Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
T he Big Day, as Lizzie had it labeled in her binder, had been going so well that she was starting to feel a sense of doom creeping up the back of her neck. Something always went wrong. Always. Hopefully, whatever it was would be minor, like a broken vase or a missing tie, and not something major like a misplaced ring or a torn wedding dress.
It was three o’clock on Saturday afternoon, and so far nothing had exploded.
She didn’t trust it in the slightest.
Lizzie took her binder to the kitchen, expecting to hear about a disaster involving food or maybe an oven had died. “Everything going okay in here?”
Carrie and Della looked up from rustic wood serving trays filled with mozzarella and tomato bites that had taken over the island.
Della held a toothpick in her hand like a tiny spear. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Carrie placed a small piece of fresh mozzarella on her own skewer with a delicate, deft hand. “Because she thinks it’s not a successful event until she gets to handle a disaster.”
Lizzie glanced around, feeling a slight rush of panic. She’d expected the cake delivery this morning, but with everything else going on she’d left it to Carrie to handle. “Where’s the cake?”
Carrie place her finished skewer on the tray in front of her. “It’s already in place in the ballroom on that big, six-foot table in the corner. Love the theme on this one. Simple and elegant. Just burgundy flowers, and no cheesy cake topper. I like it.”
Lizzie breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, good. I don’t want a repeat of the last wedding.”
“Why?” Della asked. “What happened?”
Carrie giggled. “The cheapest bakery in town sent two sixteen-year-old boys to deliver this giant thing that they could barely hold, much less see around. One of them tripped over a shoelace or something and the whole thing went flying. Cake hit the wall behind the head table and splattered everywhere. Turned out the insides were mostly chocolate pudding. Left a mark like an inkblot test.”
Della laughed. “I’d have paid to see that.”
“It wasn’t funny!” Lizzie said, but she couldn’t stop the grin that spread across her face. “That was such a huge mess. It took six people an hour to clean up.”
“And the bride wasn’t upset?” Della asked.
Carrie plunged a cherry tomato onto a new skewer. “Yours truly did some truly spectacular emergency baking that day. I turned out a five-tier cupcake pyramid that actually made it into the local paper.”
Lizzie beamed at her friend. “You saved my ass that day. Those cupcakes were a lot better than anything that sleazy bakery ever dreamed of making. The bride and groom were so happy they gave Carrie a five hundred dollar tip after.”
Carrie bowed. “I still say it was the best thing that could have happened. Turned out the groom’s mother had ordered the cake. Nasty piece of work, that woman. The bride was allergic to chocolate.”
Della’s eyes widened. “That’s so wrong.”
Carrie nodded. “Yeah, I always say you don’t just marry the man, you marry his family too, so before you say yes take a good, hard look at them . Is that really who you want to spend holidays with?”
Lizzie frowned at her. “That’s cynical.”
“No. Just practical. For instance, what’s Renic’s family like?” Carrie looked at Lizzie with a wicked twinkle in her eyes. “You haven’t talked about his parents at all. Does he have siblings?”
“He’s an only child,” Della said. “And his parents are assholes.”
“They aren’t assholes. They’re just busy.” Lizzie’s phone pinged. She fished it out of her jacket pocket.
“Yeah, too busy for a kid. Renic told me how he had to bribe his dad to come to his high school graduation by promising to run his mother’s charity auction later that night.”
Carrie snorted. “That’s cold.”
Della popped a tomato in her mouth. “Yeah, instead of having a kid they should have just got a cat. Less maintenance.”
A text from Piper appeared on the home screen. Call me.
Lizzie raised her eyebrows at that. Piper was finally ready to talk? Why the change of heart? “I need to take this.”
“Who’s that?” Della asked. She craned her neck to get a look at the screen .
Lizzie turned the phone down so Della couldn’t see it.
“Just a follow-up.” She squeezed past Della toward her office.
“I wouldn’t go in there,” Carrie said. “The girls are changing into their uniforms.”
“Oh, right.” Lizzie altered her course to the back door.
She stepped out onto the small, covered porch on the side of the house and shut the door behind her.
It was a clear, unseasonably warm day, with a cool but pleasant evening predicted—perfect weather for an outdoor ceremony with the heaters they had set up. Lizzie sat down at one of the small, round wrought-iron tables with a feeling of satisfaction. They wouldn’t need the tent after all, which meant the twinkle lights would have the desired effect.
She pushed Piper’s number on the speed dial.
Her sister picked up after two rings. “Hey, Lizard Breath.”
Lizzie smiled. It had been too long since she’d heard Piper’s no-nonsense voice. “Pipsqueak. How are you? What took you so long to call?”
“Sorry about that. I had meetings. You know that animated movie I told you about?”
“The Sleeping Beauty spin-off?” Lizzie asked.
“Not spin-off. More like a loosely based twist. The guy is the one trapped, and the girl uses a dragon to rescue him. Anyway, we just signed the contract. I’m Aurora.” Piper’s voice was full of pride and excitement.
“That’s fantastic! You’re a perfect fit too. I’m so proud of you, Piper.” Lizzie couldn’t sit still anymore. She jumped up and paced the length of the porch to use up some of the energy Piper’s news generated. “Does Mattie know?”
“Yep. Just got off the phone with her. She said Renic showed up. I take it that means Baby Brat’s still there. ”
Piper’s tone was loaded with innuendo and hidden meaning.
Lizzie kept her own tone guarded and carefully neutral. “Yes, to both. Renic came for Della, and they’re both still here.”
“Why’s he still there? Surely he’s done his pep talk by now. You sure he didn’t come for a little somethin’ somethin’ from big sis?” Piper’s teasing lilt came through loud and clear and entirely too close to home.
Lizzie could picture the look on her sister’s face. Her own heated up in a way that made her glad they weren’t on a video chat. “I’m sure if he did it would be none of your business.”
“Oh my God. You two really did get busy?” There was a palpable silence, followed by a strangled, choked laugh. “I can’t wait to tell Mattie. She owes me twenty bucks.”
“I didn’t say that.” Lizzie squeezed her eyes closed and rubbed her forehead. “You two are betting on my nonexistent love life?”
“No,” Piper drew out the word, “we bet that you and Renic would eventually end up together. I said four years or less. Mattie took five and over. I win.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I can see how red your face is all the way from LA.”
“No you can’t.” Lizzie cleared her throat. “Can we change the subject please?”
“Fine,” Piper said with a giggle. “Tell me straight out you did not sleep with Renic and I’ll drop it.”
Lizzie pressed her lips together and glared at the grapevines on the other side of the drive.
“You can’t, can you?” Piper laughed. “You can’t even lie about it, which means you must have had a really good time. How did this happen? Three years of avoiding him like the plague and suddenly you’re jumping him in a room at the inn? What’d he say to get you to go after it like that?”
She was never, ever going to be able to live this down. “It wasn’t at the inn. Can we move on?”
“Oh really? Where? You might as well tell me because if you don’t, I’ll just call Carrie and she’ll tell me.”
Lizzie started to tell her she was forbidden from ever calling anyone at the inn ever again, then saved her breath. “I had a weak moment, that’s all. There was beer involved. And music.”
“I’m going to need a little more detail than that.” She could hear the amusement in Piper’s voice and pictured her sister leaning forward with a big grin on her face like a kid waiting for ice cream.
She filled Piper in on the day spent hunting twinkle lights, the discovery of a new star, then tried her best to change the subject. “Anyway, the reason I called was—”
“Oh no,” Piper interrupted. “You don’t get to stop there. I haven’t heard the part where you and Renic smashed faces. Was it before or after the beer and music?”
Lizzie took a long, deep breath, then hurried through the last part of the story in the hopes Piper wouldn’t be able to understand what she said. “After we finished with Jacob we went out to the parking lot and wound up kissing next to the car and then we, um, came home.”
“You did it with Renic in a parking lot? Where, on the hood of the car?”
“Of course not.”
“The ground? That would hurt. Picnic table? There wasn’t a room out back, was there? Those small towns sometimes do things like that.”
“No.” Lizzie wrinkled her nose at the thought. “The backseat. ”
Piper burst out laughing. “Like any respectable lusty teenager would. That’s awesome.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying this.”
“I’m glad you are finally moving on from that sorry excuse for an ex-husband of yours. I’m just shocked it’s with Darth Renic.”
“I shouldn’t have called him that.” Lizzie sighed. “He’s not evil. It’s complicated.”
“You were mad. You’re allowed to be human. Glad to hear you’re finally figuring it out.” Piper paused, then shouted, “I’ll be there in a minute!” to someone in the background.
“You sound busy,” Lizzie said.
“We’re doing run-throughs of the songs this afternoon, just to get a feel for them. Several aren’t finished. Anyway, stop overthinking it.”
Lizzie blinked. “Overthinking what?”
“You know what.” Piper scoffed. “Renic. You always overthink things when they come to your own well-being. So do us all a favor this time and don’t. Just go for it. See what happens. I promise the world won’t fall apart if you put yourself first for a change.”
“There’s nothing to think about. He’s leaving in a few days. I told you, he’s only here for Della. We’re both trying to help Della get past whatever this is.”
“I can tell you what it is,” Piper said, sounding irritated. “The spoiled brat is feeling sorry for herself because her life choices suck. She screwed up, and she can’t admit it.”
Lizzie thought about it. Piper was obviously hurting just as badly as Della, if in a different way. Maybe now was as good a time to talk about it as any. “She misses you, Piper.”
Piper was quiet so long Lizzie thought the connection might have dropped.
“Yeah, well. There’s nothing I can do about that. ”
Della wasn’t the only one who couldn’t admit to things.
Lizzie hesitated. She could drop the subject here, or maybe try another gentle nudge. Dropping the subject felt wrong, somehow. Piper was listening; she shouldn’t waste the opportunity. “Don’t you think this has gone on long enough?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think.” Piper huffed out an irritated sigh. “Does she ask about me at all? She texts Mattie. Calls her too, every now and then. She visits you. The only word I’ve had from her was when she tagged me on a social media post six months ago.”
It was the most Piper had said about Della in the past three years. Lizzie stared out at the empty vines and wished she could think of something to say that would fix this rift between her sisters. “I’ve caught her looking at pictures of the three of you together every night since she got here. She seems lonely.”
“Yeah, well, she dumped us, remember?” The words were harsh, but her tone had softened a little.
The back door opened, and Della poked her head out. “Lizzie? You better get in here.”
“Speak of the devil,” Piper muttered. “Look, I have to go.”
“Love you, Pipsqueak,” Lizzie said.
“Love you too.” Piper hung up before Lizzie could say anything else.
Della’s expression turned from concerned to clouded in the time it took Lizzie to hang up the phone. “She calling to gloat? I saw she got the part on that animated movie. It’s all over social media.”
“Gloat isn’t the right word.” Lizzie tucked the phone back in her pocket. She noticed the way Della very carefully avoided using Piper’s name. “What’s wrong?”
“DJ Jay is here,” Della said. “And that, by the way, is the most ridiculous name for a DJ ever. Anyway, he’s not happy and he’s getting loud about it. When the girls went in to do the place settings, he screamed at them to get out.”
“Finally. Took long enough,” Lizzie muttered. When Della gave her a questioning look, she explained, “Every wedding has something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and something wrong. Without fail. The longer it takes to show up, the more of a crisis it is to fix. At least it wasn’t during the ceremony. Come on, let’s go see what crawled up Jay’s butt.”
They hurried through the kitchen and across the hall to the ballroom. Lizzie heard shouting and the scrape of furniture along the wood floor of the ballroom.
DJ Jay stood on a chair he’d placed in the center of the dance floor. He was short, a little pudgy around the edges, with a handlebar mustache and a nose ring. He wore an outfit that would have made more sense at a rave than a wedding, including several layers of gold chains and an oversized football jersey. He pointed at two boys, one possibly college aged, and the other early high school.
“Dad. If we move the table the cake is probably going to fall over,” the older one said.
“Do what I said. I want the speakers in the damn corners.” Jay glared imperiously down at who Lizzie assumed were his sons with the air of a long-suffering man forced to put up with incompetence.
Lizzie gaped at the state of the room. In the short time the ridiculous man had been alone in the room, he and his two helpers had managed to shove the bulk of the tables and chairs over against the walls, and the lattice that hid the bald section of wall was lying on the floor by the door.
“You can shift the cake over there.” Jay pointed at the window. “And stick that projector over there with it.”
“Stop right there!” Lizzie roared. After spending most of her life yelling over music and backstage noise at concerts, she knew how to project her voice. Her command echoed off the walls and made all three intruders freeze in place. “You touch that cake, I’ll break your arms.”
Now that she’d stopped potential disaster, she turned her attention to DJ Jay. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Jay narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m fixing the layout that you screwed up. I told your people that it had to be set up on the vertical but apparently they’re too stupid to understand basic acoustics.”
“Is he for real?” Della stared up at the man.
Lizzie pointed at the floor. “Get down. Now.”
Jay gestured at his sons. “Go ahead and get that cake out of the way, then start on the tables while I deal with this.”
The boys looked like deer caught between a hunter and a cliff, unsure which way to jump. The older one turned toward the cake, the younger toward the door.
“Hey!” Della stalked toward the oldest with the stride she sometimes used on stage to command attention. “She wasn’t kidding.”
The boy froze midstep. “I just do what I’m told.”
“Well, I ’ m telling you to get away from that cake,” Della said.
Lizzie reached the chair Jay stood on in three long strides. “Get off that chair.”
DJ Jay flicked a hand at her like he was swatting a fly. “Step back, sweetheart. I got standards and I’m sticking to them. They hired a professional for this event, not some two-bit wedding planner.”
Della snorted. “Professional what?”
He peered down at Della. “I know you?”
Della wrinkled her nose. “I seriously doubt it. ”
The older boy looked from Lizzie to Della and back again. “You look familiar to me too. You from around here?”
The younger boy hovered near the door. He looked ready to run at any second, but curiosity held him in place. “Dad?”
Jay waved a hand at his younger son. “Get the tripods out of the van.”
The boy scurried off without another word.
Lizzie glanced at the remaining teenager. Nothing about his father’s behavior was appropriate, but neither was dressing down his dad in front of him. “Why don’t you go help your brother? I need to speak with your dad for a few minutes. Okay?”
The kid cast a hesitant gaze in his father’s direction.
Jay huffed out a breath that wiggled his mustache. “Go get the big speaker.”
Lizzie waited until the boy left the room before she unleashed her rising temper on the man. “The bride is the star of the show, not you. What you want doesn’t matter. Get down, put the tables and chairs back where you found them, and do your job, you sad, pathetic little egomaniac.”
Jay jumped down off the chair. Now that he was on the ground, Lizzie could see he was at least three inches shorter than she was, maybe more, and was obviously compensating for it with attitude.
Della moved closer to Lizzie. “Whatever you paid this guy, it’s too much.”
“What did you just say to me?” Jay flexed his jaw.
Lizzie glared at him. “Pathetic. Little,” her gaze dropped to his crotch and back up, “egomaniac.”
He took a menacing step forward. “How dare you. Do you have any idea who you’re talking to, bitch?”
Lizzie’s neck and shoulder muscles tensed the same way they had during the one and only physical fight she’d ever participated in. She’d been twenty-three at the time, defending fourteen-year-old Della from a backstage leech. Usually she avoided situations like this entirely, but this time she clenched her fists and resisted the urge to back away from the threat.
Della took a step forward, her hands raised into a stance Lizzie had seen in movies. Had her sister been taking self-defense classes? “You did not just call my sister a bitch.”
Jay’s eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed. “What the hell you think you’re going to do about it, princess ?” He spat the word out like it was a high-dollar swear word.
Lizzie put a cautionary hand on Della’s shoulder. The last thing she needed was for her sister to get into a fistfight, and nobody came into her home and threatened her or anyone else with violence. Her need to fix the situation vanished. She’d put up with a lot for a client, but there were lines, and this jerk had just stepped over all of them.
“Get the hell out of my house.”
“Or what?” He took another step forward. He was so close she could look down her nose at him now. "You can’t fire me. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
“Yes, she absolutely can.” Della’s voice was lower and more serious than Lizzie had ever heard it. “This is private property, moron, and as of now you’re trespassing.”
“You got no idea who you’re dealing with.” Jay’s gaze turned calculating. “What did they say your name was? Bellamy? I know that name from somewhere?”
“A lot of people have that name,” Lizzie said. Her stomach did an uneasy little jump. The way he said it made her thoughts go down a spiral of worst-case scenarios. Della was not an unknown country girl anymore. She was a well-known, celebrated music phenomenon. If this guy realized that , there was no end to the amount of trouble he could make for all of them. Most of the town had no idea Lizzie Bellamy was related to those Bellamys, and she wanted to keep it that way. “Get out of here, before I call the police.”
Della glanced at Lizzie. “I learned a neat trick with thumbs that’ll make him cry. Want me to try it out?”
Jay opened his mouth to speak, then seemed to see something that made him rethink whatever it was he’d been about to say.
Lizzie glanced behind her. Renic and Mark filled the doorway. They didn’t say a word. They just silently menaced from the background.
“Don’t bother. I quit.” Jay kicked the chair for emphasis. “I’ll make sure my cousin and everybody else knows exactly who ruined his wedding, Bellamy. I got connections. When I’m done, all this place will be good for is a pigsty.”
Lizzie stepped to the side as he stormed past.
For a few seconds, Lizzie thought Mark and Renic were going to move, but then they both stepped to the side as if by unspoken agreement and let him pass.
Renic glanced at her, and then he and Mark followed DJ Jay out.
She could hear his continued tirade until the front door closed behind him.
“What a freak,” Della said. “Good riddance. The wedding’s better off without him.”
Lizzie groaned. “I can’t believe I just did that. If he recognized you, we won’t have enough security to handle the crowd. And how am I going to tell the bride that she’ll have no music for her reception?”
“Even if he did recognize me, nobody would believe him. Who would ever think Della Bellamy would run away to a backwoods place like this?” Della patted her on the shoulder. “And trust me, playing the radio would be better than that creep. She’ll probably thank you. I seriously doubt it was her call to have him here in the first place.”
“It wasn’t, but that doesn’t fix the problem. I have two hours to put this room back together.” When she’d anticipated something going wrong, she’d had no idea it would go this wrong.
Della squeezed her arm. “I’ll help put the room back. It won’t take long. The cake’s still in one piece, so there’s no real harm done. Right?”
That wasn’t exactly true. Real harm had definitely been done, but there had to be a way to fix it. There was always a way. “Thanks, Dell Bell. That’ll help a lot. Now I just need to find a fill-in for DJ Jackass.” She thought of all the people she knew in town, but none of them were performers of any kind. She needed something better than a DJ at this point. She needed a singer.
She eyed her sister. It couldn’t be Della. Her sister needed to stay out of sight just in case. It had to be someone else. Someone really good. Someone who would make the bride forget her wedding plans had changed because she was already so thrilled with the excellent job he’d done at her rehearsal dinner. Jacob stayed until the last person went up to bed and the lights were out. “I hope Jacob Evans doesn’t have the late shift at the bar tonight.”
Della smiled. “I think the bride would love that.”