures.
Suddenly he sank to his knees, shoving up the slinky silky fabric. Twitching down the panties. Pressing his face to my mound, which I had gotten trimmed and waxed and shaped just for the occasion. I was all smooth and bare down there.