Skinny Bitch Gets Hitched (5 page)

Holy hells bells, this was embarrassing. I glanced over at Zach, but he was deep in conversation with a cousin, thankfully missing the entire thing. As I walked over, I overhead at least ten people joke to Zach that they expected to be invited to his wedding. Again, strained smile.

Ya'll are ruining his surprise,
I wanted to shout at them.
Leave the guy alone. Getting married is about two people who love each other, not all this crap.

Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than for Zach and me to take a long walk down the beach, hand in hand. For him to tell me he loved me, that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. I'd run Clementine's just fine with Zach as my partner in crime.

Just as I joined Zach, his father disengaged from a group and came over to us. “Is this some kind of vegetarian cake?” Cornelius Jeffries asked as he approached us, forking a piece of cake in his mouth. He wore a suit and his trademark Stetson.
Cornelius looked like a sixtysomething version of his sons—tall and muscular, his thick, dark hair shot through with gray. “It's not half-bad.”

A vegetarian cake, ha.
Yes, Cornelius, there's no ground beef in
this
cake
. “Actually, I'm a
vegan
,” I told him. “But the cake isn't. Full of eggs and butter.” In the name of friendship, sometimes you had to get your hands dirty.

“Now it makes sense,” he said, taking another bite before getting pulled away into conversation with a group of men.

Zach was about to say something to me, but his cousin Griff, whom Zach had introduced to me earlier, pulled him aside with a maniacal look on his face. Seriously, the guy—early thirties, like Zach—looked to be freaking out, but in an excited way. I took a sip of my champagne and watched as Zach and Griff headed over by the huge planters in front of the hotel, as if hiding from view. But through the stalks and leaves of a giant bird of paradise, I saw Zach reach into his pocket and hand Griff the black velvet ring box.

Cute, I thought. He must have confided in Griff about proposing to me, and Griff wanted to see the ring—for some un-guy-like reason.

They shifted a bit farther behind the huge plant. Griff opened the little velvet box, took a deep breath, smiled that maniacal smile again, and then closed it. Next came a cousinly embrace. As they headed out from behind the giant plant, Zach caught up to some relatives heading into the hotel, and I watched Griff go over to a blonde in a short, pink dress. He led
her farther down the beach, then got down on one knee—the black velvet box proffered in his hand.

Wait a minute. That was
my
ring. Wasn't it?

A second later, she jumped up and he swung her around.

My ring on her finger.

My hard-won yes coming from her mouth.

I
wasn't proud of my next move, but after Cornelius Jeffries's third story of roping a buck at a dude ranch out West, and the bajillionth toast to Griffin and his new fiancée, I faked an emergency at the restaurant and got the hell out of the hotel lounge (where the family had migrated once the reception had wound down) with its wall-to-wall Jeffrieses.

Rejoice!
the little devil on my shoulder screeched with a jab of his pitchfork.
You just dodged the bridal bullet!

You didn't want it, then you wanted it, now you're not getting it,
the angel said with a strum of her harp.
That's what you get for snooping
.

Zach glanced at his watch. “It's just after eleven, and the place is closed. Can't it wait till tomorrow?”

Nope,
I thought, my stomach churning.
It can't
. “I'm really
sorry, but I'd better go handle it. I'll see you tomorrow.” I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

He looked at me quizzically, but handed me the keys to his car and I bolted.

Actually, there
was
an emergency (my feeling like a big, fat fool), so I didn't feel
that
bad about taking off on the after party. And I did go straight to the restaurant, the only place that could set me straight, make me forget what had just happened.

Remind me of what I was supposed to be thinking about, what I was supposed to be focusing on. It
wasn't
getting married. Jeez.

I parked in the tiny alley behind Clementine's No Crap Café and headed in the back door, the place dead quiet and sparkling clean. Just a few hours ago, the noise in the kitchen would have been deafening on a busy Saturday night, but now, at eleven thirty, it was my peaceful sanctuary, where I could shake off feeling like a dumbhead and work on my rustic potpie.

I put a Clementine's No Crap Café apron over my midnight-blue halter dress, took off the four-inch heels, cranked up the
Saturday Night Feve
r soundtrack on the iPod dock, and got to work at my stainless steel station, slicing carrots into chunks and chopping onions. Sweet potato for the whole-wheat-biscuit crust or pumpkin? It would take forever to bake a sweet potato right now, so I'd use pumpkin tonight and see how it came out.

I added mushrooms, peppers, peas, corn, some fresh thyme, pepper, and sea salt to the carrots and onions, then
brushed the veggies with extra-virgin olive oil and slid them into the oven to roast. Mmms, the smell of caramelizing onions never got old. As I started pressing dry the tofu, I kept thinking about that ring, so of course I started pressing too hard. Slam. Wham. Bam. Shitzam.

Focus, Clementine
, I ordered myself.
That's what you're here for
. I put aside the tofu to start the crust when I heard my phone ping with a text.

I'm out back.—Z

I should have known he'd come after me. I went to the back door and let him in.

“The emergency was
cooking
? I smell something good.”

The emergency is that I didn't want to marry you ten hours ago. Now I do. What am I supposed to do with that? Think fast, Clem.
“One of the McMann twins thought he left a burner on, and then when I got here, I realized I might as well work on my rustic potpie for the
Times
reporter. I only have six weeks, and—”

“Can you bring over the ingredients to my place? There's something I wanted to talk to you about.” His expression was dead serious. He looked kind of . . . nervous.

He was dumping me. He was moving to New York. Hong Kong, maybe. He wanted to see other people. “What about?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level.

He took a deep breath. The kind of deep breath you take when you're about to tell someone something he or she won't want to hear. “Let's go. We'll take Charlie for a walk on the beach.”

That's what you get for snooping,
Charlie seemed to be saying to me when we got back to Zach's house just after midnight.

It was crazy that I felt like a popped balloon. If I'd never found that ring box, I would never have been thinking about marriage.
Just blink yourself back to six o'clock this morning, before you stuck your hand in that pocket. Before you snooped.

Before Zach wanted to dump you.

Except once again, Charlie's leash was being clipped on him, which brought me back to that morning.

I just wanted to go home and complain to Sara about what an idiot I was, but she was likely at Joe's anyway.

Zach and I headed toward the Pier, still lit up. Not many people were on the beach this late, but we passed a few couples, walking hand in hand, just like us.

“You okay?” Zach asked, Charlie scampering ahead of us on his leash. “You got quiet at the after party, and then you took off. Did someone really leave a burner on or did my family just talk you to death?”

I smiled. “I love your family. I had a great time today.”

“I'm glad to hear that. But you haven't met my mother yet,” he added with a smile.

Huh. Maybe he wasn't dumping me. “I'm sure I'll love her too.”

Zach had told me a little about his mother, Dominique Jeffries Huffington. For the past few years, they'd been on the outs
and had only recently repaired their relationship. Zach rarely talked about it. His father and mother had been archenemies for years and were never in same room—or stretch of beach—together, so Dominique hadn't been invited to the wedding.

“My cousin Griff—the guy who got engaged at the wedding,” Zach said, throwing a little piece of driftwood for Charlie to fetch, “he was so afraid he'd lose the ring he asked me to hold it for him until it was time to propose.”

Heart clench. “Good thing she said yes, then.”

He nodded and tightened his grip on my hand, stopping and looking out at the ocean. “Remember when we took that walk on the beach with Charlie last summer and held hands for the first time? I think I fell in love with you that night.” As Charlie came running over with a stick, Zach stopped and moved a lock of my hair from my face to behind my ear. His hand lingered on my cheek, caressed my chin, and the expression in his eyes was so . . . tender.

“I remember,” I said. That night, we'd laughed over Charlie looking for the sticks Zach kept throwing for him, and I'd felt as if I were in the middle of an incredibly good dream. “It was soon after we met. You were telling me about how much you loved that we're from the same place, that we both grew up on farms.”

Zach and I were both from farm country three hours north of Los Angeles, but the fifty-acre organic-vegetable farm I'd grown up on and the thousands-acre cattle ranch where Zach had grown up were night and day.

Sometimes, such as now, I felt so close to Zach, so connected to him. Getting engaged, not getting engaged. Who gave a fuck? We were together, had a good thing going, and that was all that mattered. Unless he
was
about to tell me he was moving to New York or Paris or Sydney.

“Close your eyes,” Zach said.

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

I closed my eyes, listening to the whoosh of the ocean, the breeze stirring my hair.

“Open,” he said.

I slowly opened my eyes and gasped. What?

He held out an open velvet ring box. Nestled inside was an even more beautiful diamond ring than the one I'd seen earlier. Big, perfect, round diamond in an antique setting, the platinum band studded with smaller diamonds.

I stood there, unable to speak, unable to breathe.

“Clementine Cooper, I love you more than anything in the world.”

“I love you too,” I whispered. Mind blown.

“Will you marry me?” he asked, lifting my chin.

Only the mini-angel was around this time. “I want to marry you more than anything. I love you, Zach. So, so much.”

“Me too,” he whispered back, and slid the ring on my finger.

F
irst the ring wasn't a surprise and freaked me out. Then it was a surprise and freaked me out even more—in a good way. When had Zach Jeffries not kept me on my toes?