Page 9 of The Wedding Twist

But then again, there would be no lodge or hotel work for her if she didn’t get some sort of accreditation.

“Okay, that’s fine,” she said. She noted the details for the class on a sticky note, then hung up and went to the kitchen to get a snack. As she approached, she heard her parents speaking in hushed tones. She paused by the entrance.

“Personally, I think the sooner the better, so we can start making plans,” she heard Jeannie say.

There was a moment of quiet. “Do you think we should just do one more Christmas? I think the girls would really appreciate it,” Everett said.

“And sell in the winter? Forget it. The lodge will show perfectly in July.”

More quiet. Celeste’s mind raced. July? That was in less than three months.

“July’s too soon to get everything in order,” her dad said. “I think August could work. Probably September or October.”

Celeste cleared her throat loudly, waited a beat, and then entered the kitchen. “Hey,” she said.

Her parents were sitting at the kitchen island, a coffee in front of her dad and a tea steeping in front of her mom. It wasn’t an unfamiliar scene, and if she didn’t know better, she’d have just thought they were having their regular morning sit-down together.

“Good morning,” her dad said in a forced chipper voice. He was wearing his old blue Patagonia fleece and a pair of khaki pants, his silver hair poking out from under a gray beanie.

Her mom stood up. “Can I get you something, honey?” In contrast, Jeannie wore her “uniform”: black leggings with a long crisp white dress shirt over top and clogs with an apron, her gray hair in an angled bob. Celeste’s parents got away with a more casual attire because of their responsibilities around the property, but Celeste, as the face of the lodge, generally wore a dress or a suit, something elegant and well-tailored. “A snack or a drink or something? I can make you an omelet.”

What she really wanted was for her parents to stop acting so weird.

“Just getting myself a coffee,” she said.

“Croissant with that?” her mom said. Everett pulled out a chair for her.

“Uh, sure,” Celeste said and grabbed a mug to fill with black coffee. “I’ll have it in the office, though. Where’s everyone else?”

“Elodie’s on a virtual panel until noon, Ava took Sam on a hike with some friends, and Quinn is over at the house.”

So, she got the unenviable task of hanging out with her parents with a curtain of awkwardness in the air. She took a sip of her coffee and accepted the plate her mom passed her.

“Quinny told us about your class last night. Fly tying! Maybe I should join you,” Everett said.

“It was kind of fun, actually,” she said. “Too bad it’s completely useless to me.” She thought about the glint in Jack’s eye when he’d complimented her work. “Turns out I was pretty good at it, though.”

“No surprise there,” Jeannie said. “You’ve always been good at whatever you put your mind to.”

Celeste looked up at both of her parents beaming at her. It was time to go. “I’m going to go check over the table-and-chair rental and catering order for the wedding.”

The soon-to-be-Instagram-famous family wedding for the upcoming weekend was a property buyout for the young couple and a group of twenty-four family members and close friends, exactly the number of rooms required to house the group, with both the ceremony and reception set to take place in the great room. She’d already checked it over twice an hour earlier, but she couldn’t take another minute of her parents looking at her like she was as fragile as crepe paper.

Back in the quiet of the office, she picked up her phone, clicked on Instagram, and started some mindless scrolling. She smiled and shook her head when she saw that Quinn had already posted a photo of her fly and a short description of the craft followed by a number of hashtags like#DIYand#HandCrafted.

She also saw that Quinn had tagged a company called Wallace Expeditions in the photo. Celeste clicked on the tag, which brought her to the page of a local fly-fishing outfitter and tour guide. The very first photo was of Jack, standing in a knee-deep river and holding up a fishing rod and some kind of big fish, grinning widely, the forest emerald green behind him. The description below the photo advertised the upcoming season’s expeditions.

Celeste zoomed in on the photo, on Jack’s bright eyes and confident grin, and felt a warm tingle of desire dance through her core. The picture had likely been taken in the summer; his skin was nicely tanned, and he wore a T-shirt with his company logo, his sleeves clinging to his sturdy, muscular upper body.

She thought back to that brief moment when she thought he’d invited her to join him on the river. Just her, not the entire class. Not that wading through freezing-cold water in the late-April drizzle to try to catch a fish that could be easily purchased at the local grocery store or fishmonger had any iota of appeal to it, but she’d felt silly that she’d thought for a split second that the invite had been specific to her—the woman who’d worn a dress to Fly-Tying101.

Jack was for sure the kind of guy who favored women who liked backpacking and sleeping outside and wearing the same clothes for days on end. Celeste and that whole scene were two opposing poles of a magnet.

Not that dating was a priority right now. The coming months needed to be focused on setting herself up for continued employment and helping her sisters through what would be a challenging time for their family. And then there were her parents. They were clearly trying to appear to be fine for their sake, but surely they’d both be dealing with many complex emotions over the course of the sale. All Celeste could hope was that things proceeded as smoothly as possible.

There was no time to dabble in fantasies of nature-loving men who hooked fish for a living.

Was there anything wrong with a little daydreaming, though? She navigated back to Quinn’s post and hitLike, then threw her phone onto the table and looked around the office, trying to decide what to do next.

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