I might need your help to run interference with Mother.”
Hadley took a sip of her latte and reached out to open the box. There were two cheese Danishes and a chocolate cake doughnut inside. Of course, Helena had brought her favorites so this must be serious.
“With what?” she asked.
“I had to ask Mom and Dad to put the deposit down on the flowers and now she’s trying to take over. I mentioned that you were the artsy one and had already designed the flowers for the church and the reception...”
“That doesn’t sound bad. I’m not sure you needed to bring the latte and the pastries to ask me to do your design. I was already planning to do it,” Hadley said.
“Great. Glad to hear it. Mom is going to be over later to give you some notes on how she’d like the church to look. You will need to make some time to go and visit with the pastor, as well as with Kinley. Now that Mom is on board, we’re going to have Kinley plan it.”
Kinley Caruthers was a local girl who’d moved to Vegas and landed a primo job with Jaqs Veerland. The Jaqs Veerland, who planned weddings for A-listers and European royalty. Kinley had come back to Cole’s Hill to plan former NFL bad boy Hunter Caruthers’s wedding. Kinley had a complicated history with Hunter’s brother Nate and after they got engaged Jaqs opened a satellite office here in town so Kinley could work in Cole’s Hill.
“What?” Now the pastries were making a bit more sense.
“Sorry, sis,” she said.
“There aren’t enough cheese Danishes at the Bluebonnet to make this okay. Mom is going to be a complete tyrant about this,” Hadley said.
“I know. I’m sorry, but I had no choice.”
“Why not? I thought you’d budgeted to make sure you didn’t have to ask them for any money,” she said.
“I did, but something came up unexpectedly and we didn’t have enough for the deposit, so I had to ask Daddy.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
She shrugged. “You know how it is with brides.”
“Actually, I don’t. But I do know you and you have a backup for everything,” she said. She put her coffee mug on the counter and walked around to her sister. “What’s going on?”
Helena chewed her lower lip and turned away from Hadley, which made her even more concerned.
“Hel, whatever it is, you can tell me,” she said.
She put her arms at her sides and shrugged. “That’s just it. I don’t know what the problem is. Malcolm withdrew the money and I can’t ask him about it without it seeming like I’m checking up on him.”
“Uh, yes you can. It’s your wedding fund,” she said.
“I know, but I took out a large amount to buy him a wedding present and I asked him to trust me and he did...so now I have to give him the same trust,” she said.
“Did he say he bought you something with it?” she asked.
“No, he just said he’d have the money back in our account soon.”
“Soon? That doesn’t sound like Malcolm. When did he say that?”
“Six weeks ago,” Helena said.
“Uh...that doesn’t sound right.”
“I know. I asked Mauricio to see if he can find out what’s going on,” Helena said. “He was really sweet after you and Jackson left the party.”
Of course he was. She’d rather he was a jerk so she could go back to hating him and forget about how sexy he was, which she hadn’t been able to do since she’d left the party.
“Anyway, thanks for working with mom on this. How’s things with Jackson? He’s really cute. You two make a good couple.”
She shook her head. “I broke up with him.”
“What? Why?”
“For a reason I’m not sharing with you,” she said.
“No spark?”
“Yeah,” she said. She wasn’t planning to elaborate or let her sister know that Mauricio was still turning her on with a barely-there touch.
“So about the money...” Hadley said.
“I’m going to see if anything else comes of it from Mauricio. Otherwise, I just don’t know. Am I wrong to trust him?”
Hadley hugged her sister close. “I don’t know. My track record with trusting guys isn’t great. You know him the best.”
“I do,” Helena said, hugging her back. “You’re right. He’s fine. We’re fine. And you’re handling Mother so everything is good.”
She was glad she had her sister’s wedding to help design instead of focusing on her own non-existent love life. Of course, after Helena left the studio, all she could think about was that she’d said Mauricio had been sweet to her. She hated when he wasn’t a total douche because it made her remember how good things had been between them.
Closing a deal in Houston, picking Alec up at the airport a few days earlier than expected and then driving back to Cole’s Hill hadn’t been what he’d planned for Friday, but Mauricio was hopeful that after the long day he’d fall into an exhausted sleep and for once not be tormented by dreams of Hadley.
But his youngest brother, Inigo, was back in town due to some downtime on the Formula One circuit and their father was in a rare mood, treating them all to dinner at the Peace Creek Steak House. His father loved it when he had all of his sons and his only grandson to himself. To be honest Mo liked these times too. Then they’d dropped the old man and Benito off at home in the Five Families neighborhood and headed out to the Bull Pit for shots of tequila and a grudge-match pool game.
“Twins versus the baby and the favorite,” Alec said, coming back to the high table with a round of Lone Star longnecks.
“Works for me,” Mo said. He and Alec had been a team since the womb, and they were pretty unstoppable once they got playing.
“Or as I like to think of it, the wusses versus the awesomes.”
“Awesomes? That’s not even a word. No wonder you’re a driver. You’re not smart enough for anything else,” Alec said, winking at Inigo.
“I’m plenty smart for you,” Inigo said. “Who gets paid to drive fast and who has to sit in an office in front of a computer? I think we both know who’s the smart one.”
“Touché,” Alec said, lifting his beer toward his little brother as Diego set up the balls and they tossed a coin to see who would go first.
As
