The Inconvenient Bride - By Anne McAllister Page 0,48
Park on Sunday afternoon. The sun was shining. People were playing Frisbee and walking dogs and tossing footballs and, according to Sierra, all was right with the world. “How nice of him.”
Dominic didn’t think it was nice at all.
For all that the old man had blathered on about family solidarity, Dominic knew the people who would be there—most of whom wouldn’t be family, and a great many of whom would have an opinion about Sierra with her purple hair and her funky clothing—and the opinion wouldn’t be good.
Personally he didn’t give a rat’s ass what they thought of his wife. But he knew they could freeze a polar bear’s toe-nails in their dismissive, haughty, but very genteel way.
And he was damned if he was going to let them hurt Sierra.
The trouble was, he didn’t know how to prevent it, short of telling her to dye her hair brown, paint her fingernails pink, and get a dress from some subdued, sophisticated designer. And if he did that, she’d think he was embarrassed to be seen with her.
He wasn’t.
Admittedly, it made him a little self-conscious, knowing that peoples’ heads turned at the sight of the two of them together. They were turning now at the sight of Sierra in her neon pink spandex top, black leather jeans and wide-brimmed floppy hat, walking alongside him in his Brooks Brothers’ khakis and pale blue Oxford-cloth long-sleeved shirt.
“Mr. Buttondown and the free spirit,” Rhys had called them this morning when they’d had brunch with him and Mariah.
“They’re good for each other. A balance,” Mariah had said approvingly.
A balance pretty much summed it up. He was still sleeping at one end of the hall and she was at the other. She talked with him, laughed with him, cooked with him, watched TV with him. But she hadn’t touched him since the night they’d fought. It had been two weeks.
“When is the reception?” Sierra asked him now. “And where?”
Douglas had called right before they’d gone out, giving Dominic the final information. He told Sierra now, “This coming Friday. He’s rented a yacht. A dinner cruise down around the tip of Manhattan Island and up the East River, then out by the Statue of Liberty.”
Sierra looked delighted. “Fantastic. How romantic with the sunset and the city skyline as a backdrop!”
“And three hundred of the old man’s nearest and dearest friends and associates.”
Sierra blinked. “Whoa. That’s a lot. But Rhys and Mariah will be there, won’t they?”
Dominic nodded. “Nathan, too. Dad said he’d told Nath to turn up, and apparently he’s going to.”
Nathan, the middle brother, was a globe-trotting photographer, the one son who’d eschewed any interest in the family business—or the family, for the most part.
But apparently when Douglas meant family solidarity, he meant all the family, even if he had to haul them back from the ends of the earth.
“I’m looking forward to meeting him. Is he anything like you?”
“More like you. He doesn’t own a suit.”
“Heaven forbid.” She laughed. “Still, it will be fun, don’t you think?”
Dominic forced a smile. “Sure. It’ll be great.”
And if anyone gave her any grief, they’d better hope they could swim!
Friday evening. 6:00 p.m.
The moment of truth.
And as far as Sierra was concerned, definitely one of those Anna and the King of Siam moments. One of those mind-shattering, throat-grabbing, pure panic moments where she’d certainly have whistled a happy tune, if only she could have mustered enough spit.
They had boarded the yacht half an hour before.
“Yacht?” she’d said, gaping when she’d first seen it at the Hudson River pier. “It looks more like an ocean liner!”
Dominic had given her a grave smile. But his expression showed him to be almost as nervous as she felt, though exactly what Dominic had to be nervous about she was sure she didn’t know!
They were, after all, his friends and his colleagues, his father’s choices from his particular world. Oh, Finn and Izzy and the kids were coming. So were Chloe and Gib and Brendan, and two or three other couples whose names Dominic had got from her, including Sam and Josie Fletcher and their son, Jake. Not to mention, Rhys and Mariah, Dominic’s brother Nathan and, to Sierra’s surprise, her own parents.
“Of course I invited them,” Douglas had said just minutes before. “It’s only proper.”
Proper.
That was what Sierra was worried about.
Ordinarily she didn’t. Ordinarily she just went her merry way, did what she thought was right, and let the chips fall where they might.
But “right” wasn’t necessarily the same in the world Dominic often