Something Blue, page 8
Beth smiled politely. “Well, I think I have everything I need to get started on the reception. I’ll be in touch if anything comes up.”
“Are you rushing me off, dear?”
“No, no. But didn’t you mention having a nail appointment this afternoon?”
“Gracious! Yes. What time is it? I’m going to be late.”
It occurred to Beth that Evelyn asked and answered her own questions more often than not. She imagined Evelyn didn’t need her there at all for this entire meeting. A voice recorder would’ve been sufficient.
“Let me run, honey.”
As though Beth had been the one keeping her. “I’ll walk you out.”
She got Evelyn out the door, closed it, and leaned back against it with a long, slow sigh.
Finally, a reprieve.
She’d have her own glass of tea and cheese biscuit, put her feet up for five minutes, and gather her thoughts.
After a short break, she’d meet with Sawyer about the groom’s dinner.
Sawyer.
He of the small dimples and deep brown eyes. Characteristics that didn’t match his more cynical nature. Sawyer with his surprisingly easy nature and casual flirtations, his soft spot for horses, in complete opposition to the tough businessman she knew him to be.
The contradiction was appealing and growing more so every time they—
No.
No, no.
Shelby’s wedding, she reminded herself.
She had a business to redeem and a best friend’s wedding to pull off. Sawyer and his charms would have to wait.
“How long are you going to stand there with your eyes closed?”
Beth’s heart leaped out of her chest and likely hit the chandelier.
“Sawyer! My heart. I mean—not my heart. I almost had a heart attack.”
“Are you okay now? Because we need to talk.”
His voice was different than normal, and not in a good way either. It held an edge she didn’t like.
“You’re early.”
“Only by a bit. Can we talk?”
Something was wrong. The clipped tone, the hard look in his eyes.
But what could possibly be wrong? Things were fine the last time they’d spoken. She’d meant to ask him about Shelby and why her best friend was of the mind that he didn’t like her, but she’d gotten…distracted.
Maybe they could discuss that today, since they’d be alone and have privacy. He was even here early enough to—
Uh-oh.
He was here early. How early?
“How long have you been lurking in the hallway?”
“I’m not lurking. I’m standing. And long enough to hear about the big plans in store for me.”
Beth pushed away from the door and went into the sitting room, knowing he’d follow. No reason to have their talk in the foyer, where anyone could hear.
She closed the door behind them.
“And what is it you think you heard?” she asked.
“Not think. Know. I heard all about Evelyn’s grand plans to spend my family’s money.”
Beth put her hands up in appeal. “I know it probably sounded bad, but that’s just Evelyn running off at the mouth. Believe me, you can’t put any stock into what she says.”
“No, that’s her wanting to get her hooks into Silvas’ resources before her daughter is even married.”
“Come on, Sawyer. It’s not like that.” He had to know this. He was a reasonable adult, with life experience. Most of the town knew how Evelyn could be. You just took her with a grain of salt and went on with your life.
“She was the same at the bridal shower and touring my home. She all but hired an appraiser to tag stuff for retail value.”
He wasn’t completely wrong there.
“I know, but I promise you, I’m not going to let her run up the cost of the wedding. You have my word.”
“Thank you, but it’s not you I’m worried about.”
Good to know, but that begged the question, “Then who are you worried about?”
“Her daughter is just like her.”
Heat shot up Beth’s neck as every ounce of her raged at the notion that Shelby could be anything like her mother. She wanted to yell at him to take it back or they could take it outside, because that was her best friend he was bad-mouthing.
It wouldn’t be a particularly lady-like reaction, but being an oldest sister and protective friend was a heady combination.
“No, she is not,” she managed to say instead. Beth knew Shelby better than anyone else, especially Sawyer Silva. She just needed to explain rationally how he’d misunderstood the situation.
“They’re cut from the same cloth, and I’m not going to let my brother fall prey to some woman who doesn’t love him and is only after his money.”
“Fall prey?” Beth’s hands started to shake with nerves and utter disbelief. “Are you out of your mind?” Was she being shrill? She felt extremely shrill right now. Wait. “Doesn’t love him?”
What weird dimension had Sawyer slipped into?
“I’m finally in my right mind. So much makes sense now and I’m not going to let my brother be played like a fiddle.”
Oh, this was bad. So, so bad. She’d seen this before: families get all stressed out and suspicious, weddings almost fall apart because Grandpa realized the groom’s great-uncle once swindled him out of some cattle.
She could calm this storm.
Think, Beth, think.
“I think if we can sit down and talk, let me get you some tea—my sister makes these amazing cheese biscuits—we can sort all of this out.”
He stared at her for a moment and then, “There’s nothing to sort out.”
The man wouldn’t even sit down. Instead he stood like an oak in the center of her sitting room.
“I’ve got some thinking to do and…I don’t know. Some work to do.”
Evelyn Meyers and her big mouth. But this obviously wasn’t all about Evelyn. Shelby’s insecurity wasn’t baseless after all. Maybe Sawyer just plain old didn’t like her.
“I do wish you’d at least sit down so we can discuss this,” she urged. “I’m sure it’s all just a misunderstanding.”
He glanced at the sofa as though tempted, but then began pacing. “No, no. I know how these things go. You bring me over here to talk and next thing you know my head is a mess and I’m doubting what I heard when I know what I heard and I know what I know.”
What in the ever-loving world was happening here? Had body snatchers taken over the seemingly reasonable cowboy she’d met over a week ago? “You came over here to discuss the groom’s dinner. I didn’t bring you here for anything ulterior, so maybe we should just focus on that.”
“I don’t want to discuss any dinners. I think this whole wedding is a bad idea.”
Beth’s barely banked fire broke free. “It’s not your wedding,” she snapped. “Stop trying to ruin something that doesn’t have to involve you.”
“You’re darn right. And the Silvas shouldn’t have to pay for any of it either.”
“I assume you’ll let your brother know of this new development.”
“He’ll know about it, all right, when I tell him I think he should call off the whole thing.”
Wait. What?
Sawyer stopped pacing and headed toward the door. “Garrett needs to get out now, before things get worse.”
He left the sitting room and stomped through the foyer.
Beth followed him out. She’d made things worse. So much worse.
How had that happened? She was trying to be the voice of reason. But how did one reason with a man who was being completely unreasonable?
“We can talk this out,” she called after him. “Come back inside.”
“I’m done talking.”
If he upset Garrett, then that would upset Shelby, and then an upset Shelby would mean all the Meyerses were upset and everything would snowball from there.
Sawyer Silva was not going to ruin this wedding.
Beth stopped short of chasing him all the way to his truck.
There had to be a way to fix this. He needed to calm down and reflect, if he did things like that, and she needed to come up with a plan.
As soon as he was down the drive and out of sight, she ran back inside and hauled Cece into the kitchen, where Aurora was pulling something out of the oven.
“We have a problem. A very big problem.”
“What happened?” Cece’s eyes were wide with concern.
“It’s Sawyer Silva, and he’s trying to torpedo Shelby’s wedding.”
“Oh, no he isn’t.” Aurora took off her apron. “Is he here?”
“He just left. I don’t want to talk about this in the kitchen, where someone could hear.”
Aurora waved them to the back door. “Let’s take a walk. These cakes need a long time to cool anyway.”
The inn was quiet midafternoon, and they were able to slip away without any guests stopping them for more towels or shopping recommendations.
“What happened?” Cece asked again as soon as they reached the first row of plum trees.
“Sawyer is going to try to talk Garrett out of the wedding.”
“Why?”
“He thinks Shelby is using Garrett and is only after him for his money.”
“Shelby has her own money,” Cece pointed out.
“Not like Garrett’s got,” Aurora countered.
“True, but it’s not like she’s hard up. Her family might’ve had hard times lately, but who hasn’t? We have.”
“None of that matters.” Beth stopped them. “Y’all know she isn’t using Garrett. Shelby loves him.”
“It’s so obvious.” Cece nodded.
“Some might say sickeningly so,” Aurora agreed.
“And Sawyer said the weirdest thing about that too. He’s convinced she doesn’t love Garrett. I don’t know how he could think that.”
Cece chewed on her lip. “Maybe it’s because he doesn’t know Shelby like we do?”
“How could he not see it? They’re all kissy faces and honey-baby-baby.” Aurora plucked one of the leaves from a plum tree.
Cece scowled at her sister. “I thought it was sweet. But back to Sawyer, how could he have it in his head that Shelby is a gold digger?”
Beth took the leaf from Aurora and checked for spots. “I have no idea. He wasn’t making any sense when he came by a little bit ago. He flew off the handle about Shelby preying on his brother, and I got the feeling there’s a lot of sour grapes there for some reason.”
“Hmm.” Cece chewed on her lip some more and then gave them a knowing nod. “I bet Sawyer got burned by a woman who was just after his money.”
“How do you know that?” Aurora asked.
“I don’t know it. Not for certain. But why else would he be flying off the handle and thinking Shelby is preying on his brother? He must’ve gotten burned before, and he doesn’t want the same thing happening to Garrett. He’s overreacting, and men overreact when protectiveness and pride are involved.”
Both of them stared at Cece, mouths slightly open.
Beth slowly shook her head. For someone who rarely ever dated, Cece had some surprising insight on men. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Just, know things,” Aurora answered.
“I listen and pay attention. People forget I’m in the room a lot. Makes it easy to observe pretty much every kind of human interaction.”
They both stared again.
“Hmm,” Beth eventually puffed. “I think you may very well be right. And we cannot let him ruin this wedding for any reason, much less because of his past. This is too important to our future and the inn.”
“How do we stop him?”
“I tried reasoning with him earlier, and that didn’t work at all.” She flashed back to snapping at him that this wasn’t his wedding. “Well…kind of. I might’ve made matters worse.”
“How?” Aurora cocked an eyebrow.
“I got a little fired up when he accused Shelby of using Garrett.”
Cece crossed her arms, looking lost in thought. “Somehow, you’ve got to put a salve on his burn before he’ll be willing to accept Shelby or this wedding without drama.”
Beth shook her head. “I tried, at first, but then everything went pear-shaped.”
“You’re going to have to eat crow if you were mean to him,” Aurora pointed out.
“I wasn’t mean.”
The doubting purse of her sisters’ lips shut her up.
“I might’ve been a little brusque. But not mean.”
Cece nodded again and uncrossed her arms. “You’re going to have to take one for the team and apologize.”
“Apologize? I didn’t—”
Cece held up her hand. “Doesn’t matter what you did, he did, you said, he said. We need this wedding and we need him to be on board, right?”
“Right.”
“Then invite him to lunch or coffee, say you’re sorry, eat that crow and listen to him, then convince him that Shelby isn’t a woman after the Silva name and fortune. You do that and you can probably get the wedding plans back on track.”
Cece was channeling her inner Beth at the moment, and she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t the teensiest bit proud—even while being told what to do.
“I could meet him for lunch. Get some barbecue.”
“Exactly. That sounds perfect.”
Her mind went back to Sawyer’s story about only his family being bold enough to laugh at him. Her sisters were the same.
From the time they really had a moment to talk, Sawyer had seemed…relatable. Familiar. She thought she was getting to know him. Understand him.
And then this about-face on the wedding and his harsh refusal to listen.
She didn’t know him at all.
“Earth to Beth?” Cece looped an arm into hers. “It’s going to be okay. You can handle Sawyer. I have no doubts.”
“Me either, sis,” Aurora agreed. “You know I’m just teasing. Let’s walk some more.”
They made their way down rows of plum trees, until they reached row after row of peach trees.
When they were kids, the three of them would play hide-and-seek for hours among these trees.
Cece always kicked their tail at hiding and seeking. They’d give up before ever finding her, and she found them both way too easily.
Aurora, on the other hand, was better at tag. The same single-sighted stubbornness that took her to the top of her field made her dominate the tag game. If she wanted to tag you, by gosh, you were getting tagged.
Beth was the best when it came to the yard tricks. Cartwheels, handstands, walking handstands, Hula-Hoop, flips on the trampoline, you name it. She’d practice and practice until she could do something perfectly. Then she’d teach her sisters.
They’d grown up in the orchard as much as they’d grown up inside the house. This wedding was guaranteeing they’d have many more years here, with lifetimes of memories, even memories for generations to come.
Sawyer Silva was not going to threaten that by threatening this wedding.
Whatever his flawed logic and weird reasoning, Beth was going to convince him of the truth.
Shelby and Garrett were meant to be together and have the best wedding Texas had ever seen. And Sawyer was going to get with the program and be happy about the blessed event, whether he liked it or not.
Chapter 8
Stop trying to ruin something that doesn’t have to involve you. Sawyer gripped the steering wheel tighter.
It’s not your wedding.
He’d never said it was his wedding. Getting married was the furthest thing from his mind. But that had nothing to do with the issue at hand.
Beth had gone into left field from their argument, away from what mattered.
Her friend Shelby was using his brother, and she’d tried to defend her.
Shelby was seeing some other guy.
He’d heard Evelyn Meyers with his very own ears.
All that talk about the Silva name and money and resources, and how he ought to contribute plenty and Garrett ought to take Shelby to the most expensive hotels all over the world, and still Beth had the gall to try to defend that family and their intentions.
Unbelievable.
“What’s eating you, son?” Uncle Joe asked.
“Nothing,” came his clipped reply.
Joe snorted. “Yeah, you sound just fine. Meeting with the wedding lady go bad?”
Despite his uncle’s attempt at humor and insistence on giving everyone a title to go with their name, Sawyer was far from fine.
Even with Beth firmly on the side of Shelby and Evelyn and defending this farce of a wedding, he still couldn’t hear her name without part of him sparking at the sound of it.
They’d argued—there was no other word for it—and even mid-argument he couldn’t be mad at her. He couldn’t stop the warmth of attraction when she’d stepped up to him, brows knit and nose scrunched, telling him no, Shelby wasn’t just like her momma.
Yeah. Sure.
Beth might look downright delicious defending her friend, but her defense was built on lies.
Maybe he should’ve told her about seeing Shelby with Clay. Maybe he should’ve come out with his firsthand knowledge of what it looks and feels like, being used for your name and money, and then cheated on.
To be lied to for who knows how long, and manipulated into believing someone loved you, when the only person they could love was themselves.
But Beth didn’t need to know about all of that. It was in the past, and he hated the way it made him look. Not knowing who his fiancée really was, all while she worked their relationship to her benefit.
He’d been played for a fool.
But this wasn’t about him.
It was about Garrett and saving his brother from a similar fate.
“So is your silence a ‘Yes, the meeting with Beth the wedding lady went to crap’?”
Sawyer shook his head and chuckled despite himself. “It’s just Beth, Uncle Joe. Not Beth the wedding lady.”
