Savour the Moment (Bride Quartet 3) - Page 39
“I’m fine. Why?”
“Oh, I bet a whole buncha lots better than fine. I bet hanging off a lamppost belting out a show tune in the rain kind of fine after that workout. Wait, let me put air quotes around ‘workout.’” She set down her drink and did just that.
“What, did you set up a hidden camera in my room?”
“I would never be so crude—unless I’d thought of it first. Besides, who needs a hidden camera? The two of you were sending off such wild sex vibes in there I had to leave before they caught me and I jumped both of you and had a threesome.”
“Really?” Parker asked, drawing out both syllables.
“Well, not about the threesome probably. Laurel’s not my type. I’d go for you, hot stuff.” She gave Parker a lewd wink.
“I thought I was your type,” Emma said.
“I’m such a slut.Anyway, the two of them are on those elliptical bastards, and the steam’s rising. Then they’re using workout code for sex talk.”
“We were not.”
“Oh, I broke your code.” Mac pointed a finger. “‘I’m coming up on you. I can finish strong.’ I’m getting hot just thinking about it.”
“You are a slut,” Laurel decided.
“I’m an engaged slut, and don’t you forget it. But I should thank you, as I took my unexpected sexual frustration out on Carter after our swim. And he thanks you, too.”
“Anytime.”
“This is all very interesting, and I mean that sincerely. But—” Parker tapped her watch. “We need to set up in the parlor.”
“Wait.” Emma tossed up a traffic cop hand. “Just one question, because I have to get the flowers out of the van. Do you really have energy for sex after your workout?”
“Read the book. Watch the infomercial.”
“What book?” Emma demanded as Laurel carried the pastries out of the kitchen. “What infomercial?”
“Flowers,” Parker said, then carted off the coffee setup.
“Damn it. Don’t talk about anything good until I get back. In fact, you have to help me haul in the flowers.”
“But I want to—”
Emma just made a cut-off sound, held up a finger at Mac.
“Okay, okay.”
In the parlor, Laurel and Parker set up the refreshments. “So, is it later?”
“Later than what?” Laurel responded.
“Later than it was earlier when you said later.”
“Yeah, it’s later.” Laurel fussed with the fan of napkins. “How many clients?”
“Bride, MOB, FOB, Groom, SMOG. Five.”
“Right. FOG was a widower. He’s not coming?”
“Out of town. You don’t have to tell me. It’s okay. Of course, it’s not okay. I’m saying that because you’re my friend, and I don’t want you to feel bad.”
“You’re such a bitch.” Laurel had to laugh. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you. It’s just that I feel stupid about it. Especially now, after the hot jungle sex.”
“It was hot jungle sex?” Emma demanded as she came in with a box exploded with star lilies. “What kind of workout was it? How long? Be specific. Parker, take notes.”
“Five miles on the elliptical.”
“Well, God.” Heaving a sigh, Emma began taking out the vases, placing them. “Forget it. I’d be dead after five miles of anything, then Jack would have hot jungle sex with someone else. It’d just piss me off. There are easier ways to HJS.”
“I wonder,” Parker began, “is it possible, is it perhaps conceivable, we’re all a little obsessed with sex at the moment?”
“It’s her fault.” Mac helped Emma with the flowers. “You’d understand if you’d been in the gym with all those sex vibes dancing around.”
“We’re not talking about sex,” Laurel said.
“When did we stop?” Emma wondered.
“Before you came in. We’re talking about something else.”
“Just as well since I’m not doing five miles on some machine. What something else?”
“It’s about dinner last night. Or before dinner. I was late. It’s your fault.” She pointed at Mac.
“What? I couldn’t help it. The studio shoot ran over, and I couldn’t find my shoes. The ones I needed. Besides, you were hardly late. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Long enough for Deborah Manning to sit down with Del at our table and have a glass of our wine.”
“I thought Deborah Manning was in Spain.”
“So you don’t know everything.” Laurel smiled thinly at Parker. “She’s obviously not in Spain as she was drinking wine with Del.”
“He’s not interested in Deborah.”
“He used to be.”
“That was years ago, and they only dated a couple of times.”
“I know.” Laurel held up her hands before Parker continued. “I know, which is one of the reasons I feel stupid. I wasn’t jealous—I’m not jealous—of her, that way. If I was, I’d feel even more stupid because he was so obviously not interested in her that way. I don’t think she was either. In him.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Emma asked her.
“It was just … when I came in and saw them, sharing wine, laughing. They looked so right together.”
“No, they don’t.” Parker shook her head.
“You didn’t see them. They looked beautiful and smooth and perfect.”
“No. Beautiful and smooth, okay. Perfect and right, no. They’d look attractive together because they’re both attractive. That’s not the same thing as right.”
“That’s profound. That’s actually profound,” Mac decided. “And I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes I’ll do photographs of couples and I’ll think this is a pretty shot, they look great together. But I know they don’t look right. I can’t change that, fix it, arrange it. Because they’re not, and that’s all.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, they looked beautiful. We’ll stick with that. And for just a minute, I felt stuck, separate. It’s stupid.” Laurel pushed at her hair. “It was like looking through a glass wall, and that I was on my side, they were on theirs.”
“That’s insulting, to all three of you.” Emma stopped placing flowers to poke Laurel in the shoulder. “And none of you deserve it. Deborah’s a nice woman.”
“Who is Deborah?”
“You don’t really know her,” Emma told Mac. “But she’s a perfectly nice woman.”
“I didn’t say she wasn’t. I don’t really know her either. I’m just saying I don’t think she’s ever waited tables or sweated it out in a restaurant kitchen.”
“That’s reverse snobbery.”
Laurel shrugged at Parker. “Sure it is. I told you I felt stupid about it. And I got over it. I did. I know it’s my problem, and I don’t like it. But it’s what I felt for that moment. And I felt it when she realized he was having dinner with me, that we were together, and I could see that flicker of what-the-fuck? on her face before she got rid of it. She was perfectly nice,” she said to Emma. “It wasn’t her fault I felt that way, which makes it worse. It snuck up on me. It does sometimes. Then we had a lovely dinner. Really lovely. So there was this part of me under the part having that really lovely dinner that felt even more stupid for the reaction. I hate feeling stupid.”
“Good.” Parker nodded. “Because when you hate something, you stop doing it.”
“Working on it.”
“Then—That must be the clients,” Parker said as the bell rang. “Crap, I lost track. Emma, get rid of those boxes. Laurel, you’re wearing your kitchen shoes.”
“Damn it. Be right back.” She sprinted out of the parlor, with Emma behind her with the empty boxes.
Parker tugged down her suit jacket. “You didn’t say much.” “Because I’ve been behind that glass wall,” Mac told her. “I know how she felt. It takes some time and effort to smash it down, but she will.”
“I don’t want there to be any sort of wall between us.”
“Never between us, Parks. Not the four of us. It’s different for her with Del, but she’ll crack it.”
“All right. You’ll tell me if you think she’s feeling that way.”
“Promise.”
“All right,” she said again. “Show time.” She hurried out to answer the door.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LATER IN THE WEEK, AND WITH CONSIDERABLE PLEASURE, LAUREL sat down with Carter’s sister and her fiance. Sherry Maguire bubbled like the champagne Laurel kept chilled, and was just as delightful.
From their first event meeting—the day Carter had filled in for Nick, and reconnected with Mac—the key word for the fall wedding had been
fun.
Laurel planned to make sure the fun extended to the cake.
“I’m so excited.” Sherry danced in her seat. “Everything’s just coming together so well. I don’t know what I’d do without Parker. Well, without all of you. Probably drive Nick crazy”
“Er,” he said and grinned at her. “Crazi
