New Year's Wedding

“We all think it’s fun to be related to someone the press is making a big deal over. So don’t worry.”

“But it’s a bad big deal.”

“This family will turn it into something good. It’s what we do. See you in ten.”

“Right.” Well, right on the “seeing her in ten” part. Turning this press nightmare into something good was going to require a miracle.

* * *

GRADY DROVE THE three blocks to the edge of downtown, then turned down a side street to the old mill that had been converted into shops and a restaurant. The Bay Bistro was on the third floor. Cassie, he noticed, looked worried.

“Forget the news,” he advised gently. “They’re your family. They don’t care.”

She turned to him with open disbelief. “That’s what Corie said, but of course they care. How can they not? When I met them in Texas, I kept everything to myself, hoping it would just go away. I didn’t know then that someone had recorded it.”

“Again, I’m sure it’s not a big deal to them.”

“Jack has to be disappointed. He worked so hard to get us all together again, and his little sister turns out to be a monster diva who yelled at a deaf woman! And the whole world knows about it!”

“Big fuss over nothing.”

She huffed a breath. “Grady, I’m the piece of the family that’s been missing and I...”

He heard something in her voice somehow deeper than the words she was saying. He turned to her as he pulled into a spot right in front of the mill and shut off the engine.

“What if I’m a disappointment? What if they’ve been waiting all this time to get me back, they’re impressed to learn than I’m a model, then find out...I have all these...issues?”

“You have nothing to fear here, Cassie. The Mannings and the Palmers are the best people you’ll ever meet. Everybody’s got their issues, so they’re all tolerant of everyone else’s. Jack came back from Afghanistan with nightmares. Corie’s life was sometimes so awful that she became a thief. Just relax. All they care about is that the three of you are together again. Come on.”

He went around to her side to help her out, then caught her hand and hurried her so she wouldn’t have time to relive the cell phone video that had taken up permanent residence in her head.

He escorted her before him into the old mill’s elegant downstairs with shops off of a central atrium, then caught her hand again and ran for the elevators, doors closing as they hurried. If he could get her upstairs before the family arrived and distract her with the spectacular view and a glass of wine, she might get over her nervousness.

He was vaguely aware of her pulling against him as he shouted to the lone man inside to hold the elevator. But he thought she was just having trouble keeping up in her boots.

“Grady...” she said.

“Come on!” he encouraged, walking quickly. “If we get there first, I can tell the waiter that Ben intends to pay. He has a tab here.” He warmed to that thought above all else. “He’ll hate that. Ha!”

The man held the door from closing as Grady hurried into the car, drawing Cassie in beside him. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders as she struggled to catch her breath. The door closed and the car began to rise.

He patted Cassie’s back as she gulped in air. He was happy with the day, glad to have the opportunity to help her relax before her family got there. He was anxious to see his friends, anticipating all of them around the table, talking and laughing while sharing the bistro’s outrageously delicious food.

So, he was completely unprepared for what happened next. Cassie caught his hand in a biting grip, her fingernails drawing blood as she let out a high-pitched, ear-splitting scream.

She began to shake him and point to the door. “No! No! No!”

“Cassie—”

“No!”

All right. No. No, what? He wasn’t sure, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out she wanted out of the elevator. The man who’d held the door for them did so again, his eyes a little wider this time as they reached the third floor and the doors parted.

Cassie gasped and ran out into a hallway that spilled right into the restaurant, only a few feet from the hostess’s stand. She stopped and noisily drew in air, her arms wrapped around herself, her cheeks crimson.

She looked mortified and somehow isolated. Her hands shook. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, then added grimly, “Remember that issue left over from my childhood I mentioned that I still deal with?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s claustrophobia.”

“Yeah,” he said. An inch of skin was scraped off his left hand. “I guessed that.”

CHAPTER FOUR (#u08c90eed-de1e-57c4-867e-98187cd384ab)

THE METHODICAL PART of him was remembering her tense behavior on the plane. That small space you couldn’t escape without a parachute had to be even more frightening than an elevator car you knew would stop in seconds. He regretted attributing her tension to a more normal fear of flying.

But deep down he knew some fears could not be explained or wished away, and he put both hands on her shoulders, saying quietly, “Just relax. You’re out now. We’re about to go into this big, airy room with views of the river, so there’s nothing to confine you or to be afraid of.”

While people wove around them into the dining room, her eyes were huge and turbulent, as though the emotional storm she’d just endured wasn’t quite over.

She nodded, expelling a deep breath. “Right. I’ll be fine in a minute.”

The elevator’s second set of doors opened and he glanced up to see most of the Manning-Palmer family. “Good,” he said quietly, “because here they come.”

“Please don’t say anything. Nobody knows.”

He dropped his hands and said firmly, “Don’t worry. Our secret.”

* * *

CHAOS REIGNED FOR a good ten minutes. Love, energy, laughter and pre-wedding excitement raised the decibel level in the corridor to deafening. There were hugs among the women, back-slapping among the men, and the children jumped up and down in joy. No one would have guessed that they’d all seen each other less than twenty-four hours ago.

The Mannings and the Palmers snaked through the dining room in a long parade as the hostess led them across the room to a table in a far corner set up for ten.

Sarah, Jack’s wife, began to suggest that couples sit opposite each other, but the children had already chosen places. Soren, a slender, fair-haired ten-year-old, grabbed a frosty pitcher of water and started filling glasses. Rosie, a year younger, with glossy black hair, wide brown eyes and a busybody attitude, took a basket of rolls and distributed them to the bread plate at every place.

Ben suggested to Soren that he not fill the glasses to the top and Corie handed Rosie the small tongs that rested beside the basket. “At the foster home,” Corie explained as they sat, “everybody helped put the meal on the table.” She smiled at the children. “Good job, guys.”

Cassie felt a new sense of comfort at being part of this warm, loud group, but also a new insecurity she hadn’t experienced when she’d been with them in Texas. Then, she’d thought her old childhood bugaboo had been beaten. Now, as she watched how confident everyone seemed, she realized she was a little broken. Jack and Corie had had more difficult lives than she’d led, yet she was the one with a leftover emotional tic.

“Hey.” Grady pulled a chair out for her and guided her gently down. “They’re much less alarming than the noise they make,” he said quietly, about to take the chair beside her when Jack shouldered him out of the way.

“You had her company all the way over on the plane,” he said, pointing him to the chair on the other side of him. “And I understand she’s staying in your loft.”

“She is. Turns out, she’s a great cook. I had crepes with blueberry compote for breakfast.”

Jack laughed. “Saved from your own bachelor cooking until the wedding. Thank you.” Jack accepted a menu from a formidable-looking fortyish waitress with a crisp black-and-white uniform and dyed red hair styled in a topknot and bangs. She distributed menus like she was dealing cards, listing off the details of the salmon special. She looked around the table and asked gravely, “Who poured the water?”