All I Need Is You aka Wedding Survivor Page 10

“What about that waitress? She’s practically drooling all over herself and so are you.”

  “Marnie?” Eli asked. “What’s happening?”

  “Ah…there seems to be a little argument,” she said, and tried to laugh it off, but Olivia looked like she was on the verge of tears. She suddenly stood up, knocking the table and tipping over stemmed water glasses when she did. “That’s it, Vittorio! You want that piece of ass? Go get it, because you’re damn sure not getting any from me!”

  Vince tried to grab Olivia’s arm, but Olivia jerked it out of his reach and accidentally hit her mother, who was trying to stop Olivia from making a scene.

  “Holy shit. Come on,” the stylist said, grabbing Marnie’s arm. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “What’s going on?” Eli demanded.

  “Ah…I’m gonna have to call you back,” she said shakily, and clicked off, grabbed her purse and briefcase, and headed out with the stylist in the opposite direction of Olivia, her mother, and Lucy. At least she thought it was the opposite direction—she’d been blinded by the light of camera flashbulbs. But she thought only Vince remained, and he was looking like a sad little puppy for the benefit of the cute waitress.

  Marnie and the stylist dude ducked out through the kitchen and ended up in the alley. “What do we do now?” she asked, still blinking.

  He shrugged, pulled out a joint, and lit up. “I’m gonna walk down the street and get a cab.”

  “But my car is at Olivia’s,” Marnie said.

  He exhaled loudly. “Sounds like a personal problem.”

  Marnie frowned. He winked and started walking toward the street, pausing once to look back over his shoulder at Marnie. “You coming?”

  She sighed, slung her briefcase over her shoulder, and went with the stylist guy to catch a cab.

  When she made her way back to Olivia’s, she walked up to the gate and punched in the pass code Olivia had given her.

  “Hey, sweetie, get Olivia outside for us, will you?” one of the permanent paparazzi called out to her from the hood of his car.

  Marnie snorted, walked through the gate swinging open, and made sure it closed behind her before walking up the long drive to her car. But as she reached the car, the door of the house flew open and Olivia came running out, tears streaming down her face.

  How did Olivia know the moment Marnie was at the door?

  “It’s over, Marnie,” she said, and caught a sob in her throat, wiping the tears from beneath her eyes.

  “Oh no, Olivia, are you sure?” Marnie asked.

  “Yes. I never want to see him again,” she said, and choked on another sob. “I can’t marry a man who’s always looking for a piece of ass, and can get it whenever and wherever he wants. Do you know that slut waitress gave him her number while I was sitting right there? And he took it!” Olivia Dagwood let out a wail like Marnie had never heard. “How I am supposed to have children with that man?”

  Excellent question. Marnie dropped her briefcase and purse on the hood of her car and ran around to Olivia, putting her arm around her tiny shoulders. Olivia turned her face into Marnie’s shoulder and cried. “Olivia, I don’t know what to say,” Marnie said. “If you can’t trust him, you can’t marry him.”

  “So…you don’t think I should marry him?” Olivia squeaked.

  Was she serious? “Well…” Marnie said in a play for time, “I’m not telling you what to do—”

  The sound of a vehicle startled them both; they turned around to see a cab coming up the drive. It pulled up behind Marnie’s car, and Vince got out the back, pulled some bills from his front pocket, and tossed them in the window at the cab driver, then slapped his hand on top of the cab, telling the driver to go on.

  “What are you doing here?” Olivia shrieked.

  “Livi,” Vince said, walking toward her, his arms wide open, an inch or two shorter than Marnie, the giant. “Come on, Livi, don’t be this way.”

  “Marnie thinks I shouldn’t marry you,” she said, squaring off.

  Marnie winced, raised a hand. “Hey, don’t listen to me. I’m just the wedding planner—”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you ought to plan someone else’s wedding if you’re going to go around making asinine suggestions,” Vince snapped.

  “She’s right. I shouldn’t marry you if I can’t trust you, Vince. You let your dick lead your life, and where does that leave me?”

  Vince frowned at Marnie. “Do you mind, wedding planner? I’d like to talk to Olivia.”

  No, she didn’t mind in the least, and in fact, was grateful for the out.

  “Don’t go, Marnie,” Olivia whimpered. “Don’t leave me alone with him.”

  “Okay, well…the thing is, I’ve got to pick my mom up from the hospital,” Marnie lied, backing around the front of her car. But neither megastar heard her. They were too busy staring daggers at each other, and Olivia was still wiping tears from her face.

  Marnie made a break for it, grabbing her purse and briefcase and throwing them into the car. “Talk to you later!” she cried, and got in before either of them could respond if they were so inclined, and tore away from the whacked-out Brentwood scene as fast as she could.

  When she finally turned onto Sunset Boulevard and headed for home, she realized she could hear the cell phone beeping. She dug around her purse for it, finally retrieved it, and looked at the display as she pulled up to a red light.

  She’d missed ten calls. And she had six messages. She wondered how Eli would take the news that Vince would want her fired. Probably okay, considering the wedding was now off. Maybe Eli would thank her. Maybe he’d buy her a big expensive gift for ending his nightmare so quickly.

  She didn’t call him back and didn’t answer the cell when she heard the cheerful tune on her way home.

  When she walked into the house, the book club was sitting around the table. A stack of paperbacks, untouched from the last meeting, was still in the middle.

  “Well, well, look who is home,” Mrs. Donaldson said, and sipped daintily from her tumbler.

  “Oh honey,” Mom cried, and jumped up from her chair and hurried to intercept Marnie before she headed to her room. “Eli McCain has been calling you. He really needs to talk to you…” She glanced over her shoulder at the four pairs of eyes fixed on the two of them, then leaned forward and whispered loudly, “about you know what.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “Marnie? Did you go shopping today with anyone we’d want to hear about?” Mrs. Farrino asked.

  “Mo-om,” Marnie protested.

  “Oh now, I didn’t tell them a thing. They’re just very clever and they guessed,” Mom said, and bustled Marnie along. “Be sure and look in on Bingo,” she called, just as Marnie’s cell began to ring. “What is that noise?”

  “Nothing,” Marnie called over her shoulder and ran down the hall into her room and shut the door. “Hello?” she asked timidly.

  “Where in the hell have you been?” Eli asked loudly. “I’ve called you a hundred times. I gave you a cell phone so I could speak to you when I needed to.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I was in the middle of a crisis,” Marnie said dejectedly, and let her bags drop to the floor, then with her back pressed against the door of her room, she slid down to her haunches. “It’s been a really long day.”

  “I gathered as much. You wanna tell me about it?” he asked, his voice gone quiet and sure again.

  Strangely enough, Marnie did want to tell him. She told him about the wedding plans, and the pavilion, and the flowers, and the arch. Eli said nothing. So Marnie told him how Vince and Olivia got into an argument about the reception, and that the group moved to Zax, at which point Eli groaned a little. She told him how Vince was making moon eyes at the waitress who slipped him her number, and how Olivia had slapped him and stormed out in a hail of paparazzi fire. And she told him how the stylist rescued her—

  He interrupted her with a chortle. “He’s not a hairdresser, Marnie. He’s their connection
.”

  “Their connection?”

  “Weed.”

  “Oooh,” she said. “No wonder that guy wanted out of there so fast.”

  “Yeah,” Eli said with a chuckle. “So then what?”

  “Then,” Marnie sighed, “I opened my mouth and inserted my entire size eight foot.” And she told him how Olivia had come crying to her, and what she’d said, and how Vince had not been too happy, and that Olivia said it was over. And when she finished, her head in her hand, her new sandals flung across the room, Eli laughed.

  He laughed. Not big and hearty, but a low and long laugh, as if he didn’t believe her.

  “I’m serious, Eli.”

  “I know you’re serious, girl,” he drawled. “I’m laughing because they aren’t through. They’ve only just begun.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that tomorrow, there will be a flurry of pictures and sound bites and speculation that the on-again, off-again affair is over, and Olivia and Vince will be incensed that their private lives have come under such a public microscope, and then they will laugh about it and conveniently forget it ever happened.”

  “I don’t know, Eli,” Marnie said morosely. “I think this time it’s for real.”

  “Wanna bet?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I do,” she said. “Remember—I was there.”

  “All right. When I get back, we’ll pay a little visit to the lovebirds. If they aren’t together, you win, and you get to name your prize. If they are together, I win, and I get to name my prize.”

  Marnie smiled. “What’s your prize?”

  Eli laughed so low that Marnie’s skin tingled. “If I told you my prize now, that would ruin the fun, wouldn’t it?”

  Was he flirting with her? Hey, she didn’t mind a little phone flirting with a hunk like Eli, and smiled broadly, stretched out, so that she was lying on her stomach on the floor of her room. “I don’t mind telling my prize up front. You want to hear it?” she asked in a voice as husky as she could make it.

  There was silence on the other end. “I’d rather you surprise me.”

  Actually, that was an excellent idea, as Marnie didn’t have the slightest idea what her prize was. “Oh, I’ll surprise you, all right,” she said in her sexy voice.

  “I just bet you will.” He chuckled. “In the meantime, why don’t you surprise me by not letting Olivia get too carried away with the flower thing?”

  Wow. Talk about taking the zing right out of the conversation. “Hello? Did you hear anything I said?”

  “Yeah, I heard every word. I just want you to try and talk some sense into her tomorrow. You know, maybe something like a thousand flowers instead of ten thousand. Or maybe an enchilada bar instead of lobster and sushi.”

  “You sound like you don’t think I tried, Eli. You sound like I’m just jumping right in and encouraging her.”

  “Well, it’s like we say in Texas, Marnie—you took to her like a bear to a honey tree.”

  “That’s not a Texas saying. That’s a saying everywhere.”

  “You get my point.”

  “Oh yeah, I get your point, I’m never at a loss about your point. Did it occur to you that maybe, just maybe, it’s hard to talk Olivia Dagwood out of anything?”

  “Oh hell, I know it is,” he said cheerfully.

  “Then cut me a little slack, will you?”

  “I’d like to. The only problem is we don’t have a lot of time. We need to have the wedding of the century wrapped up pretty quick.”

  “I’m not sure there is going to be a wedding of the century, and even if there is, I probably won’t be involved once you talk to Vince.”

  “Vince won’t remember anything about it. Trust me. I’ll be back in a day or two. When I get in, we’ll go patch it up. Okay?”

  “Whatever,” she muttered.

  “Hey, coppertop,” Eli said kindly, “don’t worry. You gotta believe me on this one—it’s all gonna come out in the wash.”

  She smiled at his attempt to reassure her, but she wasn’t so easily swayed.

  “More important, how’s Bingo?” Eli asked.

  “Bingo is great,” Marnie said, grinning now. “He wants to give you a dog bone for saving him.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it. I’m sort of partial to big ol’ gangly mutts. Okay, I’ll talk to you later. And listen—next time your new cell phone rings, pick it up, will you?”

  “Okay,” she said, and a little voice in the back of her mind shouted at Marnie to ask him to call tomorrow, but she said, “Talk to you soon,” and hung up.

  She was really beginning to like this guy. He had a crusty exterior that could really piss her off at times, but underneath that crust, the man had a big heart.

  For some reason, the image of Eli the cowboy flashed into her head. Wildflowers in hand, he was standing on a wooden porch, at the door of a woman.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  A TV was blaring in the convenience store where Eli stopped the next morning for a cup of coffee. He was standing at the donut case when a word caught his attention, and that word was breakup.

  He spied the TV behind the clerk and walked over, putting his coffee and donut on the counter. It was a local morning talk show by the look of it—two talking heads with giant coffee cups were smiling and talking about the spectacular breakup of Olivia Dagwood and Vince Vittorio. Apparently, one of the more enterprising paparazzi had been carrying a handheld minicam and caught Olivia’s dramatic exit from Zax. And there, sitting in the booth across from Vince, was one wide-eyed, slack-jawed Marnie Banks.

  Damn.

  Eli paid for his coffee and his donut and walked outside, looked up at the blue California sky, and sighed.

  He went on to his first appointment in a tony office building outside San Diego, in Coronado. He was shown to a richly appointed conference room paneled in oak and with a view of the ocean, where six Japanese businessmen in dark suits were waiting to meet with a representative of Thrillseekers Anonymous.

  Through an interpreter, Eli learned the gentlemen wanted to take a trip down the Amazon River. They were very excited about the Amazon River, and every time he said the word Amazon, they would all chatter at once and nod energetically. He couldn’t help but be reminded of a flock of turkey buzzards.

  He was trying to figure out how they wanted to take this trip down the Amazon when his phone rang.

  There was an immediate chattering of Japanese, and the men started bobbing their heads at him. Eli looked at the interpreter.

  “They like you answer,” she said.

  “That’s okay,” he said, waving a hand at them. “It can wait.”

  She translated that, and they bobbed their heads again. A few moments later, the phone rang again, and the chattering started all over again.

  “They like you answer,” the woman insisted.

  “Okay,” Eli said, smiled sheepishly, and answered the phone.

  “You know your girl is in trouble up here,” Cooper said, dispensing with any greeting.

  “I heard.”

  “Thought you might want to get back here. The press is all over the place trying to get a scoop.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, and tried to imagine Marnie, in spunky good humor, holding a bunch of piranha-like reporters at bay. “I’ll get back as soon as I can,” he said. “I’m still working through this other deal.” At that moment, two of the businessmen sitting next to him started to converse excitedly.

  “Anyone speak English?” Cooper asked.

  “Not a one.”

  “Damn,” Coop said.

  Eli told him he’d be in touch later, then ended the call and asked the interpreter how, exactly, the men wanted to tackle the Amazon.

  “Tackle, please?” she asked.

  “How do they want to go,” he said, making a swimming motion. Why he made that motion, he had no idea.

  The woman looked at his hands and said something to the men. There was some lively discussion between them,
and then they looked at the interpreter. She turned stoically back to Eli and said, “They please no swim. They please sticks one.”

  Eli blinked. “Come again?”

  “Sticks one.” She made a gesture that escaped him.

  It was going to be a long meeting.

  When Eli finally left that day, he understood that the Japanese men wanted to take a rafting trip to the Amazon the week after the wedding. TA normally didn’t like to book trips so close together, but the Japanese men had some sort of national holiday or something like it and really wanted that week or no dice.

  Eli tried to explain through their interpreter that unless they were well versed on the wildlife and people of the Amazon, a raft might not be a good idea. He tried to explain piranhas and snakes and natives, but every time he thought he’d made a little headway, they would do the buzzard thing again and grin at him.

  He did, however, have pictures to show them. He and Jack had done the Amazon once, and it was not exactly his favorite spot. But they didn’t seem to care about anaconda snakes or giant beetles—they remained enthusiastic about it.

  That meeting took a lot longer than he’d anticipated. He wouldn’t make it back to LA until late, not with the last stop he had to make.

  Eli drove to Escondido. In a neighborhood of small cottage bungalows, he pulled up at the curb of a yellow house that had green shutters and pots of bougainvillea hanging off the porch. As he got out of his truck, the front door flew open and a girl came bounding off the porch, dodging the bike and the discarded toys in her haste to reach him. “Eli!” she cried, and threw her arms around his waist.

  Eli grinned and hugged her back. “How you doing, Isabella? You behaving yourself?”

  “Yes,” she said, turning her gap-toothed smile up to him. “Did you bring me something?”

  “Maybe,” he said, and with her standing on his feet, him holding her hands, he monster-walked around to the passenger side of the truck, opened the door, and took out a stuffed panda. Isabella shrieked and let go of Eli for the bear, burying her face in the fur. “Thank you, Eli! I love it! I’m going to name it Marco.”

  Eli ran his head over the top of her curly black hair. “Is your mom home?”