The Wedding (The Casanova Club Book 14)

by Ali Parker

  “The city life suits you.”

  Laurel gave me a tight hug before stepping away and turning toward the black sedan at her back. The rest of the crew had already piled into their vehicles. Three of them were already down at the gate, where they had apparently run into Wyatt, who had pulled his truck over to open the gate and let them out.

  “I’d better be off,” Laurel said. “See you soon.”

  “See you soon.” I wrapped my arms around myself and waved as the sedan pulled away, its headlights rolling over me as it turned around and nearly blinding me. It was just past six and full dark. I looked forward to the spring and summer months when the days would be longer and the sun would stay out for well into the evenings.

  Once Laurel’s car, the last of the six, made it through the gate, Wyatt got back in his truck and drove through. He hopped back out to close the gate behind him before completing the drive up to the house.

  Grinning like a fool, I jogged the twenty or so feet across the gravel to meet them.

  Phillip hit the gravel first. He met me with a grin just as wide and genuine as mine, and we slammed into each other for a big hug. He messed up my hair, and I poked at his ribs, and we broke apart laughing in time for me to hug my father as he got out of the back of the truck, and then my mother, who hopped gingerly down from the front.

  Wyatt walked around the back of the truck and began unloading luggage.

  “How was your flight?” I asked, looking around at all of them.

  “Good.” Phillip grinned. Then he nudged me in the arm with his elbow. “We had a hot flight attendant, so I mean, there really wasn’t anything to complain about.”

  I rolled my eyes and caught my mother doing the same thing.

  “Let me help you with those, Wyatt,” Phillip said, abandoning me and going to help my fiancé with the bags. Watching them together made my heart swell. Wyatt cracked a joke I couldn’t hear and Phillip laughed unabashedly, which in turn made Wyatt laugh.

  I wanted to preserve the moment in its entirety in my mind. This was my life now. This was what I had to look forward to every time my family came to visit. Love. Laughter. Joy. It almost seemed too good to be true after everything that had happened this year.

  After I’d convinced myself there would be no happy ending for me.

  But here I was, watching that elusive happy ending unfold before my very eyes.

  “What took you so long?” I asked as my mother slipped past me and gazed up at the ranch house.

  Wyatt closed the tailgate of his truck. “Traffic.”

  “Yeah. Traffic.” My father nodded.

  I arched an eyebrow.

  Wyatt had two duffel bags slung over his shoulders and he toted a massive suitcase along behind him as he walked up the side of the truck to meet me. He gave me a kiss, adjusted the heavier of the two bags on his shoulder, and then tipped his head back down toward Cherry Road. “So Laurel’s gone, then?”

  “Until tomorrow,” I said. “They were heading back to the hotel to rest up before the big day.”

  “Did you get everything done that you wanted?” He asked.

  Nodding, I tried to take a bag from him, but he pulled away, refusing to let me help. I pouted before giving in. “Yes, we did. The ceremony site and the reception are completely set up. It looks beautiful. You’ll see when we head down in a bit for the rehearsal.”

  “And where’s Janie?” he asked, scouring the property.

  “Up in her bedroom writing her speech.”

  “Uh oh.” Wyatt chuckled. “That sounds frightening. Janie and speeches?”

  I nodded knowingly. “Don’t worry. I’m sure most of the jokes will be at my expense, not yours.”

  “Good,” Wyatt said, flashing me that devilish smile of his before looking over his shoulder at my family. “Come on, James crew. Let’s get you inside. Piper and I will show you to your rooms and give you the tour. Then we’ll be on our way to the rehearsal behind the barn.”

  I let Wyatt take the lead. His boots thudded up the porch steps and his forearms flexed and strained under the weight of the bags. I checked him out as I waited at the bottom of the steps for everyone to pass, and then I indulged in staring at his ass as I came up behind them.

  My man had it going on.

  We followed him through the front door, and then I almost walked smack into my father’s back as they all drew to a stop before the open-concept grand-ranch interior.

  I’d had the same reaction when I first saw it. Somehow, it was simple and grand all at once. The living room and dining room shared a good portion of the space and then gave way to the massive ranch-house kitchen, which was all exposed wood and distressed cupboards with a massive kitchen island flanked with barstools.

  Wyatt’s father had built the place with the intention of fulfilling his wife’s dream to have a house full of children. That dream was never realized. Wyatt was an only child. The only one his mother could bear. The space was not wasted on the family, however. I knew Wyatt had beautiful memories in this place. Hard ones, too.

  But what person doesn’t have hard memories in their family home?

  “This house is gorgeous,” my mother breathed.

  I stepped up beside her and rested a hand on her back. “It is, isn’t it?”

  Wyatt pointed up the staircase to the second level. “The bedrooms are all upstairs. Come with me. We’ll drop off your things and get you settled.”

  We went up the stairs. On the landing, my family cast continuous glances down to the first level. I forgot how much of an impact this place had on me when I first saw it. In fact, every house I’d stayed in over the course of last year had been a masterpiece. This was the only house that felt truly homey to me, though. Yes, it was beautiful and elegant, but it was also cozy and simple and somewhat understated. It was an easy place to cuddle under a blanket and waste hours away watching mindless television with the person you loved.

  I never worried about misplacing something or about spilling a drink.

  This place had felt like home within a matter of days of arriving here. And now? Well, it almost felt more like home than New York ever had.

  My parents’ guest room was at the end of the hall on the second floor. Wyatt put them up in the nicest of the suites, with powder-blue walls, billowy white curtains, and a white-pine-frame bed with a heavy white quilt. They had their own bathroom, complete with a steam shower and giant soaker tub, which my mother immediately walked over to and stared down at with her hands clasped together under her chin.

  “I know where Mom will be tonight.” I giggled, lingering in the bathroom doorway.

  From there, Wyatt saw Phillip to his room, a simpler, smaller space in the room next to our parents. The bed was made up in navy blankets and loaded down with fluffy pillows. His room overlooked the fields out behind the ranch. Way off in the distance, if I squinted hard, I could just make out the loafing shed Wyatt and I had used as a place away from all the wedding prep to have sex the other day.

  Just thinking about it made my skin itch with desire.

  We showed my family the rest of the house and fetched Janie from her room to head down to the barn for the rehearsal just after seven o’clock. Wyatt ducked out to get Boone and Dodge, his two best men, who had likely forgotten about the rehearsal entirely and had their feet up after a long day of work on the ranch.

  I walked my family through the barn and toward the reception site set out in the back.

  As we walked, my mother slipped an arm around my waist. “Your home is beautiful, Piper. And it suits you. So does Wyatt.”

  “Thanks, Mom. I don’t know how I got so lucky.”

  “It’s not luck,” she said firmly. “You deserve this. You deserve all of this. And the way he loves you? I did not expect it, if I’m being honest. I didn’t think a thing like this—this Casanova Club—could end so well. But he’s proven me wrong. He’s a good man, Piper. A very good man.”

  I couldn’t help the smile tugging at my lip
s. “He is.”

  My father chimed in on my other side. “We’re proud of you, Pipes.”

  “And we’re glad you chose love and not the money,” my mother said.

  My smile faltered. “I wish I could have had both so you guys would be taken care of.”

  “Hush.” My mother smiled. “There is no need to worry about us anymore. I promise. Taking the money might have made things easier in the short run, sweetheart. But the long haul? It wouldn’t have been worth it. You would have missed out on the love of your life. And he would have missed out on you. And that would’ve been the biggest shame of all.”

  I willed the tears threatening to break free to go away. I slipped out of my mother’s embrace and fanned my eyes. “Don’t make me cry. I’ve been doing too much of that the last couple of weeks.”

  Janie, who’d been hanging back while my parents and I got all mushy and sentimental, rose to the occasion to distract me from my near emotional outburst. She strutted out in front of us to the back barn doors fixed on a wrought-iron bar and slid them dramatically open, revealing the reception site outside.

  White tents were pitched, their ceilings drooped and billowing. Strung up all through the ceiling were twinkling lights and faux chandeliers where, tomorrow night, candles would flicker and glow above sprigs of greenery hanging upside down over the tables from the chandeliers. The tables were done up in shimmering white table clothes that matched those wrapped around the chairs. The ribbons and centerpieces and finishing touches would arrive tomorrow morning, but as it was, it was absolute perfection.

  “Holy shit,” my brother breathed. “How much did this fucking cost?”

  “All part of the club,” I said simply, striding forward to revel in the glory of my wedding. The next time I entered these tents, it would be on Wyatt’s arm.

  As his wife.

  And there was nothing in this world I was more looking forward to than that.

  Chapter 15

  Asher

  Antoni kept pace with my long strides as I marched across the tarmac from my family’s private jet to the Casanova private jet. My best friend, confidant, and saving grace in all this mess with Piper, shot me a hard look as he straightened out his navy-blue blazer.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to—I don’t know—skip out on the whole wedding thing, Ash?”

  I kept walking. The heels of my oxfords clipped the pavement and I adjusted the leather strap of my bag on my shoulder. “I’m sure.”

  I sensed Antoni’s unease as he chewed the inside of his cheek. He kept quiet for just shy of a minute before giving in to the impulse to speak his mind. “You’re sure? I mean, it’s not going to be a good time. I know how rough this has been on you. Three weeks isn’t a lot of time to recover from this kind of heartbreak.”

  “It would be easier to recover if I didn’t have someone prattling in my ear all damn day about how heartbroken I was.”

  Antoni winced. “Sorry. That’s not what I mean. It’s just… we’re in America, Ash. Why don’t we get a swanky hotel and go to some clubs? How do they say it here? You need a rebound.”

  “I do not need a rebound.”

  Antoni sighed and cast his gaze ahead to the jet waiting for us. There were several men already gathered around it. I could pick out the massive burly Jeremiah and the severe Camden even from our far distance.

  At least I’d be surrounded by men who were feeling just as shitty as I was.

  Antoni was a good friend. And he was doing his best to understand. But understand, he could not. Like my mother, he seemed oblivious to how hard I’d really fallen for Piper and how easy it was for me to see her in my life.

  The pressures of being royalty seemed so much lighter when I still had Piper as a dream.

  Now reality had come crashing back down around me. My mother expected me to make up for lost time. She had new women from all across the country attending each and every one of our lavish social affairs in a desperate attempt to put an end to my bachelor lifestyle.

  Of course, after Piper, I wasn’t living the bachelor lifestyle at all.

  I’d been waiting for her. And I still felt like I was trapped in that space of waiting, like I couldn’t take the next necessary step to put space between the memory that was us.

  “I hear Austin has some pretty great nightlife,” Antoni said.

  “I’m sure it does.”

  “But?”

  “But we’re going to the wedding, and that’s final. I need to see her. I need to close the book and walk away from this feeling less stuck than I feel now.”

  “I’m sorry, mate.”

  “Don’t be. I’m sick of people feeling sorry for me.”

  Antoni squared his shoulders as we closed in on the jet. Then he started to hang back, trailing along slightly behind me. “Are you sure they don’t care that I’m tagging along?”

  “Nobody will care.”

  “But—”

  “Antoni, seriously. Nobody will care. Besides, I need you. The last thing I want is for my mother to call me a hundred times over the course of three days to make sure I’m not ‘abandoning all my responsibilities’ while I’m here. You need to keep me accountable.”

  “I’ve never been very good at that, Ash,” Antoni grumbled.

  “Well, you’d better be because I have a feeling I’m not going to be in the mood for my mother’s incessant micromanaging after I get home from this trip. Let’s stay on top of things so I can avoid her wrath when we return to London, yes?”

  “Very well.”

  My mother had been a royal pain in my ass for these last three weeks. I’d thought, naively, that she would be consistent with the person she’d been when I was waiting for Piper’s answer. I’d spent my time after Piper how I saw fit, working with the less fortunate to build solutions rather than holing up in the estate and worrying over every penny and dime and how I would make more and save it all and crunching numbers with our financial advisor.

  My parents did enough of that for the lot of us.

  No. I’d been out in the streets just like I promised my mother I would be. And for a time, she let me be. After Piper chose Wyatt on the last day of December, my mother returned full force to the overbearing matchmaker she used to be.

  When I returned to London, I’d be moving out of the estate. Antoni and I had already looked at places and I’d found a pleasant property not far from the downtown core. It was small, sure, but it was peaceful. There were no nagging mothers, no house staff, no complacent fathers, and best of all, no memories of me and Piper.

  It was a clean start, and one I desperately needed at that.

  All I had to do was get through this damn wedding.

  Antoni and I arrived at the jet. Jeremiah and Camden greeted me with curt nods.

  “Asher,” Camden said. “How’ve you been?”

  I shrugged. The leather strap of my bag creaked softly on my shoulder. “Oh, you know. Hanging in there. You?”

  Camden offered me the same shrug. “The same.”

  Antoni stared at his feet until I introduced him. He shook hands with the two other men, and then we talked about things that didn’t matter for the next fifteen minutes until the others arrived. When all of us, minus Levi and Cooper, were gathered on the tarmac, the pilot arrived and let us on the plane. We put up our bags, claimed our seats, and cracked into the booze.

  It shouldn’t have been a surprise that everyone wanted to start drinking so early. We’d be in Austin in less than three hours, and from there, we had what I’d been told was about an hour and a half car ride out into the middle of the country where the wedding was happening on Wyatt’s ranch.

  Well, Piper and Wyatt’s ranch.

  I drank greedily from the bottle of beer Easton had handed to me moments earlier. Christian, who was sitting diagonally across from me lazily draped over the beige leather of his seat, brooded over his beer. He swirled it around a couple times before lifting it to his lips and taking a swig. Then he stared mor
osely out the plane window.

  I’d wondered since that night at the Casanova Club when Piper ran out of the party what had transpired between the pair of them out on the balcony. Whatever it was Wyatt had been there to break it up. When Piper ran out obviously distraught I’d considered confronting Christian about it. I likely wasn’t the only man with the same thought process that night.

  He’d done something to hurt her. And none of us could understand that. Since that night he hadn’t really been a part of the group. Sure, we indulged him, but he was withdrawing into himself. Presently, he looked like he was just willing this thing to end.

  I didn’t blame him.

  Time ticked by. I glanced at my watch and wondered what the hell was taking Levi and Cooper so long.

  “Maybe they aren’t coming,” Miles mused.

  A couple of heads turned toward him, including mine. “I’m sure they’ll make it,” I said.

  Just then, as if on cue, footsteps sounded on the metal stairs outside. Cooper ducked under the low doorframe and entered the plane. He looked around at the lot of us, that classic cocky smile of his lingering on his lips as he stalked inside and slung his bag up into an open overhead compartment.

  Then he hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his pants. “Well, aren’t you a sorry looking bunch.”

  “Piss off, Coop,” Easton glowered.

  Cooper threw his head back and laughed. “Don’t get confused. I’m not happy about this shit either. Did I wake up this morning wanting to watch Piper walk down the aisle to another man? No. No, I did not. But I’m here, aren’t I? As are the rest of you. Well, minus one. Where is that brooding rock star, anyway?”

  “He hasn’t shown,” Joshua said. He was sitting at the back of the plane near a window. He hadn’t uttered a word since he arrived, aside from a couple of quiet hellos he offered to Miles and Aaron only. Then he’d claimed his seat and, understandably, brooded.