Wright Rival (Wright)

Then, we swayed side to side. No music. No people. No big, beautiful gala.

Just the two of us, cocooned by the night sky. Wrapped in all her glory. The swelling depths of affection drew us together until there was nothing left.

I rested my head on his shoulder, and he pulled me even closer against him.

“This was what I wanted,” I said with a soft sigh of pleasure. “This was all I wanted.”

“Me too.” Hollin kissed the top of my head and held me close, repeating, “Me too.”

31

Piper

With Peyton’s wedding coming up so quickly, I spent all of my free time helping her prepare. And there was a lot more to do now that the wedding had to be moved to Wright Vineyard on such short notice. Nora was taking on the bulk of the change, but it was clear that after what had happened with August, she was only a shell of herself.

She wasn’t crying like she had been that night at the gala. But she wasn’t…happy either. In fact, the poor girl was in mourning. She hadn’t just lost her boyfriend. She’d lost her best friend, too. I tried to be there for her, as did the other girls, but it wasn’t the same. She’d known Tamara all her life. And the two people she would normally turn to with her heartbreak were the ones who had sundered her heart.

She’d even ditched her high heels for most of the week. I rarely saw her in flats off of the soccer pitch and sometimes forgot that she was only five feet tall. It was as if they had even stolen her extra height.

But the biggest problem of them all was still the wedding dress.

We’d found a few dresses in town that fit, but none of them were what Peyton wanted. Especially not compared to the designer dress that had been destroyed in the fire. Even though there was nothing I could do about it, I still felt deeply responsible.

“It’s not your fault,” Peyton said the morning before the wedding. “And anyway, we’re going to get this fixed. Katherine said she could handle the mission.”

Katherine Van Pelt was a friend of Peyton’s from her time in New York City. Her and her husband, Camden Percy, were flying down for the wedding. Katherine had once been a model and was in the know with designers. She’d reached out to a few with Peyton’s measurements and promised to fly in with what she found. She’d landed in Lubbock, and she would be coming straight to the hotel suite Peyton had gotten for the weekend.

“I know,” I said. “I feel like I put unnecessary stress on you.”

“You caused the fire in the barn?”

“No.”

“And you purposefully put the dress somewhere you couldn’t reach it?”

I rolled my eyes. “No.”

“Then shut up,” my sister said with a laugh. “It’s not your fault that my dress was burned to a crisp and that the venue was destroyed. It was a fluke. A one in a million chance. We’re here now. We’re making the best of it. I don’t want my maid of honor to feel guilty.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

I’d braved a burning building to try to rescue that dress. There was nothing else I could do at this point. I was just anxious to have the dress problem rectified. It would feel like tomorrow could go off without a hitch.

Finally, an hour later, a knock sounded on the door. I rushed to open it, and there stood Katherine Van Pelt in all her glory. She was tall with cascading brown hair and the kind of figure people would kill for. She was Helen of Troy or Aphrodite. Songs had been sung about her. Wars had been waged for her. Just a tilt of her full lips sent men falling to their knees.

“Well, your fairy godmother has arrived,” she said with an arch of one eyebrow. Her designer bag hung from one arm, and she was in a red dress that clung to her narrow frame with black stilettos.

She strode into the suite as if she owned it. Considering her husband was the CEO and majority shareholder of Percy Hotels, it was entirely possible that she did. Behind her, she enlisted the staff to wheel in racks of white dresses, all carefully hidden behind a variety of designer bags.

“Thank you,” she said, tipping each of them generously, as if money grew on trees. “Camden sends his regards. He has business to attend to, and then he’s going golfing all day. Apparently, he befriended a PGA golfer here. Who knew you had a PGA golfer in Lubbock?”

I grinned. “Landon Wright?”

“Oh, you know him?” she asked.

Peyton laughed and stood to embrace Katherine. “He’s kind of royalty around these parts. The vineyard we’re getting married at belongs to his cousin.”

“Charming,” she said. “Well, let’s get to it. You’re going to like one of these gowns. I just know it.”