Chapter 16 #2
Cy nudged his shoulder, and Liam looked up at him and shrugged before he said, “It was worth a try.”
Coco and Ember were so excited that they were bouncing up and down next to Holly.
I couldn’t help but smile at their excitement.
Once Holly got them into place, she gave them directions and assured them that they’d be paid in cake on the actual wedding day.
She also let them know that she had a treat for them in her purse if they did well tonight.
“Good thinking,” Bella said as Holly walked past me. “Do I get a treat?”
“You get to wear the puffy dress, carry the flowers, and then get your very own mafia man,” Holly retorted.
“But what if I want a treat?” Bella called out after her.
“I’ll give you a knuckle sandwich,” Dylan offered.
“Try it, and see what happens,” Bella retorted.
“Children!” Holly yelled from where she was standing near the steps of the stage.
“God, I’m an adult, and when she yells like that, it still scares the shit out of me,” Cydney said from her spot in front of me.
“How does she do that?” I asked.
“Can we jack with her just once?” I heard Rain ask. “Please, Bella?”
“I would expect nothing less,” Bella assured her. “What are we doing?”
◆◆◆
LUCKY MARKS
“What the fuck are they up to?” Dice asked as he tried to get his son to stop chewing on the end of his hoodie string. As soon as the boy lost focus on that, he went for the patches on Dice’s vest, so Dice turned him around to face outwards, which just pissed him off. “Can you see it?”
“See what?” Flynn, one of Bella’s brothers, who had already gotten his fifteen-minute lesson on how to be an usher, asked.
“They’re planning something,” Lark’s boyfriend, Bax, answered.
“Yep!” Corey Forrester agreed.
“I knew they couldn’t get through this shit without acting up somehow,” Garvey, Corey’s twin, said in exasperation. “I should have made a bet with her.”
Stamp, one of the bikers from Tenillo, was sitting a few feet away and had been chatting with Dice about some of their club brothers.
I’d had the chance to speak to Stamp several times, seeing as how his son was the groom, and his wife was one of the wedding planners.
Our conversations usually happened at planning events Rain had to attend to prepare for Bella’s wedding.
We’d even skirted around the subject of his wife and her friends paying a visit to a certain ex-boyfriend of Rain’s who was giving us trouble. I thanked him and asked him to send my regards to whoever that might have been, although I knew exactly who had done us that favor.
Stamp chuckled before he said, “From what I’ve heard, those girls don’t know how to behave when they’re together.”
“It’s like watching magic happen,” Dice said with a grin.
“Good grief. If they make this run too long, Stan will kill them all. She’s about over this wedding shit,” Rin Tempest, one of the Colorado family, announced from his seat next to Stamp.
“She doesn’t want to be part of the wedding?” I asked.
“Oh, no. She does, but she likes the rest of the festivities more than the wedding prep. She really wants to go on a motorcycle ride this evening, and I know she’s itching to get this rehearsal over with since Bella promised that we could all go out together after the dinner,” Rin explained.
“That’s the plan,” Dice agreed. “We’re gonna drop Turner off with his grandparents and meet you guys for drinks. Well, I might have a drink, but Cyd is gonna pass.”
“I think I’d like to meet you out, if you guys don’t mind,” Bax, Lark’s boyfriend, announced. He didn’t own a motorcycle and didn’t plan to buy one, as far as I knew, but he didn’t seem to mind in the slightest when Lark went on a bike run.
“The more the merrier,” I assured him. “We’ll probably go to Spokes.”
“There they go,” Dice said before he let out a shrill whistle. The noise didn’t seem to bother his son, who continued chewing on his hoodie string but started clapping anyway. “That blonde wedding planner lady is gonna blow a fuse.”
“Shit. You’re right,” I agreed as I watched Holly’s eyes narrow as Teague and Janis two-stepped down the aisle toward her. The men on stage, along with Stan, were cheering and clapping, encouraging the women as they each took a turn dancing down the aisle.
Even the little girls were in on it, skipping and twirling as Cyrus’ son, Liam, did the Cabbage Patch as he walked behind them.
Lark, Rain, and Bella, the last three women in line, walked side by side down the aisle, but they weren’t dancing.
Finn Conner was videoing the girls from the top of the aisle and burst out laughing when they got to the end of the chair rows and posed like Charlie’s Angels, holding imaginary guns as they smiled at Holly.
Shockingly, Holly didn’t react the way I thought she would. Instead, she grabbed the woman closest to her, which just happened to be Janis, and wrapped an arm around her neck as she pointed her finger like a gun at Janis’ head.
Janis played along and, through her laughter, begged her friends to take the stage where they were supposed to stand.
Instead of following Janis’ plea, the girls found cover behind the chairs next to them and had a pretend shootout with Holly with the help of the flower girls and Liam.
Suddenly, Rain stood straight up and slapped a hand over her chest before she spun around and fell to her knees, one hand over her heart and the other reaching to the sky.
She made some horrible choking sounds, coughed a few times, and then crumpled to the ground.
As if seeing a grown woman fake her own death wasn’t funny enough, she lifted one hand to rearrange her braids so they weren’t tangled over her face and then let the hand drop back down with a thump. Everyone roared with laughter.
Holly kissed her hostage on the cheek before she let her go, and Janis squealed loudly before she furiously tried to rub it off. Lark walked over and held her hand out to help Rain up off the ground.
“Now that we’ve got all the drama out of our system, can we please do this the right way? Just once all the way through, that’s all I’m asking,” Holly pleaded.
“Well, if you’re gonna go so far as to take hostages, I guess we don’t have much choice,” Bella announced. “Come on, ladies. We better get in line or the wedding dictator is gonna get stabby.”
“They are nuts,” Dice said through his laughter as he tried to catch his breath.
“Certifiable,” Bax agreed.
“Mostly psychotic,” Flynn chimed in.
Stamp was grinning when he announced, “I think they’re wonderful!”