Page 39 of SCRUMptious

Chapter15

D O N AL

I hated cigars,and yet here I was, smoking my third one of the week. I didn’t know how the tradition had begun, but there was something about weddings and cigars that seemed to go hand-in-hand. At least on the groom’sside.

Lauren had explained that for brides it was mimosas. She’d been drowning in them since the impromptu bridal shower her friends had thrown for her the weekend before.

Not that I was complaining. These cigars were proof that I’d pulled off the biggest upset of mylife.

I’d married thegirl.

I still couldn’t believeit.

It had been six months since I’d dropped to my knees in the airport and begged Lauren to marry me. Sometimes I still woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, thinking it had all been a dream. When that happened, I’d roll over and pull her tight against me, and then breathe in her scent until the adrenaline rushing through my veins dissipated and my erratic heartbeat slowed to a steadypace.

“Here, you look like you’re going to be sick.” My dad passed me a cold bottle of beer, condensation snaking down its sides.

With one hand, I grabbed the bottle, and with the other, held the cigar away at an angle. “It’s these things. I hate the way they taste.”

He laughed and took it from me. Stubbing it out in an urn that sat on the wall that separated the patio from the beach, he turned back to me. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“Everyone just keeps handing them to me. I didn’t know what to do, so I just started smokingthem.”

“You could say, ‘no thanks.’”

“Yeah,” I chuckled. “Have you ever successfully told Uncle Seanno?”

He shielded his eyes and squinted into the distance, searching for his older brother somewhere out on the beach. It didn’t take long for my dad to find him. Not necessarily because Uncle Sean was easy to see, but because he was easy tohear.

“Point taken.”

“Anyhow,” he said, taking a puff of his cigar and blowing the smoke away from my face. “I’m sorry your ma couldn’t behere.”

Originally, we’d planned on getting married in the fall, but when Lauren was asked to compete on a reality TV cooking show that conflicted with our wedding date, we’d moved it As far as I was concerned, I would have married her at the courthouse the day we’d landed in L.A., but she’d wanted a wedding for her mom’s sake. Her mom, who was sitting at a round table directly under a heat lamp and grinning proudly. She had every reason to be—she’d raised a remarkable woman.

We’d known getting married on such short notice would mean some of our friends and family wouldn’t be able to make it, but I hadn’t thought my mom would be among them. If anything, I figured my dad and his girlfriend Stacia would be the ones to miss it. Then again, the wedding had been on the beach in front of his house, so maybe not somuch.

“It’s okay,” I said with a shrug as I tried to keep my toneeven.

It wasn’t, but what was the point of complaining now? I’d said my peace when I’d spoken to her the night before. Personally, I thought her excuses were bullshit, but how did you say that to yourmom?

“Listen, I know things haven’t always been easy betweenus.”

I raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “That’s one way of puttingit.”

He stubbed out his cigar. “I know your ma and I didn’t do a great job withyou—”

I scoffed. Ma had done a grand job. Well, up until recently. He’d always been the problem.

“—But there are some things I think you should know. Now that you’re older, and married yourself, you might understand things a bit differently.”

“What sort of things?”

“Things about your mother and me and why our marriage was what itwas.”

“You mean how you cheated on her for years and how I have brothers and sisters I can’t even acknowledge?” I shot back, then lowered my voice so as not to attract any attention.

The sound of Lauren’s melodic laughter reached me from across the patio, and almost immediately, the tension left my body. I watched as she clinked glasses with a curvy redhead who’s arm was wrapped around a tall blonde guy with movie-star good looks.

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