Prescription For Love (The Kingsley Series) (2 page)

"Oh dear God," he muttered. "It must be here somewhere!" He leaned forward, making everyone laugh as he pretended to peek down the front of Cassaundra's dress. She held her hands to her cleavage, mortified, which made everyone laugh harder. Finally, Drew slapped himself on the forehead.

"Right!" he exclaimed. Slipping two fingers down the back pocket of his jeans, he finally withdrew the engagement ring he'd given to Cass, returning it to her finger. She'd been wearing it privately for some months already, as they had taken some time to keep the engagement to themselves. Still, the time had come to break the news and Drew had wanted to be dramatic for his mother's sake, so he'd placed the ring carefully in his pocket just before he and Cass had entered the party.

"Oh, Drew," Eva whispered, watching her son take Cassaundra's hand and slide the ring home on her finger. She lifted a finger to swipe under her eye as Drew and Cass turned to face her, together. Smiling, she held her hands out, taking Cass in her arms.

"Welcome to my family, daughter," she said.

"And now I'll be even more busy," Cameron muttered to Evan, unable to hold back her smile.

"Nah, I bet I can get them to hire me instead," he laughed back, elbowing her in the ribs. "You may be the wedding planner in the family, but everyone knows I'm the best at everything. All these fine examples to follow. I bet I could rock a wedding party."

"Oh shut up, Ev," Cameron laughed back, watching her mother rip the paper excitedly from another gift.

Later, as the evening wound down and the party cleared out, Adam and Eva lounged on the couch in their living room. Surrounded by their children, they gave thanks for forty years of marriage.

"It's been so long," Adam said, his voice raspy with age but still deep and reassuring. Slipping his arm around his wife, he looked down into her face, his dark eyes meeting her faded green. "Who ever thought we'd make it this far?"

"I did," Eva laughed. "It might have been longer by now, if you hadn't been so slow about it." She slapped his cheek playfully, her wedding band flickering in the light of the room.

"But now, look at us," she continued. "Here we are, our children here with us, and a new marriage coming to extend our family." She looked in turn at each of her children, speaking to them individually. "Cameron, my first child, take heart. Love is real, I promise you, and one day soon, it will rear up and take you in, and it will be strong and solid; you will find it delicious and so very wonderful. Stop doubting, my girl, and open your heart." She waited while Cameron rolled her eyes, embarrassed, and then she laughed and turned to the first of her sons.

"Michael. You must know how very proud we are of you, too. Running your own business, right from scratch. I remember when you learned to change a tire, and now look at you, spending every day under the hood of a car, doing what you love."

Waiting until he nodded acknowledgement, Eva looked again to Cameron. "Just like a true Kingsley, willing to start small and crawl up through the ranks to become just who you were meant to be. Both of you, I'm so proud to share this moment with you."

She lowered her eyes to Drew, who’d stretched out on his favorite rug in the house, his ankles crossed, his head pillowed in Cass’s lap. “Andrew. Look at who you’ve become. You go out every day to a job we’re all so proud of, making a career for yourself in a way that means something beyond the borders of our home. And this woman you’ve brought home to us; I couldn’t imagine a finer choice, son.”

Turning, Eva eyed her youngest children sternly. "And you two. Harmony and Evan. You two stay away from the opposite sex, until you've decided what to do with your lives, you hear me?" Everyone laughed, taking in Evan's horrified look.

"Mom?" he asked, pretending to be in terrible pain. "I'm a teenager. Telling me something like that is just downright mean. I need women! I need cheerleaders! They make football go 'round!"

"And me," Harmony giggled, rounding her stomach and rubbing small circles around the surface of her tiny waist. "Here I am, pregnant by the tattoo-covered biker from the butch bar, and now you tell me to stay away from boys? It's too late to be careful now!"

Cameron couldn't help laughing. She couldn't deny that she hoped someday to find true love, a strong bond that lasted through the challenges of time. She wanted a house full of children and laughter, a life full of good night kisses and good morning sex. But in the meantime, she just kept telling herself that she was plenty happy, surrounded by the love of her family.

***

Within one short week, Cassaundra and Drew had asked Cameron to plan their wedding. She was overjoyed to have been asked to plan a family wedding, but that didn't stop her cynical nature from making her worry.

"It's just that marriage doesn't last. It just doesn’t,” she said to her best friend, Tabitha. Tabitha and Cameron had been inseparable since childhood, and now Tabitha was Cameron's partner in the wedding planning business. They were a great mix; Tabitha's ever-hopeful nature helped to balance out Cameron's chronic pessimism.

"I have to disagree, Cameron. I mean, my parents lasted," Tabitha laughed, rolling her eyes. "So did yours. Or have you forgotten the giant forty year party you just threw them? Look at us, grown children with still married parents. It’s for real, for some people."

"I haven't forgotten, Tab. Hell, I'm not even sure I'm recovered from that party yet!" Cameron tucked an errant curl behind her ear, sipping coffee from the take-out cup on her desk. "But they're different, you know? They were married in a different time. Back then, what you were taught about marriage was that if it wasn't working, you stuck together and figured it out. Husbands and wives weren’t disposable because marriage back then really was meant to be forever. But now?"

"Yeah, I know," Tabitha said. "The marriage motto now is, 'there's other fish in the sea.' It's sad, I know. But still, you can't think the majority vote is the only one, Cam. Marriage is still real for some people. Look at the examples we have to follow."

"Mmhmm, that must be why we're not married yet, and I'm planning Drew's wedding before my own," Cameron retorted glumly, dropping her deep brown eyes to her coffee.

"Well you know," Tabitha said, reaching over to drop a new file on Cameron's desk, "always the planner, never the bride."

"Still, it'd be nice though," Cameron muttered, watching Tabitha wrap her red hair up into a neat bun with a pencil. "Even for someone like me, with the little tiny bit of faith that I just barely hold on to. Even I'd like having someone to go home to. Even if he is eventually going to cheat, or I will, or one of us will have to leave and go do something stupid like 'find ourselves.'"

"Jeez, such a cynic," Tabitha answered, looking into a mirror as she pulled tendrils from her bun to frame her face. "Get off it. You might find that someone if you didn't shut them all out. You just tend to have this vibe that tells men to stay away. So hopeless."

"I know, and I don't mean to be such a downer, you know? I just keep thinking; this is what I do every day. I call the florists, and I call the venues, and I remind the brides to breathe. I counsel the grooms to hold out, that their new wives are just nervous. And me? I wait, and I check the calendars to see how long until they come back to me with the next wedding request. Some of these people are getting married yearly, you know? Like birthdays and weddings are the same now. And I’m scared to put my toes in the water, because they’re all sharks out there."

"Oh, stop, it's not that bad," Tabitha laughed, rolling her eyes again. "Don't you remember why we started this? Where's the romantic in you?" Tabitha pursed her lips and blew her feathery bangs out of her eyes, sighing when they fell back to dust her eyelashes.

"I remember," Cameron answered, opening the file and starting to input the budget numbers.

"Remember us, when we were kids? Six years old and planning our weddings? We had it all worked out, you know? We knew what he'd look like, and how he'd act, and how he'd talk. And I just remember when we started all this, thinking that planning a wedding is like writing someone else's romance."

"Or like being a fairy godmother; you get to wave your magic cell phone and make someone else's fairy tale wish come true. We were really something else back then, hmm?" Tabitha laughed, dropping her pen on the desk and leaning forward to brace her cheek on one long-fingered hand. "Little dreamers, we were."

"Exactly. But part of growing up is waking up. That first wedding we did? Tab, I was riding high for months, remember? Those two were so young, and so beautiful together, and so in love. And they had a great story, so sweet. And they didn't last three years, and now I've planned their second weddings, watched their children nervously accept step-parents. I don't want that, not for myself. And now I’ve held out for so long, I wonder if children are even in the cards for me."

Flipping her mirror closed and tucking her lipstick into her desk drawer, Tabitha laughed. "It's so easy to wish for the fairy tale though, Cameron, you know that. That's why they come to us, even the ones that didn't get it quite right the first time around. They come back to us because they still believe; they still love the idea of love." She rolled her eyes dramatically to the ceiling, clasping her hands under her chin and grinning ridiculously at Cameron. "They all want their very own hero," she sighed. “And you’ll have one someday, too. We both will.”

Cameron scoffed. "Heroes aren't real, though, are they? Maybe all princes are just toads in disguise, and princesses are all wanna-be's. All of them desperate to achieve some impossible standard. I mean, isn't that why they keep trying, why they keep coming here?" Cameron waved her arms, indicating the office they worked in every day.

Pale creamy walls with barely visible silver swirls surrounded them, a touch of glitter in the paint to make the room sparkle. Elegant silver lamps were covered in sparkling cream shades, dotted with sparkling crystals. Throughout the room, various fabrics brought splashes of color to the room, their thick and rich textures giving weight to the light colors of the room. Perfumed with a rainbow of fresh flowers, it was a light atmosphere, a comfortable place for Cameron and Tabitha to meet clients and do the daily chores of wedding design.

"So what's on the agenda for today?" Tabitha asked.

"Actually," Cameron said with a grin. "I'm meeting with Drew. He's bringing his fiancé, Cassaundra, to get an early start on their wedding prep. They've been together for a little less than a year, so it’s still really odd to think of them as getting married. But you’ve seen them, how in love they are. I still don't know her very well yet though, as far as wedding planning, so it's all ground up on figuring out what they want." As she spoke, Cameron stood and walked around to the front of her desk, angling the two guest chairs so that they faced the desk.

"Uh oh," Tabitha laughed. "Giving them the straight angle, are you?"

"I have to," Cameron sighed. "When they're in the same room together, all they see is each other. How can I get them to focus on me and get them planning the wedding if they spend their appointment staring romantically into each other's eyes, planning what will happen when they get back home?"

"Right," Tabitha laughed, throwing a wadded sheet of paper at her friend. "Like they don't all do that! If that works, I’ll treat us for a spa day!"

***

"Hey, guys!" Cameron exclaimed, welcoming Drew and Cassaundra into her office. With a wink, Tabitha took her cell phone and tablet computer from her desk and breezed from the room.

"I hope we're not chasing Tabby out of here," Drew laughed, watching her settle into a comfortable chair in the lobby area of the office.

"Nope, not at all. That chair is actually where she spends most of her time when we're here," Cameron answered, reaching out to give Cass a quick hug. In a black wrap dress, Cass looked professional and lovely, but her eyes were soft, revealing a quick glimpse at her nervousness.

"Hey Drew, there's a little diner right next door," Cameron said, hoping to get rid of him for a few minutes. She wanted to talk to Cass alone before they got down to business and try to calm her nerves a little. "Can you go over and talk to the owner for me, tell him we need three of the usual? He'll know what you need, and it goes on my tab."