A Proposal at the Wedding (Bride Mountain 2)

“How long have you been designing, Cassie?” she asked to distract herself from those regretful thoughts.

“Since I could hold a crayon. When I was little, I drew clothes for my paper dolls. Dad cut them out for me and made little tabs on them to fold over the dolls. I was too young to manipulate the scissors then.”

Bonnie glanced at Paul, who smiled sheepishly. “I told myself that scissors are tools, and tools are manly.”

“Then when I was a couple of years older,” Cassie went on, “I sketched outfits for my dolls and Grandma Bauer, my stepdad’s mother, helped me sew them. She was a professional seamstress when she was young. She helped me bring my sketches to life, taught me to sew, starting as soon as I was big enough to reach the foot pedal, which she put on a box for me.”

“Good woman,” Paul agreed. “Made the best pecan pie I ever put in my mouth. She passed away last year, sadly.”

“You really did have a supportive extended family, didn’t you?” Bonnie asked Cassie.

Cassie smiled over the rim of her glass. “I don’t remember Dad’s parents, but Larry’s family accepted me as their own and I’ve been able to see Mom’s parents in North Carolina quite often. So, yeah, I hit the family jackpot. What about you? Do you have a large extended family? Are your parents and grandparents still living?”

“No, my grandparents are all gone. I have some aunts, uncles and cousins on my dad’s side, but most of them live in Mississippi and Georgia and we don’t see each other often.” Running a finger through the condensation on the outside of her own glass, Bonnie added softly, “We lost our mother after a very brief illness almost four years ago. She had just turned fifty-eight.”

Even after this much time, it was still hard to believe her mother was gone. And it still hurt every time she had to accept that it was true.

Paul reached across the table to lay a hand over hers. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Cassie said, looking a bit stricken.

Bonnie spoke reassuringly, not wanting Cassie to feel badly about having asked the question. “It’s okay.”

“Never gets easier, does it?” Paul asked quietly.

Remembering he’d told her he’d lost his own parents young, she met his eyes, seeing the understanding there. “No,” she said, “it doesn’t.”

He gave her fingers another little squeeze, then withdrew his hand, leaving her skin tingling in his wake.

“Is your father still living?” Cassie asked quietly.

Bonnie nodded. “My dad is still going strong. He travels all around the world, but he calls every so often and we see him occasionally. He says he thinks there must be Gypsy blood somewhere in the Carmichael background because he just can’t seem to stay in one place for very long. He and my mom were married for ten years, but she simply couldn’t pack up three kids and move every time the whim struck him. They divorced when I was only four. Mom raised us in Tennessee, but we came to visit Uncle Leo and Aunt Helen—and later just Uncle Leo—every summer and most holidays. Mom and Uncle Leo were very close, which was why he left the inn to my brother and sister and me. I, by the way, was his favorite.”

Paul chuckled. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

“Why were you his favorite?” Cassie asked, wide-eyed.

“Because I was the one most obsessed with someday reopening and running the inn,” Bonnie explained, rather relieved that neither had focused on her unusual relationship with her father. Maybe they’d been able to tell by the way she’d glossed over the subject so quickly that it wasn’t something she liked to discuss. To be honest, she had nothing else to say about it just then. She didn’t even remember a time when her father had been a permanent part of her life. “You know how you made clothes for your dolls? When I was little, I played innkeeper with all my dolls and stuffed animals. I charged my sister a nickel a night to let her dolls stay in the cardboard hotel rooms I created.”

Cassie laughed. “Really? That’s hilarious. Did she pay?”

“Of course. I convinced her that only the coolest dolls stayed in my hotel. Kinley’s always been a bit competitive.”

Grinning, Paul said, “And I thought Kinley was the salesperson in the family.”

“Oh, she is. Kinley could sell sand in a desert.”

“And you?”

“I can turn that desert into an inviting place to stay,” she quipped.

“Or to have a wedding,” Cassie suggested.

“That, too.”

Cassie glanced at the clock on the yellow wall of her dad’s cheery, stainless-and-slate kitchen. “Oops. I have to cut out. I promised Jenna I’d take her and a couple of her friends to a movie tonight. Jenna used the old ‘spending as much time with my sister as I can’ spiel, but really she just needed a chauffeur who won’t get exasperated with them for acting goofy in the car.”

Bonnie started to rise. “I should go, too.”