Page 11 of Never Marry the Best Man (Whatever It Takes #4)
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Ranney
The bartender was watching them closely now. Remembering a video she’d seen recently on Facebook, in which an intoxicated woman was handcuffed in an airport for disorderly conduct, Ranney lowered her voice.
Either "Tom Philips" was an extraordinary con artist, or he really was part of the Idaho party, but either way, she needed to verify.
“Just a minute.” Flipping her laptop open, she pulled up the Sanderson/Herrera wedding and clicked the Wedding Party file, angling her screen so he couldn't see, checking behind her to make sure her screen wasn't reflected back at him via mirror or window glass.
Each name was linked to its full bio, she knew, complete with all known data, personal preferences, and a photo. Before she fell asleep on the plane, her plan had been to review the whole file carefully. For now, she just scanned the list.
Best Man:
John Sanderson, Earl of Montrose (Jack)
Ushers:
Nicolas Herrera (Nico)
Antonio Herrera (Tonio)
Rafael Herrera (Rafa)
Nigel Rossdale
Martyn Phillips
“Nice try. But you had bad intel. I have no one named Tom Phillips in the party.”
He grinned. “ You have the bad intel. My name is Martyn Thomas Chatsworth Phillips. I go by Tom. Or Ducky, if you ask my schoolmates, but that’s a story for another time.”
“Oh." She looked at the last name on the Usher list. "Spell your first name."
"It's Martyn with a Y."
Like me , she thought, her "Ranney with a Y" old standard flashing through her mind.
Blinking, she tried to replay their entire conversation in her mind, to hear it objectively. Had she been unreasonably suspicious, paranoid even? Did she owe him an apology for her rudeness? He was, as they said in the office, client adjacent.
Offending him was not an option.
Also, it was starting to look like they’d be spending a long weekend in close proximity. There was no easy escape from this awkward situation.
An apology never hurts, she thought, taking a deep breath. Almost never, anyway.
“I am so sorry. I shouldn’t–” she began, but stopped at his appalled expression.
“Good Lord. You thought I was–of course you did. A beautiful woman like you, this kind of thing must happen to you all the time. I am a total idiot.” He used both hands to push his hair back.
“It’s just a misunderstanding,” Ranney said with a small smile, but in truth, she was embarrassed at having lost her composure and nearly causing a public scene.
If she weren’t so tired and frazzled, she would have handled the whole thing better.
This day had been too long, and it was still far from over.
The waitstaff had apparently decided they could be trusted to behave themselves, and their drinks arrived, along with a basket of stale popcorn.
As he took a long first sip of his beer, Ranney said, “Can we do a reset? Like, back to the gate in Miami?”
“Absolutely,” he answered, wiping foam from his lip with a paper napkin.
Her expression went neutral, her tone of voice becoming polite but impersonal, as she tried to channel Deborah Kerr encountering Cary Grant.
“What a coincidence!” she exclaimed. “Didn’t we meet at Meet Cute? Imagine running into you here!”
“This must be fate!” he played along smoothly. “If you’d been delayed two more minutes, I would have boarded this plane and flown off, never to see you again! What a stroke of incredible luck that you showed up just in time to prevent me from snagging your seat!”
She burst out laughing but quickly resumed a straight face. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I must fly. Perhaps someday our flight paths will cross again.”
“Look for me in Los Angeles–I’ll be waiting for you at the–” he checked around for a sign, rolling his eyes when he saw the punny name, “–the BarFly. If you’re there, I’ll know that you truly care. If not, well, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering what might have been.”
The guy was a pretty good actor. For a moment there, he actually sounded sincere.
“Technically, I was waiting here for you,” she smiled, dropping the role play. “Anyway, for the next five days, you’ll know exactly where to find me. If I can manage to get there, that is.” Her phone sat silent on the table. Where was Nilly? What could be taking so long?
“But you’re coming with us, on the plane,” Tom said, as if the decision had been made. “We’ve got to get over to PS. I’ll just text Charlie and let him know what’s happening.”
“Get over to what?”
“PS. It’s the private-flight terminal. We can cab over to it. Ready?” In response to his signal, the server was headed over with the bill.
Her anxiety came roaring back. On the one hand, he appeared to be who he claimed he was, but there was a long way between ‘appeared to be who he claimed he was’ and getting on a private plane with him.
She needed to see the photo in his bio, or at least get some kind of confirmation of his identity from the office before she walked out of this terminal with him, but he was sitting two feet away from her.
There was no way to be subtle about this.
“I’m just going to run to the ladies’ room,” she told him, stowing the laptop in her bag and hoisting it over her shoulder.
“Right, of course. You don’t need to take everything, I’ll watch it.”
Red flag number two! Signs all over every airport in the world warned against leaving your bag with a stranger!
Or an almost-stranger, basically the same thing.
Was she losing her mind? No one kidnaps a 52-year-old and sells her into sex slavery, and she was neither an heiress nor a political pawn, but still…
Archie would have a coronary if he knew what was going on here.
“Thanks,” she replied faintly.
Picking up her phone and her purse, she stepped away from the table, intercepting the server on the way. “Put the drinks on my card, please,” she said, handing over her company Amex.
Now at least there would be a trail for the police to follow. And if all was well and he really was Charlie’s cousin, well, professionalism dictated that she should be buying his drink.
In the ladies’ room, she found an unoccupied stall at the far end.
On the back of the door, there was just a hole where the hook used to be, and she wasn’t about to put her purse on the floor, so she clamped the bag under one arm and held her phone in the other hand as she called the office.
While it was after “normal” working hours, nothing about Wedding Protectors was “normal,” so someone was always on call.
She got through to Carly.
“Carly, I need to speak to Nilly. Or Nessa. It’s–”
“Sure, Ranney, hang on.” Blissfully unaware of Ranney’s stress level, Carly instantly put her on hold.
As the seconds ticked by, Ranney wondered if she should multi-task and use the facilities, but that seemed like too much to juggle. The last thing she needed was to drop her phone into a restroom toilet. You had to be deeply disorganized and a bit clumsy to do that .
Plus, it was very hard to get anything past Nilly, and “Are you peeing? ” was not a question she wanted to answer right now.
Eventually, Nilly’s harassed voice came on. “Ranney, I am so sorry, I’m trying to get you re-booked, but I–”
“Nill, never mind about that, I need you to check something else,” Ranney said urgently, keeping her voice as low as possible.
“I can’t hear you,” Nilly said. “Is that water running?”
“I’m in the restroom, sorry.”
“Are you peeing? ”
“No! That’s the sink and the hand-dryer thing!”
“Okay.” Nilly’s tone was skeptical. “What do you need?”
“Can you email me a photo of one of the Sanderson ushers? The list says Martyn Phillips, but he says his name is Tom, and before I get on a private plane with him, I just want to be sure it’s the same–”
“Whoa,” Nilly interrupted. “You rented a plane? No one ran that past me.”
“No! I met this guy the other day in Boston, and then he tried to take my seat in Miami but I didn’t recognize him, and now we’re in a bar at LAX and he says he’s going to the bachelor weekend and his name is Tom but the file says Martyn and if I google a name like Tom Phillips I get hundreds of hits.
None of which is this guy's face. I mean, if it’s him, that’s awkward, and what if isn’t him?
He says there’s a plane and he’s insisting I go with him to some private terminal and get on it.
So I went to the ladies’ room and called you, but he said to leave my bag with him and my computer’s in it, so could you hurry and–”
“Let me get Archie on this call.”
“NO!”
“Don’t worry about the computer, sweetie, we can track it. Airports are just waiting rooms for disaster. You didn’t drink anything he could have touched, did you? I’m getting Archie.”
“Nilly, no! It’s not as bad as it sounds–”
“Why don’t we let him be the judge of that, considering that’s his job and all?”
“Let me start over. I keep having to do that today. This man is very nice and respectable, he’s an architect of, I don’t know, museums and churches–”
“Or so he says,” Nilly interjected.
“–and he’s a Brit–”
“A foreign national!”
“The groom is a Brit!” Ranney felt her normally low blood pressure creep up. “Nilly, please! Don’t make me sorry I called you instead of Nessa. She’d have sent me the photo and I’d be back at the table by now. I have good judgment. I’m the most senior member of the staff.”
“Seniors being by far the most-scammed demographic,” Nilly muttered.
"You know that’s not what I meant. I just need you to email or text me one good, clear photo of Tom–Martyn–Phillips. Immediately. Please.”
A beat passed in standoff, then Nilly sighed audibly. “Okay. But if you disappear and are never heard from again, I will be so mad at you!”
“Noted. Anyway, if he kidnaps me, don’t come looking. He’s pretty gorgeous, except for that annoying accent.”
“Seriously?”
“No–well, yes, gorgeous, but no, way too young for me. Maybe I’ll meet his father at the wedding.”