One More Taste (41 page)

“Oh Gosh, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize I'd left the volume on. Excuse me,” she murmured with a smile of apology as she set her fork down and lifted the phone.

The text read,
This wedding is bananas crazy.

It wasn't from her sister, but from her friend Remedy, the head wedding planner at Briscoe Ranch. In Skye's ample experience at the resort, all weddings fell somewhere on the crazy spectrum, so tonight's affair would have to be extra gonzo for Remedy to text something like that.

Skye waved her phone at Vince. “Sorry, it's my mom. Just a sec.” Oh, how the lies rolled off her tongue. But she couldn't find it in her heart to care as she let her fingers fly over the touch keys.

Crazier than the date I'm on?
she texted.

Looking at Mrs. Biaggi and Vince, she forced her smile to stay apologetic while waiting for Remedy's reply. It came a minute later.

Better hurry if you want to see the maid of honor doing tequila shots from the best man's belt buckle flask with no hands.

That did sound bananas crazy—and exactly what Skye needed to salvage her Saturday night. A zing of delicious, addictive adrenaline pulsed through her veins. It was only a small fix of her preferred vice—nowhere near enough to satisfy the rebellious streak she'd been cursed with—but it was way more of a thrill than she'd expected out of the night.

“Aw, shoot,” Skye said, taking her purse handles in one hand and waving her phone in the other as she stood. Her napkin fell from her lap to the floor, but she didn't dare risk losing momentum by stooping to pick it up. “My mom needs me. My dad, with his bad back … he fell again and he's stuck. She can't get him off the floor on her own.” Which was kind of the truth. Sort of. He'd fallen a few times lately and had needed Skye's help to hoist him up again.

She sent up a quick mental prayer for forgiveness for using her dad's disability as an excuse. Then she dashed off a second prayer for forgiveness about lying in the first place, covering all her bases. One thing she
wouldn't
feel guilty about was running out on their free meal.

Vince looked as lost as a boy who was just told his dog had to visit a farm far, far away. He poked at his half-eaten meatball. “But our date's not over.”

Yeah, buddy, it is.
“I'll text you.”

Another lie, another prayer. Such was life.

Skye grabbed a dinner roll from the table, nodded to a still agape Mrs. Biaggi, and dashed through the front door. She'd driven herself to the restaurant, a rule she'd learned the hard way a few years back while on another excruciating blind date. In fact, she'd come to think of inviting a guy to pick her up at home for a date as a big relationship step—one that the men she'd dated had seldom made it to.

Racing the clock, hoping to catch the maid of honor's and groom's belt buckle antics, Skye arrived at Briscoe Ranch Resort's in record time. After tossing her car keys to her cousin Marco who was working valet that night, she hot-footed it through the lobby and ascended the grand staircase, headed to the ballroom on the second level.

What she saw as she crested the stairs didn't disappoint. With a small crowd surrounding them, Remedy and her assistant Tabby were pushing a luggage trolley through a small crowd of onlookers. Seated on the base of the trolley was a very,
very
drunk young woman who slumped against one of the trolley's brass poles as her eyes fluttered open and closed. The voluminous yellow bridesmaid's dress she wore billowed out around her like she was being eaten alive by Pac-Man.

Skye's mouth fell open at the sight, but she sprang to action again when the yellow dress caught in the trolley's wheels, and rushed over to free the material. “Is this the maid of honor?”

Remedy flashed a wry smile. “Oh, yes. And it's time for her to turn in for the night.” She patted the woman on the top of her elaborate, hairspray-crispy updo. “Sound good, Kimberly?”

Kimberly groaned. Her head lolled to the side.

“I think it's a little past time,” Tabby muttered.

With Skye clearing the crowd from their path, Remedy and Tabby wheeled the trolley to the elevators, where Remedy got on her phone to request that someone meet them at Kimberly's room with the master key to let them in, since they hadn't snagged her clutch purse during their hustle to get her off the bride and groom's sweetheart table and out of the ballroom.

“So, your date was a bust?” Remedy asked Skye once they were in an elevator, headed to the fifth floor.

Skye pressed her fingers to her temples. “This guy was even worse than the last one. Remember him? He kept steering the conversation back to his plant collection and making double entendres about propagating succulents.”

Remedy snorted out a laugh. “This guy was worse?”

“He took me to dinner at his parents' restaurant so he wouldn't have to pay and so they could scope out the merchandise.”

Remedy gave her a playful hit on the shoulder. “Ew!”

“Right? I know I said I wanted to settle down with a nice, vanilla, Catholic guy, but Vince Biaggi was a little too vanilla. I have to believe that in the danger-and-drama spectrum of Vince on one end and Mike the Mistake on the other, there's got to be some middle ground.”

Mike the Mistake was Skye's ex-husband. Except she couldn't quite get the word
ex-husband
past her lips. Partly because, eight years later, she was still reeling in disbelief that she'd ever been that out-of-control twenty-year-old who'd allowed the thrill of rebellion to intoxicate her into marrying a lion keeper with an international traveling circus—even if they'd only lasted for three months. And partly out of respect for her faith and her parents, both of which strictly forbid divorce. That three-month marriage had caused her nothing but pain and had resulted in the greatest sin of her life—a sin she could never afford to make again. Which was why she had to get it right next time when it came to choosing a mate, because next time would be forever, for real.

On the fifth floor, they rounded the corner and found Skye's mom leaning against the wall just outside of Kimberley's hotel room door. Clad in the resort's standard-issue middle management uniform of a burgundy skirt suit, she held herself with the noble bearing that came with being the fierce loving, no-nonsense heart of both the resort and the Martinez family. She'd put on some pounds since Skye's dad's health had deteriorated a few years earlier, and they'd pleasantly softened her compact, athletic build in a way that made Skye want to hug her every chance she got—not that her mother appreciated any random display of affection.

“Hey, Mom,” Skye said. “What are you doing here? What good is it being in charge if you keep working Saturday nights?”

Her mom flashed the key fob at room 524's door, then shouldered it open and held it for Remedy and the luggage trolley. “Your father was driving me crazy. You know how grouchy he gets when his back's hurting him. I made him a poultice of herbs, brewed up my abuela's tea, and sent him to bed.” She frowned sympathetically at Kimberly as Remedy and Tabby wheeled her in. “Poor thing.”

“Kimberly made some bad choices tonight,” Tabby said as she pushed.

Her mom shifted her focus to Remedy, a brow raised in a bid for more details, but Remedy just shook her head. “It involves the best man's belt buckle. You don't want to know.”

“You're right,” Skye's mom said, following them farther into the room. “Where are her friends? Why aren't they taking care of her?”

“The DJ had them busy running through the gamut of eighties dance styles at the reception,” Remedy said. “Kimberly was attempting the Running Man on top of a table while a couple of groomsman were filming up her skirt when I found her.”

“Bastards,” her mom muttered. “Speaking of which … Skye, I thought you were on a date tonight.”

The trolley wheels snagged on something, giving Skye a chance to look around. The room was a wreck. Every horizontal surface was covered with discarded champagne flutes, makeup, plastic dry cleaning bags, and glitter. So much glitter.

Skye reached down to see what the wheels had snagged on and pulled up a blonde weave. With a shudder, she tossed it onto the nightstand. “I ditched him to hang out with Remedy.”

Remedy, Tabby, and Skye made careful work positioning the trolley next to the nearest queen-sized bed. Maybe Kimberly could be roused enough to crawl up into it.

Her mom cringed. “That bad?”

Skye was spared from answering by a sudden retching sound. The next thing she knew, Kimberly had hurled tequila and God-knows-what-else all over her dress, the floor, and the duvet.

Remedy and Tabby sprinted for the hall, squealing and gagging in disgust, but Skye and her mom merely groaned at the idea of what a pain in the ass it would be to clean it all up. Decades working hotel housekeeping did wonders for a woman's tolerance for coping with every manner of bodily fluid.

Gesturing to the mess, Skye shot her mom a wry look. “Still more fun than my blind date tonight.”

With a roll of her eyes, her mom got on her phone. “Hey, Annika? It's Yessica. Would you bring your cleaning trolley and a new duvet to room 524 please?” To Remedy and Tabby, who stood in the hallway, eyes averted from the room, she called, “You two can get back to the wedding. We'll take it from here.”

Some might not like working with their mothers, but Skye didn't mind. Except for a brief stint as a waitress during high school, she'd worked for her mom all her life. And she was proud of it. She and her family were the backbone of Briscoe Ranch Resort for nearly four decades. Her father had run the maintenance department until his back forced him onto disability, while her mom was the head of housekeeping—a mantle she hinted at passing to Skye someday soon.

Skye made short work of helping Kimberly off the trolley and out of her dress, leaving her in Spanx and a bra, while her mom fetched wet wash cloths and towels.

“You're too picky,” her mom told Skye as she toweled off Kimberly's hair.

Yes, Skye was picky. She had to be. The next man she fell in love with had to be forever, no mistakes. “This is rural Texas. There are only so many men. All of the eligible bachelors who work at the resort or go to our church or live in town, I've either dated them or they're not interested in me. There's no one left, mama.”

She swabbed Kimberly's face and arms with a wet washcloth, cooing to her as she worked. Skye had endured her fair share of drunken regret back in her early twenties, so she knew how awful the poor girl must be feeling.

Annika arrived pushing a housekeeping trolley. She assessed the situation with a frown and a shake of her head. “Every weekend, every wedding,” she grumbled as she walked to the bed.

Skye's mom left Skye to attend to Kimberly while she and Annika stripped the soiled duvet from the bed and stuffed it into a laundry bag.

“I can help you with your man problem, mija,” her mom said as she pushed the voluminous skirt of Kimberly's bridesmaid dress into a second laundry bag.

It was an offer her mom had made before. There was just one problem. “I don't believe in old world magic, Mom.”

With Annika busy mopping, Skye's mom watched with pursed, disapproving lips as Skye helped Kimberly crawl between the bed sheets. “It's your generation. You don't appreciate tradition. If there isn't an app for it, it doesn't exist.”

Skye had heard that argument before, but she knew better. If her mom's old world magic actually worked, then her dad would be pain-free and back at work. If the old magic worked, then maybe Skye's marriage would have, too, along with everything else that went wrong during those fleeting months. Her arms, working of their own accord, wrapped around her belly. “Mom, there's no one.”

Her mom grabbed a water bottle from the trolley and set it on Kimberly's nightstand. Then she squared up to Skye and took her hands. “Let me help you find someone to love.”

Annika mopped around their shoes. “Yessica helped me last year when Mitch wouldn't commit. She gave me this magic coin that I stuffed in my bra and—
bam
—he proposed.”

Skye's resolve started to crack. She took a long, hard look at Kimberly, slack-jawed and drooling, and going to bed alone—the perfect embodiment of Skye's wild, rebellious, drama-addicted, terminally single past. Not a very pretty picture. Not at all. “Okay, Mom. I give up. Let's do this your way.”

Even if it didn't work—which it wouldn't, she was certain—then at least her mom would stop needling her about trying such ridiculous, old-fashioned methods. Then she could get back to her equally ineffective, often ridiculous modern day methods of online dating and ill-advised blind dates arranged by eighty-year-old Bingo players. The thought nearly made her wince.

Annika gave a quiet golf clap at Skye's agreement, while Skye's mom straightened up, an impish gleam in her eyes that reminded Skye of her fondest memories of her abuela, the two of them sneaking cookies in the kitchen for breakfast while her mother was in the bedroom ironing.

Without warning, she plucked a hair from Skye's head.

“Ow!”

Impervious to Skye's shock, her mom dropped the hair into a mug lifted from the coffee caddy near the television. “This is going to be great, mija. You'll see.”

Skye rubbed the tender spot on her scalp and gathered around the coffee maker along with Annika to watch. With Kimberly's snores as their soundtrack, Skye's mom brewed a cup of coffee right into the same mug that contained Skye's hair. Then, from the housekeeping trolley's mini bar replenishment kit, she pulled a bottle of bourbon and poured it in while chanting under her breath in Spanish, the words said too low and quick for Skye to understand them. Then she pinched silver glitter from the bathroom counter and sprinkled it over the magic brew.