Hawaiian Wedding Page 3

  Reaching over to cover Remy’s hand with his, Lane wrapped his fingers around Remy’s ring. The gold felt slightly warm beneath his touch. “This says otherwise. How’s Chell working out?”

  Remy grimaced and downed half his beer in one swallow. “She isn’t. If I had any other option, I’d kick her to the curb in a heartbeat. No offense, but she sucks.”

  With a laugh, Lane told him, “None taken. I don’t even know her anymore really. You just said you wanted someone who lived in Hawaii and she fit the bill.” He leaned against Remy, letting the intimacy of their booth hide his hand as he eased it off the table and into his lover’s lap. It curved over Remy’s thigh, angling between his legs.

  Remy smirked and scooted closer, opening his legs so Lane’s hand could press against the crotch of his jeans.

  “Hm-mmm,” Lane murmured. “And here you are trying to tell me my lines don’t work. Looks like I picked you up no problem, doesn’t it? Already putty in my hand…”

  Scooting down a little in the booth, Remy thrust his hips up to push himself against Lane. Through the denim of his jeans, Lane could feel the budding erection stiffening in his briefs. “Something in your hands,” Remy agreed.

  Giving his lover a quick squeeze, Lane said, “So tell me what’s up with Chell.”

  “Nothing, that’s the problem.” Remy dropped his head onto Lane’s shoulder and sighed heavily. “Two weeks ago I sent her my to-do list. You know, things that need to get done before we get there. Airline tickets, hotel rooms, wedding venue, priest or officiator or whatever you want to call it, reception area, caterer, photographer, flowers, tuxes, cars, yadda.”

  Lane laughed softly. “You mean your list of demands.”

  “My list of things we need to make this day go off without a hitch,” Remy corrected. “And I scaled it back even. I left all the details up to her like she asked. I just told her we had invited this many people, and we knew at least the immediate family was coming, so we’d need a dozen plane tickets and five rooms—”

  “Refresh my memory,” Lane interrupted. “Who’s that all for again?”

  Remy held out one hand, fingers open, and ticked off the people they knew were going to be attending. “Kate and Mike and Braden, one room. Your sister Angie, her husband, their baby, second room. My parents, third. Your parents, fourth. And the couple of honor makes five.”

  Lane had been surprised to learn his parents and sister insisted on attending, even when the wedding would be held so far away. When they found out Remy was working with an agent on the island, they’d asked if Chell could make their travel arrangements, as well. It was decided they should all stay at the same hotel, for convenience’s sake, and she would book them as a group to cut costs. Lane and Remy had discussed it at length, and had decided that they would foot some of the bill from their families’ travel expenses as a holiday surprise. Going through Chell then made everything easier—she would charge their credit card, and they would turn around and pass on a smaller portion of the actual cost to their families. Lane had a credit card with a ton of reward points saved up on it that he could cash in, too, to help with the expense.

  “So she has your list,” Lane said, sipping his beer. He signaled the bartender for another round, then grabbed a handful of Chex Mix to munch on. They were waiting for chili cheese fries, which should’ve been out already, but the bar was packed for a Wednesday night, thanks to the number of rowdy planners and architects filling the place. Patting Remy’s thigh, he told his lover, “Not everyone has the same sense of urgency you do, hon. The wedding’s eight months away. I’m sure she’s hard at work—”

  Remy sighed again. “That’s just it. She isn’t.” At the look Lane gave him, he explained, “When the first week went by without a response, I resent the email and was like, did you get this? A few days later, when I still hadn’t heard anything, I dug out the first message she’d sent with her contact info and called her cell.”

  “And?” Lane grinned. “Let me guess. She was at the florist picking out roses for the arrangements and wanted to know if you wanted red or white.”

  Remy’s face soured. “No. She was at someplace called the Pipe where she said there was a gnarly surf competition underway and she’d be there for the next month and a half.” He widened his eyes in disbelief, so annoyed at the thought of Chell going about her daily business when he obviously had work he wanted her to do. Lane had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing out loud. “What the hell, man? Then—then! Then she wanted me to send her a thousand dollars so she could start working on the list I sent her, because she’d spent all her cash on the entry fee for the competition!”

  Lane frowned hard, trying not to smirk. “What’d you tell her?”

  “I told her hell no!” Remy’s voice turned shrill enough to make several people glance in their direction.

  Lane squeezed his leg and Remy calmed a little. “I told her to have the vendors invoice me,” Remy said. “I’m not giving her squat over and above her personal fee because I already know she’ll throw it away on surfing and who knows what else.”

  Fortunately at that moment the bartender arrived with their fries and Lane’s second beer, and Lane didn’t have to respond. He didn’t know what he would’ve said if he had. He suspected Remy was right.

  Chapter 3

  For a while, Remy managed to heed Lane’s advice and let Chell work at her own pace, even if he felt she wasn’t getting anything done. But he had other things to deal with, and it was easy to let day-to-day life eclipse the upcoming wedding, which was still nothing more than a date on the last page of his calendar at this point. If he thought too much about the details of the ceremony—the impending fourteen-hour, cross-country flight, the cost of living out of a hotel for two weeks, the rehearsal and the ceremony itself and the reception afterwards, his family and friends, Lane’s family, God!—when he let himself dwell on it all, he started to hyperventilate and wanted to pass out.

  So yes, let Chell take that on for now.

  Remy had real life to contend with. In March, Lane turned thirty-nine; “the first of many,” he quipped. But because they were in the midst of grants, they didn’t get the chance to celebrate. When grants were turned in, Remy promised a little getaway together to unwind, but he had Braden the first weekend, and Braden’s ninth birthday was the weekend after that. Now that Braden thought Lane was cool, he was invited to the boy’s birthday party. “We can’t say no,” Lane argued when Remy tried to beg off. “Kate said Mike was coming.”

  “Oh, so now I have to one-up my ex?” Remy joked.

  Lane gave him a sardonic smirk. “Well, yeah. You have the hotter boyfriend.”

  That earned Lane a kiss. “True that.”

  Once grants were submitted, a quarter of the year was already gone, and summer was just around the corner. Many of the government funded projects Remy’s office had submitted the year before were beginning to break ground, so he spent a lot of time driving to localities around the state to ensure the various elements were coming together. He had public meetings to attend, construction plans to review, monetary drawdowns to approve, labor compliance to submit. When he was in the office, he was on the phone or answering email, shuffling papers, making travel arrangements for his next jaunt out to another part of the state. The only downtime he got was the occasional business lunch he managed to sneak in with Lane, and of course, the evenings he spent in his lover’s embrace.

  On weekends, the last thing he wanted was to worry about the wedding. Lane kept telling him to trust Chell, and it finally seemed to be working. When she realized Remy wasn’t about to give her his credit card information or send her a large retainer, she quickly funneled all invoices to him to pay. The few pointed questions he’d asked early on about vendors ended up with her leaving all final decisions up to him, which is really what he’d wanted anyway—she simply recommended four or five local restaurants and florists and chapels, gave her opinions on hotels and bands and venues, com
piled all the information into a spreadsheet complete with websites where he could look at the places himself, and let him pick and choose. Because, as he’d reminded her on more than one occasion, it really was his wedding here. He was the one getting married. She was simply going to walk away with a hefty check at the end of the day, and if they were lucky, Remy would never have to hear from her again.

  The one snag came in early August when Chell emailed him about the airfare. She wanted to coordinate the flights and the hotels because she claimed to have an in somehow and could get him a great group rate. He explained they would all be coming in on different flights, so he didn’t know how anyone would consider them a “group.” He and Lane would be leaving from Richmond a few days before Christmas, because they wanted to spend some time alone on the island relaxing before their family and friends descended for the wedding. They would also be staying later than everyone else, since they intended to extend the wedding into a honeymoon. While Kate would be flying out of Richmond, as well, she planned on coming after the holiday was over, bringing Braden and Mike with her.

  But Lane’s family lived in New Jersey, and would be flying out of Newark, and Remy’s parents had turned nomadic after retirement, cashing in their home for an RV. It took some doing to pin them down into committing to be somewhere at any particular time anymore, and his mother had actually wondered if they couldn’t maybe somehow find a ship or boat to ferry them out to Hawaii at a leisurely pace. “You know, like an RV on the sea,” she’d said when Remy told her about the wedding over the phone. “Do they have those?”

  “They’re called cruise ships,” Remy told her. “There are Hawaiian cruises but I don’t think you’re allowed to get off at the islands and stay off. You’ll have to take a plane. We have to buy the tickets now.”

  “So early?” his mother complained. “December’s so far away. We don’t know where we’ll be by then.”

  Remy sighed. How someone as meticulous and organized as he was came from parents as discombobulated as his were, he’d never know. The very thought of waking up in the back of an RV parked on the side of the road somewhere and just starting the engine to begin his day made him shudder. “Well, pick somewhere and show up in time to make your flight. You have half a year to get there.”

  “What if we change our minds?” she countered.

  “The tickets are non-refundable,” Remy said. “So come or don’t come, it’s up to you. But if you can pick any airport to fly out of, make it somewhere in Texas or California, because then you’re less likely to have any layovers. How’s that sound? Can you be somewhere like that by December?”

  His mother cooed, “California sounds nice.”

  In the end, Remy told Chell to book tickets for his parents out of San Diego, because if he waited for them to make up their minds, they’d wait too long and the costs would skyrocket. He told his mother where to be and when, and figured that was the best he could do, short of putting them on the plane himself. He also gave her the names of Lane’s parents, Lane’s sister and her family, and Kate, Mike, and Braden, as well as Lane and himself. A few co-workers who had shown interest in attending the wedding also wanted to take Chell up on her discounted travel rate, but Remy had them contact her themselves, since he didn’t want to confuse her too much. If she managed to get everyone flying out of the right airport, his opinion of her would go up slightly.

  * * * *

  At the end of August, Remy turned forty, a birthday he would’ve rather no one made that big a deal about. Though Lane knew it, he still treated Remy to a night out. They shared a lovely meal at a steakhouse downtown, then met Kate and Braden for gelato at a little Italian cafe in the West End. By the time they returned to Remy’s apartment, both men were pleasantly buzzed from the wine and the food and each other. As Remy fumbled to get the key in the lock, he noticed a FedEx envelope tucked in between the door and its jamb. “Hey, look. A birthday present,” he said.

  Lane plucked the envelope from Remy’s fingers. “It’s from Shelly. What’d she send you?”

  Wrestling to unlock the door, Remy told him, “Open it and see.”

  Inside the apartment, Lane tore open the envelope and pulled out the sheaf of papers inside. Remy riffled through them as Lane leaned his chin on his lover’s shoulder. “What is it?”

  Skimming the cover letter, Remy said, “Our tickets, I think. Itineraries, shit she could’ve emailed but didn’t, for some reason. Signed contracts and receipts for my records. Nothing I have to go through tonight.”

  Quickly he crammed them back into the envelope and tossed the whole thing onto the counter. Turning, he caught Lane around the waist and pressed his lips to Lane’s. His lover tasted cold from the gelato, and the lingering wine on the back of Lane’s tongue took Remy’s breath away. “Come here, you,” he murmured, hugging Lane close. “Happy birthday to me.”

  Against Remy’s mouth, Lane grinned. “I got you something special,” he said.

  Remy dropped his hands to cup Lane’s buttocks and squeezed. “Is it this?”

  Lane arched his back to push his ass into his lover’s palms. “What’s so special about that? You get it all the time.”

  “I want it now,” Remy said with a smirk. “I’m the birthday boy. Isn’t today all about me?”

  Stepping back, Lane took both of Remy’s hands in his and led the way to the bedroom. “Do you want what I got you, or not?”

  Remy laughed as he followed. “You know I do. Should I close my eyes?”

  It didn’t matter if he did or not; the hallway was dark, and Lane didn’t turn on the light. The way was as familiar to him as the paths inside his own home. Still, Remy closed his eyes as he stepped over the threshold into the bedroom, his stomach fluttery with anticipation. Lane led him a few paces into the room and then stopped, releasing Remy’s hands to turn on a lamp beside the bed. Remy could see the darkness behind his eyelids brighten, but he didn’t peek.

  After a long moment, he asked, “Can I look?”

  “In a minute.” Lane’s voice came from across the room, where Remy could hear him rummaging around in a bag or briefcase.

  He waited. And waited. Then, in case Lane might have possibly forgotten about him, he called out, “I’m waiting.”

  When Lane answered, he spoke right next to Remy’s ear, as if he’d been standing there all along. His words were warm as they curled into Remy, as intoxicating as the wine they’d shared earlier. “Okay, you can open them.”

  At first, Remy wasn’t sure where he was supposed to look. Lane stood beside him, fully dressed—damn, Remy thought. He knew a night of lovemaking was in the cards, and he was eager to get started. But the grin on Lane’s face said he was excited about something else, so Remy glanced around the bedroom, looking for something different, something special…

  On the bed he saw Lane’s iPad. The case was open, and on the screen was a gorgeous 1940s style Cape Cod brick home on a lush green lawn, framed by shrubbery and trees. It looked luscious and expensive, a movie star’s estate with an A-frame front porch and a bay window off to one side, and a slim chimney rising above twin dormer windows on the second floor. Remy wasn’t sure what he was looking at, or what he was supposed to think about it, so he sort of smiled and asked, “What’s this?”

  Lane countered with, “You like it? Take a closer look.”

  He placed a hand on the small of Remy’s back, guiding Remy in. Below the image was a description. Four bedrooms, three full baths, master bedroom downstairs with sliding doors opening onto back patio. Knotty pinewood floors, fireplace open to both the living room and the den, modern kitchen with breakfast nook and all the amenities. Privacy fence, wraparound patio, and above ground pool in back. Central air and heat. Minutes from Carytown, Libbie and Grove, West End.

  Remy sat down on the edge of the bed and looked up at his lover, who smiled down anxiously at him. “Well? What do you think?”

  “I think it’s gorgeous,” Remy admitted. “But it has to be out of our p
rice range—”

  “It isn’t,” Lane assured him. “I’ve done the math, and we can afford it. In fact, it’ll be less than what we pay now for our separate places.”

  Picking up the iPad, Remy scrolled through the images, each more beautiful than the last. “Four bedrooms?”

  “One for us, of course.” Lane said. “And one for Braden. Then the others we can use as offices. One for me, one for you.”

  When Remy blinked, his vision blurred. Maybe it was the wine, or maybe he was feeling his age, or maybe it was the fact that Lane had thought of a room for Braden. Whatever it was, suddenly the moment swelled and everything seemed too real for him. This was really happening. They were getting married. They would be moving in together, buying a home, creating a life. Together. Rising to take Lane into his arms, he hugged his lover close. “I love it,” he whispered.

  Lane let out a sigh of relief. “Thank God. I knew you would. That’s why I already made an offer on it.”

  “I love you.” And, cradling Lane’s face in both hands, Remy showed him just how much with a kiss.

  * * * *

  The next few weeks passed in a blur. Lane took Remy on a tour of the house, and the moment he stepped over the threshold, he knew it was right for them. He wanted to rush out and start picking out furnishings, but Lane reminded him the sellers were still considering their offer. “Increase it,” Remy said, only half-joking.

  He wanted the house—it was theirs, it had to be. He could already see himself stretching awake beside Lane in the bed they shared as sunlight reflected off their pool beyond the vertical blinds on the sliding doors that led to the patio. He saw them in the breakfast nook canoodling over pancakes, and in the study curled together in front of a crackling fire. He saw Braden racing down the stairs, an overeager German Shepherd pup right behind…”Let’s get a dog,” he told Lane, breathless with anticipation. The expansive backyard practically demanded it.

  With a grin, Lane said, “Let’s buy the place first. And get the wedding behind us. Then we’ll talk about it.”