Page 109 of Tempting as Sin
Ruby had said, her voice nothing but a gasp, “Sounds good. You’ll be happy, Bailey. Sorry I couldn’t…do better. Couldn’t always…take you.” She’d looked at Lily, held her hand in a weak grasp, and said, “Don’t let her…” Her breath had failed her, and she’d struggled, then finished. “Hook up with the wrong…guy.”
“No worries,” Rafe had said, choking up in the way he’d kept doing since he’d met Lily, like she’d opened the door to his heart and there was no closing it now. “Not happening.”
“Good,” Ruby had said, and closed her eyes like she could rest now. At peace. Bailey had kissed her cheek, and the next morning, Ruby had slipped away.
It had been sad. It was still sad. Chuck and the goats and the pony, though, which Bailey had named Misty after a certain apparently-famous-to-girls animal, had all helped. And on November fourteenth, Bailey had become Lily’s forever daughter. She had a cute haircut now, and her jeans were long enough, but the dress she’d wear today was the first she’d ever allowed Lily to buy, and she still played football and soccer every chance she got.
That suited Rafe fine. He loved both his girls exactly as they came. He was even learning to throw an American football. You could pass forward, which was naff, but if he ever had occasion to play a quarterback, he wouldn’t need as many lessons.
The wedding date meant that his part of the publicity tour forUrban Decay 3: Underworld Rising,which had released three days earlier, would be curtailed, but that suited him, too. Never his favorite thing, publicity.
The film had got him the best reviews of his career, and the new one, his sheriff, was going to do even better. He felt it in his bones. The critics had said, even onUnderworld,that he “showed a new depth of character,” which made sense, because that was how he felt.
On the other hand, the director had left half of Antonio on the cutting-room floor. Box-office poison. Antonio couldn’t have done much worse if he’d embraced Scientology. That would probably come next.
“Nervous, mate?” Jace asked now, then grimaced. “Stupid bloody tie.”
“Nah,” Rafe said. “Feeling good.” It was true. He felt like he had that first night, singing karaoke in a bar in Japantown with Lily dancing beside him. It was a good thing they weren’t doing this outdoors, because he’d have floated away. He surveyed his brother critically. “You’ve made a regular dog’s breakfast of that.”
Jace scowled. “I just said that.” He wrenched at the strip of black silk.
“Stop it,” Rafe said. “You’re crumpling it more. Mate.” He laughed. “Let me do it.” He took the limp, bedraggled black tie from Jace and tied it quickly into its bow. “It won’t look as good as mine, but then, you never do.”
Jace was still scowling and pulling at the neck of his white shirt. “I’m unbuttoning the top.”
“You are not unbuttoning the top,” Rafe said. “I happen to know that Paige went through some fairly torturous beauty routines for this. Lily told me she yelled. She’s six months pregnant, too. You can live with a tight collar for an hour.”
After that, there was nothing to do but wait and listen to the muffled sounds of people gathering and chatting, and the calming strains of a cello, the soaring notes of violins, and the in-between, mellow tones of a viola, drifting in through the open windows on the summer breeze.
Finally, though, the venue’s wedding coordinator poked her well-coiffed head through the door and asked, “Ready to go, boys? Big moment’s here.”
Rafe saw Jace swallow hard and asked, soberly now, “Mate. Is it cold feet?”
Jace didn’t do fear. Jace was a soldier, and he was bloody good at it. Jace was the strong one, the brave one. What was wrong?
“Nah,” his brother said. “It’s a hell of a thing to live up to, that’s all. Being the man she deserves, and a good father as well.”
“I reckon,” Rafe said, “that all we can do is our best.”
Jace reached a hand out to grip Rafe’s shoulder, and the brothers held each other close and hard for an instant before Jace released Rafe, rolled his head on his neck, and said, “I’m the man they’re stuck with, anyway, because I’m not going anywhere. My wife. My baby girl. Let’s go.”
Bailey’s neck itched. The dress wasn’t lacy, but the neck itched anyway.
Lily had let her help pick it out, and she hadn’t made her wear tights or high heels or anything. Australia wasn’t very fancy. Everybody wore shorts, and lots of people wore sandals and flip-flops, even though there were snakes and poison spiders.
There were no crocodiles in Byron Bay, but Jace and Paige, who were sort of her uncle and aunt now, were going to take her to see them while Lily and Rafe did their honeymoon.
“Yeah, you can still wear sandals,” Rafe had told her when she’d asked him about the snakes. “Hope for the best, that’s the Aussie motto.”
She wished she could see a shark, too, but it wasn’t realistic. It would be too dangerous. Same thing with jellyfish and the blue-ringed octopus. She’d already seen lots of kangaroos and all kinds of birds, though, and even a koala one time, and Rafe had said she’d probably see dolphins and maybe even whales. She couldn’t wait to tell Hermione about all the animals. Rafe had said that next time they came, Hermione could come, too. That would be cool. Hermione had been on a plane before, and to the ocean when she’d lived in California, but she'd never been to Australia.
Everybody was sitting down now, she saw when she peeked out the door. In a little while, she had to walk down the aisle and drop rose petals. It was kind of inefficient, because afterwards, somebody would just have to sweep them up, but it was supposed to be like a fairy tale. This time there were two brides to walk on the rose petals, at least, so it was only half as inefficient.
The lady who was in charge came in, which meant it must be almost time to start. She was really bossy. Even Rafe did what she said, and Rafe wasn’t scared of anybody. When he was around, everybody relaxed and smiled more. Maybe that was because he was a movie star, but people had done that even before they knew he was a movie star, so she didn’t think it was that.
After he and Lily got married, Rafe was going to adopt her, too. He said she had to take more swimming lessons, even though she could swim over her head now, because he had swimming pools in both his other houses, the one in LA and the one here, plus the lake in Sinful and the beaches at both houses. “Besides,” he’d said, “you’ll be part Aussie then, and Aussies swim. Got to, haven’t we, to get out of the sharks’ way.” Part Aussie, he meant, because he’d be her dad. That was weird, but it was really cool.
Hermione had said that people who had a swimming pool were sometimes rich and sometimes not, but if they had two houses and both of them had swimming pools, they were almost always rich. Also, Rafe really was famous. The kids at school all wanted to be her friend now, but her best friend was still Hermione. Plus, she was going to have a brother. His name was already picked out. Elijah Blue Blackstone. Lily had picked Elijah, and Blackstone was Rafe’s name. Blue was Bailey’s name. “That way,” Lily had said, “he’s got a little piece of all of us in him. Our whole family.”
