“You’re right. That’s worse.”
“I’m sorry, Axel. I don’t know what else to do.”
Axel grabbed her hand. She didn’t wrench it away, but her expression seemed pained. “If we can come up with a way to keep Francine from being hurt, would you be okay with the wedding being called off?”
She hesitated, then asked quietly, “What do you have in mind?”
“I don’t have anything in mind, but I do have a strong willingness to keep thinking about it. I have brothers, some of whom are very creative. They would help—”
“No. I don’t want to involve anyone else.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“If either of us comes up with a miracle plan that will let us marry without hurting Francine, the fewer people who know about it the better. If anyone finds out, my parents can find out, especially my mother. Trust me, she has superpowers where these weddings are concerned. I don’t want to take any chances of her finding out that we’re plotting. She’s probably on the lookout for any schemes.”
Axel didn’t like being curtailed, but understood. “Okay.”
“Since we’ll likely be seeing a lot of each other over the next month during the wedding preparations, you can pass me notes like the one for this meeting. Otherwise, don’t make this any more difficult than it already will be.”
“Understood.”
Axel pulled on her hand, wanting one last kiss good-bye, but she turned her face away. She did give him a quick, hard hug. Then Lucy was up out of her seat, through his office door, racing into the night toward the docked airship before he could lift his sorry butt off the couch.
Lucy spent almost every waking moment of the next week with Francine. Wedding director meant she had to help with each detail, large or miniscule. Most wedding directors had months to prepare. She had one. Four short weeks to make magic happen on foreign soil in a secret Alpha colony. If they’d been back on Alpha-Prime, it would have been much easier.
Her parents had moved the entire Duvall household off the cruise ship and into temporary quarters in the way station until after the wedding.
Axel’s little sister Valvoline had recently arrived home after being away at some sort of school. Xenia Grey had enlisted her to help with the Earther details. Lucy looked forward to meeting her. She hadn’t heard from Axel. Apparently, he was resigned to the fact of his coming wedding. Maybe he was avoiding her. It was hard to blame him.
The Celestial Barbeque Shack touted the best BBQ on the planet. She’d arrived for her meeting with Valvoline half an hour early to escape her mother’s endless digs regarding how she was planning the Earther wedding. Once a day, minimum, her mother asked if it wouldn’t be better for Ardelia to take over. And every single day, Lucy explained that Francine had chosen her and she would do a good job.
At first, her mother tried to say she hated to see Lucy suffer, but they both knew it wasn’t true. Lucy didn’t know which was worst, knowing there was less than a month before her true love married her sister and best friend or facing the prospect of the whole debacle dragging on for months before the inevitable happened while her mother rubbed her hands together in glee. Probably a toss-up in the great scheme of things.
The stress of deflecting her mother’s endless suggestions was wearing on her. She was happy to have Valvoline’s help.
The Grey family was naturally excited about a wedding ceremony. Apparently Axel’s two married brothers had eloped, so Zebulon and Xenia were very enthusiastic about finally getting to attend the nuptials of one of their offspring. Axel’s mother seemed especially pleased the wedding would take place on Earth with the families of bride and groom in attendance.
Even though many guests planned to travel to the colony on Earth to attend the first ceremony, Lucy’s mother had put plans in motion for the more elaborate affair on Alpha-Prime, inviting every socialite in elite Alpha-Prime society.
The guest list for the Earther ceremony had hit three hundred, the bulk of them Duvall family members and “close” friends who were only interested in seeing what an impromptu planned-in-a-month wedding on a back-water colony planet would look like.
Her mother insisted that wasn’t true, but Lucy knew better. Comparisons would be drawn. She’d overheard her mother and father talking about it the night they moved into the basement of the Big Bang Truck Stop. Adeline Duvall did not see it as a bad thing to have a very “simple” wedding here and a full throttle, over-the-top wedding extravaganza on Alpha-Prime.
The other tidbit she’d picked up was that her mother expected Francine and Axel to live on Alpha-Prime permanently.
Lucy didn’t think Axel wanted to leave his family. She pondered the information as a possible way to break this wedding up, but hadn’t come up with any ideas as to how to use it.
“Are you Lucy Duvall?” asked a feminine voice touched with Axel’s attractive accent. Lucy looked up to see a petite young woman with her blond hair pulled into a ponytail.
“I am.”
“Awesome. I’m Axel’s sister, Valene.” She wore jeans, a bright pink collared shirt with the word “Juicy” spelled across her chest and what looked like pink cowboy boots peeking out from beneath her pantlegs.
Lucy stood up, instantly enchanted. “Valene? I thought your name was—”
“It is, but I hate that name so I shortened it.” She quickly changed the subject. “Have you been waiting long? I hope not.”
