She laughed. “That he is. Are you in the music business?”
“I dabble.” He smiled. “I’m sure I’m terribly late in asking this, but you probably don’t have any rooms left, do you?”
I frowned. “What about Tish’s? We’re not quite done due to some delays, but if your brothers give us a few more days as planned—”
“My brothers do nothing as planned. Besides, with this weather, I imagine many of the wedding guests will be bunking down here tonight.” He tossed back his hair and sprayed me with snow yet again. “I’d hoped to attend the wedding with Ging, but it looks like I’m late there too.”
“We don’t have a room, and we’ll be driving back.”
“Not if that weather forecast is accurate.” Laverne chuckled and patted our arms. “We’ll get you all in here, don’t you worry. We have room in the main building, plus the separate bonus building for the inn to boot.”
“This place is huge. I heard there’s a winery too?”
“Sure is, and a performance space as well. Along with gift shops and a café and more apple products than you could shake a stick at.” Laverne winked at me and dusted snow off her gloves. “Luna already requested a special room for you and Leticia, Lucky.”
Hmm. She hadn’t known who I was, yet she knew Tish. Was everyone around here all-knowing or what?
“Thank you, ma’am. I’ll need to discuss it with Ru—Tish,” I corrected. “She may have other ideas.”
“Of course. You just let us know. And we’ll set one aside for you, Rhett. Enjoy that wedding now. I may just pop my head in if I can get away. I’m just a sucker for them.”
“Thanks so much,” Rhett said with a smile, skidding his way down the rest of the walkway as Fred pushed his shovel in the opposite direction. Even the area he’d just cleared was already filling up again.
“Nice meeting you, ma’am.”
As we walked down the long winding walkway that led to the chapel—not so much a walkway now, as the snow was falling hard and the team of shovelers had seemingly vanished—Rhett nudged my arm. “Hey, don’t suppose you can pretend you invited me here?”
“Me?”
“Yeah, Tish is gonna have a kitten. She’ll be like, why didn’t you tell me you were here early? A guy goes off the grid for a month to write a song with Oblivion and misses some calls and it’s an issue. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure I’d make it back in time.”
“I’m glad you’re here. Tish needs family around her with all the changes.”
“All what changes?”
“Her place. Cohen’s injury. You know.”
“No, I don’t know, but I have a feeling she’s keeping something from me. Just in case you doubted it, two out of three Burns brothers know martial arts and the third is just an all-around supreme athlete.”
I swiped a hand down my face to get rid of the snow and smothered a laugh. “Noted.”
“So, are you going to say you invited me to this wedding? Because I technically don’t know the bride or groom. Who are they again?”
I laughed and waved at Dare and his wife Kelsey heading into the chapel. They were squabbling about something, but Kelsey immediately brightened and waved, her gaze lasering in on Rhett.
“New blood?” she mouthed before her husband ushered her inside.
“Groom is Caleb Beck, my best friend. He’s a teacher at the Catholic school—”
“Oh, right, he knocked up the witch.” Rhett wiped off his glasses on his shirt. “Yeah, I’ll just let you do the talking until I get the lay of the land. Not that I’m landing long. But maybe I’ll get a song out of it.”
“You’re really a songwriter? That’s cool. And for Oblivion? They’re massive.”
“First time working with them. I work with a lot of people though. I’ve kind of been under the radar for years under a pen name.”
“What is it?”
“I am not telling you.”