The Supermodel's Best Friend (A Romantic Comedy) (13 page)

“Maybe. Or maybe I heard about your setup
with Alex. Maybe I read over your little spreadsheet and know more
than I want to about what makes you tick.” In two steps he was
right next to her. “Maybe I noticed you’re more interested in me
than him.”

She lifted her chin. “Not in any way that
matters,” she said, and stormed out.

* * *

Miles was late.

He still had no idea what a tree ceremony
was, but he’d never intended to blow it off. Since Lucy had left
his cabin, however, his mind had been elsewhere. When he finally
took a break from his brooding over what had and hadn’t happened,
he looked up at the clock and scrambled to find the map and the
steep path through the forest before he lost his nerve to see her.
Now he was hiking up a trail through clusters of towering trees and
inhaling the damp silence. He wished he could absorb the quiet into
his body.

He never, ever should have poked around her
computer. He’d done worse things, like pulling her into his lap and
kissing her, but none of that would have happened if he hadn’t
started the flirting in the first place.

He wasn’t going to lie to himself; that’s
what he’d been doing. Breaking into her computer and teasing her
was flirting. He thought she was cute, he thought Alex was a tool,
and he thought her blender-shopping approach to finding a spouse
was shallow and annoying and, yes, reminded him of his
ex-girlfriend. Maybe he’d wanted to take her down a peg because his
pride still stung from Felicia dumping him.

Or maybe he’d taken one look at her flushed
pink cheeks and her compact, fierce little body, and he’d wanted a
taste.

He picked up a curved stick and swiped at a
fern blocking his path. He had to cool it. The last thing he needed
was another woman who wanted a husband more than she wanted a
man.

The path looked simple and natural, just a
smooth ribbon of earth switchbacking up through the trees, but he
could see it was carefully maintained by human hands to be free of
mud or rocks, fallen trees, poison oak. Every couple of minutes he
passed a wooden marker with a hand-carved image of a tree. Just as
he was breaking a sweat, he reached the top of a ridge. In the
center of a clearing was a massive coastal redwood at least ten
feet in diameter. Built right next to it was a timber platform,
about twenty feet high, with a zip line extending off into the
forest.

A zip line? And the Sterlings? His mood
lifting, he approached the tree.

A dozen or so people stood around it in small
groups, looking up at the platform where a man and a woman were
preparing harnesses. Two snub-nosed electric cars were parked off
to the side. The climb was probably too much for the golf carts,
and not everyone could hike up mountains.

Or ride on zip lines.

He hoped the ceremony involved Huntley’s
parents flying through the air at fifty miles an hour. And that the
wedding videographer was around to capture it.

Lucy was there with her friends and a handful
of people he didn’t recognize. He told his body to calm down and
went over to Huntley. “I can’t believe they haven’t made a run for
it.”

Wedged between his parents, Huntley smiled at
him, but his eyes looked anxious. “They know I can’t make them,” he
whispered. “They didn’t even want to get in the car to ride up
here.”

Fawn stood awkwardly off to the side, clearly
excluded, while Huntley’s parents gave Miles the once-over of
people who’d known him when he was very young and still couldn’t
believe how much he’d grown. It always made him feel like a Saint
Bernard.

The elder Huntley strode over and held out
his hand. “Still slumming it at that nonprofit, Miles?” He squeezed
hard and gave him a serious look. “What kind of security do you
have in a place like that? Oakland, isn’t it?”

“Nice to see you again, Huntley the Second,”
Miles said with a half smile. “And the clubhouse is in Berkeley.”
The “Second” nickname had started when Miles was eleven and he
hadn’t been allowed to call him anything else since. The younger
Huntley said it probably made him feel like a regular dad—the kind
who coached soccer teams, not the kind who owned one.

Miles nodded at Huntley’s mother. She had
never wanted to be regular. “Mrs. Sterling.”

“I think you’re old enough to call me
Rosalind, Miles.” She took his hand and leaned in for an air kiss.
Softly, audible only to him, she said, “Save him, will you?”

Miles smiled noncommittally and broke away to
stand with Fawn. She was clearly eager to win over Huntley’s
parents, with clothes off the set of a L.L. Bean catalog shoot and
a big smile in spite of the obvious hostility aimed her way.

“So, who gets to go first?” he asked her.
“Strapping people to wires and pushing them off a cliff had to be
Huntley’s idea.”

“Actually, it was mine,” Fawn said. “The
wedding coordinator here at the spa made it sound
unforgettable.”

“I imagine it will be,” Rosalind said.

Miles glanced at Huntley to see if he would
jump in to stand up for Fawn, but he had a hand on the platform for
the zip line, tapping it as though checking its stability.

The dork. Miles was tempted to grab his
ankles and shake him upside down again. Even if the best man wasn’t
thrilled about the bride, the groom had to be.

Miles gave Fawn a smile. “It looks really
fun,” he said. “What do we have to do before we ride? The note said
‘ceremony.’”

Huntley’s father snorted. “Whatever it is, I
hope they get on with it. They should have warned us about the
athletic features of the event.” He scowled at the guides and their
harnesses. “Not to mention the cold.”

He and Rosalind were wearing summer-weight
shirts and slacks, no jackets, leather shoes. The fog had never
burned off and a wind was picking up.

“We were waiting for Miles,” Fawn said. “I’m
sure they’ll start in a second.”

The elder Huntley squeezed his shoulder. “So
we can blame you, Miles. I hope you don’t teach those children of
yours it’s all right to be late. Hardly the message they need to
make a place for themselves in the world.”

“They’re better than I am with the clock, I
admit,” Miles said.

The elder Huntley patted him on the back.
“All that basketball, eh? But you didn’t answer my question about
security. What kind of staff do you have?”

“The clubhouse isn’t in a dangerous
neighborhood, just industrial. Lots of biotech companies,
factories, warehouses, that sort of thing.”

“The kind of kids you’re trying to help bring
problems with them, don’t tell me they don’t. What’s your age
limit? Thirteen? Twelve?”

Miles gave him a steady look. “They’re
welcome to come as long as they want. I pay the older ones to run
the summer camps. I’ve got a girl right now who comes in every
Thursday afternoon to help with grant proposals. She’s going to Cal
in the fall.”

“A girl, one with that kind of ambition,
sure. But aren’t you dealing mostly with delinquent males?”

Miles saw Huntley close his eyes and could
almost hear him praying. But Miles was used to the insults and the
snap dismissals. “No,” he said calmly. “They’re just kids who need
a place to go after school. All walks of life.”

“You telling me the professors and doctors
pay to send their children to your inner-city gym?”

Miles managed a smile. “Some of them.”

Rosalind made an impatient noise and took her
husband’s arm. “It really is freezing up here. Fawn, could you
please go and see what’s holding them up? Any longer and I’ll have
to request a ride back to the lodge.”

Fawn hesitated, but when Huntley said
nothing, she blasted them all with her stunning smile and strode
away toward a group of people on the other side of the
clearing.

“Pretty girl, Huntley, but not very bright,
is she?” Rosalind said, watching her walk away. “When the looks
go—and they will, even with all the help your money can buy—what
will be left to hold you to her?”

Huntley laughed nervously and put an arm
around her. “My mother the romantic.”

“I’m serious. Even with a prenup, marriage is
nothing to joke about.”

“Even with a prenup.” Huntley winked at
Miles, pretending his mother was just being her usual comic self.
“I better go see what’s holding us up.” He scurried away.

“That boy needs to grow some balls,” the
elder Huntley said.

“I’ll go see if I can help him with that.”
Miles strode after his friend and caught his arm just as he was
about to climb up the ladder to the platform. As though he could
just fly away, leaving Fawn behind to talk to the staffer with the
walkie-talkie. “Don’t you dare.”

“The sooner we get this moving, the better,”
Huntley said.

“The sooner you stand up to them, the
better.”

Huntley choked out a laugh and ran his hand
through his pale hair. “Really? And then spend the rest of the week
trapped at the resort with them? No, thank you.”

“You owe it to Fawn.”

“I owe it to her not to cause a scene with my
parents over her in public,” Huntley said. “My parents have been
brilliant about maintaining the family’s privacy. Even when my
sister started her gay rights campaign, she always kept it classy,
never let on Mom and Dad were privately giving her shit. I’m not
going to be the first Sterling to screw that up.”

“You want to keep it
classy
?” Miles
gripped his shoulders and swiveled away from the platform. “Go
stand next to the girl you’re going to marry. Show everyone whose
side you’re on. Which, in case you’ve forgotten, is hers.”

“What’s your problem? I thought you didn’t
even believe in marriage anymore.”

“Not bad ones.” Miles gave him a shove and
turned his attention to the one person standing near the tree he
couldn’t ignore any longer.

* * *

Lucy watched Miles talk to the Sterlings on
the other side of the platform. They looked happier to see him than
they had anyone else.

“Kind of standoffish, aren’t they?” Geri,
Fawn’s mother, asked her.

After a brief introduction, the Sterlings had
moved away to the other side of the tree. No friendly chitchat
between the parents of the bride and groom. Not even a smile.

Geri lowered her voice and gestured down at
the waterproof jacket and hiking boots she wore. “Were we supposed
to dress up? I thought this was just some fun nature thing.”

Lucy gave her a squeeze. She’d spent a lot of
afternoons in Geri’s kitchen, eating normal foods her eccentric,
academic father never learned how to cook—things like chicken with
bones, fresh vegetables, anything more complicated than toast. “You
look fine. They’re just from the East Coast. Probably thought all
of California was hot. And I think the zip line was a surprise to
everybody but Fawn and Huntley.”

Fawn’s father, Larry, was remarried, and
stood with his wife Val a few feet away talking to Betty and
Krista. They were all dressed in warm clothes—fleece, jeans, hiking
sneakers. Lucy waved but stayed with Geri.

“You’d think all that money could pay for
better manners,” Geri said, still watching the Sterlings.

“Their way of showing they’re not thrilled
about the marriage, I suppose.”

“I meant Richie Rich,” Geri said through her
teeth.

“Don’t you like Huntley?”

“Look at him over there. He’s not even
looking at her. Like he’s ashamed of her.”

Lucy had been too distracted by the large man
in the navy sweatshirt next to Huntley. Miles seemed to be arguing
with him about something.

Geri sighed. “Ignore me. It all just happened
so fast. I’m just surprised they didn’t elope. Sudden weddings
between strangers should happen on the cheap in Reno. You know how
much this week must be costing them? I had breakfast in that
restaurant—did you know every stupid thing in there is white? And
afterward I’m sitting there waiting for the check and then finally
learn, oh no, it’s all paid for!”

Lucy nodded. Forced herself to turn so Miles
was out of her line of vision. “Ate there last night.”

“I wish they’d told me. I felt like an idiot.
Tried to pay for my free oatmeal with a debit card.” She squeezed
Lucy’s arm and whispered in her ear, “I should have gotten the crab
omelet with champagne!”

“Tomorrow. I’ll eat it with you.”

They laughed together. “How are you, Lucy?
Fawn told me you broke up with Dan. It was so many years. Is it bad
to say I’m relieved?”

“I don’t know. Is it bad for me to
be
relieved?”

“Thatagirl.” Geri squeezed her again. “I
always thought you were settling. I know how badly you want a
family, but take it from me, some men just aren’t worth it.” She
glanced at her ex.

“But without him,” Lucy said softly, “you
wouldn’t have Fawn.”

Geri sighed. “True enough. And look at her,
so lovely. Never ceases to amaze me that gorgeous creature came out
of my body.”

Lucy smiled at the old joke but then noticed
the hostility in Huntley’s mother’s face. “Don’t worry. If Huntley
doesn’t stick up for her I’ll key his private jet.”

Geri’s face twisted with worry. “She even
signed the prenup. I told her, whatever you do, just make sure he
loves you. And don’t sign anything!”

Suddenly Miles was there at her side.
“They’re going to start in a minute. A staffer stopped me to
apologize for the delay.”

Pretending her heart wasn’t pounding, Lucy
stepped away from Miles and introduced him to Geri. Geri admired
him with her sharp brown eyes and gave Lucy a raised eyebrow before
drifting away with her ex-husband and his wife. They got along
pretty well as long as nobody was drinking.

Miles and Lucy stood there awkwardly, saying
nothing, watching Huntley and Fawn doing the same thing a dozen
yards away. Lucy knew her cheeks were hot and was grateful for the
chill in the wind.