She'd tried to please an impossible taskmaster for too long. Somehow, being a mother gave her fresh perspective on that relationship. And maybe gave her a bit more backbone as well.
"Dammit, honey, I told you I was teasing," he grumbled while a siren wailed on his end of the phone. "Call your mother soon, won't you?"
A deep sigh escaped her as she thought of how easily her mother had always let Dad steamroller them both, never taking Tatiana's side when they disagreed. She loved her mother, but she had vowed to be stronger than that for César. "Of course."
Disconnecting the call, she felt relieved to have drawn a line in the sand with her father. But the news he'd delivered still sucked some of the life out of her on a day that had already started out badly. Reminding herself Marcus Caruthers had been tried in front of a jury of his peers, she shoved the thoughts out of her head to focus on whatever wedding crisis Gervais and Erika were facing. If she'd met the couple under different circumstances, she would have truly enjoyed her evening with them the night before.
Pressing the doorbell, Tatiana barely had time to toss aside the crushed rose before the door swung open. A different maid greeted her in the entryway today. But she was no less efficient. With a smile and gesture, the woman guided Tatiana inside. Tatiana followed her across the marble floors in the opposite direction from the night before.
Her high heels echoed in the wide-open corridors as they passed a library and a feminine-looking office space in the front of the house. Reaching a closed door at the far end, Tatiana could hear music from within-a '70s disco tune. Two female voices were harmonizing the chorus. So far, it didn't sound like a crisis.
The maid knocked briefly on the door and then opened it to admit her to a dimly lit home theater room with deep blue walls and rich, burgundy trim. Wide leather seats faced a screen showing Hurricanes game film, though the sound was turned off. And instead of Gervais and the rest of the family sitting in the chairs, she found all seven of them-including Jean-Pierre-seated on the floor in the open space between the seats and the screen, surrounded by boxes of small wine bottles, stacks of labels and pots of brightly colored paints on a drop cloth.
Someone turned the music down as she neared the group.
Jean-Pierre rose to greet her while the others called out hellos. For the most part, however, they remained focused on their task. Which seemed to be painting labels.
She turned questioningly toward Jean-Pierre, whose presence reminded her in vivid detail of the dreams she'd had about him the night before. Dreams where he'd peeled off all her clothing with slow, tantalizing touches, kissing each inch as he unveiled her...
"Thank you for coming." If he noticed that she felt flustered, he didn't say anything about it. Tucking a hand under her arm, he led her toward the group seated on the floor, the warmth of his hand on her bare skin sending a delicious shiver through her. "Gervais and Erika had a setback with their wedding plans last night and we're helping them out in here because the media room is the most secure room in the house and there seems to have been a privacy breach from someone on staff here."
Tatiana stiffened since her father had only recently suggested she betray the family's privacy. But she knew he would never choose revenge over his own daughter. He might be a self-centered man, but he loved her in his own way.
Erika stopped in midsong to interject. "We're not sure about the breach."
Fiona continued to hum along and paint from where she sat, crossed-legged, on Henri's lap.
Henri reclined against a chair and used Fiona's back as his painting surface, his tongue tucked into his cheek as he gave the project intense concentration. The couple, she realized, never seemed to stop touching each other, which said a lot for their marriage considering they were far from newlyweds.
"It could have been a coincidence," Gervais continued, looking up from his work, which involved centering the dried labels on the wine bottles.
They were wedding favors, she realized, with a personalized message on each bottle for their guests.
"Our wedding planner is ill after traveling to Singapore last week for an event." Erika leaned back from her work, tossing her head so that her thick blond hair almost grazed the floor when she arched her spine to stretch out a kink.
Gervais reached to rub her back for her while Jean-Pierre cleared a spot on the floor for Tatiana to sit. Not an easy task when she'd worn a minidress, but Adelaide seemed to sense her dilemma and handed her a giant pillow.
"For your lap," she whispered as she leaned over.
Gratefully, Tatiana used the pillow to cover her legs.
"The wedding planner obtained the wine for us, but she had a difficult time of it even though we purposely ordered from Gervais's Uncle Michael, who has a vineyard on the West Coast." Erika recounted the tale with her lovely accent that sounded a bit like Swedish; her tiny island country sat off the Finnish coast. "Apparently, there is another family feud that I did not know about." She raised an eyebrow at Gervais.
"I didn't know where you sourced the wine, but I regret the stress it has caused." He spoke to his pregnant bride with a gentleness that made Tatiana's heart feel hollow by comparison.
She glanced at Jean-Pierre beside her, wondering where he'd spent the night after leaving her alone. He looked even more exhausted than she felt, with shadows under his eyes and his face still sporting yesterday's growth of beard. She wondered what it would feel like to run her fingers across his darkened jaw, to kiss the strong column of his neck.
"It is all right. I come from a large family myself. I understand the inevitable disputes." Erika brushed her fingers along Gervais's face in the way Tatiana had just been daydreaming of touching Jean-Pierre.
Did these women know how fortunate they were to have found love that would sustain their hearts as well as their physical needs? Amid so much romance, Tatiana almost found it difficult to breathe. She, of all of them, should have worked out her relationship before she had a child. She regretted for César's sake that she'd failed.
"So your wedding planner obtained the bottles but they didn't come with labels?" Tatiana asked, wanting to help and needing a task before her thoughts drove her mad with wanting and frustration.
"My wedding planner would have helped me with the messages for each bottle. She's very good at this kind of thing and she set aside the next two days to paint the labels personally since the shipment was late and she knows we cannot trust many outsiders with wedding details."
"But then she got ill." Tatiana began to see the problem.
"We have not subcontracted many of the responsibilities for the wedding since the press has been relentless in trying to figure out our plans," Erika continued. "And I really wanted the date and our names on these, so I could hardly ask a local artist to do this without risking helicopter flyovers during my vows." She straightened from her brief break and went back to painting a daisy on a label. "This, I will not have."
Beside her, Jean-Pierre passed her a list of guests' names.
"The rest of us are just filling in the standard information," he explained, showing her several templates. "The whole point is to make each one unique, so you can be creative."
Seeing these men-two of them superstars in the NFL and the other two the power behind the Hurricanes' success-all giving their undivided attention to the preparation of personalized wedding favors would have tugged at her emotions even if she hadn't been vulnerable to bouts of sentimentality lately. The idea of these brothers, who had always been so strong-willed and competitive, all pulling together to provide a happy day for a pregnant princess really got to her.
There was no doubt about it, she wished she'd been able to establish herself within a supportive family situation before the birth of her son. He deserved to have come into the world with this kind of love all around him, as opposed to alone on a Caribbean island with only his mother to welcome him.
She peered around at the work of each of the Reynaud men. She noted the neat black lines on Jean-Pierre's labels, no surprise since he tended to be methodical in football, too, clinically picking apart defenses. Henri chose bold colors and took more chances in his artwork, the same way he did on the field when he chose the long, risky passes that sometimes paid off and sometimes backfired. Dempsey created geometric grid borders, choosing established patterns but filling them in with unexpected colors, which seemed to coincide with an upbringing where he'd had to make up the rules himself since his drug-addicted birth mother had never provided boundaries or safety. And Gervais, the oldest, was probably the most stern and serious of the four, yet his labels were the most unique and fully imagined. One of his starry sky backgrounds suggested he had real artistic talent.