by C. D. Reiss
“Why are we going the wrong way?” Nicole asked from the backseat. She’d tipped up the bottom of her blindfold so she could see.
“Put that down, young lady,” Brad said, looking at her in the mirror.
“Okay, but where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise!” Brad and I said at the same time.
When we got close I crawled into the backseat and covered her eyes with my hand. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to cover her nose.
“I smell horse poop!”
Brad shot a look back as we went past the gate. Behind the beautifully kept clubhouse and manicured lawns sat a functioning stable grounds for training horses and riders.
“Where are the horses?” she cried.
“Keep the blindfold on,” I said when Brad pulled up to the front and handed the valet the keys. He sped around the front and opened the door while I leaned back and unbuckled Nicole’s safety belt. Dave was there with his assistant, camera rolling. Ten months into their year of exclusivity, they’d used the time wisely, telling the story of the Sinclair family’s fall into anonymity and the rise to normalcy. The public had been hungry to hear something positive.
“You got this?” Brad asked Dave.
“Got it.”
“Is that David?” Nicole asked. “Hi, David!” She waved at where she thought he was.
“Hi, Nicole. You excited?”
“Yes. How’s Buster?”
Buster was Dave’s bulldog.
“He’s good. You should come visit again.”
We led her off the paved road to the dirt road of the stables. The horseshit smell got stronger.
“Do you like surprises?” he asked.
“I like ones where I know what it is.”
Even with Brad’s career “over” we figured Nicole was going to have to get used to people taking pictures of her. Turned out that if she got comfortable with the person behind the camera, she was comfortable with the camera.
We went into the stables. That was when I sensed something wasn’t going to go as planned. I didn’t know what about the room seemed different. The same horses were there. The same smell. The same white paint on the stalls and the same wooden nameplates by each one.
Then Nicole giggled and Dave said, “Shh.”
And a chuckle from behind a wall.
Why did I smell a little sugar behind the horseshit?
“Brad?”
He flashed a devil of a smile, and I knew something about this picture was as wrong as wrong could be.
“Happy anniversary, teacup.”
“What? I—”
“SURPRISE!”
I jumped, oh, ten feet in the air as dozens of people poured into the stables.
“Wait! What?”
Nicole was jumping up and down, clapping, blindfold long gone. Brad picked her up as Blakely hugged me.
“Congratulations,” she said in a pink satin dress and heels.
“For what? I—”
Brad’s parents hugged and congratulated me too. And Susan and her kids. Buddy. Willow Heywood. Ray and Kendall.
“Brad? What the h—”
“Don’t say a bad word!” Nicole shouted.
“It’s your wedding,” he said.
He pulled me out, and the crowd followed, laughing and talking, until we got to the clubhouse. I dropped his hand when I saw an easel with a flourished sign.
“The Wedding of Cara DuMont and Brad Sinclair.”
“A surprise wedding?” I exclaimed, looking for my soon-to-be and not finding him. “There’s no such thing as a surprise wedding!”
“Yes there is!” Blakely said. “We got a dress. That makes it real.”
“Where’s Brad?” I craned my neck to look for him, but only saw David. Jedi Heywood reached up to hug me, and I gave him a hard squeeze before looking over everyone’s head for my . . . well, my fiancé.
“Come on,” Blakely said, yanking me away. “We have half an hour to get dressed.”
“What? I—?”
I was pulled into a dressing room.
Blakely and a gaggle of nannies from the parks and parties got me into a white gown and gussied up in thirty-four minutes. Whirlwind didn’t begin to describe it. I’d gone to the stables to surprise Nicole with a pony and came out in a long white gown with a handful of white roses.
“The wedding’s on the lawn overlooking the canyon,” Blakely said absently, pulling me out the door. She’d done nothing but pull me from surprise to surprise for half an hour. Surprise, it’s your wedding. Surprise, here’s your dress. Surprise, long white ribbon on your bouquet. Surprise, Nicole is the most perfect flower girl ever.
“But the pony,” I said. “Does she know about the pony?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Pull down a carpeted hall. Pull around a corner. She pulled me until I was at the top of a stone stairway and—
“Blakely!” I yanked my hand away.
“What?”
“I can’t walk down the aisle. I have no one to give me away. Who thought of this? It’s like a big missing piece. I can’t go alone with everyone looking at me. It’s depressing.”
I anticipated Blakely recoiling in horror when she realized her massive embarrassing mistake. But she kind of smiled a little, then she smiled a lot.
“Surprise,” she said quietly, holding her hand out to the side. I followed the line of her arm to a gray-haired man in a tuxedo. He stood perfectly still, a vision of diplomacy and courtesy. His eyebrows were still dark brown, and blue and brown coexisted in his eyes like dual mood rings.
“Dad?”
“Hi, button.”
That was his voice, his stature, his posture. It was him. His presence cracked through the barriers I’d built around him.
“Dad?” I repeated.
He held his hand out for me. My father. He hated me. I knew he did. But he was here, at this ridiculous surprise wedding.
“Let’s walk a straight line together,” he said. “Then let’s dance. Then you, me, and your mother—”
“Mom’s here?”
I was reduced to simple thoughts and sentences. Nicole could have gotten deeper sentiments out.
“Of course we are. We love you, button.”
Past him, down the stone steps, and over a short flagstone path, a hundred people waited. Past those hundred people stood Brad Sinclair in a tuxedo. With full-length pants. The whole getup. Even the tie.
“Can we go already?”
I had forgotten about Nicole at the top of the steps in her poufy white dress and basket of rose petals. She wore light-up pink sneakers that were never meant to be paired with a flower girl dress. Her brow was knotted, and she looked like a holy terror.
“She has your mouth,” my father said.
“That’s impossible.”
He looked back at me dryly. “I was talking about what comes out of it.”
His mouth twitched with a smile, and he gave me his arm. I slid my hand around it at the elbow, and he led me down the stairs. In front of us Nicole liberally covered the center aisle in white petals.
“I’m glad we came,” he whispered to me. “You look beautiful.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
Nicole got impatient in the last three steps. She held out her basket and dumped the remaining flower petals at her father’s feet. Everyone laughed, and when she hugged his legs, he laughed with them.
“He seems all right,” my father said.
Brad picked up Nicole and held her to one side as I got closer. He waited for me with his daughter and my father patted my hand. I wanted to thank him for giving me the wedding I was afraid to create for myself. For completing wishes I didn’t dare have. I felt a tightening circle around me. A bond of family that protected me from harm. A bond I would use everything in my power to protect. We completed a cycle of love and protection passed from father to daughter, generation to generation.
Brad took my hand and I was whole.
EPILOGUE TO THE EPILOGUE
NICOLE
My pony is the best pony in the entire world.
Her name is California Pie.
I love my pony and new mommy and daddy.
All four of us are very happy together ever after.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
So many people.
I have to mention my husband first. His help with this book was in his quiet support of whatever I’m doing. My daughter inspired Nicole and rounded out my life the minute she was born.
I have to mention Jana Aston, who read Shuttergirl and, in a Facebook post, suggested Brad needed a baby. The second her comment appeared on my screen, I knew she was right.
I had a great time working on the outline with my agent, Amy Tannenbaum. Without her guidance, I never would have gotten it together.
My content editor, Angela Marshall Smith, is completely brilliant at finding the things that work and making sure I turn the volume up all the way on them.
Jean Siska, as always, helped with the verisimilitude of the legal issues in the book.
Kayti McGee, with her sharp, quick-thinking brain, created the tone for the celebrity blog posts.
Jenn Watson poked me with a stick to get me to the finish line. She fed me avocados and cheese. I would have been late without her.
My girls Lauren, Laurelin, and Kristy—thank you for giving me a safe place to talk about all the bookish things I can’t share anywhere else.
Thank you to Charlotte and Chris at Montlake, and the entire Amazon team for landing me my first publisher contract after 24 years of trying.
Everyone who supported me, thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2014 Erin Clenendin
CD Reiss shot up the USA Today and New York Times bestseller lists with sizzling works like Hardball, Shuttergirl, and Marriage Games, but she still has to chop wood and carry water, which was buried in the fine print. Her lawyer is working it out with God, but in the meantime, if you call and she doesn’t answer, she’s at the well hauling buckets.
Born in New York City, Reiss moved to Hollywood to get her master’s degree in screenwriting from the University of Southern California. Unfortunately, her screenwriting went nowhere, but it did give her enough confidence to write novels.
Today she’s adoringly referred to as the “Shakespeare of Smut,” which she thinks is flattering, but it hasn’t gotten her out of chopping a single piece of wood.
