A Blazing Little Christmas(6)
Damn. In less than two minutes this situation would deteriorate from worse to catastrophic.
“C’mon in,” he said, not seeing that he had much choice.
“Thank you.” Kelley sailed into the room, and Eric closed the door to keep out the snow and cold air until the next batch of uninvited—and unwanted—guests arrived.
Jess, who clutched their parkas to her like a down-filled shield, came to stand beside him. “Hi, Kelley,” she said. “This is a, um, surprise.”
Eric wrapped an arm around Jess’s shoulders, noting the stiff tension in her body. “A really big surprise,” he agreed, failing at his attempt to not sound irritated. “Kell, I left the message telling you where I’d be this weekend in case of emergency only.”
“This is an emergency, Eric,” she said. “We need to discuss the menu, the invitations, the decorations…dozens of details you both have been putting off. I told you last week that these things had to be finalized by this week. Obviously you forgot because here it is this week and now they can’t be put off any longer. Tomorrow is the drop-dead date to have everything ordered and since you decided to go away until Tuesday, you left me with no choice but to come here.”
“You could have called.”
“I did. I left half a dozen messages on your voice mail. Have you checked your cell phone at all today?”
“No. Because I’m on vacation.”
She cocked a single brow at him, in that I’m-not-gonna-take-any-crap-from-you-or-anybody-else way of hers. “Believe me, Eric, I’m not any happier about driving all the way here than you are to have your weekend escape interrupted. But if you’d bothered to check with me before taking off instead of just leaving a message on my machine, I could have saved us both a lot of trouble. This shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours, so why don’t we get started? That way you can get back to your vacation and I can get home.”
Eric raked his free hand through his hair and bit back the terse hell no that rushed to his lips. God knows he hated fighting with his sisters, especially Kelley to whom he owed a debt of gratitude he could never hope to pay. At the age of nineteen she’d quit college to raise him, Lara and Chloe after their parents were killed in a car crash. Kelley’s new fiancé had decided he didn’t want to take on the responsibility of caring for three kids under the age of twelve and had dumped her. To the best of Eric’s knowledge she hadn’t had a serious relationship since. Dates, yes, but nothing serious. He’d often wondered if her career choice was in some way connected to her heartbreak over her own thwarted wedding plans.
Yet while he hated to fight with her, he couldn’t take the pressure this wedding and both their families were putting on him and Jess any longer. Damn it, he didn’t even care if they had a freakin’ wedding. All he wanted was for Jess to be his wife. For him to be her husband. To share their lives. He didn’t want or need any fancy-schmancy wedding. But knowing how girls dreamed about that sort of stuff, he was willing to do whatever Jess wanted.
But like him, Jess was caught in the cross fire of the missiles being lobbed between her mother and Kelley. Kelley, although she meant well, tended to come on very strong. She’d planned Chloe’s and Lara’s weddings with a military-like strategy and coordination—as she did for all her clients—plowing through any and all obstacles until the perfect results were achieved. Her efficiency simultaneously awed and scared the crap out of him. And occasionally annoyed the hell out of him, especially when it caused arguments. The tension between Kelley and Jess’s mother—who had her own strong opinions about the wedding—hovered like a thick fog whenever they were in the same room together. It had gotten so bad, especially during the last month, Eric worried that Jess might cave to the pressure and just call the whole thing off.
A knock sounded on the door. “Jessica?” came Carol Hayden’s muffled voice. “It’s Mom and Marc.”
Speak of the devil. Oh, boy. His gut churned with unease. He had a bad feeling about this. His future brothers-in-law, especially Marc, had all made their low opinion of him perfectly clear. He was the bad guy, Jess was a haloed saint and at any given moment they looked like they’d relish getting him alone in a dark alley and flinging him into a Dumpster—after they roughed him up and loosened a few of his teeth.
He could certainly understand a brother’s protective instinct toward a sister. Hell, he had three sisters he felt that way about. But the fact that he was the business “competition” had pretty much sealed his fate from moment one with the Hayden brothers. And with Carol Hayden as well, although she also objected to Kelley being in any way involved in planning her only daughter’s wedding.