The Feminine Mesquite: The Complete Series

by Sable Sylvan

  Savina stood across from Mason and Savina’s dad lifted her veil up before taking his seat again.

  Savina couldn’t believe it. Mason was in a tux, looking at her with tears in his blue eyes, looking at her as if she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Her vision became blurry again, and this time, it wasn’t from the veil. It was from the tears welling up in her own eyes. All she could look at during the ceremony was Mason as she replayed the events of the last hour over and over in her head and thought about what the heck she’d say.

  The ceremony was short as the vows would take a while. After all, there were five sets of vows to exchange. Naturally, they went from oldest to youngest, and they had chosen to start with the grooms.

  “Alice Penny Quincy, for as long as we both shall live, I promise to love you, protect you, and honor you,” promised Herbert. “You’re not just my fated mate. You’re my true love. This has all been one heck of a story, but this isn’t our ending. This is just the beginning of the rest of our lives. I know most people say that they’re starting a life together after the wedding. However, you and I have been united since nearly the beginning. There were hiccups along the way, but you and I fought circumstance and family rivalries to be together. If we were able to do that, we’ll be able to face anything that Fate tosses at us in the future.”

  “Herbert Scoville, you’re my true love, my partner in business and my partner in crime. You are always up to do any crazy thing that I suggest,” explained Alice. “I have never known someone who understands me as well as you do. We share a mind, a heart, a home, a company, and yes, a life. What will we share next? I don’t know. I do know this. Whatever it is, it’s going to be great. Our Cinderella story has ended, but the rest of our story has yet to be written. I promise that no matter what, we’ll have our happily ever after.”

  “Abigail Olivia Quincy, I promise that for the rest of my life, I will always be by your side,” vowed Clove. “My Viking ancestors fought the seas and the storms for their lovers. I’d drain the sea and strangle the winds if you desired it. I am forever your faithful servant. My only mission in life is to make your life as full and exciting and spicy as you have made mine. Your inner beauty tamed my inner beast and taught me to embrace my shift. For that, my shift and I owe you a lifetime of pleasure and happiness, of safety and loyalty.”

  “Clove Scoville, our relationship taught me that sometimes, love isn’t just about two people looking for someone to share their life with. Love can be found in the most unexpected places, in places where you never in a million years thought you’d find it. Until I opened my heart, I couldn’t open my eyes and see what was right in front of me,” explained Abigail. “I was so focused on papers and fighting with you over, well, I don’t even remember, and please don’t remind me…but anyway, I was so busy fighting you I wasn’t able to see that I should be loving you. I promise that yes, in the future, we’ll fight, but we’ll love more than we fight, and I won’t let anything petty get in the way of our future.”

  “Addison Quincy,” started Sage. “I can promise you so many things, but I’ll keep this short and sweet. First off, any time you need a dragon fought, I’ll fight it. Secondly, we’ll always make sweet, sweet music together.”

  “Sage Scoville, I may have gone to Bonimolean to study abroad, but the most important things I learned in England were the lessons I learned from you,” said Addison. “You taught me more about Pride and Prejudice than Prof. Bingley. You taught me about the dangers of prejudging people based on appearances. You taught me how to dance with eyes closed and heart open, how to live life as more than just a sleeping beauty waiting for her prince to wake her up. You helped me be a confident, sassy woman like my sisters and made me more of a Quincy girl than I was before I even met you. I promise that I will go into the rest of our life with an open mind and an open heart, and welcome any lessons that Fate tosses our way. I’m confident that no matter what, we’ll be together until the end.”

  “Cayenne Quincy, I’ve traveled the world, but the only woman that I’ve met that can make my heart race like you do is, well, you,” said Basil. “When we first met, I knew you were a special woman, and that to earn your heart, I’d have to prove to you I was a special man. I knew I’d have to become a man worthy of your love. I never told you this before, but the work I did in Brazil…it was partially driven by my desire to impress you. At least once during every hour spent negotiating with property owners, with schools, with group homes, I thought of you, and that drove me to push harder to close deals and open doors. You make me a better man, and together, you and I created an epic restaurant. Now, I promise, I’ll help you create a wonderful life.”

  “Basil Scoville…I had no idea that I was part of what drove you to do your work in Brazil,” admitted Cayenne between tears. “When I met you, I was a Southern belle who was not about to let some European billion-heir do whatever he wanted with The Feminine Mesquite. You taught me that it’s okay to let down my walls and be vulnerable. You showed me it’s okay to ask for help, and when I needed you, you were there, whether we were fighting off werewolves or you were carrying me to my bed after I worked too hard at the restaurant. You gave me the gift of my studio, my art, and you showed me that to work hard, I’d need to play hard, too…and relax hard. This has been the happiest time of my life. I promise to retain the habits you gave me this summer, even during the school year, and have a balanced life, a life that I’ll share with you, from sharing my triumphs to asking for help.”

  Finally, it was time for the last couple to exchange their vows.

  “Savina Scoville, you are by far the most challenging woman I’ve ever met,” said Mason. “From the moment I met you, I knew you were a firebrand. I knew that you were a firecracker who couldn’t be controlled, and never in a million years would I dream of controlling you. As a bad boy, as a daredevil, I know there are forces greater than me, bigger than me, stronger than me, and the moment I stop respecting those forces is the moment that I’ll lose control of myself. You’re like a great wave crashing against a beach, a river running through a canyon. You are unstoppable. You are a force to be reckoned with. All I can do is look at you, the way I’d look at a snowcapped mountain or a vast desert, and appreciate your power and your beauty, and consider myself lucky that I get to see you, get to be with you, get to experience you. You make the bear in me roar as it appreciates the sublimity of your nature, of your human nature. You make the man in me dance with joy from finding kinship with someone else who knows what the heck it’s like to have an unstoppable force inside of them. I can promise you this. I will never tame you. I will never control you. I will never even try. I will just appreciate you for the wild woman you are, for the heart you have inside of you. I will love you, treasure you, and worship you. That, I can promise.”

  “Mason Scoville, I don’t have anything prepared,” said Savina. “I don’t have note cards that I memorized. I don’t have a file on my computer of bullet points of ideas of what to say to you. All I have is what’s in my heart. I love you, Mason. I know that it took me too long to say it, but I love you so much. Somehow, you managed to pull everything off, from the proposal to us being right here, right now. I always knew you were a daredevil, but I never realized you’d dare to do something this crazy, this high stakes, but if anyone could pull it off…it would be you. You not only pulled this off, but you also managed to protect my feelings. You know how much my family means to me, and you involved them in all of this, and you all made this a success, together. You proved that together, the Quincy-Scoville Clan can do frikkin’ anything, and you taught me that you truly understand the complexities of the feminine mystique….and the power of The Feminine Mesquite. I can promise you this. I will love you, Mason. It’s not much of a promise because I don’t know how I could ever stop loving you, but I promise that I will show it. I will say it. I will show it. I will do it. I will say I love you. I will show you I love you. I will do the act of loving you, every darn day, for the r
est of our lives. All I’ve got is my love, and that’s all I can offer you.”

  “I’ll take it,” said Mason with a wink and a smile.

  “It is now time for the exchanging of the rings,” said the officiant.

  “A ring?” asked Savina. “Oh, no…” Her siblings had already started their ring exchanges, and Mason was looking at her expectantly.

  “It’s in your pocket,” whispered Kai, as Basil put a ring on her finger.

  “My pocket?” asked Savina. She put her hands in her red hoodie and felt for the ring. There was a secret pocket in the righthand pocket. She poked in there and felt something cold and round. She pulled it out. There it was, a golden ring. Like the other rings, it was a simple gold ring, with an engraving on the inside. The engraving of this ring read simply, ‘Mason.’ Her sisters had thought of frikkin’ everything.

  Savina held the ring in her right hand while Mason put the ring on her left hand. She then put the ring on his left hand.

  “You may now kiss the brides,” said the officiant.

  One by one, the grooms reached for their brides and the brides, for their grooms.

  Alice took a step toward Herb and Herb pulled her close, leaning down so that her lips could brush against his before he leaned down some more, pressed his lips against hers, hard, and picked her up into his arms to give her a fairytale kiss worthy of a princess.

  Abigail and Clove reached for each other and met in the middle. Their hands met their bodies as their lips rejoined and they shared a passionate embrace.

  Sage held Addison’s waist gently in his as he kissed her, softly and slowly. They swayed to a melody only they could hear.

  Basil couldn’t help but dip Cayenne before kissing her deeply and turning her the other way, before spinning her to be in his arms. Cayenne was smiling and laughing all the way.

  Mason reached forward and took Savina close. He couldn’t hold back his desire for her. His bear roared. This was what Mason had been working toward, and now, the plan the man had come up with, that even the bear had admitted was going to be one heck of a challenge to pull off, had come to fruition. Their fated mate had finally accepted them as her true love, as her forever love, as her husband.

  Mason pulled Savina close and kissed her, gently at first, but then Savina crashed into him like a wave, pressing and begging for him to kiss her back, hard. They shared a quick, passionate kiss before pulling away. They were the last couple to have exchanged kisses, but there was still something to do before the real festivities started. They had to kick the party off with their first dances.

  The string quartet stopped playing, and the DJ didn’t put on a track. Savina looked at Mason, confused, but then saw that Sage was moving toward a piano that had been rolled out to the dance floor by some of the groomsmen (Scoville cousins and friends from out of town, shifters, strong ones, who could move a piano with no trouble).

  Sage gave Addison a kiss on the forehead and then walked away, toward the piano.

  Sage started to play a song that Savina had never heard before. His shared room with Addison was soundproofed, so Savina had never heard him play piano in his room. She had only ever heard him play in the living room. The song he was playing was not a jaunty jingle to sing along to. It was classical inspired, but there was a modern twist to it. It was a mix of contemporary classical, and New Age inspired wedding music.

  Then, suddenly, Sage got up from the piano…but the piano kept playing itself. It was an electric player piano hooked up to the electrical sockets found in the backyard. He walked up to Addison and took her by the waist, and they started to dance.

  All the couples paired up and started their slow dances, five gentle, warm spotlights cast on the five couples as they glided over the floor to the special song Sage had composed just for the occasion.

  Alice was swept over the floor by Herb as Clove spun Abigail. Addison and Sage were in their own world as Cayenne and Basil twirled and giggled like schoolchildren. Finally, there was Savina and Mace, who were not dancing as much as they were embracing while moving. The piano played its song over twice more before the song faded out on its own, as the piano had been specially programmed to do that. It was time for the first mother-son and father-daughter dance.

  Mama Scoville danced with Herb while Papa Quincy danced with Alice. The time for the others to share dances with their parents would come later. After all, they had to give mom and pop some time to rest between dances and nab some of their delicious wedding fare. This may have been a fancy wedding of the kind en vogue among Europe’s shifter elite, but this wedding was still held in Texas, and that meant that this wedding had barbecue and lots of it. Each of the sisters’ sauces was featured in the wedding buffet.

  Alice and Herb’s jalapeño ‘Secret Sauce’ was served with the traditional Quincy-Scoville jalapeño poppers. Each jalapeño popper was filled with a mix of their green hot sauce and a medley of soft white cheese, before being battered in bread crumbs and deep fried. They were the perfect starter item for the buffet. However, poppers didn’t have much meat on their bones, which is why they served steak, cooked in the Argentinian style, with their version of Argentinian chimichurri, an Argentinian sauce made for grilled meat. The Secret Sauce was used as a base for the chimichurri, which required the addition of parsley, oregano, and garlic.

  Next up was Abigail and Clove’s ‘Awesome Sauce.’ While they hadn’t come up with this sauce, they did select the dishes it was served with. Abigail’s favorite cut of meat, tri-tip steak, was served with their crimson red roasted habanero sauce. It truly was, as many mouths (when not stuffed with steak) said, ‘awesome.’ They also served habanero poppers for people that wanted more of a kick from their poppers than the jalapeño poppers could offer.

  Right next to their sauce’s section was Addison and Sage’s ‘No Bullshizz Sauce’ section. The pair hadn’t even had a chance to try their sauce with meat back when they were at Bonimolean, but they’d had the summer to experiment with the sauce (and with each other). The chocolate brown adobo chipotle sauce looked like it’d be rather quiet and muted compared to the other sauces, but it was one of the sleeper hits of the wedding buffet. Naturally, as they were in Texas, Addison and Sage had pulled pork made with their sauce. Their sauce was best used as an ingredient in cooking. The complex flavors of the sauce simmered with the soda pop used to tenderize the meat and their pulled pork sliders were tender but flavorful. As their sauce had a Spanish origin, they also served pork loin marinated in the sauce, adobo style, however, because this was a Scoville wedding, the pork loins were from black Iberian pigs, some of the most expensive pigs in the world.

  Of course, Cayenne and Basil’s station was a slam dunk. They served churrasco style barbecue, just like they did at The Matchstick Grill, complete with hot, sexy shifter waiters who were only wearing slightly more clothing than usual. At a shifter wedding, things could get a little spicy, so this was not a faux pas. They served many cuts of freshly grilled meat right off of the skewers, custom made, designed to look like old Norse swords from the Viking Age. This station was especially popular with the bachelorettes at the wedding. The meat was the perfect way for them to showcase their cayenne garlic ‘Fated Mate Sauce,’ and that night, there may have been one set of fated mates that met because of that very sauce…

  Finally, Savina and Mace’s ‘Alpha Sauce’ was featured as part of some killer buffalo wings. The recipe was simple: wings, hot sauce, heat. The flavor was intense, and there was no question as to how Savina and Mason had won first place in the hot sauce competition. Their little red hot sauce had gone all the way, as had their love. Of course, for desert, there were mangos, cubed, served with little spoons of their hot sauce.

  All that hot sauce needed to be washed down with something, so all five of the Quincy Sisters’ favorite iced sweet teas were featured at the wedding. There was Alice’s herbal watermelon sweet tea, Abigail’s mint chocolate ‘mint julep’ sweet tea, Addison’s raspberry sweet tea, Cayenne’s
classic peach sweet tea, and of course, they’d made Savina’s lemon tea just the way they wanted, sprinkles included.

  “Is it time for the toasts?” asked Savina, sitting next to Mason.

  “It will be soon,” said Basil, from Savina’s other side.

  Herb took the mic and announced that it was time for toasts. The mic went around, and people spoke praises of the Quincy Sisters and the Scoville Brothers, from both sides of the wedding aisle. The siblings enjoyed receiving compliments while they ate the delicious food. The wedding had gone off without a hitch. Just as the mic was about to start being passed back to Herb, somebody grabbed it.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  “Ahem,” came a voice. It was coming from one of the Scoville family tables.

  A man stood up. Tall. Broad shoulders. His hair was icy white with only a whisper of blond. He was wearing a custom designer suit. Even in old age, he looked every bit as regal as his grandsons. It was Morten Scoville.

  “I’d like to make a toast,” said Morten. “To my grandsons and their brides. May they have relationships as strong and as spicy as their sauces.”

  Everyone cheered to that.

  “However, I’m not just here to make a toast,” said Morten. “I’m here to make…an announcement. Effective today, I am retiring, as is my son. The Scoville companies will be passed on to my grandsons.”

  Everyone gasped.

  “However, I’m not just here to announce my retirement,” said Morten. “It has come time to reveal something to you all, through a video. VJ?”

  The video jockey pressed play on a video that had been set up. It was projected onto one of the white sides of the wedding tent.

  What everyone saw shocked them.

  On the screen was a man in a leather armchair, an oxygen tank hooked up next to him. He was in a worn flannel shirt and jeans, his hairline receding and his breathing heavy. This man was nothing like Morten. It was Elijah ‘Pop-Pop’ Quincy, the patriarch of the clan, at least, before his passing.