Page 113 of What Doesn't Kill Her

“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 usetheirrack 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.

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