Winning Hand (Poker Loser Book 3)

by Golden Angel

  Her father nodded approvingly. Allison was a little taken aback at the expression of pride on his face, he was almost glowing with it. What on earth had changed while she was away? Beforehand he’d been supportive but not like this. Not only was he being much friendlier and more open with Todd than she’d ever expected, but the approval that was fairly emanating from him was not what she was used to when it came to talking about jobs. “Would you like me to look at your resume?”

  It wasn’t just her father either, her mother was beaming at both him and Allison as if they were having a very clever conversation. Was it the fact that Allison was engaged and so her mother was happy with whatever else she chose to do, or was it just that Patrice had truly missed her daughter so much that she didn’t care what Allison did anymore?

  “Yes… I would appreciate that,” she said, trying to cover her surprise.

  “Oh surely you can do more than that dear,” said her mother, reaching out to touch her father’s hand. "Aren't you friends with-"

  "No it's okay, that's perfect," Allison interrupted. "I really appreciate it." She smiled at her mother to take any sting out of her words.

  Although it would definitely make her life easier to use a little nepotism, that's not really how she wanted to get her job. Right now she felt like she had a little bit of a leg up anyway on most of the people in school, because she was working at least part time and getting experience to go along with her degree. If she really couldn't find something that she wanted then maybe she'd allow her parents to help her with their connections, after all a big part of the business world was connections, but she really wanted to try and do it on her own. More than anything, Allison was touched that her parents would even want to help.

  Her mother made a little face of disappointment, but she subsided without a fight. And then brightened again. "Can we talk about the wedding now?"

  Allison giggled at the slightly pained look on her father's face; listening to party planning was not his favorite thing to do and she couldn't imagine that a wedding would be any different. Todd smiled encouragingly, reaching out to cover Allison’s hand with his own. She smiled back at him, feeling rather giddy.

  "When are you thinking about having it?" her mother asked, her eyes glowing with approval as she looked from Todd to Allison.

  "Ah..." Allison shot a glance at Todd. "We hadn't really talked about that yet." They’d been too busy having mad passionate sex, fighting and then having more mad passionate sex. While the fighting hadn’t been very pleasant, she could say that she preferred the mad passionate sex to sitting down and trying to think about wedding planning particulars.

  "Well spring is always nice, but very busy... that would give us a full year to plan though and that's just barely enough time."

  "A year is barely enough time?" asked Todd, looking rather disbelieving. Allison wasn’t surprised, but then again she was a girl. She’d watched enough wedding television shows to know that a lot more went into planning a wedding than most men realized. Okay, and researched it a little bit herself. Although she was no longer particularly interested in having the kind of giant wedding that she’d always planned in her head back during the days when she’d done things like look through bridal magazines at dresses and venues.

  "Oh my yes... places book up a year in advance, sometimes more! Especially the best venues," her mother chirped, her eyes brightening as she warmed to her topic. “And Allison will need to pick out her dress at least six months in advance, although more will be better so that there will be plenty of time to have it made, and then altered if it needs to be. We’ll need to do a tasting for the food from at least three caterers for comparison, and the same for the cakes. Then there’s the flowers, the invitations, the officiant… Do you know if you want to be married in a church or somewhere else? And by a member of the clergy or a judge? Oh and you’ll need to pick out a wedding party and tuxes and bridesmaid dresses, but before that you’ll have to decide on your colors – oh and we can’t forget that we need to pick out favors. Something unique but not tacky. Announcements, we’ll have to send out an engagement announcement and write up something for the wedding announcement for the paper…”

  The expression on Todd's face started to match Allison's fathers as her mother chattered on and it was all Allison could do not to laugh. Her mother was babbling on so quickly that no one would have been able to get a word in edgewise if they’d wanted to, but at least Allison knew that there wasn’t a chance in hell she’d forget anything important during the planning process. Not with Patrice Bradford as her mother.

  “Oh, and dear,” her mother put her hand over Todd’s, beaming at him with all the happiness that a future mother-in-law hell-bent on planning a wedding could. “I’ll need your mother’s phone number.”

  “Um… of course.”

  Stifling her giggles, Allison decided she'd better step in and save the menfolk. Her father had looked more and more pained the more her mother spoke, obviously finding it all too easy to envision the upcoming months of event planning.

  Plus, Allison knew they needed to change topics if they were ever going to move on to dessert because her mother seemed to have forgotten that the purpose of dinner was eating.

  "We'll have to talk the rest of it and get back to you," she said smoothly as her mother paused for breath in between explaining all the myriad of details that would need to be considered. "I think we'll focus on the big things first - date, budget and guest list and then move on from there."

  "Budget first," her mother trilled. Allison was a little surprised she wasn’t bouncing in her seat she was so happy. Obviously she’d considered containing herself during the first part of dinner to be a duty well completed and was perfectly happy to commandeer the conversation now that the end of dinner was approaching. "That will determine the venue and the number of people on the guest list. I can already tell you that I've put aside an account and you have at least $60,000 to spend, although I’m sure your father and I wouldn’t have a problem if you needed more." Allison couldn’t help but notice that her mother completely ignored the way her husband’s jaw clenched at that.

  Todd's jaw dropped and Allison shook her head. "That's way too much mom, I don't want or need a wedding that big."

  Her mother waved a negligent hand as Todd blinked, still looking adorably stunned at the idea that a wedding might actually cost that much. Allison knew all too well that weddings could cost even more than that, although she’d seen weddings that were just as wonderful without going to all that expense. At a certain point no one cared if you spent $200 or $2,000 dollars on your flowers because either way the flowers were beautiful.

  "Well it's there for you to use, I thought you should know. And you might be grateful for it when you see our side of the guest list."

  "Todd and I will talk about it," Allison said firmly. "But I think you should know that I want a small wedding. And by small I don't mean less than 300, I mean less than 150 people." Now Todd looked slightly horrified at the idea that a small wedding could be up to 150 people and Allison was having the hardest time not laughing at him. Her father's attention had obviously wandered, he had that blank look on his face that said he was thinking about anything other than the conversation at hand. Well she really couldn’t blame him for that.

  "But how will we invite all of my friends and your father's business associates?" Her mother blinked, looking both disappointed and confused.

  "We won't."

  "But-"

  "Can we not talk about this now please?" Allison pleaded a little. "Todd and I haven't even discussed a date much less anything more detailed."

  "Well... well yes of course," her mother said, obviously regrouping. The little furrow that appeared in her brow indicated that she wasn't done arguing yet.

  But Allison wanted to talk with Todd so that they could get on the same page before her mother ended up taking over the entire planning process. Although she was sure that her mother would plan a lovely wedding,
it would end up going far beyond the original budget that she'd indicated and the guest list would be enormous and it would probably be mostly people that neither she nor Todd knew. Which, at one point in her life, Allison had assumed would be the wedding that she would have. Now it sounded overdone and unnecessary, not to mention that she'd rather have people that she cared about there rather than literally hundreds of people that she would barely recognize.

  "So what about the honeymoon?" her mother asked, and Allison tried not to groan.

  *******

  By the time Allison and Todd returned home, she was feeling a bit like a wrung out rag. But happy. For the first time in a long time there wasn't any negativity hovering over her head in any form. Nothing that made her feel angry or sad if she accidentally thought about it. Although neither she nor her parents had actually apologized during the evening, it was pretty clear that both sides were ready to silently compromise and move on. Part of her still kind of wished that they'd apologized, but she could live without it. And it had been really nice to see them again.

  "Thank you," she said, throwing her arms around Todd's waist as they walked up to their house. "I'm really glad we went there."

  "Good," he replied as he unlocked the door and pulled her inside. "Your mother is terrifying."

  "You didn't notice that before?"

  "I mostly talked to your dad when I went over there to talk about proposing to you. Your mother just stood there and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. I thought the crying was frightening but good God when she went into planning mode...."

  "Ah," Allison said, smiling as she went up on her tip toes to kiss him. "You'll get used to her."

  "Apparently I don't have much of a choice," he teased, shaking his head. They were standing in the entryway to the house and he put his arms around her, looking down at her with an incredibly soft expression in his eyes and she tilted her head back for the kiss that she was sure was coming. "So when do you want to get married?"

  She burst out laughing. "We don't have to decide on everything that she talked about right now."

  "But what if she calls tomorrow asking?"

  "Oh my goodness." Allison rolled her eyes. "You actually are terrified of my mom. I always thought my Dad was scarier."

  "He and I understand each other," Todd muttered, as he pulled away and moved into the house, pulling her along with him by the hand towards the television room. "Come on, let's go watch something mind numbing. And you can explain to me what the hell she meant about wedding colors."

  While Allison was picking out a movie, Todd listened to a voicemail that his mother had left him while they'd been at dinner with her parents. Although his mother had known he was going to propose, he hadn't actually gotten a chance to talk to her during the day because of everything that had happened. And, of course, he’d had his phone turned off while they were having dinner with Allison’s parents because anything else wouldn’t have been polite.

  Groaning, he collapsed onto the couch, looking absolutely harried. Holding a DVD case in her hand, Allison arched an inquisitive eyebrow at him.

  "She asked every single question that your mom did," he said testily. "When, where, how many guests... what colors? What is it with you women and wedding colors?"

  The poor man looked absolutely daunted Allison thought as she launched herself onto his lap, giggling even harder as she wound her body around his. Apparently the poor thing hadn’t realized just what a tizzy a wedding could send mothers into . "Don't worry sweetheart, I'll protect you."

  "You'd better," he growled. "Or I'll tan your bottom."

  "Hey, you asked for it. Literally."

  He rolled his eyes and then grunted as she poked him.

  “Like, literally, you asked me to marry you.”

  Their eyes met, shining with the same teasing love, and Allison felt like she could just melt into a puddle of blissful joy.

  "Yes, yes I did."

  ********

  Mr. & Mrs. Robert D. Bradford

  request the honor of your presence

  at the marriage of their daughter

  Allison Elizabeth

  To Theodore Paul Rinald

  Saturday the twenty sixth of January

  at 5 o'clock in the evening

  Reception to follow

  Wedding: The art of compromise. At least that’s how Allison had come to think of it.

  Although her parents were very excited and proud at her graduation and threw her a wonderful graduation at their house (inviting a lot of people that Allison didn’t know other than from her father’s work related parties, but that was okay because they all brought envelopes with checks and she and Todd had decided to use each and every one of those for Todd’s further education. After their wedding he was going to go back to school for his Masters) it was obvious that the wedding was of bigger import to her mother at least. She spent the entire graduation party talking about it, even though Allison kept asking her not to. It seemed rude when she knew that they weren’t going to be inviting the majority of the people at her graduation party, at least not all the business wives that her mother kept talking to. But her mother hadn’t quite accepted that yet.

  April through July was really the big 'wedding' season, so they didn't have too much trouble finding a venue that was available for a winter wedding, despite her mother’s dire predictions. The guest list was the next big issue, although when Allison said that she'd rather pay for her own wedding if that meant that she could get what she wanted, her parents gave in. 150 people were invited, 132 of them were coming, all friends and family. She had relented and invited a few people from her father's business, his bosses and his work team. But none of his business acquaintances. This was about her and Todd, not about showing off for her father's friends.

  She let her mother upgrade the meal. And the chairs for the reception. And the linens. And talk her into an overpriced dress, which was absolutely gorgeous even if it was far too much money to spend on a dress she would only wear for one day. But it kept her mother happy. Plus, she really did like the upgrades, even if she didn't think they were technically necessary.

  Todd's mother was so thrilled that her son was getting married that she had no special requests. Allison adored Todd's mother. To keep things on an even footing, she and Todd decided to pay for their mother's dresses, as a gift, and Allison’s mother and Mrs. Rinald (Allison was still having trouble calling her Tess as she’d requested) bonded over dress shopping without any of the snobbishness from Allison’s side of the family that she had worried about. It seemed as though her parents really were changing, just a little bit.

  The biggest drama actually came from Allison's friend Chrissy, who was incensed that Diana had been asked to be the Maid of Honor while she was "only" a bridesmaid. And then tried to take over planning the bridal shower and bachelorette party. Poor Diana had her hands full dealing with that. Fortunately as the bride Allison got to stay out of it. Not that Chrissy didn't try to recruit her support, but Allison had no problem disappointing her by saying that she should talk to Diana about it. It got to the point where she started hoping that Chrissy would throw enough of a fit that she would resign her position as a bridesmaid completely. The other two bridesmaids weren't too impressed with Chrissy either and eventually she figured out that she needed to calm the eff down and try to play nice.

  By the day of everyone was smiling and getting along famously. Or at least faking it enough for Allison’s purposes. It was her own fault for asking Chrissy to be a bridesmaid anyway, she’d known what Chrissy was like before she’d made the decision to include her in the bridal party. Expecting Chrissy to be anything other than herself was ludicrous. But deep down their friendship was strong enough that Chrissy stopped playing the spoiled brat and put on her best face for her friend.

  Yesterday they’d gone to the nail salon en masse for mani-pedi’s. Chrissy had tried to promote all of them getting the same color but Allison had said she couldn’t care less and they’d e
nded up choosing whatever color they wanted. She was starting to suspect that when Chrissy got married she really did not want to be a bridesmaid. It was all too easy to picture her bridesmaidzilla as a bridezilla.

  Today was hair followed by make-up, followed by pictures. Hair was another thing that Allison had let her bridesmaids choose for themselves. Her own was done up in a rather loose curly style, pinned to the back of her head with tendrils coming down in the very back and along the sides. Somehow the entire thing stayed secure when she moved, despite all those hanging tendrils. It was a very soft style with one loose curl on each side to frame her face.

  Very romantic looking, especially with her dress. She’d managed to find one with straps, which she was happy about. Strapless always made her worry that she was going to spend all night tugging on it. The dress was basically backless, the straps wrapped around her shoulders and connected to the front of the dress under her arms. A rather demur sweetheart neckline made the front of it seem much more innocent than the back. The skirt was a full A-line – made fuller by the crinoline underneath- and it had a detachable chapel length train. Little pearl beads and embroidery decorated the dress in various places, along the waist line, on the straps, and little pockets of it around the skirt. It was a wonderful combination of traditional in the front and sex in the back.

  Since the back was so dramatic she’d decided to wear a birdcage veil, pinned in place with a pearl encrusted comb.

  All of the girls oohed and aahed once the veil was in place and she got rather teary when she looked at herself in the mirror. She looked every inch a bride. Even the hair and make-up trial hadn’t given her this glowing, glorious image.