She was not sure if the driveway was actually ten miles long, or if it simply felt that way to someone in urgent need of a bathroom, but it twisted and turned up through the mountain woods for quite some time. Eventually it left the larger trees behind, emerging into the clear top layer of the mountain, where bare rocks were numerous and only scraggly little trees had a foothold. Finally the path crested over a rise, revealing the house tucked snugly into the side of the mountain on the other side amid a few trees, and returning her gratefully to civilization.
It turned out that the place Dylan and his entourage referred to as a cabin was actually more a lodge, and a big one at that. At least two stories from the front side, the gray wood was trimmed in white, and lots of big, clean windows added to the striking first impression. Both the ground floor and the upper level had wide wraparound porches on which ceiling fans turned lazily in the mountain breeze. She would later learn that there was even more to the house than that, including an enormous terrace level beneath the first story, built into the side of the mountain, and a back deck the size of her condo that jutted over the slope of the mountain behind the house.
But she could be amazed by all of it later. For now, all she could do was leave her car in front of the house and skitter up to the front door. Yvette answered her knock promptly—thank God—and showed her to the closest powder room with an air of reluctance, as though someone without enough foresight to manage her urinary tract was obviously a poor choice to plan a wedding.
When she emerged from the bathroom, feeling as if she might float away with relief, Yvette led her into the den, which was actually a two-story great room with polished wood walls, a double-sided stone fireplace, and a full wall of windows looking over the green mountains beyond. Several people were in the den, lounging on assorted couches watching TV or playing checkers, and two guys were picking softly at guitars in one corner, murmuring to each other.
She recognized one of these last two as Dylan, but he was absorbed in conversation and did not notice her. Some of the others looked familiar from the Braves game and the night at the High. She spotted Misty, sprawled on one of the couches, painting her nails and looking bored. Next to her were two women Suzanne recognized as a pair of Dylan’s older sisters. Her humiliating experience at the High came back to her in flashes. Suzanne’s stomach churned, and she fought hard against the fervent desire to turn and run back out the door.
“Wait here,” Yvette murmured softly, leaving Suzanne to stand uncomfortably on the edge of the room. A girl with long, light brown hair was curled into an overstuffed chair on the opposite side of the den, near one of the colossal windows. She had a blanket pulled over her and was reading a well-worn leather-bound book. Yvette touched the girl’s shoulder, and the latter looked up to meet Suzanne’s eye and give her a broad, endearing smile.
Suzanne waved awkwardly and followed the girl’s beckoning motions to meet her in the next room. As she made her way across the back of the den, she glanced at Dylan, who nodded perfunctorily in acknowledgement of her presence. As he turned his gaze back to his fingers working on the acoustic guitar, she thought she saw the corner of a crooked smile.
Chapter 15
The kitchen was open and sunny, with soft yellow walls, glossy white cabinets, and light wooden furniture. The room was at the back corner of the cabin, which meant large windows let in daylight on two walls. Kate and Suzanne sat across from each other on stools at the breakfast bar, going over the binders and Suzanne’s notes. Yvette flitted in and out, asking periodically whether they needed anything and pausing to look at whatever Suzanne was writing.
It struck Suzanne as odd that a soft-spoken, sweet girl like Kate would command so much power over an established professional in her forties like Yvette. Certainly it was not owing to any outlandish demands on Kate’s part. As they went over Kate’s expectations together, Suzanne found that Dylan’s younger sister was meek about her opinions and preferences almost to a fault.
“I don’t know, Suzanne, what do you think?” Kate was saying for the hundredth time in the past hour.
“Well, it’s really up to you, sweetie,” Suzanne said. “Personally, I think with an outdoor wedding it’s better to go with the nicer, white plastic folding chairs, rather than the ones with fabric covering. That way, if it rains…”
“Of course,” Kate said. “That’s so smart. It’s the kind of thing I would never think of.”
Suzanne put a hand gently on Kate’s to get her attention. “Sweetie, ease up on yourself, okay? I wouldn’t have thought of it either, except that I had a hundred and fifty black velvet chairs get soaked right before an annual meeting once.”
“Really?” Kate said.
“Really,” Suzanne said. “It was a nightmare.”
“What happened?”
“This advertising firm wanted a black tie meeting-slash-celebration, but outdoors. We had a tent over the dance floor and music and stuff, but the president wanted to give the speech under the stars for some reason—some ‘reach for the stars’ theme or something, I forget…
“Anyway, we were all set up, and there was a sudden rainstorm. It only lasted ten minutes, but that’s all it takes. My assistant Chad and I spent thirty minutes trying to fix it with hair dryers, until we realized the velvet chair covers were ruined. We only had two hours until the keynote speech, the chair rental place was closed for the night, and it was supposed to be this big elegant deal…”
“What did you do?” Kate asked, her eyes wide as though Suzanne were telling her she’d been present for the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Suzanne laughed at the memory. “It sounds crazy, but I had just done a huge event the weekend before called ‘Couches for Kids’ where people donated their old sofas to a children’s shelter thrift store. It was sponsored by a big furniture company, people got a coupon for donating, yadda yadda…”
Suzanne could feel herself becoming animated as she recounted it. Something about an impending crisis had always energized her. She was at her best in those types of situations, and her resourcefulness under pressure set her apart from other event planners. “Anyway, I called my contact at the shelter and it turned out there were still a ton of couches on one of their trucks. So Chad ran to a fabric store and bought every yard of black fabric he could find, while the guys from the shelter brought all the couches out to the venue and set them up instead of chairs. We even put some floor lamps around and hooked them up to extension cords, right in the middle of this field.”
“How funny!” Kate said.
“Yeah, and the effect was actually pretty spectacular,” Suzanne said, grinning in spite of herself. “It actually made the AJC. There was a wave of outdoor couch parties in Atlanta the whole summer after that. The firm’s president was so happy with the publicity of his event he made a big donation to the children’s shelter.”
“That’s awesome!” Kate said. “Sounds like it worked out even better because of the rain.”
Something about the sweet twenty-four-year-old’s unadulterated admiration checked Suzanne’s own enthusiasm. Last week both the children’s shelter and the advertising firm had fired her, very politely and apologetically.
A reputation takes years to establish, Suzanne’s mother reminded her, but only one night to ruin forever. Of course, Mom had been talking about one night in the back seat of a Buick, not a public debacle at a hallowed institution of art, but the principle still held.
“That’s exactly why I recommended her, sis,” said a voice behind Suzanne. “She’s kind of a creative genius, at least for a blue-blooded city girl.”
She turned to see Dylan entering the kitchen behind her. Without his guitar she could see that he was wearing old jeans with paint splatters on them and a beat-up Ramones t-shirt. “I know she’ll come up with something as unique as you are.” He walked behind Kate and tousled her hair affectionately on his way to the refrigerator.
Kate threw an elbow at him in an unconscious gesture of playfulness. Suzan
ne imagined this was the same basic interaction they had been having since they were kids. Dylan fished a few beer bottles out of the fridge and gestured toward Suzanne on his way back to the den. “Hey, when you ladies are done in here, I need to talk to you for a second.”
“Me?” Suzanne asked.
“Yup.”
She and Kate exchanged shrugs. “Well, I guess let’s get back to it,” Suzanne said when he was gone. “Sounds like your brother needs me for some reason.”
“Yeah, Jeff will be back soon, too,” Kate said. “We’re going to town for dinner. Trying to get all the time we can before the summer tour starts.”
“So he travels with Dylan?”
“Yes. Basically as soon as the wedding is over, they’re all hitting the road. It’s a short tour this year, though, which is nice. We’re taking a honeymoon in September.”
“Why not get married then?” Suzanne asked. “I’m sure it’s lovely here in the fall, with the leaves changing on the mountain.”
Kate went scarlet. “It’s a long story,” she said, fidgeting with a scrap of lace.
Suzanne instinctively changed the subject. “It must be hard, having him away so much.”
“Well, yeah, it is. But I have my parents and my older sisters. Half-sisters. You know, Dylan and I are full siblings and then there are two older sisters on each side.”
“Yes, I’d heard that. I saw two of your sisters at the—” she hesitated, watching Kate’s response. “At the gala a few weeks ago.”
If Kate knew about the incident, it didn’t show on her pretty features. “That was probably Sherrie and Amber. They’re both here now, actually. They’re the single ones, the ones you usually see…in the limelight.”
The ones making asses of themselves and getting plastered all over the tabloids, Suzanne corrected mentally. But then who was she to talk?
“I love them and everything,” Kate said. “They’re Mom’s kids and they lived with us when I was young. But I’m actually closer to my other sisters, Francine and Carla. They’re both married with kids. I have great nieces and nephews!”
“Dylan mentioned you really like kids,” Suzanne said conversationally. Kate nodded.
“Do you get to see them much?”
“Francine lives in Memphis with her husband, so I see her little boys pretty often. Carla teaches at the American School in Madrid—her husband is Spanish—so I don’t see her and her family as much. I’m spending a few weeks with them this summer, though. I’m really excited.”
Kate’s face, however, did not reflect that excitement. At least not at this second. Her pallor was suddenly pale and green, especially in contrast to the deep blush from just moments ago. “Kate? You okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Would you excuse me, though? Can we talk again later? Or tomorrow?” Without waiting for an answer, Kate rushed out of the room. Suzanne heard quick footsteps on the stairs and the rapid slam of a door above.
Had it not been for Marci, she might not have put it together. Having recent experience, however, watching morning sickness in action—which did not at all confine itself to mornings and therefore had a stupid name—Suzanne thought she knew why Kate did not want to wait until fall to get married. She smiled to herself and collected the materials back into the binders, making herself a note to look up all the foods pregnant women weren’t supposed to have, so she could put them on the block list from the wedding meal.
When she had everything neatly stacked on the counter, she wandered out to the den looking for Dylan, and found that almost everyone had vacated the large room. Yvette alone sat on the abandoned couch, working away on her laptop, with three phones and several manila file folders lying next to her. She smiled perfunctorily when Suzanne entered.
“Um, I think Dylan wanted to see me?” Suzanne said.
“They went downstairs,” Yvette said, closing her laptop. “I’ll take you down there. I might as well give you the tour and show you to your room while I’m at it.”
“Great.”
The house was as spacious and commodious on the inside as Suzanne had imagined from the outside. The second story was in the shape of a fat “U,” wrapping around the open den downstairs with a landing railed by solid, polished pine. Six guest bedrooms were upstairs, each pair taking up one side of the house and sharing an adjoining full bath between them. Yvette opened the door to an empty room at one end of the hall, saying, “Dylan’s parents will stay here when they arrive tomorrow, so I’ll just show you this one so you get the idea.”
Large for a guest bedroom, especially in a cabin, the picture windows looked out on two sides toward the wilderness beyond. The furnishings were rustic but pretty, and the walls boasted pictures of Dylan and his five sisters at various ages. In one corner was a pet bed, and Suzanne remembered that Dylan’s mother had a small dog she took with her everywhere. This was obviously the room his parents always stayed in.
“Do you spend a lot of time here?” Suzanne asked curiously.
“Well, sometimes,” Yvette said. “Dylan comes here for a week or two at a time at different times of the year. It’s a good place to get away and work. Quiet, but room enough for lots of people. The guys wrote the entire Fireflies album here. My room is in the guesthouse with yours. I’m not always with them when they’re here, but when they need me it’s easier to be on the premises than at a hotel in town.”
For the first time, Suzanne wondered what kind of personal life Yvette had. What did she do when she was off the clock? Was she ever off the clock?
Yvette cocked her head to the side, listening, and Suzanne thought she discerned what might be the sound of vomiting from the bathroom door. Kate. Suzanne coughed loudly to try to cover the sound, and then put her hand on Yvette’s shoulder. “What about the master?” she asked, searching for a distraction.
“It’s downstairs,” Yvette said. “Though obviously we can’t go in there.”
Obviously.
Still, Yvette had taken the bait and led Suzanne back downstairs. They covered the den, an office/library, and what was obviously originally intended as a dining room but was used to house an assortment of music equipment. “This can all be out before the wedding,” Yvette said. “Between the two main rooms and the library, I think you could seat forty-five inside easily. The longest part of the back deck will accommodate two ten-by-twenty tents, I believe, which would be another forty. I think Kate is only planning to invite a hundred people, so…. Well, you’re the expert; I’ll let you do your own measuring.”
Suzanne had to admit being impressed at Yvette’s attention to detail. “That’s great. Thank you for your thoughts.”
As they passed the door to the master bedroom, which Yvette indicated by a quick wave, curiosity about it struck Suzanne. How did he decorate his bedroom? Did he even do it himself? Was it neat or messy? Did Misty have her suitcase full of tiny shorts in there, too, or was she in one of the bedrooms upstairs? How did Dylan’s parents feel about her being here?
You’re a fine one to judge, she scolded. Still, these thoughts made her surprisingly uncomfortable, and she pushed them away with a furrowed brow.
They were going out the back door onto the deck, which was actually more like the deck of a cruise ship than a house, much less a cabin. At least twenty feet wide from the house at the narrowest point, it wrapped halfway around the house on one side and tapered off at the garage on the other. Several bikini-clad bodies lay face down on chairs at the sunnier side of the deck, where a radio played music Suzanne couldn’t distinguish.
The deck also had a couple of narrow piers—it was the only way Suzanne could describe them—that went several yards over the mountainside to end in smaller observation decks above the trees. Both of these satellite decks had benches around the sides, and one even had a little gazebo overhead. It reminded Suzanne of the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where people walked in the treetops.
“You can see the guesthouse, where you and I will stay, from here.” Yvette led
her to the side of the deck next to the master bedroom and pointed down to a small cottage a hundred yards or so from the main house, tucked neatly into the woods.
As they turned to go back inside, Suzanne kept her eyes away from the master bedroom windows, afraid that either Yvette would think she was nosy or that she would see something she didn’t want to see. An intrusive image appeared in her mind of Dylan, tangled in a white sheet and nothing else, snoring peacefully, sprawled across an old-fashioned bed made of pine logs.
No, no, no, she said to the Dylan in her head. This is inappropriate. You’re a client and I won’t think of you that way. Go away. She willed herself to concentrate on Yvette, to hear the words she was saying. “…didn’t think you would mind staying with me out in the guest house. I hate to intrude on the kids’ fun, don’t you? It’s very roomy and at least we won’t be kept awake at all hours.”
She returned to reality as the implication of Yvette’s words registered. The chipmunk-like little manager considered herself and Suzanne peers, while Dylan and his band mates and friends were a younger generation. But I’m barely thirty-three, she wanted to protest, realizing that this would have been incredibly offensive to Yvette if she said it out loud.
“I know Dylan wants to see you,” Yvette said, “so we’ll just stop in down there first and I’ll have someone get your bags to the guesthouse. Okay?”
“You have servants here?” Suzanne asked. It felt as if she was in a Jane Austen novel.
The response was a high-pitched, nasal laugh that Suzanne had learned meant Yvette thought you were an idiot. “Of course not, don’t be silly. We have a cleaning service, of course, but no. Dylan’s road manager is here, though, and he’s very nice. Considering his job is getting thousands of pounds of equipment from one place to the next every night, I thought maybe he could handle your little bags.”
Regrets Only (Sequel to The Marriage Pact) Page 12
