Chapter 9 #2
Even Naomi Copeland, owner of Sweet Tooth Bakery, and her wife Svetlana stopped by to ask if Jenna had seen him because they both couldn’t get over how perfect of a male specimen he was.
They were tempted to ask him if he’d consider being a sperm donor not even because of how hot he was but because of how nice he was and how great of a dad he was to his daughter.
If there were two women Jenna would have thought could have been immune to his charms, it would have been Naomi and Svetlana.
Jenna was convinced it was the money. It had to be.
Money did funny things to people. She wondered if those people didn’t know he was a billionaire, if they’d think he was so hot, so nice, such a good dad.
Would they still want his sperm then? Would they be tripping over themselves?
Would they be giving Max Colburn ten free throws because their mind was blank?
She seriously doubted it.
“It turns out Deacon St. Claire…”
Here we go. What was it going to be? Serial Killer? Stalker? Secret double life?
Maybe she needed to stop watching Dateline.
“Is Liam and Poppy’s half-brother.”
Jenna dropped her make-up brush on the floor. That was not what she had on her Bingo card. That was…she didn’t know what that was.
“What?!” Yaya shrieked.
“Yeah, well, and Phoebe, Pippa, and Paulina’s too,” Frankie added.
Liam, Frankie’s husband discovered the man who he grew up thinking was his father was not, in fact, his father. His biological father was a man named Michael Davies who was married to a woman named Teresa and had three daughters, Phoebe, Pippa, and Paulina with.
It turned out Liam’s mom wasn’t the only woman Michael, who passed away almost ten years ago, was unfaithful with.
He’d carried on a two-decade long affair with a woman named Kerri and produced a fourth daughter, Poppy.
And now, it seemed Michael was a very busy boy because apparently Deacon St. Claire wasn’t a St. Claire after all, which was crazy to think about.
“How you know this?!” Yaya demanded.
“AJ found out because, well, he’s AJ.”
Frankie’s twin brothers AJ and Niko could not be more polar opposite despite looking identical.
Niko was a World Series-winning major league baseball player.
AJ worked in cyber intelligence for the military and also closely with the CIA, he was a literal genius.
Yaya told Jenna all about her grandsons, the twins.
She talked about them and Frankie as if they were her own children.
Unfortunately, their father, Yaya’s oldest son, passed away when they were young, but Jenna had a feeling she saw a lot of her son in the twins.
“We had to call Michael’s parents, Bampi and Momo, the legitimate Davies sisters, Michael’s wife, Teresa, and Poppy’s mom, Kerri, all to come over and tell them the news. Thankfully, they had all met Deacon either on Halloween or Thanksgiving.”
“Why he not tell truth from beginning? Why he lie?”
“We haven’t talked to him yet. I’m guessing because he’s rich and he wanted to make sure that his brothers and sisters were actually people he wanted in his and his daughter’s life.” Frankie rested her head back on the chair and closed her eyes again.
“You call and invite to wedding!” Yaya demanded clapping her hands.
“What?" Frankie’s eyes popped open.
“Yes! Wedding. Is family day! He is family!”
“Yaya… this is not… you’re not…”
“What I’m not?!” Yaya’s arms flew up in the air, knocking Jenna’s arm, sending her blending brush flying. “Is my day! I am bride, yes?! Yes! You call! You tell him come! Family together now!”
Frankie jumped out of the chair to retrieve the brush, but Jenna beat her to it. She walked across the sunroom where it had flown and picked it up.
“Yaya, you have to be still while Jenna does your makeup,” Frankie explained.
“Is fine, fine, fine.” Yaya waved her hand. “She can do!”
“It’s fine,” Jenna assured Frankie.
“You call now!” Yaya insisted.
“Poppy will be here soon. Can we just make sure she’s okay with it? Don’t you think we should make sure Liam is okay with it?”
“Of course is okay! Is brother! And is my day!”
Frankie looked at Jenna, who had given up on doing Yaya’s makeup at this point and had decided to focus on her hair.
“Let me go talk to Liam.” Frankie grabbed her coffee and headed out of the room.
As Jenna gently unspooled the rollers from Yaya’s hair, she felt eyes staring at her reflection in the portable mirror she’d set up. Yaya tilted her forehead towards the mirror, her face scrunched in disgust. “You wear for wedding?”
“I can’t stay for the wedding,” Jenna reminded Yaya as she looked at her reflection.
She was wearing a loose black long-sleeved shirt, black pants, and black ankle boots. It was her typical wedding day work look. She wasn’t the one getting married. Her job was to blend behind the scenes.
Yaya gasped as she clasped the rosary beads around her neck. “What?! Yes, you stay! Of course you stay?! You are my Barbie girl.”
The first time Yaya met Jenna, she called her a Barbie, to this day, Jenna wasn’t sure if she meant it as a compliment that first time. But now she knew it was absolutely a term of endearment. She called her my Barbie girl.
“Remember, I told you that I have another bridal appointment scheduled this afternoon.”
“No, no, no!” Yaya shook her head and finger. “No! You cancel! I’m favorite client! You are my favorite Barbie girl!”
“Yes, you are my favorite client, but you only told me you were getting married ten days ago. I rescheduled two regular appointments to be here to do this.” Jenna met her eyes in the reflection.
“But I can’t cancel on my other bridal to stay for the wedding, I’m sorry. I can’t. It’s her wedding day.”
Jenna had considered it. If it were anything other than a bridal she would have.
Prom, graduation, anniversary, reunion, anything.
It broke her heart that she couldn’t witness Yaya say I do.
But she couldn’t let a bride down. The bride had booked her fourteen months ago.
She’d done her practice look ten months ago.
She couldn’t cancel ten days before her wedding.
That just wasn’t in her DNA. Thankfully, her regular clients that morning knew Yaya, and both understood why she’d had to reschedule.
Yaya looked like she wanted to argue but then sat back in the chair with a humph. “Who gets married first week in December?!”
You, for one.
“Winter weddings are on the uptick.” Jenna pulled out another roller.
“When you get married?”
“I did that already,” she reminded her. “Twice.”
“Yes. Same. But I do again.”
“You had a better experience than I did,” Jenna reasoned. “Wait, you were married twice before this?”
“Yes, first time as part of cover for mission.”
“When you were a resistance fighter?”
“Yes, and then showgirl and owned a tobacco factory and artist and pilot,” Yaya listed.
“You were a pilot?” Jenna knew about the tobacco factory, showgirl, and artist but not the pilot. This was why she loved talking to Yaya. Every time she spoke to her, she learned something else.
“Yes. In wartime you do whatever need to do.”
The woman had literally lived a thousand lives and had photos to prove it. She was Jenna’s favorite client, not just in Hope Falls, but of all time.
“See fearless,” Yaya stated, Jenna was pretty sure about herself. “And love, scariest of all. Some good. Some bad. You try again. But love only thing that matters!”
“I have love.” Jenna loved Blake with all her heart.
“Yes, you love daughter.” Yaya waved her hand in front of her. “But daughter leave and then you alone.”
“I like being alone,” Jenna lied.
Jenna was reaching up to remove the second-to-last roller when Yaya yanked her hand down and flipped it over, so her palm was facing up right in front of Yaya’s face.
“What?” Jenna asked. “What are you doing?”
“See here.” Yaya pointed to a line on her hand.
“Is love line. And this, this say who is love and if connect…” A wide smile appeared on Yaya’s face.
“Ahhhh, good girl. You found love.” Yaya clapped her hands.
“You know him. Now just say yes. Simple.” She reached up and patted Jenna’s face. Beaming. “Good, good, good. Good girl.”
Simple? Good girl? You found love?
“What?” Jenna looked down at her hand and then back up at Yaya, confused at what had just happened.
“I read palm. You found man. You meet already. Is soul mate. Love of life.” Yaya beamed, patted her cheeks again, with the biggest smile she’d ever seen on her face, then dropped her hands and brushed them together as if it was a job well done. “Is settled. Good, good, good.”
Jenna smiled back, not having the heart to tell her that just that morning she’d deleted all her dating apps and promised herself she’d not date until after Blake left for college.
If Yaya wanted to believe she read that on her palm and her love life was settled, especially on her wedding day, then what did it hurt?
She couldn’t be right. There was no way she was right. The only man she’d met that she had any interest in at all was her one-night stand, and he was…well she didn’t know where he was, but he was not in Hope Falls, that was for sure.