Page 51 of Keep

It wasn’t easy to make Cami blush but she blushed now. Not everyone was impressed though. Ethan and Rider made a big spectacle of gagging into their pizza.

“Oh the sappiness,” Ethan complained.

Rider shook his head. “I can’t take it.”

Cami threw a napkin at her cousins. “Shut up.”

Then she stood, placed her palms on either side of my face and leaned in for a kiss that sent my pulse racing and my hands wandering. I pulled her into my lap and had we not been surrounded by a room full of her relatives I’d have been searching for someplace more private to peel off that sexy blue dress.

But alas, there was no privacy among the Gentry crew and by now our long kiss had attracted some attention.

“I can’t unsee that,” young Ethan grumbled to his cousin.

“This is not the horny newlywed honeymoon suite,” Chase bellowed from the next table.

Cami broke the kiss and made a face at her uncle but he only laughed at her. We stopped torturing the crowd with our sloppy make out session but I stubbornly kept her in my lap as we finished eating.

Meanwhile, Cassie and Curtis occupied their own private table at the front of the room and seemed unaware of anything but each other. I approved wholeheartedly. From personal experience I can say that a man who had his eyes on anything but his bride on his wedding day probably wasn’t doing it right.

We didn’t take long to make short work of the piles of food and soon people started moving around. Cami wanted to chat with her aunts, Truly and Stephanie, so she left my lap and roamed over to where they were standing by the cake table while laughing over some private story.

Across the table Rider and Ethan kept elbowing each other. They were snorting over the kind of raunchy jokes that comprise peak entertainment around the age of thirteen but eventually lose their luster. I decided to seek out less adolescent company.

Nearby there was a spirited debate between Derek, Stone and Conway about rebuilding vintage transmissions but I didn’t have anything of value to add to that conversation so I kept looking, wandering through the crowd until I ran into Cord.

He was watching from a short distance as Cassie fed a bite of cake to her new husband and it appeared as if Cordero Gentry was getting a little misty eyed. His youngest daughter apparently noticed it too.

“Don’t cry, Daddy,” Cadence warned. “The uncles will never let you hear the end of it.”

He swiped at his eyes. “I’m not crying,” he muttered. Then he gave her a quick hug. “Just do me a favor and stay close. I don’t think I can deal with giving away another daughter anytime soon.”

Cadence rolled her eyes. “You don’t need to worry about that. It’s not likely I’ll run into a guy in the near future who can handle all of this.” She gestured with a flourish and accidentally smacked Curtis’s brother, Tristan, in the back. He turned around.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, reddening. Tristan stared at her for a few seconds without smiling and then turned back to his conversation with Brecken.

“Tough room,” Cadence shrugged.

A minute later I was tapped on the shoulder by Chase and Kellan. Curtis had given up his keys after Chase offered to go retrieve his truck from the parking garage so that the bride didn’t have to walk back through the streets of Phoenix in the heat. Chase’s plan was to retrieve the truck all right, and then decorate it in the most obnoxious way possible so the couple could exit the party in style.

“Are you in?” Chase challenged.

“You bet,” I replied.

It only took a few minutes to walk back to the parking garage. Kellan’s idea was to wrap the vehicle in plastic cling but Chase vetoed that proposal.

“Nothing obscene either,” he warned.

Kellan wasn’t pleased. “What fun is that?”

“Son, let’s pretend we have a little bit of class. Just for today.”

“Fine,” Kellan muttered.

We found a convenience store that carried assorted color balloons, toilet paper and string. Kellan also managed to acquire a cardboard box which he fashioned into a sign, scrawling ‘Just Married’ across the surface with a tube of hastily purchased red lipstick.

The final result wasn’t the most elegant thing anyone ever saw but it got the message across. Once the truck was parked in front of the pizzeria Chase urged me to get back inside but I was busy checking something on my phone.

“In a minute,” I told him. “I’ve got to make a quick call.”

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