Page 13 of Never Marry the Best Man (Whatever It Takes #4)

Looking around, she headed for two seats that were set apart from the others. This was a good time to check messages, while the group was boarding and stowing and generally getting settled.

Lots of new business emails pertaining to Charlie and AnaMaria’s upcoming wedding, vendors and other interested parties, plus a few from the bride herself.

She’d circle back to those after she looked at her texts, which she prioritized because they were either personal or from someone at Wedding Protectors. There were only three.

Claire: Have you met them yet? What are they like–will we have our hands full? I hope so. Gosh, this is fun! I packed a swimsuit but only a one-piece. See you soon!

Nilly: You said you would keep me posted and you’re not. What is happening? Are you safe?

Nessa: Do you have my turquoise earrings? I need them for Austin.

“Excuse me, is this seat taken?” Tom was smiling down at her.

“Are you on standby again? Why not try just booking a ticket?”

“Oh, no, you meet much more interesting people this way. No more reserved seats for me. Boring and predictable. You'll be a much better seat neighbor than my last flight.”

"Oh?"

"I was booked on a pet courier service." He sniffed again, then gave that throaty chuckle of his, the one that zinged through her body. "I must have sounded like a mess at the bar. Sneezed the entire flight."

"Pet allergy?"

He waved his hand. "Nothing worth talking about. But you will be far more interesting than a purse pet."

"I most certainly hope so!"

Maybe it was just the quick camaraderie of fellow travelers, but he was actually starting to seem like an old friend.

Especially with his coat off now, open collar exposing his throat and a bit of dark chest hair, sleeves pushed up on his forearms. He seemed comfortable and relaxed, and that made her relax, too.

“Seriously,” he went on, “do you mind if I join you? I promise not to talk the whole way, I’ll let you work if you need to.”

“Oh, of course. But don’t you want to sit with your–” she gestured to the men settling in behind them. A young woman with a sleek, dark ponytail was serving them glasses of Champagne with shorter glasses of whisky offered as well.

“I have this whole very long weekend to sit around with them,” he said in a lowered voice.

“A bunch of cousins, AnaMaria’s brothers who are cattle ranchers in Argentina and don’t speak much English.

One was Charlie’s roommate at Oxford. All of them are at least eight years younger than me. I choose you.”

“I do speak English, at least, although maybe not what you recognize as English.”

“I’ll try to follow. There’s always Google Translate if I can’t understand you,” he said lightly, “because it’s important that we understand each other.”

“Champagne?” the woman with the ponytail asked.

“No, thank you,” Ranney said at the exact same time that Tom said, “Yes, please. Two. Is that the 2012 Bollinger?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, you’ve got to try this,” he told Ranney, who was making ‘no’ hand gestures to the server. “You’re not driving, you know. At least, not till we land, and that’ll be a while. Come on, one glass. It’s spectacular.”

“I–”

“Just leave the bottle,” he told the woman.

And that was when she thought, Here I am, Ranney Silver Martini, on a Lear jet in California, with a glass of what is apparently very good Champagne in my hand and a handsome foreign national making a fuss over me, for some unexplained reason. And I am being paid for it.

Mame’s pragmatic voice sounded in her head: Drink the damn Champagne, Ranney!

She took an experimental sip and lightning did not strike. So she took another. If an emergency should arise between here and Boise, there would be nothing she could do about it anyway. Client relations was part of her job, so she'd chalk this up to being extra professional.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” Tom asked.

“Very. Thank you.”

“And how is everything in this secluded corner?” Charlie leaned one hip against the side of Tom’s chair. “I see you’re thoughtfully saving our server the trouble of coming back with refills.”

“This way, she can spend more time watching over you,” Tom shot back.

“Very considerate, as always.” He shifted his attention to Ranney. “Do you have everything you need? Ani said you’d be meeting us at the Freestone, but this is much better. Did you say your name was Randy?”

“It’s Ranney,” Tom answered quickly. “It turns out, we’re old friends. Quite a coincidence.”

“Indeed,” Charlie said, his eyes moving curiously from Tom to Ranney and back. “Well then, no need for me to break the ice. We’ll be taking off any minute, I should think.”

Which turned out to be the case, and the next fifteen minutes were taken up with those processes and procedures. When they had finally leveled off, Tom pulled out his phone.

“I haven’t checked my messages since Miami,” he commented. “And I promised I wouldn’t talk to you the entire way.”

“Designing churches and museums seems like it would be a fairly low pressure environment,” Ranney ventured. “With lots of creative freedom? Not a constant barrage of messages?”

He snorted. “First of all, these are non-profit clients. Budgets and timeframes are closely monitored. Second, they are overseen by committees, so multiply every call or email by six. Internal politics and personal alliances aside, there is a tendency in both art and religion for those involved to think they have the one true interpretation. So…”

“I get it. My situation’s not that different.

Weddings could be said to involve both art and religion, and they are usually overseen by some kind of committee, mostly consisting of mothers.

But of course, your projects are permanent.

Mine are only permanent in photos.” Pausing for a second, she amended that.

“I mean, the marriage is permanent, of course! At least, that’s the plan. ”

His eyes cut to Charlie, who was laughing at someone’s joke. “Yes, that’s the plan.”

They both turned to their phones, tapping, reading, and scrolling in silence.

Ranney reached down into her bag for her laptop, appreciating that her Neverfull was sitting conveniently on the floor next to her chair, not shoved far under the seat in front of her or, worse, in an overhead bin requiring gymnastic maneuvers to access it.

Do NOT get used to this, she told herself for the second time that day.

As she was transferring notes from the florist’s email into the appropriate file, Tom made a sound–more like a gasp–as if the wind had been knocked out of him.

She stared at him in alarm, and he met her gaze. He looked utterly shocked.

“Is something wrong?” she asked tentatively.

“The Saltzman Prize–have you ever heard of it?”

“I think so? It’s an American architecture prize, right?”

“Yes, exactly. It’s like the Nobel Prize for architects.” His phone was still in his hand and he held it up. “I–they–I’m shortlisted.”

“Oh, Tom! That’s wonderful!”

“For a chapel I designed in Montana. It’s–let me show you.”

His fingers were shaking visibly as he pulled up the photos.

“Here. Here it is. It’s in a huge, open prairie, you see?

Nothing around it. And the grasses, when the wind blows–which it always does–it’s so much like ocean waves that it’s disorienting.

You’re just immersed in the natural world.

So this little chapel had to be absolutely simple. ”

She lifted the phone from his hand to look more closely.

“They’re right. The shape of the chapel reminds me a bit of a ship.”

He beamed. “You have a good eye.”

“The committee, whoever they are, they’re right to give you the prize for this. It’s amazing.” Frowning, she tried to do better. “‘Amazing’ isn’t a good enough word. I don’t think I can express it in one word, actually.”

“Thank you. I’m going to take you there someday.”

Okay, Ranney thought, startled. That’s just one of those things people say. It’s social. It doesn’t mean anything.

But he looked like it meant something.

Leaning over, he picked up the Champagne bottle and refilled their glasses.

“Cheers! To inspiration. To the gods of design.” They clinked their rims. “To… answered prayers. And places to say them.”

“You two look awfully happy,” Charlie called, standing and heading toward them. “Toasting to Ani and me and to marital bliss?”

“In a way,” Tom responded cheerfully. “We’re drinking to answered prayers.”

“Excellent! I’ll join you in–”

The plane dropped straight down, like an elevator with a snapped cable. Seconds later, when it stabilized, Charlie was lying on the floor in a puddle of 2012 Bollinger. For a moment, no one made a sound, and then Charlie moaned.

“Oh, my god, are you all right?” Ranney jumped up and knelt beside him. Tom followed. “What is it? Are you hurt?”

“My arm,” Charlie said in a stunned whisper. He tried to sit up but fell back in obvious pain, his face ashen.

“Don’t move,” she told him, then looked over at Tom. Charlie's hand bent at a disturbing angle. “I’m trained in first aid, but he needs a doctor. I think it’s broken.”

By now, the flight attendant was kneeling on Charlie’s other side. Sizing up the situation quickly, she got to her feet again. “I’m going to inform the pilot,” she said.

Tom pulled a toss pillow off a seat and gently positioned it behind Charlie’s head while Ranney, for lack of anything medically useful to do, picked up whatever debris she could reach, napkins and broken glasses and a couple of poker chips that had rolled across the floor.

Between Charlie’s condition and their own moments of terror when the plane plunged, the groomsmen had been struck silent.

The attendant returned quickly.

“We’re going to divert and land in Las Vegas,” she told them. “We’ve called an ambulance and they’ll meet us there. We should be on the ground in twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes,” Charlie echoed hopelessly, as if she’d said twenty hours.