One More Taste (One and Only Texas #2)(103)
Skye waved her phone at Vince. “Sorry, it’s my mom. Just a sec.” Oh, how the lies rolled off her tongue. But she couldn’t find it in her heart to care as she let her fingers fly over the touch keys.
Crazier than the date I’m on? she texted.
Looking at Mrs. Biaggi and Vince, she forced her smile to stay apologetic while waiting for Remedy’s reply. It came a minute later.
Better hurry if you want to see the maid of honor doing tequila shots from the best man’s belt buckle flask with no hands.
That did sound bananas crazy—and exactly what Skye needed to salvage her Saturday night. A zing of delicious, addictive adrenaline pulsed through her veins. It was only a small fix of her preferred vice—nowhere near enough to satisfy the rebellious streak she’d been cursed with—but it was way more of a thrill than she’d expected out of the night.
“Aw, shoot,” Skye said, taking her purse handles in one hand and waving her phone in the other as she stood. Her napkin fell from her lap to the floor, but she didn’t dare risk losing momentum by stooping to pick it up. “My mom needs me. My dad, with his bad back … he fell again and he’s stuck. She can’t get him off the floor on her own.” Which was kind of the truth. Sort of. He’d fallen a few times lately and had needed Skye’s help to hoist him up again.
She sent up a quick mental prayer for forgiveness for using her dad’s disability as an excuse. Then she dashed off a second prayer for forgiveness about lying in the first place, covering all her bases. One thing she wouldn’t feel guilty about was running out on their free meal.
Vince looked as lost as a boy who was just told his dog had to visit a farm far, far away. He poked at his half-eaten meatball. “But our date’s not over.”
Yeah, buddy, it is. “I’ll text you.”
Another lie, another prayer. Such was life.
Skye grabbed a dinner roll from the table, nodded to a still agape Mrs. Biaggi, and dashed through the front door. She’d driven herself to the restaurant, a rule she’d learned the hard way a few years back while on another excruciating blind date. In fact, she’d come to think of inviting a guy to pick her up at home for a date as a big relationship step—one that the men she’d dated had seldom made it to.
Racing the clock, hoping to catch the maid of honor’s and groom’s belt buckle antics, Skye arrived at Briscoe Ranch Resort’s in record time. After tossing her car keys to her cousin Marco who was working valet that night, she hot-footed it through the lobby and ascended the grand staircase, headed to the ballroom on the second level.
What she saw as she crested the stairs didn’t disappoint. With a small crowd surrounding them, Remedy and her assistant Tabby were pushing a luggage trolley through a small crowd of onlookers. Seated on the base of the trolley was a very, very drunk young woman who slumped against one of the trolley’s brass poles as her eyes fluttered open and closed. The voluminous yellow bridesmaid’s dress she wore billowed out around her like she was being eaten alive by Pac-Man.
Skye’s mouth fell open at the sight, but she sprang to action again when the yellow dress caught in the trolley’s wheels, and rushed over to free the material. “Is this the maid of honor?”
Remedy flashed a wry smile. “Oh, yes. And it’s time for her to turn in for the night.” She patted the woman on the top of her elaborate, hairspray-crispy updo. “Sound good, Kimberly?”
Kimberly groaned. Her head lolled to the side.
“I think it’s a little past time,” Tabby muttered.
With Skye clearing the crowd from their path, Remedy and Tabby wheeled the trolley to the elevators, where Remedy got on her phone to request that someone meet them at Kimberly’s room with the master key to let them in, since they hadn’t snagged her clutch purse during their hustle to get her off the bride and groom’s sweetheart table and out of the ballroom.
“So, your date was a bust?” Remedy asked Skye once they were in an elevator, headed to the fifth floor.
Skye pressed her fingers to her temples. “This guy was even worse than the last one. Remember him? He kept steering the conversation back to his plant collection and making double entendres about propagating succulents.”
Remedy snorted out a laugh. “This guy was worse?”
“He took me to dinner at his parents’ restaurant so he wouldn’t have to pay and so they could scope out the merchandise.”
Remedy gave her a playful hit on the shoulder. “Ew!”
“Right? I know I said I wanted to settle down with a nice, vanilla, Catholic guy, but Vince Biaggi was a little too vanilla. I have to believe that in the danger-and-drama spectrum of Vince on one end and Mike the Mistake on the other, there’s got to be some middle ground.”
Mike the Mistake was Skye’s ex-husband. Except she couldn’t quite get the word ex-husband past her lips. Partly because, eight years later, she was still reeling in disbelief that she’d ever been that out-of-control twenty-year-old who’d allowed the thrill of rebellion to intoxicate her into marrying a lion keeper with an international traveling circus—even if they’d only lasted for three months. And partly out of respect for her faith and her parents, both of which strictly forbid divorce. That three-month marriage had caused her nothing but pain and had resulted in the greatest sin of her life—a sin she could never afford to make again. Which was why she had to get it right next time when it came to choosing a mate, because next time would be forever, for real.