Authors: Sophie Pembroke
Ruth stuck her head out of the drawing room. “By the way? I had a thought about the soundtrack for the hen night. Do the rooms have surround sound built in?”
Perhaps not quite alone. With a sigh, Carrie went to explain the concept of refurbishing in stages to her cousin. Again.
* * * *
By the middle of her second week home from hospital, Nate knew his gran was already bored out of her mind. She was certainly driving him out of his. Jacob had managed one afternoon of watching both Moira and Georgia and declared it had to be one or the other. And since he had no desire to watch Hurricane Georgia, Nate got stuck with his gran. So he called Cyb.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” he asked, his coat already half on as he let Cyb into Moira’s house.
Cyb hoisted a plastic bag full of supplies and waggled it at him. “I’ve got cards, chocolate gingers and
Strictly Ballroom
on DVD. Should keep us going for an hour or two.”
While two hours out of the house sounded like bliss, Nate wasn’t sure it was going to be quite enough. “Carrie’s got the stag and hen nights tonight... I’m not sure how long she’s going to need me.”
Cyb waved him away toward the door. “Don’t worry. I’ve got Stan coming over at eleven with one of his nephews’ cars. Should be big enough to get the wheelchair in. We’ll all be up there to help for a few hours before the hordes descend.”
Nate paused in the doorway, wondering if three senior citizens, one in a foul mood and a wheelchair, were really going to provide the ambience Ruth and Graeme were looking for at their celebrations. Then he remembered how much they’d achieved before Carrie had even known they were helping, and let it go. “Fantastic. See you up there.”
By the time he reached the Avalon Inn, hens were already arriving. The plan, as Nate understood it, was for the girls to check into their rooms and get the one limo in the county to take them down to the luxury day spa Ruth had fallen in love with. Then they were back to the bridal suite for too much alcohol, snacks and weepy movies. Nate had big plans for avoiding as much of this as possible.
Luckily, that shouldn’t be too hard, as Carrie had put him in charge of supervising the Avalon-based part of the stag night. The guys’ schedule had them starting off with paintballing at an outdoor center a few miles away, then sampling the delights of Coed-y-Capel’s pubs. Nate figured by the time they made it back to the Avalon and became his responsibility, they were going to be plastered, and in need of black coffee and pouring into bed. He wasn’t particularly looking forward to it, but he wouldn’t have wanted to let Carrie do it, either.
“Nate!” Ruth bounced down the steps of the inn toward him, dressed entirely in pink, followed by a collection of other girls, all in varying shades of cerise. “I didn’t think you were going to make it.”
“Cyb and Stan are watching Gran.” He shrugged. “I felt your need was greater.”
Ruth laughed, a low and dirty chuckle. “Liar. She driving you crazy already?”
To Nate’s relief Carrie appeared in the doorway before he was required to answer that question. “You made it,” she said, and the smile on her face made a lot of things more bearable. “Will your gran be all right?”
“I think you can expect to see her and her temporary carers up here later, desperate to help.” Nate moved past Ruth to the inn steps. He could feel himself echoing Carrie’s slightly foolish grin, but couldn’t bring himself to stop.
“I’ll take all the help I can get,” Carrie said, her smile slipping, and Nate suddenly realized how tired she looked.
“Then put me to work,” he said, just to make her smile come back.
It did. “Come with me.”
Three hours later, the bridal suite looked like a Russian millionaire’s daughter’s sweet sixteen party, the bar was stocked with every drink under the sun, and Nate was wondering exactly when in the next forty-eight hours he would find the time to put up an eight foot Christmas tree in the lobby, and get the gardens into a fit state for the wedding photos. Ruth was hoping for a crisp, sunny day, he knew, to make full use of the new terrace. Nate was secretly hoping for snow, to cover up the bare spots in the beds and the weeds he hadn’t had a chance to pull up. It didn’t seem very likely, though.
Deciding that with a bit of caffeine he might be able to keep going for another hour or two, Nate stuck his head into the kitchen, looking for Jacob.
“I think the sausage and bacon butties are still the best idea.” Carrie stood at the kitchen counter, looking even more tired than Nate felt. “Anything to mop up the alcohol.”
“Is this for the stag night, or the wedding itself?” Nate asked, sneaking over to the kettle.
“Stag night,” Carrie confirmed, turning to him. “Are you sure you’re okay to chaperone? I could...”
“You can’t miss your best friend’s hen night,” Nate said, not pointing out that she was already missing the spa portion of the day so she could stay at the inn and get everything ready for Ruth’s girly night in. “I’ll be fine. Cyb’s going to stay in with Gran.” On the other side of the kitchen, the internal phone line rang, and Jacob left them to it while he went to answer it.
Carrie nodded. “Thanks. That’s really... Just, thanks.”
“No problem.” Nate stirred a teaspoon of sugar into his coffee. He didn’t normally sweeten his hot drinks, but anything that might give him a little extra energy had to be good. “Now, the bridal suite is pinkified, the bar ready for some serious drinking–and incidentally, I hid both the good glasses and the best scotch. What do you want me to do next?”
“I think the landlord of the Red Lion could probably answer that,” Jacob said, hanging up the phone. “Izzie’s just had him on the line begging one of us to go and collect our stag party before they drive away the locals for good.
Nate winced. Coed-y-Capel was not used to large groups of drunk ex-public school boys. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks.” Carrie looked at him gratefully. “I’ll walk you out.”
As they made their way through the dining room into reception and out onto the driveway, Carrie stayed suspiciously silent. It was only once they reached his car that Carrie said, “Can we talk, later? There’s something... Well, anyway. It would be good if we could...”
“Talk?” Nate finished for her as she trailed off. “Of course. Although, if you’re sober enough to actually string sentences together by the end of the night, then I’d say Ruth’s hen do will have been a bit of a flop.”
Carrie smiled, but there was something nervous in it. “I won’t be drunk. Too much to do for the rehearsal dinner tomorrow night.”
“Of course.” Nate opened the car door and climbed in. Carrie retreated back to the steps and, as he started the engine, he wondered what she wanted to talk about.
Unless she didn’t really mean talk.
Nate smiled. Suddenly his evening was looking up.
* * * *
By the time the hens returned from their pampering spa day, Carrie was beginning to think her shoulders would never relax into their natural position. Nate still hadn’t returned with the stags, which was actually a saving grace, since Moira and Cyb were using the main bar to finish folding wedding favors.
“You look positively blissful,” Carrie told Ruth as her cousin floated through the front door.
“It’s the champagne in the limo,” Ruth confessed. “Although the spa was pretty bloody brilliant too.”
“So you’re ready for phase two?” Carrie moved out of the way of two other women coming through with a bottle of champagne in each hand.
Ruth shook her head. “I think we’re all going to have a short rest, then we’ll meet in my room later.”
“Okay. Well, the boys were last seen in the Red Lion, but I’ve sent Nate to keep an eye on them, which might help.”
“Good.” Ruth looked relieved. “It’s not that I don’t like Graeme’s friends. It’s just...”
Carrie nodded. “You told me about the Amsterdam stag weekend.”
“Exactly,” Ruth said, with feeling.
“You know there are considerably less brothels and pot cafes in Coed-y-Capel, right?” Carrie asked.
“Just don’t want to take any chances.”
With the girls all dispatched upstairs, Carrie checked in with Izzie to see if she’d heard anything from Nate, or any other irate bar owners.
“All quiet,” Izzie said with a shake of her head. “On that front, at least. But I do have a couple of queries from guests arriving tomorrow...”
With the reservations log straightened out, Carrie moved on to the bar to check on the Seniors.
“These look fantastic,” she told them as she examined one of the butterfly favor boxes–a concession Ruth had been willing to make to her mother, to keep the wedding at the inn.
“It’d be going faster if we didn’t have to keep Stan from eating the chocolates,” Moira said, with a pointed look at Stan, whose pile of boxes was considerably smaller than the women’s.
“How many left to do?” Carrie asked.
“About another twenty,” Cyb said. “Then we’re off back to Moira’s to watch
Strictly Ballroom
. Get some tips for the next dance night.”
“Shouldn’t you be drinking champagne with your friends somewhere, anyway?” Moira asked as Carrie took a seat and started folding the nearest box into its desired shape. “Not hanging out with an invalid and a couple of pensioners.”
Carrie rolled her eyes at Nate’s gran. “You’ll be back on your feet in no time, and you know it.” She shrugged, tipping six chocolate beans into her box. “Besides, it’s weird. I’ve known Ruth forever, but her other friends? I’ve never really spent any time with them. When Ruth and I hung out, it was just us.”
“And everyone else knows each other.” Cyb nodded sadly. “That’s hard. It was a bit like that when I first came here, after my husband died.”
“Really?” It was hard for Carrie to imagine Cyb as anything other than a central part of Avalon life. “It doesn’t matter, really. I’ll probably never see them again after the wedding, anyway. And I have my own friends, here.” She smiled widely at them, and saw Stan’s cheeks turn pink.
Moira leaned over in her wheelchair and gave Carrie’s arm a gentle shove. “All the same, Ruth will miss you. A girl needs her best friend when she’s getting married. You’ll see, one day.”
“Besides,” Cyb said, tipping the last of the beans into her box. “We’re all done here.”
“Thank God for that,” Stan said, tossing his final box onto the pile. “Time to go home.” He looked up at Carrie, and there was a hint of a smile in his eyes. “You go on upstairs. We’ll clear up here.”
Carrie did as she was told and, leaving instructions with Izzie to call her when the boys got back, headed up to the bridal suite.
“You’re here!” Ruth tugged Carrie into the room and pushed her toward the oversized four poster bed. “Come on, you have to lie down to get the full effect. Your boy does good work.”
Carrie bit back an inappropriate comment and collapsed beside Ruth on the bed covers. For a moment, it was such a relief to have the weight off her feet and to be able to slip off her shoes that Carrie failed to pay attention to what she was supposed to be noticing. Then she blinked and said, “This place is like Barbie’s idea of heaven.”
“I know!” Ruth grinned at her. “Isn’t it magnificent?”
Carrie rolled onto her side. She’d never been a big fan of pink, not least because it clashed with her hair. And while Ruth was decidedly more girlie overall, she’d never seemed particularly obsessed with the color before. “What’s with all the pink?”
“It’s a hen night,” Ruth said with a shrug. “The last bastion of girlhood. My last chance as a single lady to enjoy all things pink and girly.”
“Hence the Kir Royale,” Carrie said, gesturing at the chilling champagne and bottle of cassis on the bedside table.
“And the pink balloons, bunting and stack of Eighties movies over there.” Ruth smiled. “You’re going to hate every second of it, aren’t you?”
“Of course not,” Carrie lied. Struggling to her feet, she went to inspect the DVD pile. “I’m sure I can make it through
Dirty Dancing
one more time.”
Ruth sat up and reached for the champagne glasses. “I thought you liked it.”
“The first eighty times we watched it together? Absolutely.” Carrie smiled at her friend. “Seriously, though. It’s your night. Whatever you want goes.”
“Good.” Ruth handed her a glass of perfectly mixed Kir Royale. “Because I want you to get good and drunk, then go seduce that gardener of yours.”
By the time the rest of the hens found their way to the bridal suite, all dressed in pink pajamas, Carrie had drunk three glasses of Kir and been persuaded to swap her suit for the pink
Wedding Planner
t-shirt and pajama bottoms Ruth had ordered for her from the internet.
Deciding she’d better make one last check in before things got out of hand, she called down to reception from the bedroom phone. “Any sign of them yet?”
Izzie sighed. “Didn’t I say I’d call you?”
Carrie decided it probably wasn’t the best time to point out that Izzie wasn’t always entirely reliable when it came to passing on important information. “Okay. Just...let me know.”
Izzie hung up before she reached the end of her sentence.
Ruth handed her another glass of champagne, this time without the cassis. “We’re going to need more pink stuff,” she said, dropping to the bed beside her.