Sisters in White (Love in Bloom: Snow Sisters #3) Contemporary Romance (23 page)

“Stop! Stop!” she cried through tears of laughter.

He pulled her down beside him. “I wouldn’t want you to get any crazy notions about being in control or anything,” he said before kissing her so passionately that she came away breathless.

“Wanna play?” he asked.

Danica looked around, then turned back and shook her head. “Uh-uh. Not here.”

“What’s wrong? Public displays of affection suddenly aren’t your thing?”

“Public playing isn’t my thing,” she said.

“Or maybe it is, but you just don’t know it yet.” He lifted his brows. “Mmm. A new game?”

The restaurant smelled of coconut suntan oil, icy air-conditioning, and French fries. Danica touched her father’s shoulder as she passed on the way to her seat. Danica was slowly realizing that she’d never fully understand what had happened between her parents and Madeline. Their lives were like tangled webs, and she didn’t need to be the one to figure out how to undo the past. She could love her parents for who they’d always been to her and for raising her and loving her. Their mess really was their own mess, and maybe they didn’t feel like it was a mess at all. For now she’d hold the memory of their walk down the aisle in her heart forever.

She could hardly believe that their bittersweet weekend had come to an end. She surveyed each of her friends and family members and realized that even with the storm and the drama, the weekend had brought them all closer together. Elise and Madeline were deep in conversation about the difference between today’s writing and the classics. Gage was deep in conversation with Rusty, while Sally looked on with a torn expression—hovering somewhere between frustration and joy.

Kaylie lifted her glass at the same time their father did, and an uncomfortable lowering and lifting of the glasses ensued.

“Sorry,” Kaylie said.

“No, go on,” her father responded.

“No, Dad, go ahead.”

Hearing her sister call their father
Dad
without tension, without restraint, like the word had once again become comfortable, Danica knew she had done the right thing by leaving Kaylie out of her parents’ issues.

“Thank you.” Her father stood, glass in hand. “I wasn’t really sure if I’d be welcome at my own daughters’ weddings.” He looked at Kaylie, who dropped her eyes, then Danica.

Guilt pressed in on her, and she clenched her jaw to keep from letting her emotions take over. Blake took her hand, and she held on tight.

“I couldn’t have been more pleased when the invitation came.”  He looked down the table.  “Danica, Kaylie, Lacy. We all know that I’ll never win a father-of-the-year award, but I do love you, all of you. Chaz, Blake, my daughters couldn’t have found better men to be partners with for life.” He put a gentle hand on Madeline’s shoulder, and with his next words, his voice turned tender. “It took a great deal of strength for Madeline to face this crowd. Thank you, Maddy, for having the strength to come with me and for giving me the courage I needed to be where I really wanted to be but was afraid to go.” He raised his glass higher. “To Danica, my dear sweet eldest daughter, you have chosen a perfect partner. May you and Blake enjoy a long and happy life together. Kaylie and Chaz...” He blinked away dampness from his eyes and opened his mouth to continue, then faltered and looked away.

Madeline reached up and touched his side.

Their eyes met, and he continued. “Kaylie and Chaz, I have watched the two of you these past few days. Chaz, Kaylie is one of a kind. She’s smart, funny, and sometimes too stubborn for her own good, but you could never find a more loving, intelligent, and stable wife. She’s already proven to be a wonderful mother. But she’ll test you at every turn.”

Kaylie’s eyes grew wide. “Dad!”

He held up his hand. “Please, let me finish. She’ll test you because she loves you and because she wants to make sure you’ll always be there. That’s my fault. I take full responsibility. From what I have witnessed in these few short days, you know how to love my daughter, and I have a feeling that the very love you give will eventually negate the worries that my actions stirred in her.” He began to sit down, then stood up again and added, “And if either of you boys break my daughters’ hearts, I won’t hesitate to hunt you down like animals and tear you apart.”

A collective laugh eased Danica and Kaylie’s tears.

“Thank you, Daddy,” Danica said.

Kaylie stood and tossed a sarcastic smile in her father’s direction. “Drama queen here.” She laughed.

Danica smiled.
Leave it to Kaylie to play up to her father’s teasing
.

“All kidding aside, thank you all for coming so far to join us in our somewhat harried wedding. Mom, you’re such a strong person. I know that now, and I’m so sorry that I spent so many years acting like a spoiled brat. Dad, you’re right. It is your fault that I test every relationship that I’ve ever been in.” She lowered her shoulders, and her eyes narrowed. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting to tell you that? Gosh, that feels good.”

“Kaylie,” Danica warned.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to take down the toast. The truth is, Dad, by testing every man I’ve ever dated, I’ve found the one man I know will never let me down. So, in a way, I should probably thank you.”

Who
are
you?

“Even if you and Mom did kiss and throw my entire life into a whirlpool of stress and anxiety that I couldn’t even share with my sister because it was our damned wedding day.”

How the hell do you know?
Danica glared at her mother.

The guests grew uncomfortably silent.

Kaylie held her glass high. “To love!”

A quick glance down the table showed a mixture of shock and embarrassment as eyes dropped, hands fidgeted. Madeline and Helen shook their heads. Their father’s jaw was lucky it didn’t smack the table when it dropped open. Lacy’s glare shot daggers at an oblivious Kaylie.

Danica sprang to her feet. “Nothing like a little joke to end the toasts. Um...” She lifted her glass and looked at her sister, who was deep in a heated whispering conversation with Chaz. “Kaylie, I love you, honey. I love everything about you, and that includes your poor timing. Chaz, more power to ya, sweetie. She’s a firecracker, but the best kind of firecracker, and I wouldn’t change her for the world.” Danica breathed a sigh of relief when everyone laughed, including Chaz. “Mom.” She wanted so badly to yell,
How does Kaylie know?
She had the sneaking suspicion that her mother had played her for a fool, but that was not something to be spoken of in public. No matter what Kaylie thought. “I love you,” she said to her mother. She turned back to Blake and took his hand. “Blake, my dear, sweet Blake. I have just as many painful traits as my sister does, and I also have every faith that you’ll find a way to love me despite them. I love you.”

“Lacy.” She waited until Lacy finally looked at her to continue. “You are everything I could have hoped for in another sister, and my only regret is that we didn’t meet much sooner.”

Lacy’s smile couldn’t quite camouflage the anger hovering in her eyes, aimed at Kaylie.

The food was brought to the table, and Danica walked as calmly as she could to her sister’s side and grabbed her by the arm. “Come with me to the ladies’ room?” she whispered.

“After I feed the kids,” Kaylie said.

Danica yanked her from her seat. “Now.” She smiled down at Chaz, whose nod told her that he understood completely what she was doing, and if Danica had read him right in that flash of a second before she pulled Kaylie down the hall, he was thankful that she was handling what he had tried unsuccessfully to handle himself. Sisters didn’t have to watch their P’s and Q’s. There was no risk of divorce from a sister, and Danica was counting on that.

“What is wrong with you?” Kaylie asked as Danica dragged her down the corridor.

Danica fumed. She heard the fast footfalls behind her and could only guess at who was on her heels. Lacy? Her mother? Hell, at this point it could even be Madeline. And she was shocked that Camille and the girls hadn’t come running after them yet. She knew that storming out of the restaurant was not a graceful move. But she didn’t care. She wasn’t going to play these games for one more minute.

Danica barged into the ridiculously large sitting area of the ladies’ room with Kaylie in tow, and before she could get her bearings, the door swung open and in walked her mother, Madeline, a very angry Lacy, Camille, Chelsea, and Marie.

“Oh my God. Is anyone left out there?” Danica said, exasperated.

“Not anymore,” Sally said as she and Nancy walked in with Max behind them. “Unless you count teenagers, men, or Chaz’s family, whom I assumed you didn’t want involved, so I told them that sometimes you got sick, Danica, and we’d check on you.”

“Thank you,” Kaylie said, “but what the hell is going on?”

Her mother stormed into the bathroom and fumed. “Kaylie Elizabeth, what did you just do?”

“What is everyone so up in arms about?” Kaylie said, pulling away from the eyes that had her pinned beside Danica.

“Have you lost your filter?” Danica spat. “Do you know what you just said out there, in front of everyone we know and love?”

Kaylie wrinkled her brow. “I thanked Dad. His leaving did actually help me in the long run.”

“Kaylie!” Danica and her mother said in unison.

Lacy broke through the group and faced Kaylie head-on. It was like looking at twins with opposite wigs. “How did you know they kissed?” she spat.

“Oh, is that what this is all about?” Kaylie said like she was talking about a new dress. “I thought I did something wrong. Mom told me.”

“Mom told you?” Danica turned toward her mother, too angry to speak.

“Danica, calm down, please,” her mother said.

Camille crossed her arms. “Wait, so it’s true? You kissed your ex-husband at your daughter’s wedding, with his wife right there? Oh, Mrs. S., this just keeps getting better and better. I mean, after seeing Max with hottie the other night—”

“Camille!” Max turned her back to the group.

“What? You gotta admit the guy’s a total beefcake. I feel like the old married one here. Between Lacy’s sexy calls from Dane and the way Sally and Gage were drooling over each other like two dogs in heat, and—”

Danica’s jaw hung open.
How did I miss all of that?

“Okay, okay, just stop.” Madeline held her hands up to shush the murmurs. “Suffice it to say that weddings have a way of bringing love to the air. And revenge,” she added.

Danica turned a hot glare on her mother. “This is why you told me not to tell Kaylie? It wasn’t to protect her, or Dad, or Madeline, or Lacy. It was because
you
had already told her? Why wouldn’t you just tell me that?”

“Oh, Danica.” Her mother sank into one of the armchairs. “Huh, so this is why they call this a ladies’ lounge instead of a ladies’ room. God, these chairs are comfy.”

“Mom!”

“Okay, okay. Danica, you’re a smart woman. You can reason yourself in or out of anything, but you coddle Kaylie like she’s still a little girl.”

“Mm-hmm. You do,” Camille said.

“Do you think? Not so much, maybe like a teenager?” Marie added.

“No, she’s done it her whole life. She protects her from everything,” Chelsea said with a roll of her eyes.

“Stop, okay. Just stop.” Danica’s head spun. “I was protecting Kaylie from having her wedding weekend ruined by something that you and Dad did. She just got over being angry at you two years ago and it still seems like it was yesterday. And as far as Dad’s concerned. Kaylie”—she looked at her sister—“you can’t tell me that when she told you, it didn’t make you want to lash out at him.”

“No, you’re right. I wanted to lash out at both of them, but then Mom explained why she did it, and”—Kaylie shrugged—“I guess it just all made sense. She showed him what he was missing and threw it in his face. I was kinda proud of her. But I didn’t know that you didn’t want me to say anything to Danica or in front of anyone else,” she said to her mother.

“That’s kind of what
this is our little secret
means,” her mother said.

Danica let out a breath and flopped into the other chair. “So, you didn’t trust me to tell Kaylie? And you lied to me about the kiss?”

“No, that’s not it. I knew that if I told Kaylie myself, she’d get it, and I thought that if I told you, you’d tear it apart like a therapist and we’d spend many hours debating the whys and wheres of it all before you realized that what I had told you was the real reason that I did it. It was easier to call it a mistake.” Her mother leaned forward and reached for Danica’s hand. “Danica, honey.”

Danica pulled away. “Easier doesn’t make it right. I get that you thought I might overthink it, but you chose to tell Kaylie over me?” Had there been more secrets over the years? Of course, there must have been. What had ever made Danica feel like she was the one her parents trusted? Whatever it was, surely it was exactly why she felt the need to protect her sister.

“I can see your brain pulling apart this whole thing,” her mother said.

“It’s just, I’m not sure why, but I always thought it was me that you trusted, and that Kaylie was somehow more delicate, thin-skinned.”

Kaylie piped up. “Thin-skinned? Do you have any idea how much of a beating girls like me get? I knew that everyone else thought that I was a dumb Barbie, but not you, Danica. You’ve never treated me like that. Is that what you’ve thought all along?”

How did things spiral this far out of control?
“What? No. Kaylie, you are anything but a dumb Barbie.”

Kaylie crossed her arms. “Thank you.”

“I never thought you were a Barbie either,” Chelsea added quietly.

“Me either,” Marie said.

Kaylie smiled at them, then turned back to her sister. “Then what, Danica? Are you surprised that Mom and I have secrets?”

“Well, kinda, yeah,” she admitted.

“I’m her daughter.”

“I’m your sister,” Danica said.

“Exactly,” Kaylie added. “Look, Dan, I love you to pieces, but Mom’s right. Sometimes you pick things to death, and you try to fix everything. It’s who you are, and I love that about you. But there are times that I just want someone to listen and understand, not necessarily fix whatever’s broken.”

“I can do that,” Danica said.

Kaylie laughed. “Of course you can, Miss Fixer.”

Danica threw her head back. “Oh God, I am Miss Fixer, aren’t I?”

“So am I,” Lacy said with a wave as she moved to Kaylie’s side. “I want everything neat and tidy and put onto organized little shelves.”

“That’s your father’s influence,” Madeline said.

Danica looked at her friends watching her with a mixture of pity and intrigue, and she began to laugh. A quiet, under-her-breath laugh, which grew louder as her friends watched her with what was definitely pity.

“What is so funny?” Kaylie asked, unable to keep the smile from her lips.

“Me. Us. You.” Danica bent over, caught in another wave of laughter that suddenly became contagious. “My own mother didn’t trust me enough to tell me what she did? And look at them.” She waved toward her mother. “Mom and Madeline!” Danica blurted out. “What must Dad think? Both his wives are now friends? What the hell is that all about?”

“You think your mom doesn’t trust you to tell you things? My mother tells me everything.” Lacy’s voice became animated. “
Oh, now that was a night to remember
,” she mocked. “And when she stumbles out of the bedroom with Dad, thinking I’m not in the room, and they’re all over each other.
Forget you ever saw that, but oh my, was that the best kiss ever!
” She laughed until tears fell from her eyes.

“Wait, wait, I’ve got one,” Camille added. “How about my drunken mother?” She lowered her voice to a husky tone. “
Hey, sugar, pour Mama Bear another vodka, and bring one to the naked man in my bedroom, too.”

The room silenced.

Camille threw her hands up. “Kidding! Duh!”

Danica fell back into fits of laughter once again, and as she finally tried to regain control, her stomach muscles clenching in pain, she looked at her mother and thought,
You were protecting me, and I just never realized that I needed protecting.