Page 8 of 4 Weddings and a Feud

“Just some pictures,” Rafe mumbled.

“Pictures? Wait, you didn’t fall for one of those card slappers, did you? You know the girls on the cards aren’t actually looking for dates.”

“No! Dammit, I’m thirty-two, not twelve.”

“Then what do you mean by pictures?”

“They wanted to take some of me, okay?”

“Clothes on or off?” Michael kept his head in the engine compartment, but his shoulders shook with laughter.

“Clothes on! Clothes on, Ma.” Rafe raised his eyes to the high ceiling and crossed himself.

“But what about your hand? You left your splint on, right?” Mary eyed it. The purple bruising was visible through the plastic bag.

“It wasn’t my hand they wanted pictures of.”

“Wait, what?” Mary gasped.

“My face! My face!” He waved his splinted hand at his stubbled chin and red cheeks.

“Mugshots?” Michael’s voice echoed from under the hood.

Rafe didn’t dignify that with a response.

“Look, their model didn’t show,” he said, “and they asked me to step in ’cause I’m about the same size as him. They gave me a tux to wear, and I stuck my hand in the pocket. No big deal.”

“Pictures for what?” Mary surveyed her brother. He was cute, but she’d never thought of him as model-handsome, especially with his cheap haircut and beat-up mechanic’s hands. He wasn’t even as good-looking as their other brother, Gabe, who might share their genes but had soft hands from working in an office. Alex, she heard, got his nails manicured and his hair trimmed every other week at his hotel’s spa.Hewas a man who belonged in a photo shoot. Not Rafe.

“Dunno.” He ducked his head. “Some promotional thing.”

“Did they pay you?”

“Not yet. They said they’d mail me a check.”

Mary shook her head. That was her brother Rafe, always stepping in to help someone and never looking out for himself. He’d never see that check. How many more sales could they have made at the expo if he’d been doing his real job at the booth so she could’ve sold some wedding planning services? Enough to pay for his visit to the emergency room?

Like he’d read her mind, he said, “Sorry I abandoned you. How’d you do at the expo?”

“I booked eleven parties, three wedding transports, and one conference VIP shuttle service.”

“Not bad.” Michael backed out from under the hood and straightened his back with a grimace. “How about the other booth?”

She hated that his back was hurting. At almost forty, her oldest brother’s body had taken a beating from working on cars since he was thirteen. He’d supported their family for so long. If Mary could get her planning business off the ground, they could hire help and he wouldn’t end up perpetually stooped, working himself into the ground the way their father had done.

She shook her head. “Not great. A bit of interest, but no sales. I had to give a big one to Alex because the bride wanted more than I could offer.”

“Alex Villa?” Michael narrowed his eyes as he wiped grease from his hands with a rag. “You talked to that dirtbag?”

“We’re cordial acquaintances. You should try it sometime.”

“But why?” Rafe asked. “After what he did…”

“We were friends before. It was my mistake to think we could be anything else.”

“It was his mistake to stand you up,” Michael growled.

“And you made him pay for it. Even though I asked you not to.” She’d been glad when Alex got his nose fixed a few years after she’d come back from college. Every time she’d seen the crooked ridge in it, it reminded her of the pain she’d experienced that night.

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