“That was the worst invite to a party ever. You insulted me while extending the invite.”
Harper’s eyes widened, and she wiped her mouth. “But Daddy’s not insector, right, Violet?”
“I assure you. Daddy’s a lot of things, baby girl, but he’s not insector.” Charlie’s voice was gruff, and his gaze locked with mine.
Yeah. The man was a lot of things.
But insecure was not one of them.
I chuckled. I hadn’t thought this night could turn around, and here I was having a good time at dinner with a man I normally despised and a kid I liked more than I ever thought possible.
Life was full of surprises.
“I’ll for sure stop by,” I said as I cleared my plate, and Charlie stopped me from rinsing it in the sink.
He said I’d done enough, and I knew there was a compliment in there somewhere.
“That’s the best present ever, Violet. And you can even see Denise at the party.”
“Sounds great. I hope she doesn’t pour orange juice on my food.” I looked at the little girl staring up at me as she burst into giggles.
I wondered if I’d meet her mother at the party.
But I wasn’t about to ask. I just thanked them for dinner and made my way back across the yard.
And I didn’t even feel the need to return to my pity party when I got home.
The Blushing Inn was our new venue for hosting weddings, and we were partial owners of the property. Montana’s ridiculously wealthy fiancé, Myles St. James, had purchased the old farmhouse and allowed the Blushing Bride to invest in it, and Huxley Construction had done the renovations to make it exactly what we wanted. It was nice that we had control over the venue where we hosted the majority of our events now.
And today was wedding day for Jacoby and Geneva Whitacre, from Pennsylvania. Like many of our clients, they were not local, but they wanted to get married in the quaint town of Blushing, Alaska. My best friend and I worked well together. Like a fine-tuned machine. She liked dealing with the clients more than I did, and I preferred all the behind-the-scenes excitement. Blakely, our executive assistant, would oversee things and let us knowwhen issues came up, so the bride and groom could enjoy their day and we could handle every challenge without a hiccup.
And when it came to weddings, we always had some sort of unexpected challenge.
I loved it. One could never be prepared, and just when I thought I’d seen it all—the shit would hit the fan.
Literally and figuratively.
Blakely’s voice came through the radio earpiece, which was how the three of us communicated when it was game time.
“Uh, we’ve got a, er, issue in the main bathroom,” Blakely said, and what followed sounded like she was dry heaving. “The FOG just dropped a bomb in there, and the toilet has overflowed. And let’s just say that things are not contained to the toilet area.”
The FOG was code for “father of the groom.”
Serves him right, because who eats two chili dogs a few hours before their son’s wedding?
Thankfully everyone was still getting ready for the big event, and guests hadn’t arrived yet. I’d get this fixed immediately.
“Heading your way. Can we get Wayne over here pronto?” I asked.
“I already called. Wayne is down with the stomach flu,” Blakely said.
“Shit. Pun intended,” Montana groaned, and we all laughed, because that was the perfect description of the situation.
“How bad is it? Can we use a plunger?” I asked as I walked through the main entertaining space and down the hallway toward the guest bath.
“This is well beyond a plunger. It’s like a murder scene in there,” Blakely said, keeping her voice low. “And Jacoby’s dad is lying on the floor near the bar area, and he doesn’t look right.”
“Monny, you handle Frank Whitacre, and I’ll get the bathroom fixed.”
