With These Four Rings: Wedding Bonus

With These Four Rings - Chapter 1

Ristorante Andreas. July – Monday...

"So, we've decided on the orchids, right?" Kaya asked, as the four brides-to-be sat around a table at a private dining room at Ristorante Andreas.

"Just because your husband has an orchid delivered to you every single morning, it doesn't mean they should be the dominant flower in our wedding." Michelle took a bite of her broiled eggplant package—a flavorful bundle of plum tomatoes, mozzarella cheese and fresh basil wrapped in thin slices of eggplant.

"You seem to forget that I donate those orchids to your Children of the Future Foundation, so perhaps I'm due a favor," Kaya stated smugly, as she cut a portion from her medium rare Kobe steak.

"And I appreciate your generosity, Kaya, along with the sick, and the shut-in, and the destitute whose lives your orchids brighten on a daily basis, but it has nothing to do with our wedding. I vote for lilies."

"No." Shaina took a sip of ice tea and shook her head emphatically. "Tulips. Red, pink, and purple. Definitely." Purple tulips were her mother's favorite flowers, and every Sunday morning on their way from church, her father used to stop at a roadside vendor. Shaina remembered the smile on her mother's face each time her father presented her with a bouquet of purple tulips. It was always as if she was receiving one for the first time. After her mother died, her father couldn't bear to look at tulips, but with that sentimental flower as decoration, Shaina could imagine her parents watching her walk down the aisle.

"My husband cuts me fresh peonies from his garden. They were my mother's favorite, so I think it should be peonies." Tashi, the newest and youngest member of the Granite Falls Billionaire Brides Club, added her two cents as she dipped a chunk of ciabatta into a bowl of fontina cheese dip.

"Mine delivers babies, so maybe we should have little baby booties and crib mobiles lining the aisle of the church, and oh wait, a giant stethoscope suspended from the ceiling."

"Well then," Shaina chimed in, "since we're ditching flowers, my man loves pussycats—leopards to be exact. We can sit Jabari and some of his friends next to each pew. Anybody they don't like gets gobbled up. No questions asked." She dusted off her hands.

The women roared as Shaina put the absurdity of their bickering to rest with sudden good humor.

"How is Jabari?" Tashi asked.

"He's much better than when we got there, and he seems to be growing stronger every day, but he's an old cat, you know."

"Has Mass thought about putting him down?" Michelle probed her.

"No way." Shaina quivered at the question. "He couldn't. He'd still be in Kenya if Aria hadn't come down with that virus. He had to choose between his cat and his daughter."

"I can identify." Kaya patted Shaina's hand. "When Webster developed chronic renal failure last year, Bryce spent tens of thousands of dollars on a kidney transplant. Webster was part of his and Pilar's family. He's like the unborn child that died with Pilar, the child they never got to raise together. Okay," she added, when the room grew deathly silent. "We're supposed to be planning a wedding, not a funeral, so let's get back to the flowers and try to make a decision before Fae gets here. We have a little over three weeks before this wedding happens, and we're all leaving on our individual family vacations next week."

Michelle cleared her throat. "Yeah, about Fae. There's a slight change in wedding planners. We had to hire Desire."

Kaya's back went ramrod straight. "You can't mean Desire Summers of Weddings by Desire?" She looked anxiously from one woman to the next.