What Doesn't Kill Her (Cape Charade #2)(83)

“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!”



47


In Rae’s mind, Max was her exclusive parent and Kellen had no right to take over any part of him. In a way, the child was right.

Kellen looked up.

Max and Verona were staring. Rae had their attention now.

But this was between Kellen and Rae, and Kellen tried to think of the right answer. “Your daddy is your daddy. He has no other children but you.”

Rae nodded and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

Kellen felt a little thrill; she’d taught Rae to wipe using the nearest sleeve. “I’ll be your daddy’s wife. And I’m your mother. We’re going to be a family.” Kellen rubbed Rae’s back. “I thought you wanted that.”

Rae nodded and played with her spoon. “I do. But we are!”

“A family.” Kellen relaxed and smiled. “We are, aren’t we? We’re a good family together just like we are.”

“Yeah!”

“Your daddy and I don’t really have to get married, do we?”

Max made a muffled sound of protest.

Verona thumped her head onto her palm.

Rae exploded in indignation. “Yes! Yes, you do!”

Heh. Kellen felt the slightest bit smug. “Honey, if we can be a family without a wedding, and a wedding makes you unhappy, then we won’t get married.”

“I want to wear pink!”

Just like that, Kellen had no idea what Rae was talking about. “What? Pink? You wear it all the time.”

“To the wedding. I want to be your bridesmaid, and I want to wear pink!”