Nate gave Bradley a friendly pat on the shoulder and watched him disappear inside. He stayed where he was and checked his watch again.
The click made him shoot an annoyed glance at Dale. “I’m not in the wedding party.”
Dale shrugged. “You’re photogenic, mate. It’s the hair.”
Nate gave him the finger, which made Dale laugh and lower the camera to hang around his neck. He wandered over to join Nate at the top of the stairs.
“Not so sure she’s really going to turn up?” he asked.
Nate gestured for him to lower his voice. “This has not been the smoothest wedding of my career,” he muttered back. “If there was ever a day the car would get a flat or attacked by gulls, it’s today.”
Dale chuckled and wandered into the folly to take pictures of the groom and guests, but he was back by the time the big Granshire estate car pulled into the parking lot. The camera clicked steadily as Katie’s dad offered his daughter an arm out of the car. Slight and glowing, she slid out in a cascade of ivory silk and delicate lace. She held a bouquet of wildflowers in one hand, and matching flowers were woven into her veil.
All the disasters that had given Nate the start of an ulcer? None of them dimmed the glowing expression on Katie’s face as she climbed the stairs. She paused at the top and took a deep breath with a huge smile on her face as she looked at Nate.
“I’m getting married.”
He nodded and waited until she’d gone into the folly and Dale had ducked in discreetly behind her to capture the ceremony. Nate waited until he saw her reach the altar and stand in front of the tall, gray-haired Canon Paisley. As his booming voice filled the space, Nate slipped away and jogged down the steps to head back to the Granshire.
THE CAKElooked elegant but deceptively simple from the outside—three stacked layers of sleek iced tiers decorated with a scatter of effervescent bubble pearls. It sat on a copper platter in the middle of the hall, and Star had promised Nate that it would be stunning when it was cut open. The chef had assured him that everything in the kitchen was in order, and all that was left was for Nate to check the place settings.
He had just sent one of the staff off to calligraph an extraeonto a bridesmaid’sAnnwhen Max caught up with him.
“I’m sorry,” Nate said. He glanced up from his clipboard and shrugged apologetically. “I didn’t mean to ditch you this morning, but I just needed some time. You know?”
The bruise on Max’s jaw had flowered since the morning. Max rubbed at it with his thumb and shuffled his feet over the polished wooden floor. He’d looked miserable when he came in, and somehow more miserable since he’d gotten an apology.
“Yeah. That’s okay,” he said. “I had a chat with your mum. Look, about Flynn—”
Nate heaved a sigh. “If this is an ‘I told you so,’ I don’t need to hear it.”
“Look, you wanted to know why I hate Flynn, right?” Max asked. “Well, there’s something I didn’t tell you about that night. You know, when he dragged me back here.”
A bad taste scalded the back of Nate’s throat. He put his clipboard down on the edge of the table and looked at Max. The question on his tongue wasn’t one he wanted to ask, but he had to.
“Did he… did he touch you or something?” he asked. It was strange. Nate remembered how sure he’d been back then that he was old enough, ready for a full sexual relationship. Now, looking back, he’d been an idiot kid. “If he did, I’ll—”
“No!” Max blurted out. He shook his head and held both hands up in denial. “God, no. He never. It was what happened after we got back. Dad got called down and I’ve never seen him so angry, Nate. He hit me.”
That caught Nate off guard. Even though he got on fine with Teddy, he knew there’d been tension between Max and his dad over the years. He’d never seen Teddy ever raise his hand to Max, though.
“Why? Because, because you were gay?”
“No. I—” A door opened in the back of the hall and one of the waitstaff dragged in a stack of highchairs. Max clammed up until the chairs were set out and the guy had left again. Then he took a deep breath and huffed it out. “No. I thought so too, maybe. He dragged me up to my room and locked me in, refused to talk about it, and you know he paid Flynn off to leave.”
That had been the gossip. Nate supposed that it had to be right sometimes. He remembered the accusation Dani had spitefully dripped in his ear the other day and wrinkled his nose. It wasn’t as bad as taking advantage of a fifteen-year-old boy, but it wasn’t a pleasant image.
“You think Teddy fucked Flynn?” he asked.
Max grimaced sourly. “Please stop guessing, Nate.”
“Then just tell me.”
“Dad wasn’t mad because I’d tried to pick up a guy,” Max said. He took a deep breath and twisted his mouth like it tasted bad. “He was mad because I’d tried to pick up my brother.”
That made no sense at all. For a second. Then Nate’s idea of the world twisted twenty degrees and suddenly a lot of things fell into place. Half-heard fragments of gossip that people never finished once they realized he was in the room, the way people had tutted knowingly over theDelaney and Sonsign, and the vague memory of an unhappy, beautiful mother before she died.
“Oh,” He breathed out the word. “That’s—”
