Kissing The Bride

by Tracey Alvarez

  Chapter 3

  3 days before the Big Day and counting…

  Two birds, one stone. Awesomesauce.

  Shaye discretely drew a check mark beside Mani-pedi Hen’s Party in her All Things Nuptial journal, then returned the book to her handbag, while admiring her French manicure courtesy of Holly’s assistant, Rutna. It’d been Shaye’s idea to combine a pre-wedding mani-pedi for all her friends with a low-key bachelorette party at Holly’s salon. And the pampering party had been a hit.

  With champagne bottles nearly empty and the last of the orange juice or bridal punch drunk, Shaye and six of her friends plus her sister tackled the last few party gifts. Shaye peeled open the elegant cream wrapping paper on the next gift. She would’ve identified it as from Bree even before reading the accompanying hand-crafted gift card.

  “Let me guess.” Shaye smiled across the circle of plastic chairs at Bree, who at nearly eight months pregnant was granted the more comfortable seat in one of Holly’s stylist chairs. “A photo?”

  “Open it,” Bree said.

  Shaye tugged off the paper to reveal a framed black and white print. A candid shot of Shaye, Piper, and Holly seated at a table in Due South’s pub, the three of them frozen mid-laughter, with Piper’s and Holly’s hand each covering one of Shaye’s. Tears welled in Shaye’s eyes.

  “Don’t you dare cry,” Bree said. “It’ll trigger my hormones, and then I’ll start.”

  Shaye stretched her mouth in a few weird shapes and blinked. Worse than chopping onions. Damn. “How on earth did you take this without me knowing?”

  Bree laced her hands around her enormous stomach. “You’re not the only one with ninja-skills.”

  Piper, seated next to Bree, snorted. “Ninjas don’t waddle, Queen Bee—or should I say, Queen Bump.”

  Bree slanted Piper a razor-sharp smile. “Bite me, darling.”

  “Which spot? There’s so much to choose from.”

  Shaye laughed and placed the photo frame beside the other gifts on a small table. Each of her friends had put a lot of thought into their choices. Tarryn, one of Shaye’s newest friends and a Department of Conservation employee, had presented her with a potted pale-pink miniature rose called “Cupcake”. Erin, her long-time friend and culinary competitor gave Shaye “His n’ Hers” chef’s aprons. Kezia’s gift was a beautiful robe trimmed with Venetian lace, with Holly chipping in to get the matching skimpy nightdress. Carly, her soon-to-be sister-in-law—because both Shaye and Carly refused to acknowledge that Carly was Del’s step-sister and not his blood sister—got Shaye and Del “I’m his Cupcake” and “I’m her Hollywood” screen-printed tee shirts.

  That left Piper’s gift—a plain, brown paper bag kept closed with a black scrunchie that Shaye had left at Piper’s house while baby-sitting Michaela a few days ago.

  “Mickey got hold of the wrapping paper and gummed it,” Piper said with a shrug as Holly passed Shaye the small parcel. “I really hope you like it.”

  Shaye’s fingers stilled on the scrunchie, her eyes narrowing on Piper’s face. “If you’ve put a weta in this bag, I’m going to be highly cheesed off.”

  Piper’s eyes widened, and she pressed a hand—with a deep wine-colored polish on her nails—between her breasts. “Why, my darling baby sister. I am offended.”

  Snickers from the other women. Shaye’s gaze grew even more slitted at the anticipatory smiles and twinkling eyes of her friends, their attention one hundred percent locked on the paper bag. She shook it, but nothing skittered. Guess she could safely assume a giant, six-legged bug wasn’t hiding inside. Shaye threw the scrunchie at Piper’s head and opened the bag, glancing down at its contents.

  Hot. Pink. Crotch-less. Panties.

  Identical to the pair Shaye had bought Piper for her bachelorette party. The same pair she’d dropped in front of Del at their first reunion on the Stewart Island ferry.

  “Show us!” Her sister—who Shaye intended to mildly torture at a later date—yelled.

  The rest of the girls took up the chant, and Shaye had little choice but to fish the tiny, lacy things from the bag and hold them up.

  “There’s your something borrowed, Shaye-Shaye. You’re welcome.” Piper doubled over with laughter, triggering an avalanche of giggles from the other women.

  “That’s just nasty,” said Shaye, but then she couldn’t help laughing, too. Trust Piper to think of the ultimate sisterly revenge.

  Piper finally stopped giggling long enough to say, “Don’t worry, they’re not borrowed, hon. I made Del go into Flirt to buy them while we were in Invers yesterday.”

  Cinnamon sticks! “You did not,” said Shaye.

  If Del had bought these ridiculous panties, she’d no hope of hiding them so he wouldn’t find out.

  “Yup. I did. And he’s pretttty keen on seeing his new bride in them.” Piper stood and offered her arm to help up Bree, who’d been making little wriggly motions on her chair.

  “Sorry, ladies,” said Bree. “I have to call it a night. Baby is bouncing on my bladder again, and I’m exhausted.”

  “Me too. It’s nearly Michaela’s suppertime.” Piper dragged her phone out of her pants pocket. “I’ll text West. He’ll give rides home to anyone else who needs one—Tarryn? Erin?”

  “Yeah.” Erin stood with a grimace. “You know I’m all for being a strong, independent woman, but damn, sometimes I wish my man was waiting in Due South for a ‘come and take me home to bed, babe’ text.”

  Tarryn looped her arm around Erin’s neck, twisting the spread fingers of her left hand back and forth beneath Erin’s nose. “As the only other single lady left at this party, I two-hundred-percent bloody agree.”

  Erin grimaced-laughed and gave Tarryn a gentle shove. “You start going all Beyoncé on me, and I promise you it’ll end up online.”

  With Tarryn singing about single ladies and rings, everyone made short work of collecting glasses and empty snack platters. West arrived a few minutes later with a snoozing Michaela strapped into her car seat, followed by Harley, who was on duty picking up Bree and dropping home Kezia.

  Harley helped Bree into the passenger seat, and Shaye’s heart gave a pleased little hippity-hop at how happy her two friends were after they’d stopped being complete idiots and realized they were totally meant to be together. Harley shut Bree’s door and turned to Holly and Shaye, who stood outside the salon after waving West’s carload off.

  “The groom and my bro are still keeping Kip company in the pub,” Harley said. “No rush, they said.” He flashed a grin at them. “But I’d better head home and give my woman a foot-rub.”

  “Bet your sweet derriere I want a foot-rub.” Bree’s voice was slightly muffled from inside the car.

  Harley drove off, and Carly gave Shaye a quick hug. “I’ll go and give Kip a hand with closing up—or do you want me to stay and help?”

  Shaye shook her head. “We’re almost done.”

  “All right then,” Carly said. “See ya!”

  Holly and Shaye waved goodbye, Holly looping an amicable arm through Shaye’s.

  “Need some Hol-time, huh?” Holly asked, once Carly was out of hearing.

  “Yeah.” Shaye pressed a hand to her stomach, which for the first time in months tickled like a hundred moths dived and swooped. “Something I didn’t jot down in my journal—jitters that make you want to hurl.”

  “Best way to deal with jitters is to walk ‘em off.” Holly tugged Shaye out of the salon’s doorway. “C’mon, we’re going for a stroll along the wharf.”

  “It’s nearly eleven,” Shaye said, dragging her feet.

  Holly raised an eyebrow. Didn’t need to say anything else.

  “Yeah, yeah.” Because, what was Shaye? Seventy? “Well, I’m not wearing my new shoes. My feet are killing me.” She kicked off her heels, the fluttering intensifying as she remembered that Halloween night when another pair of shoes had pinched her feet. Del had given her a piggy-back ride from the community center to Due South. Then there
was another piggy-back ride, the one after Piper’s bachelorette party, where Del had taken her home and looked after her since she’d had one too many champagnes. Her heartbeat broke out into a little salsa routine, remembering how Del made love to her the next morning—and how it’d been around then she’d realized she’d never be able to let him go.

  Holly toed off her heels, too, and dumped both pairs inside the salon before locking it. They set off, a salty breeze drifting off the ocean and blowing their skirts around their legs.

  They left the main road and headed onto the wharf. Everything was closed for the night, the last ferry having left port hours ago, and Erin’s Great Flat White Café sat deserted, the outside chairs and tables stacked neatly against the building. Some of the tension wiring through Shaye dissipated from the soothing slosh of waves hitting the wharf’s pylons, the rustles and creaks from the native bush behind them, the distant calls of hunting nocturnal birds.

  “So, jitters, huh?” Holly asked as they sat on the wharf’s edge, dangling their feet over the side.

  Moonlight sparkled off the water below their feet. The slow surge and pull of the tides were a lifeline for Shaye to cling to—as were the brightly lit windows of Due South across the way and the shadowy shapes inside, one of them her Del.

  “And missing my dad.” Shaye rolled her shoulders and sighed. “He would’ve looked forward to Del’s stag night in two days’ time. Man, he would’ve gotten Del good.”

  Holly shuffled closer along the wooden planks until her arm bumped Shaye’s. “He would’ve looked forward to walking you down the aisle, too, and I’m so sorry, sweet, that he won’t get to.”

  “Me, too.” Shaye rested her head on her best friend’s shoulder.

  Even though Michael Harland had been gone for many years, she still caught glimpses of his smile in Ben’s wry grin and touches of her father’s taste for adventure in Piper’s hazel eyes. But what part of him did she reflect? The everything-is-fine stubbornness when things didn’t go her way? The determination to keep her family together? Yeah. The boring bits, in other words. She sighed a ragged, belly deep sigh. “I’m scared, Hol. Really, fucking, scared.”

  Muscles tensed under Shaye’s cheek as Holly stiffened.

  “Oh, crap,” Holly said. “You’re not going to do a runaway bride on me, are you? I’ve been through that once with MacKenna, and let me tell you, it sucked balls.”

  Shaye shut her eyes. “Nope. I’m not running anywhere. I’m becoming Mrs. Delmar Westlake in three days’ time, and I’ll be on Del like a lioness bringing down a wildebeest if he tries a runaway groom on me.”

  Holly snorted. “So…the jitters, AKA you being shit-scared, have nothing to do with getting married?”

  “More like the what comes after the getting married part.” Shaye swung her bare feet and watched the silhouettes in Due South move about. “I’m worried I’ve planned this wedding too carefully, planned our lives too carefully, and then what if it all goes wrong?”

  “Planned your lives…like your All Things Nuptial planned?” Holly asked carefully. “With boxes to check, step-by-step organization and details that would make Del’s eyes bleed if he knew about them? Like your list in your teenage journal of requirements for your perfect man?”

  “I haven’t written all that stuff down.”

  The life planning was mostly in her head, stuff she dragged out and examined and re-examined on nights when falling asleep was elusive. Which, to be fair to Del’s categorically a-maz-ing skills between the sheets, wasn’t often. Shaye gripped the rough edges of the planks beneath her bottom, swung her legs faster.

  “I love him so much, Hol. I’m just scared because with his last serious relationship, the woman went OTT with the wedding planning and freaked him out. And I’m scared because what if our lives, our marriage, won’t unfold the way I hope it will?”

  Holly chuckled then laid a hand over Shaye’s, squeezing it gently. “It’ll unfold the way it’s meant to, sweet. Aries and Cancer, there’s always going to be friction between you. But that friction will keep your love red-hot, you know? And don’t doubt for a moment that Del loves you every bit as much as you love him—and hell, he hasn’t freaked out yet about all your OTT planning. But maybe you ought to be a little more flexible, a little more…spontaneous.”

  Shaye liked the red-hot-love bit of Holly’s pep-talk, but spontaneous? “I am spontaneous! Remember how I packed up my life and went to New York after Ethan Ward offered me a job?” She nudged, not so gently, Holly’s arm. “Huh? Huh? How impulsive was that. Oh—and then there was the time I impulsively went for a ride with Del on Ford’s motorbike. Maximum impulsiveness right there, sister.”

  Holly’s eyes rolled so high toward the star-speckled night sky that they almost disappeared under her dark-brown and rusty-red streaked hair. “Oh, that was ages ago. What have you done that’s out-of-the-ordinary to surprise your man lately, Ms. Impulsive?”

  Lately? Oh. Shaye blinked. “Um?” Yeah. Not so much of the spur-of-the-moment stuff happening in their relationship since the wedding planning claimed center stage—other than impulsively hot sex. That, at least, she was doing right. “Guess I’m gonna have to work on that.”

  “Just don’t over-think it, sweet, because you totally missed my main point—Del loves your anal, over-thinking, neurotic self to distraction.”

  Shaye, over-think things? Pah. With a grin, Shaye scrambled to her feet and held out her hand. “C’mon. We’re gonna jump.”

  Holly squinted up at her, moonlight shafting down on her classic WTF expression. “Jump where?”

  Shaye tilted her head to the right…and toward the swirling, sparkling water below them. Like, six feet below them.

  “Are you nuts? The water’s freezing.”

  “Chicken?” Shaye wiggled her fingers in invitation. “Or are you just over-thinking it?”

  Holly’s sudden, fierce grin as she grabbed Shaye’s hand fired a bolt of adrenaline through her. She tugged Holly upright, and they walked to the edge of the wharf and looked down. Way down.

  “Just like when we were kids?” Shaye gripped Holly’s hand.

  Holly squeezed Shaye’s in return.

  “Towanda, sweet. Towanda!”

  ***

  “What d’ya reckon they’re doing up there now? Plotting to take over the world?”

  Del glanced sideways at Ford, who stood by Del’s side in front of the pub’s windows, watching the two feminine silhouettes on the wharf. They’d kept half an eye on the women for the past ten minutes, ever since Carly arrived and announced the party was over, and Ford spotted Shaye and Holly walking on the wharf.

  “If Shaye’s got that damn notebook with her,” Del said, “I can almost guarant—holy shit! They jumped!” His heartbeat went from chilling-with-my-brother-from-another-mother relaxed to a chased-through-the-bush-by-a-crazed-killer thunder against his ribs.

  “Huh,” said Ford. “So they did. And they’re worried about your stag night being a little too wild, ay?” He turned a women, what can you do? grin toward Del, then froze—probably noticing the vein throbbing in Del’s temple. “Bro? You okay?”

  “Get some towels from housekeeping, and meet me down on the beach,” Del said.

  Then he was off, slamming out of Due South’s pub and sprinting down the main road toward the beach.

  Shit—it was like Jessica drowning while out for a drunken swim alone. Except a billion times worse, because, Shaye. Muscles trembling, pulse slamming against his eardrums, mind spinning like a boy-racer doing tire burnouts, Del ran harder.

  It didn’t help he’d heard the faint, laughing yell of “Towanda” as the women plunged off the wharf. It didn’t help that his frantic gaze registered two splashing forms swimming toward the shore. All that mattered was his woman, the one person he loved more than fucking anything or anyone in his life, was in the icy grip of the ocean. At night.

  Shit.

  Del vaulted over the handrail in a move parkour experts would
’ve admired had they been around in the middle of nowhere on a Wednesday night. His feet, still encased in his slip-on chef’s shoes since he’d finished up in the kitchen an hour ago, nearly skidded out from under him as he landed in Halfmoon Bay’s soft sand.

  He paused long enough to kick off the shoes, then splashed into the shallows to reach Shaye. Freezing water bubbled and foamed up his legs, his balls shrinking close to his body with a don’t-go-any-deeper-dude ache. He was up to mid-thigh before Shaye caught sight of him and gave a cheery wave. At that point, he became aware his vocal chords had locked closed. So fucking terrified, he couldn’t even shout out for her.

  “Shaye!” Her name tore past his frozen throat in a rasp that scoured his lungs.

  Only a few meters from him, she stood and waded forward, water streaming down her face, her party dress tissue-paper thin and clinging to her breasts. In any other circumstance, he’d appreciate the sight of his fiancée’s tits displayed to perfection in a sopping-wet dress—but not tonight. The smile on her beautiful face slipped as the distance closed between them.

  “Shaye. What the actual fuck?” he snarled as she got within grabbing distance.

  And grab he did—getting hold of a wrist and dragging her into his arms. It was like cuddling a frozen side of beef dropped into ice water—cold, stiff, and instantly soaking him from his breastbone downward. Shaye shivered, bumping against him as the waves continued to buffer them. Her freezing little nose poked into his neck, and he cupped the back of her head, threading his fingers roughly into her hair.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded again.

  Splashes from beside him and the sound of Holly’s name being called in a deep voice—Ford. He too swooped on his woman but hauled her into his arms and turned toward shore.

  “Del,” Ford said sharply. “Get back to the beach, man.”

  Following Ford’s example, Del picked up Shaye and waded out of the water. He carried her up the beach to where Ford was wrapping a towel around a shivering Holly. Del lowered Shaye to her feet—her bloodlessly pale feet with prune-ishly wrinkled toes, what had she been bloody thinking—and snagged the second towel, shaking it out and wrapping it around Shaye’s shoulders.