Still feeling a little weak, she took a deep breath and was standing up, holding on to Sandy’s arm, when Rhett came into the room, with a pointless knock on the door as he was already entering.
“This is the ladies’ room,” Charity told him.
“I’m coming to see what’s taking so long. Everyone is here, and they’re devouring the appetizers.”
He looked very handsome in his suit, his tie straight, a jaunty red for the Valentine’s Day theme, and Shawn willed him to meet her eye. She needed him to look at her, to reassure her. He did, giving her that sexy smile that she had first noticed in The Wet Spot, her insides turning to liquid.
“Hey, beautiful. You ready to do this thing?”
She nodded, immediately feeling better, then immediately after that freaking out that she needed him to make her feel better.
He held his hand out for her.
She took it.
• • •
SHAWN looked a little green, but Rhett knew she was nervous about being the center of attention. He found it interesting that for a woman who ran a business and had spent all those years on the youth racing circuit, she wasn’t comfortable with entertaining. Parties and anything that could be classified as an event seemed to generate nerves. Yet in his mind, every weekend at Hamby Speedway during the season was an “event.”
Maybe it was just that she didn’t really like wearing dresses, which was a damn shame, because she was a knockout in them. Especially this one. It looked every inch what he would imagine a bridal gown to be, from the strapless fitted top, to the flowing skirt that looked a little like soft-serve ice cream to him. He wanted to lick her.
“You hungry?” he asked her, as they moved down the hall, her friends and their mothers following them. “There is enough food in there to feed the fans at the Daytona 500.”
It was an inane thing to say, but he wanted her to relax. He squeezed her hand a little and she squeezed back.
“I actually have an upset stomach,” she said. “I think I’m having stage fright.”
“It’s just our friends and family. And the hard part is over. If you didn’t faint in that courthouse,” he murmured to her, “I think you’ll be fine. I mean, let’s face it, it takes a strong woman to agree to put up with me for even six months.”
She gave a brittle laugh, but the tension lines in her forehead smoothed. “True. You are a whole lot of something, Rhett Butler Ford.”
He winced. “Don’t trot out the middle name unless you’re pissed off at me. Or I may not contain my spankings to the bedroom.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
She smiled up at him, and he was glad to see she was genuinely amused and looking less sallow. “Don’t try me,” he teased. Then he pushed open the doorway to the banquet room that his sisters had spent the last two days decorating.
“A big Charlotte welcome to the brand new Mr. and Mrs. Rhett and Shawn Ford!” his brother-in-law Mark boomed as they stepped into the room.
Mark had gotten a microphone from God knows where, and he appeared to have nominated himself for MC/DJ, an iPod and speakers set up behind him.
Even Rhett wasn’t quite prepared for the loud pronouncement of them as man and wife and the thundering applause and hoots and hollers that followed. For a second he just blinked.
Shawn murmured, “Good Lord, it looks like Cupid shart in here.”
Rhett choked back a laugh and managed to smile and raise their clasped hands together in a victory shake. Then he fought the urge to drag Shawn through the crowd and the explosion of pink and red hearts, and took a nice, steady pace instead. He wasn’t exactly sure where they were supposed to go, so he took the opportunity to just stop every few feet and greet guests and receive hugs from ancient great-aunts and his grandmother.
Suddenly he wasn’t sure this party had been such a fabulous idea after all, because while he knew for certain he loved Shawn and she loved him, they had gone about this all ass backwards. Instead of taking their vows in a church with family present, meaning each of those words they’d spoken, they had stood before a judge and lied through their teeth. It left the stain of dishonesty on this party, and that pissed him off. He didn’t want there to be any whiff of falsity to the night, and while he was used to being hugged and cosseted from female family members, the truth was, he didn’t have his brother’s easy charm. Playing host wasn’t any easier for him than it was for Shawn to tackle the hostess role.
So as soon as they had reached the head table, crowded with giant vases of red flowers, he deposited Shawn in a chair and went for some liquid fortification. Shawn shook her head when he asked if she wanted a drink, already turning away as her mother swooped down on her like a purple dragon. He’d barely exchanged five words with her, and he had to say quite honestly, he despised her mother. From her made-up first name of Mati, stolen no doubt from the legendary spy, to her insistence that marriage was for the weak-minded, she grated on his nerves.
Rhett had kind of always thought marriage was for the monogamous, but go figure. He ordered a shot of whiskey from the bartender.
“Eight dollars,” the bartender told him.
He didn’t even have his wallet on him. “I’m the groom.”
“I’m sorry, sir, that doesn’t matter.”
“Are you f**king kidding me?” Rhett turned to go find someone to bum a ten off of, when he almost ran into his father.
“Let me buy you a drink, son.”
“Thanks, Dad,” he said, more relieved than he cared to admit. He wasn’t usually one to crave alcohol, but neither did he usually have this much emotion churning inside him like a cement mixer.
“Whatever he wants,” his father told the bartender. He handed the bartender a hundred dollar bill. “For the rest of the night so we don’t have to keep doing this every time he or his bride need to wet their whistle.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Rhett was touched.
His father smiled at him and held his hand out. They shook. “Congrats. I hope you and Shawn will be as happy as your mother and I have been.”
Yeah, that was a lump the size of a baby’s fist in his throat. “Me, too,” he said. He meant it with every bone in his body.
“My youngest married.” Nolan Senior shook his head. “Damn, I must be old.”
“Nah.” Rhett clamped him on the shoulder. “You still have a lot of Saturday afternoon delights with Mom ahead of you.”