Marrying the Wedding Crasher

by Melinda Curtis

  “Why play any game other than to win?” He surveyed the crowd. “Do you remember the night we played darts in that pub?”

  Harley nodded. They’d found a hole-in-the-wall bar to watch a baseball game. “I was so upset when we didn’t win, mostly because you let that lady have a do-over.”

  “Everybody needs a do-over sometimes.” Vince ran the backs of his fingers over her cheek. “You, of all people, should agree with that.”

  True.

  “And sometimes you have to live in the moment.” Vince escorted her to a table for the contestants. They were assigned a spot between Mildred and Hero, and Jessica, the bakery owner, and her husband Duffy.

  There were white folding chairs set up facing the contestants’ tables and it seemed every one of them was filled. There must have been at least sixty people in the audience.

  “Ladies and gentlemen.” Gabe had a small microphone attached to a karaoke machine. “Welcome to Joe and Brit’s Couples Dinner. You’ve all chipped in to help pay for dinner, catered by Chef Enzo and Chef Claudia, who run the lunch service at Giordana’s and the dinner service at El Rosal.”

  There was a wild round of applause, possibly from fans of their mole tacos, which were delicious.

  “We’re here to celebrate Joe and Brit’s forthcoming nuptials,” Gabe continued. “But before they get married, we’d like to put them through their paces and prove they’re compatible by seeing how they stack up to the other couples in town.”

  “You know what that means,” Duffy said to Jessica. He had a hand on the swell of her stomach. “That means we should lose on purpose to make Joe and Brit feel better.”

  “Oh, what a sweet idea.” Jessica kissed her husband’s cheek.

  “Don’t get any ideas about going soft,” Mildred admonished her date. “We’re in it to win it.”

  “It’s darts all over again,” Vince whispered in Harley’s ear.

  She shivered, not entirely from the evening chill, and didn’t complain when Vince put his arm over her shoulders. What if they did well? What would it prove other than they’d been close once? Her shoulders tensed and she leaned into his warmth.

  Gabe explained that each contestant would receive a large index card with numbers that corresponded to questions. He’d ask the questions quickly. They’d write their answers down quickly, and then he’d read all the questions by number again and they’d reveal their answers.

  “If you want to back out, the time is now,” Vince said softly.

  “That would be wise.” Mildred fluffed her snowy-white curls. “Hero and I know each other like the backs of our hands.”

  Harley noticed Mildred’s beau didn’t say a thing.

  “We’re staying,” Harley said to Vince. “Living in the moment.”

  The questions came fast and furious. Gabe timed them on his military watch, which suited Harley just fine. She didn’t want to overthink.

  “All right, couples.” Gabe waved his sheet of questions in the air. “Dinner is almost ready. It’s time to find out which couples know each other best. We’ll start with the ladies. First question, the answer of which is written on your card with a big, red, number one on it... What is your man’s favorite food?”

  Harley and Vince flipped their cards over. They’d both written the same thing. Vince looked perplexed.

  The crowd read all the cards, groaning, chuckling and applauding.

  “Mildred, chocolate is not my favorite food,” Hero admonished, waving a card that said green beans. “It’s yours.”

  “Ham with bananas and hollandaise.” Duffy gave Jessica a kiss. “Spot-on.” He’d written the same thing.

  Gabe came to stand in front of Vince and Harley. “There’s no way carrots could be my brother’s favorite food.”

  “It’s written on the card, my friend.” Harley stacked the two cards together, unable to contain a triumphant smile.

  “Moving on to the next question. This one is for the gentlemen. If you were home on a rainy day, what movie would your partner want to watch?”

  The cards flipped over for the audience to see.

  Harley and Vince’s cards showed the same answer.

  “Love Actually.” Harley fanned her suddenly warm cheeks. “How did you know?”

  “It has an architect in it.” Vince lowered his voice. “And it was sitting on your DVD player when I came over to your apartment.”

  Harley was touched he’d remembered. She turned away, reminding herself this was just a moment, not forever. “What does yours say, Hero?”

  “Days of Thunder.” Hero sounded dejected. “I know you like Tom Cruise, Mildred.”

  “Honestly, that’s my second choice.” Mildred slumped. “I wrote Cars.”

  “We’re moving on, people,” Gabe said into the microphone, clearly born for the limelight. “Food is almost done, and we have eighteen more questions to go.”

  Before dinner was served, Vince and Harley racked up a total of fourteen matches. Joe and Brit beat them by two. Mildred and Hero only had ten. And Duffy and Jessica left in the midst of the game because Jessica thought she might be having contractions.

  Gabe stopped by Harley’s table while Vince was getting them bottles of water to drink with dinner. “Impressive score.” Gabe lowered his voice. “Maybe you should stop pretending you aren’t a couple and actually try being a couple.”

  How she wanted that to be possible. But love, like her balconies, was out of reach.

  * * *

  HARLEY WOKE UP DISORIENTED.

  She’d had a dream she was a bride, except when she walked down the aisle, there was no groom awaiting her.

  Her bed was harder than usual and her sheets felt as if they had too much bleach. She couldn’t be home.

  Her stomach gurgled.

  And then she remembered where she was. Harmony Valley. A bed-and-breakfast. Vince.

  She wanted to go back to sleep and reimagine the dream, inserting a handsome groom with black hair and black eyes beaming at her.

  Her stomach gurgled again.

  There’d be no dreamland do-over.

  She’d eaten too much salsa last night. Or overloaded her fajita with cheese and sour cream. Or realized that no matter how compatible she and Vince were on paper, no matter how much she and his family wanted their engagement to be real, it was a temporary fantasy.

  Vince entered the room they shared, holding two mugs. One mug had a tea bag tag hanging from the side. Based on the smell, there must have been coffee in the other.

  Harley sat up. “I slept in again.”

  “No need to apologize.” Vince placed the tea mug on the nightstand next to her cell phone and then sat on his bed. “Take your time. You’re on vacation. I’m going to tinker with the riding mower Gabe found and see if I can get it running.”

  “Thank you for the tea.” Her stomach gurgled again. “Go drink your coffee in the dining room. I’ll be out in fifteen minutes.” She was going to Joe and Brit’s house to tile.

  “Don’t mind me.” He settled against his headboard. “I need to check my email.”

  “Vince. We’re pretend engaged. I want a little privacy.” In case she got sick.

  He didn’t look up from his phone. “Unless you were planning to dance naked into that closet they call a bathroom, there’s nothing you’re showing that I haven’t seen before. I’m not looking, anyway.”

  “Yeah, but now we’re just friends, remember? Vamoose.”

  He didn’t say a word, feigning, she was sure, that whatever he’d found on his cell phone deserved his undivided attention.

  She huffed, grabbed clean clothes from her duffel and headed for the bathroom.

  * * *

  SOMETHING HAD GONE wrong last night at dinner.

  Everything had been fine with Harley until they’d eaten. She hadn’t want
ed to talk much afterward.

  Vince lingered in their room, preferring the quiet to watching Gabe devour breakfast. Harley was in the shower. Every once in a while, he’d hear a bump. He knew about bumps and that shower. It was too small for anyone over the age of ten.

  Her notebook was back beneath her pillow. He’d been raised in Harmony Valley where everyone was in everyone else’s business. He took it out again and flipped through it, noting things he hadn’t yesterday.

  Staircases that ascended to clouds. Ribbons of walkway that curled around walls, as if they were catwalks designed for felines living in yurts.

  Vince traced the lines of a house, wanting to be able to solve Harley’s unsolvable puzzle.

  A seed of an idea took root.

  Not a solution, but a possibility, a compromise.

  He’d worked on an ocean oil rig where creative architecture had sea legs.

  Harley’s phone was charging on the nightstand. It rang, shaking the idea for Harley’s design concept loose. Her phone display read Dan Friedman.

  Dan. Harley’s old boyfriend. The man who’d smashed her saw. If Vince had known the guy was that vindictive, he’d have landed a few more punches before he’d let him go.

  Vince nearly dropped his coffee in the rush to answer her phone. “For your own good, you need to quit calling, buddy.” He ended the call without waiting for an answer.

  He picked up her notebook again. That idea. He studied the drawing, trying to recapture it. But the thought had slipped away.

  The shower turned off.

  Vince flipped back and forth through her sketchpad, listening to Harley dry her hair. No ideas appeared. At least, none that would help her. He was consumed with a mental photograph of Harley in Dan’s arms.

  That guy wasn’t right for her. She needed someone who admired her work, appreciated her quick wit, accepted the fact that she’d go her own way and make decisions in her own time. All of which were important and had nothing whatsoever to do with how Vince could lose his hands in her thick hair when he kissed her.

  She shut the hair dryer off, snapping him back to the present. He returned her sketchpad to its rightful place.

  Harley emerged, braiding her long, thick hair. She’d put on a pair of blue jeans and one of Jerry’s company T-shirts, this one margarita-green.

  “Why don’t you ever let your hair down?” The only time he’d seen her take it out of the braid had been before she went to sleep at night. Or when he set it free.

  “It’d get covered in grout, for one.” She rummaged through her duffel, which seemed to hold more than Mary Poppins’s magical carpet bag. “Or caught in a tile saw. Shed all over someone’s new floor...”

  “Get tangled in some guy’s hands.”

  She hesitated only a second before firing back. “And then Jerry would tell me I’m reducing productivity at the workplace.”

  Their verbal banter always made him smile. If only things were different. If only he was different. “I could love you if—”

  Harley half turned, half looked, half spoke. “Wha...?”

  Vince hadn’t meant to say anything. But he was looking at her and the L-word was bouncing on the back of his tongue like a springboard diver readying for a reverse double somersault. Because she was great, really great. And talented. And beautiful. And it stank that he couldn’t be the man she deserved.

  But he could tell her how he felt about her, along with the parameters he had to live by. The rules that meant they couldn’t be together. “I could love you if—”

  She launched into his lap, knocking him back on the bed.

  One kiss. Another. And...

  Vince lost count. It was enough that Harley was in his arms. For the first time in days, he felt like he could breathe. He breathed in the scent of Harley—her soap, flowery shampoo, hardworking woman. He broke off the kiss. Set her aside. Sat up. “We need to talk.” This time he’d try not to blurt out the L-word. “What I meant to say was—”

  “I love you.” She stared at him, blue eyes shining with the truth. “Don’t mess this thing up again.”

  He drew back. “Love is serious.” Loving him was serious, he’d meant to say.

  She laughed, stopping when he didn’t laugh with her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Let me rephrase. Loving me... You should consider all the consequences first.”

  “Consequences?” It was her turn to draw back.

  He put his hands flat on the bed and leaned away from her to keep from reaching for something he shouldn’t have—her.

  “I could love you if...if you promised to let me go the moment I show any symptoms of—”

  “No. Love isn’t like that.” Her head swung back and forth. “My love isn’t like that. I don’t need you to be perfect. No one’s perfect. Perfection is overrated.”

  “But healthy isn’t.” He would not touch her again. He would not hold her. He would not kiss her. Something in his chest panged. “I’ve seen what happens to a healthy person in a relationship with someone battling schizophrenia.”

  “Which you don’t have.”

  “But I could get.”

  “That’s a risk I’m willing to take.” She leaned forward, covering his hand with hers. “If it came to that, I could learn how to help you.”

  She was so young. So naïve. So hopeful. That hope wrapped him in its tempting, loving embrace, bringing him closer to her. Closer to heaven. And everything that frightened him in the night. She had no fear. She looked at Vince and dreamed about a full and happy life. With him. He couldn’t let her have that illusion. “I can’t have children.”

  Harley startled a little, like a kitten who wasn’t sure the sound she heard was that of a predator’s paw behind her. “Then why did we use condoms?”

  “I can have kids.” At least, he assumed he was biologically capable. The point he was trying to make was about choice. “I told you before. I don’t want to have kids.”

  She’d grown wary, not to the point of defensiveness. But she was looking at him in that analytical way of hers.

  He needed her to conclude that he was not the right man for her. He needed it like a drowning captain needs to know his crew will be okay as he goes down with his ship. “Let’s say I never develop mental illness. That doesn’t mean my DNA couldn’t be carrying something that passes the disease on to a child. I won’t do that to my kid or any kid.”

  “Has schizophrenia been proven to be genetic?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Lightning struck my dad against all odds.” She was missing the point. “I won’t take that risk. And you shouldn’t, either.”

  “No kids?” The wheels were spinning. This had to be her deal-breaker.

  He’d seen her smiling at his niece. He’d noted her chuckle as she’d watched Sam and Brad bicker. She liked kids. She wanted kids.

  “We’ll talk about it,” Harley said carefully, fingers twining in her lap. She was just stubborn enough to believe she could change his mind. She’d probably taken a debate class in college. “Relationships are about compromise.”

  “No kids.” He wasn’t compromising on this. Ever.

  “But...” Her fingers stopped moving. “We could adopt or find a sperm donor.”

  Vince should put an end to this madness right now. Before they fell too much in love. Before Harley refused to let him go when he became his father.

  “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of kids and you, if need be.”

  He recognized the determined set to her jaw. Overlaid his mother’s expression onto Harley’s. Saw the path she’d travel. Saw her upbeat, positive personality deteriorate until she was a bitter, empty shell of the beauty before him.

  “This can’t work.” Vince stood, charging for the door. Needing out. Needing to save her.

  But Harley was quicker and reached the door before he did.
She placed her hands on his chest. “What happened to small steps and learning how the simple things are done? What happened to not giving up after just one failure?”

  She was using his own words against him.

  She raised up on her toes, pressing her lips to his.

  He was lost. Not lost as he’d been to his brothers when he’d left Harmony Valley. But lost to want. Lost to need. Lost to love.

  And to his horror, he couldn’t find the strength to insist Harley let him go.

  Not until Gabe knocked on the door a moment later, telling Vince what he already knew.

  It was time to leave.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE LONGER THE day went on, the sicker Harley felt.

  Her head pounded. Her stomach churned. Her entire body sagged with fatigue.

  She blamed it on Vince. On his fear of a disease he may never develop. But his fear affected his ability to love her freely.

  It had taken a kiss to make him give them time. But Harley had no illusions. This was a temporary truce unless she could convince him their love was worth overcoming any doubt.

  Vince checked on Harley before lunch, pressing a gentle, almost reluctant, kiss on her forehead before leaving. He was going to Santa Rosa for an engine part. He was determined to get the riding mower fixed to tackle the field they’d cleared for the wedding on Saturday.

  The tile Gabe had found was cutting cleanly without cracks and going up without a hitch. That practically guaranteed something would go wrong.

  “I brought lunch.” Sam wandered in as Harley was finishing up the hall shower. She carried a plate with a turkey sandwich and potato chips. She wore her coveralls today, which sagged around her ankles. “It’s so pretty.” She took a picture of Harley’s work with her cell phone.

  “I still need to grout.” But the black-and-white geometric pattern was stunning. “You can help with that tomorrow.” Unexpectedly, Harley’s stomach lurched. She ran for the front door, gagging, and spit up in the trash can on the front lawn.

  “Should I get my dad?” Sam hovered in the doorway. “Or call Brit?”

  Joe was in the garage. Brit was at the salon.