Chapter 49
Note to self:
Elope.
Rain in Texas was quick and dirty. A storm blows in fast, brings thunder and lightning, thirty minutes of heavy rain, and then it’s done.
But we weren’t in Texas; we were in Portland where rain worked differently. It started early Friday morning, an endless light drizzle. A few moments of more intense rain and then back to endless light rain. It didn’t stop. Just continued for hours and hours, making everything damp and gray.
“So much rain.” Melanie stared morosely out the window while a nail technician worked on her French manicure. She’d been on the verge of tears since yesterday.
“This is why I wanted you to have the wedding back home in Texas. We could have used the church and wouldn’t have had to worry about the weather. But what do I know? I’m just your mother.” Melanie’s mother, Sonya, was an aggressively polite woman but always standoffish when Alec brought me around. All day, her snide comments had done nothing but drag the mood down.
I’d never liked that woman. There. I said it.
“Hallie,” I said, in hopes of changing topics, and quickly, “how you doing?”
She smiled at me from the miniature pedicure chair next to me where she was getting a lovely pearl pink applied to her toes. “I feel like a princess.”
My mom didn’t take the hint. “A wedding in Texas would have been so nice.”
“Mom.” I turned my head and gave her a pointed look. “No, just no.”
“That’s what I told them. I said it would be so much more convenient.” Sonya sighed. “But no, they insisted on having it here in Oregon.”
Melanie drew in a slow breath, her cheeks flagged with red. Sonya was the biggest reason Melanie hadn’t wanted the wedding in Texas. She would have taken over everything and done it “the right way.” It was also the reason she and Cal had insisted on paying for the wedding themselves.
“It’s so…soggy here, isn’t it?” Sonya’s mouth firmed in distaste.
“I think it’s beautiful,” I said lightly. “Mel, you said you got a tent as a backup, right?”
“Yes, from the chair rental company.” Melanie gave me a grateful smile.
“There you go. Problem solved. It’s going to be beautiful. I’ll help however I can,” I said.
I meant it too. I didn’t like how stressed-out and exhausted Melanie was. That’s not how a woman about to marry the love of her life should look. Time to do something about that.
“In fact, why don’t you let me call the rental place and double-check everything. I can make all your last-minute calls, if you want. I bet I can con Theo into picking up anything that you need, too. I’d like to help.”
“You’d do that?” Melanie beamed. “That would be great. It’s been a lot, trying to plan a wedding in a place I just moved to.”
“I did tell you to hire a wedding organizer,” Sonya said.
I really didn’t like that woman.
It turned out the rain was only the first problem.
Back at the hotel, Melanie and Cal had plans to take out both sets of parents for lunch. After some hemming and hawing, and eliciting many promises from me, Melanie trusted me with the Wedding Planner and left me with instructions to call a list of vendors to triple-check everything was in place for Sunday.
I found out quickly, things were not in place.
“But I have a signed contract right here,” I said for the fifth time. “They reserved a tent in case there was rain. And guess what? It’s raining.”
“There was a little snafu.” Ted, the nice, if somewhat disorganized, employee at the rental company, explained.
I’d learned he had a wife, two daughters, and a dog named Benji in our ten-minute phone call. I had, unfortunately, also learned that sometimes rental companies double-booked their equipment by mistake. Things like tents.
“I understand but I’m in a bind now. I need a tent for Sunday, and you all promised my soon to be sister-in-law. I need to tell you that right now, I am the calmer person to deal with, but I can always put the bride on the phone. I’m sure you know how sensible and understanding a bride can be two days before their wedding day.”
“No, no,” Ted said, a bit of panic in his voice. “I have a tent.”
“Excellent.” I grinned. “It’s all set for delivery Sunday morning, correct?”
“Yes, but as I said, we’re low on tents and while I do have one in the correct size, this might not be exactly what you were thinking.”
“It’s a big white tent. What’s so hard about that?”
“If you’ll notice, the contract doesn’t specify color of tent.”
“What does that mean?”
He promised to text me a photo and hung up quickly. Hmm. That didn’t sound promising.
Next, I moved on to the photographer, who was nearly impossible to get ahold of. But after several phone calls, someone finally picked up.
“Did you say you were Luke’s assistant?” I asked.
“No. I’m his son. He’s not here.”
The voice sounded young, like a prepubescent middle-school boy.
“How old are you?”
“Eleven.”
Great. “Why can’t I speak to your dad?”
I could practically hear this kid’s shrug over the phone. “He’s in Montana this weekend.”
“But he’ll be back for the wedding on Sunday, right?”
“I think he’s not coming back until Wednesday.”
I pulled up the PHOTOGRAPHER folder in the Wedding Planner. “I have receipts. He received all the payments. What am I supposed to do?”
“Um, I have a cousin who likes photography. He helps Dad sometimes.”
I perked up. “Oh, really?”
“I can ask him. Sometimes his mom works on the weekends and then he won’t have a ride.”
“Wait. How old is he?”
“Fifteen.”
I pulled the phone from my ear and stared at it. Was I getting punked?
It only got worse.
The caterers confirmed for Sunday but swore their receipts stated one hundred and fifty guests when it was supposed to be two hundred and fifty. The venue lost the reservation for the honeymoon suite and there was some convention in town starting on Sunday. Getting a new room was going to be a challenge.
The limousine company verified they’d be sending over a replacement since the white stretch limo had been in a car accident two days before.
The officiant had the flu, but he was pretty sure he’d be okay by Sunday. Then he proceeded to cough so hard and so long, I almost called 9-1-1 for him.
That was about the time the text came in from Ted. Oh, he had a tent for us. One with yellow and red stripes that said, WELCOME TO THE BIG TOP, in bold, bright letters above an oversized entrance. A literal circus tent.
“What am I supposed to do with this mess?” I asked my empty hotel room. I couldn’t tell Melanie all this. She would curl in the fetal position and never speak again. Literally. I was not exaggerating. The rainy forecast almost killed her.
I’d have to fix it. I wasn’t sure how, but it was going to happen.
I just needed a plan.
I called a meeting of the wedding party, minus parents and the bride and groom. By the time everyone arrived, I’d managed to talk the hotel into letting me borrow a small whiteboard from one of their conference rooms. My hotel room had become the Situation Room.
An hour before the rehearsal was to start, Mack, Karen in tow, my brothers and Theo, plus Melanie’s bridesmaids: her twin cousins, Lydia and Laura, Ruth, Frankie’s girlfriend, and Melanie’s best friend since college, Penny, were all crammed into my hotel room.
And Alec. Yeah, him, too.
“We have a problem.” By the time I finished explaining the many, many things that were about to explode, no one was smiling. In fact, the room had grown eerily quiet. Except for Karen who began to growl when I accidentally made eye contact with her.
“I have a plan,” I continued. “First, we don’t tell anyone else about this. Second, we?—”
“Not tell them?” Alec cut in from his spot leaning against the closet door, where he’d stared at his phone the entire time I’d talked. “Cal and Melanie need to know about this as soon as possible.”
A chorus of “no ways” and “no’s” rang out.
Penny shook her head. “Melanie is hanging on by a thread as it is.”
“And Aunt Sonya would spend the rest of her life reminding Melanie about how the wedding should have been in Texas,” Laura said. “She’s kind of a Karen.”
“She didn’t mean that, sweetling.” Mack rubbed the dog’s tummy. “Could we please refrain from making Karen jokes? She’s a very sensitive puppy.”
“Our mom tends to be a little…highly strung,” I said. “We’re on our own here.”
“Fine, we won’t tell them.” Alec pushed off the wall and walked to stand next to me. “Here’s what I think we should do?—”
“Sit down.” Theo stood. “Ali’s got it under control.”
Alec smirked. “Is that so?”
Theo stepped closer and the two of them glared at each other. If it was Regency England, Alec would have slapped Theo across the face with a glove and challenged him to a duel. Theo would be the dashing pirate in disguise who beat the bad guy and got the girl.
I tucked that little fantasy away to think about later.
Seeing the two side by side, the differences between them were stark. Alec with his dark hair slicked back and shrewd dark eyes versus Theo’s blond curls and thoughtful blue eyes. Alec was a bit shorter, leaner, clean-shaven and dressed in designer jeans and a black t-shirt that probably cost three hundred dollars. On the other hand, Theo was taller with wider shoulders, and a permanent scruff. His shorts and t-shirt were probably ten years old.
Alec would be the kind of dad who left early every day to work out and stayed late at the office every night. The weekends would be for schmoozing on the golf course. His kids would never see him. Theo would hurry home after work. He’d take the kids swimming and on walks and to the playground. Surely, he’d invent twelve different pirate games to play with them.
I really had chosen Alec because he was so different from the man I wanted. He had been a safe choice. What an idiot I was. I almost felt bad for wasting Alec’s time. Almost.
“Yeah, that is so. Ali’s got it covered. She’s smart and clever and thinks outside the box and she’ll get the job done, no matter what. In fact, she makes a damn good leader.” Theo gazed at me, his eyes steady and true. “I’d follow her anywhere.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, but inside the dragons were in a frenzy of swoops in pure adoration.
“No problem.” Theo took a step toward Alec. “What she’s not is a finance bro with more money than sense.”
“Whatever. I think I know Ali pretty well and I can?—”
Theo cut in. “I know you’re the idiot who broke up with her on a text message and then blocked her number like a coward.”
“That’s how he broke it off with you?” Frankie inspected Alec from head to toe like he was a bug about to be squashed under his foot. He sneered. “We’re going to talk about this later.”
That wiped the smarmy, smirky expression off Alec’s face.
“What can we do to help?” Lydia asked.
Everyone’s eyes were on me (minus Alec, who had found something very interesting on the carpet), expectant, trusting, and a moment of real panic wedged its way into my chest. It must have shone on my face because Theo slid his hand into mine.
“You got this,” he murmured.
He was right; I did have this. I straightened my shoulders and started talking.