When Kellen exited Rae’s room after assigning her one simple job—pick up her naked princess dolls and their clothes and stack them in the massive dollhouse—Max put his arm around her and led her toward the bedroom. His bedroom.
Kellen pulled back. “I can’t go in there with you. Your mother will have a fit. She doesn’t want you to sleep with me!”
“Are you kidding? When she finds out we’re going to get married, she’ll be thrilled. She’ll be in her element, Rae is going to have a blast, and little Martin’s mother is going to wish she kept her mouth shut, because they’re not going to be invited to the most important wedding this town has ever seen.” He sat down on the bed, smiled and patted his knee. “Come here and let’s talk about what we’re going to do after the ceremony. Maybe have a demonstration.”
“I have a bullet in my brain. I’m not supposed to strain myself. Remember? No bumping the headboard?”
“I’ll make sure you stay very, very still...using merely my hands.”
She was tired: from hiking, from falling, from having an MRI, from hearing a dire verdict of pain and little hope. They had time; right now, the blows to her head had caused swelling around the site where the bullet rested. If she took care and didn’t reinjure herself, a few months would allow the bruising to subside and the surgery would proceed with the optimum chance for success.
Yet somehow, Max Di Luca managed to make her feel alive as she had never felt before. And that was worth risking death, anytime. “As long as you’re doing all the work... I suppose I could rest in your bed and take it easy.”
He chuckled. “Yes, let’s rest together.”
Max’s phone whimpered.
Max rolled over on the bed and reached toward the nightstand. “It’s my mother.”
“Your phone whimpers when your mother texts?”
“I always know who it is. Saves time.” He read the words. “Dinner’s almost ready. She advises us to clean up.”
“I can almost see the indignation curling off the phone.”
“It’s Mom’s specialty.”
Kellen rolled off the bed. “I’m going to go shower and change out of these resort clothes and into something real. I’m tired of looking like a tennis player.”
He watched her dress. “Have I mentioned how pretty you are?”
“Not often enough. Have I mentioned how pretty you are?”
He fluttered his lashes. “I have a mirror.”
She laughed. “Hurry up. I am not going down there alone.”
Max and Kellen met in the hallway, clean, dressed and guilty and giggly as only having sex in forbidden circumstances could make them. They descended the stairs and walked into the kitchen, a large old-fashioned room with colorful tiles, modern appliances, a round table in the middle and one very irritated cook preparing bubbling brown stew with root vegetables and cheese biscuits.
The smells of garlic, tomatoes and browned beef permeated the air, and Kellen thought that the promise of good food would cushion the blow of Verona’s disapproval.
Verona banged the lid on a pot. “Maximilian, I do not think that the two of you sharing a bedroom while in the same house as your mother and your daughter is appropriate behavior.” The steamy heat made her brown hair hang in ringlets across her forehead, but her words were icy and clear.
“Wait a minute, Mom. We’ve got something to tell you.” Max went into the adjacent parlor and bellowed up the stairs. “Rae, come down here please!”
Rae bellowed back, “Coming, Daddy!” Her shoes clattered on the stairs and she appeared in the doorway, a vision in pink, glitter and glue, which she had smeared on her cheek.
The Di Lucas were the loudest people Kellen had ever heard. Her parents, what she remembered of them, had been busy, boisterous people, but when they had died and Kellen went to live with her aunt and uncle, the household had been ruled by her aunt’s migraines and the most commonly used phrase was, Use your indoor voice, please.
Come to think of it, Kellen didn’t mind the Di Luca noise.
“Wash your hands for dinner,” Verona said.
“I did!” Rae rubbed her palms on her shirt.
Max put out his hands. “Let me see.”
Rae sighed dramatically and headed into the bathroom by the back porch. She didn’t shut the door, so they heard the scrape of the stool across the Spanish tile, the splashing and the humming, and when Rae walked out, her hands, her hair and the front of her shirt were dripping wet. Proudly, she proclaimed, “I washed my face, too!”
Kellen waited for Verona to fuss.
Instead, she said, “Good thinking, Rae.”
The family was so casual and encouraging about the little stuff and kept their drama for the big life-changing events. Kellen liked that, too, except—oh man, there was about to be drama.
Max got a kitchen towel out of the drawer and used it to wipe Rae down. “Why don’t you and Grandma sit down? Mommy and I have something to tell you.”
Verona looked from Max to Kellen and sank down in her chair as if her legs were too weak to hold her.
Rae pulled her chair out from the table—another long scrape across the tile—and perched on her heels, leaned over the table and fastened her gaze on her father.
Max took Kellen’s hand. They faced Verona and Rae, and with the flare of an accomplished showman, Max announced, “Kellen has agreed to be my bride.”
The reactions were exactly the opposite of what Kellen expected.
Verona shot to her feet. “A bride? You’re going to get married?” She clasped her hands and shook them at the heavens. “My prayers have been answered!”
Rae said nothing, but her eyes were big and wary.
“I wonder if we can manage it by Christmas?” Verona walked to the calendar that hung on the wall. “To get the dress done and the family here—”
“Two weeks,” Max declared.
Verona swung around. “You’re kidding.”
“Two weeks,” Max repeated. “We’re getting married in two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” Verona squawked like the chicken who had swallowed the rubber band, and faced Kellen. “Wait. Are you pregnant again?”
“Mother.” Max sounded excessively patient. “Even if she was, we wouldn’t know yet and anyway, we have a seven-year-old daughter together. We can safely say the scandal ship has sailed!”
Kellen grinned. “Nice interception,” she muttered to Max.
Verona promptly returned to her main complaint. Which was, “I can’t get a wedding together in two weeks!”
“We don’t have to have a wedding,” Kellen said. “We can get married at the justice of the peace and have a reception later.”
Max and Verona and even Rae stared at her as if she was speaking a foreign language.
Max and Verona turned back to each other.
“How can everyone in the family make arrangements so quickly?” Verona asked.
“Do you really think they won’t?” Max seemed casually confident.
“It’s going to be an inconvenience to at least some of them!”
“If it’s too inconvenient for them to come, they can watch the video.”
“Max! Your attitude!” Verona paced the kitchen and wrung her hands. “How can we get the dresses made?”
Kellen looked at the stew bubbling on the stove, at the cheese biscuits stacked in the warming oven. Her stomach growled.
“We’ll get dresses off the rack,” Max said with rock-solid assurance.
“We are Di Lucas! We have relatives who are famous designers and we’re getting wedding dresses off the rack?” Verona had become completely and emphatically Old World Italian, tossing her hands in the air and her head from side to side. “Have you run mad?”
Max was unimpressed. “We’ll use their rack dresses.”
“We could have a small wedding,” Kellen suggested.
She got the same blank look as before.
Okay. Never mind.
She went to the stove and ladled stew into broad bowls, added a cheese biscuit—they were burned on the bottom—and placed them on the table.
Which seemed to send Verona’s mind in a new direction. “The food!”
“If you can’t handle the food, at least we’ll have good wine,” Max answered.
Kellen had to appreciate his ability to manipulate his mother. She grinned at Rae.
Rae avoided her eyes.
“If...if I can’t... I will handle the food!” Verona sputtered.
“We’d better get the invitations out tonight.” Max pondered the date and time. “An evening wedding, I think. A ceremony at sunset, in the grove where the new staff put up all the tables.”
“It’s almost time to start picking the grapes. The predictions are for warm weather. It will be a madhouse around here anyway, and you want to add a wedding?” Verona sat down, snapped her napkin and put it in her lap. “Why don’t we ask Annie and Leo to host at Yearning Sands Resort?”
Max followed suit, only without the snap. “Annie almost died last winter. Do you really think that’s a good idea, to put that kind of pressure on her?”
Kellen looked at Rae, shell-shocked and unhappy, and somehow, Max and Verona were too involved in planning a wedding to pay attention.
Verona pounced on another objection. “We have new inexperienced staff.”
“They don’t seem inexperienced to me. Let them prove themselves.”
While Verona and Max squabbled, Kellen pulled Rae’s bowl close. She shredded the beef and cut the carrots, potatoes and parsnips into tiny bites. She cut the burned bottom off the cheese biscuit and slid it back in front of Rae. She knelt beside her. “Doesn’t that look good?”
Rae nodded, her gaze fixed on the food.
Kellen rubbed her back. “Honey, what’s wrong?”
Rae’s eyes filled with tears. “Married? B-but Daddy is mine!”