Page 2 of Love and Other Trials
Tornado #3
They let you land in this weather? I thought your flight would be canceled. It’s ghastly outside.
Tornado #1
Good thing you didn’t crash in the storm. I need you so bad this week.
Tornado #3
God, we’ve been drinking. We’ll have to figure out who can come get you.
She tossed her phone back in her purse and imagined Jeffrey swearing a blue streak. Made her feel a little happier on the inside. Because she wasn’t relieved by her sister’s assurance that someone would come. God, she should probably call an Uber, but she had no guarantee she’d find one at this hour, especially since there was a storm on the way and not all car services accepted dogs. Might as well enjoy the quiet and a little more Jack.
She stroked behind Sherlock’s floppy ears as he gave a sympathetic ruff. “Maybe if they forget us, we can hop on the first flight out of here in a few hours.”
His rueful gaze had her laughing. God, he was such a trooper at family events.
“Yeah. I’m delusional. Don’t mind me.”
If it weren’t for her desire to have her grandma’s house, Ariel would have arrived at Tiffany’s wedding right before the rehearsal this coming Friday. But no…
Her mother had teamed up with her sister to blackmail her. Blackmail her! Ariel’s organizational skills were legendary, sure, as were her contacts in Charleston. They thought she could hit this wedding out of the park and stop the Deverell wedding curse. While she was known as a miracle worker of sorts, working in disaster recovery as she did, this was totally different.
Sure, she and Sherlock had pulled off some amazing search and rescue operations, but she wasn’t confident even they could do anything to combat the wedding curse—if it were real.
Ariel’s grandmother had married her (former) friend’s ex-husband, and the woman had cursed her and her offspring on the steps of St. Michael’s Church the day of the wedding.
More startling, there was plenty of evidence it had worked.
Case One: Her grandmother, who’d been married three times. Her first wedding had been thetalkof Charleston, but her former friend’s curse had immediately set in—the lights had flickered in the church and the seven-tiered cake had broken in half and crumbled to the ground as she and her friend’s ex were about to cut it.
And then there was Grandma’s third wedding…
Well, a tropical storm blew in and canceled the darn thing on the day of, only to be held days later in city hall under muted circumstances to say the least.
Case Two: Her mother’s three weddings had only added more proof to the pudding, and don’t get her started on her aunts’. The carriage horse carrying her mom and the Three Tornadoes’ dad off into the sunset reared and took off at a gallop before the driver got him under control. And when she’d married Ariel’s dad, a nest of mice had run through the reception hall, causing a massive exodus, and her father still shuddered when he saw one. But that was not to be upstaged by what happened during the reception for wedding number three—the porch steps to the mansion had given way from wood rot when the women were gathered to catch the bouquet, causing a few turned ankles and bumps and bruises.
And then there were her sisters’ previous weddings. Oh Lord. The chandelier taking the tent down during Tricia’s wedding dance was still talked about at family reunions over mint juleps. Six people had been rushed to the ER.
The oyster bar at Terry’s rehearsal dinner had made everyone hang over the porcelain throne all night.
And Tiffany’s first wedding…
Well, not only had she set a new record for bad taste with nude Adam and Eve ice sculptures, courtesy of her artist ex-hubby, but one of the Sterno cans under a nearby chafing pan had somehow melted their genitals, causing Adam’s giant junk to drip and shrivel in size, making every guest there totally uncomfortable or wheeze with laughter until they were wiping tears.
She and Jeffrey had laughed themselves silly. They’d bandied backwho knew Adam had been so hung?remarks with them concluding he had to be, to father all humans according to the biblical account.
And that wasn’t counting the others’ woes at that wedding… There’d been a poison ivy outbreak after the wedding rehearsal, held at an idyllic farm, and the next day the top of the holy water had popped off violently during the blessing, knocking out one of the bridesmaids. Cold. For two minutes. Tiffany had wisely not asked her to be in the wedding party this round.
Who had rushed in to help with every disaster at her sisters’ weddings? Ariel. She’d bought and distributed the calamine lotion and Pepto. She’d found event staff to shore up the tent and remove the broken chandelier. Heck, she’d even called the paramedics when necessary.
Despite her being dubbed the family fixer, Ariel didn’t know if she could stop a curse. The research on that was fairly hair-raising, involving crazy incantations under a full moon and one-eight-hundred numbers to voodoo priestesses named Madame Renfro on Bourbon Street. So not going there.
But she would do everything in her power to make this wedding into the fairy tale her sister had in mind—somebody in the family needed a wedding win—and she had readily agreed to help from afar. With a skilled wedding planner at the helm.
Of course, that hadn’t been enough…
She did love her sisters. And her mother. But God, they were hard to please and even harder to feel connected to. They were the exciting and fun ones, and she was the wallflower. Some might say she had an exciting job, but she considered herself a no-nonsense professional who trucked through mud and debris to find people. She was a mere daisy. Not a bold dahlia or bird of paradise like her sisters. Maybe it was because they all had the same father, while she’d gotten her father’s practical, grounded side, like Jeffrey, who’d been a toddler when their father had married her mother.
