Her mother.
“WHAT?” she squealed, startling Kylie, who tucked her hair behind her ear and gave Rachel a puzzled look.
The song was ending, everyone applauding, but a strange buzz began in the area around her mom.
Her mom.
What was Rachel’s mother doing here?
And then it all came together in one big hit to her psyche. Kell wasn’t just proposing.
He had brought her mother, and likely her dad and brother, here for the big event.
“Oh, no!” Rachel groaned, her idea of a very public proposal shattered by her mother’s presence. Being the daughter of Portia Starman, the famous 1980s television actress who still drew fans, was hard enough.
But having her here, stealing the spotlight at her own engagement, was a bit much.
If her mom and dad and Tim were here for a more private affair, she’d be thrilled. Poor Kell had no idea when he invited them to come for whatever he was about to do that the situation would inevitably spin around 180 degrees and all the attention would be on Portia.
Portia, Portia, Portia.
For her entire life, Rachel had experienced exactly this. Make the cheerleading squad? Portia’s attendance got all the attention. Snag a major role in a school play? Fans gushed about Portia’s influence to her face as they mingled over cookies and coffee afterward in the school cafeteria.
Get a promotion and go out to dinner with Mom and Dad?
Someone always wanted an autograph.
Having a mother who’d been a pin-up poster on every baby boomer’s bedroom wall–and half of Gen X’s–meant that crowds of slobbering fanboys, many now in their sixties and even seventies, dominated every occasion.
“Sing, Portia, sing!” someone called out, the words followed by shrill whistles, the crowd cheering hard.
And then.
And then she spotted a man in a furry suit, looking kind of like a bear with big weird eyes. It was as if someone had captured a grizzly, fed it some meth, and made it put on black and white makeup.
In a sea of red, white, and pink, the man stood out. What a weirdo.
Rachel squinted.
Wait a minute.
That was Kell.
Her weirdo.
Chapter Three
Kell
“Sing, Portia, sing! Sing, Portia, sing!” the crowd chanted. His eyes darted from person to person as if taking inventory, trying to understand why they were all doing this. He was next up in the line up.
Why were they calling out Portia’s name?
The mask was stifling, sweat dripping into his eyes, tickling his cheeks as it rolled down through his beard. When he’d planned out the whole lemur aspect of this proposal, he hadn’t taken heat into consideration.
Damn it.
Of course, the audience had no idea why Kell was onstage in a lemur costume. Only Rachel and his family got it. Stella Cambridge from Love You Flowers didn’t realize that trying to get Portia to sing was ruining Kell’s proposal to Rachel. Joe Kendrill wasn’t intentionally sabotaging him by encouraging Portia. They just saw a star in their midst and wanted her to do her star thing, which was to perform.
Even if she wasn’t a singer.
“No. No no no.” He saw Rachel off to the side, whispering furiously to his own mother, and watched as Deanna struggled to keep her from confronting Portia.
All of his careful plans were falling apart, one chant at a time.
Finally, Rachel broke away from Deanna and climbed on stage with him. The sweat under his costume turned into a salty, hot bath.
“KELL! You can’t let my mother sing.”
He pulled the stupid head off the costume, giving up on the idea that he had any control over events now.
He wiped sweat from his brow, looking down at her, ears ringing. “I can’t do anything about it.”
“And the costume? What is this?” She tentatively touched his fur-covered bicep with the tip of one finger, retracting it immediately upon contact. “What are you doing?”
“FAILING MISERABLY!”
“Oh, Kell,” she said, her face tipped up to meet his eyes, the sad lemur costume hanging off his limbs and shoulders, looking like a frat house joke. What had he been thinking?
A nice, romantic dinner with candlelight and privacy–sweet, sweet privacy–would have been the smart move, but nooooooo.
He had to make a big, grand gesture.
And now Rachel’s mother was upstaging him.
Because Portia now had a microphone in hand and was singing the first line of the song to thunderous applause.
Well – as thunderous as two hundred people outdoors on a New England town common could be.
“I didn’t expect this!” he choked out, his eyes bugging out of his head as his future mother-in-law upstaged him. “Portia never said a word about wanting to sing in the festival when we planned their trip out here.”
“Ugh!” Rachel said, her single word juggling thirty different emotions all at once, making him do a double take. Something about her changed with that word.
A change that pained him.
A man had to make snap decisions sometimes. Adaptability was a hallmark of a great tree guy, and as an arborist in the branches, Kell often had to make split-second, instinctual choices that didn’t involve thinking so much as movement.
This was one of those times.
Reaching for Rachel’s hand, he took it, then looked at her and paused. More luminous than usual, she fairly glowed, even through the obvious tension on her face.
Beautiful.
She was so very beautiful.
“She does this. Every time,” Rachel whispered in his ear as she stood on tiptoes and pressed her hands against his chest. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed, looking at her mother, then him, back to her mother. Contempt flashed across her face for a second, then something closer to compassion. “It’s not on purpose. She doesn’t do it to be mean. But she does it. Every time. The fans beg her and she can’t stop herself. And she’ll feel horrible afterward and apologize. Hold out, though.”
“Hold out?”
“She’ll try to apologize with something like a nice shirt, maybe even a new suit for a guy. Tim once got a spa day with full manscaping and a Peloton.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Apology presents.”
“Apology presents?”
“You know.”
“No. I don’t.”
“When your parents make a huge mistake and hurt your feelings? The presents they give you?”
What was she talking about?
“I’ve never gotten an apology present from either of my parents.”
“That’s because they don’t do things like upstage your marriage proposal, Kell.”
Clapping her hand over her mouth, she looked at him with eyes that were almost as deranged as his costume’s. His hands were already on her hips, which made his grip tighten, pulling her closer.
“You knew?” he growled, gut going tight.
All this work for… this?
“I–”
In an accidental duet with Rachel, Portia held the word “I” for a long note that overpowered her daughter’s single word. Surreal and shattering, he instantly saw that the moment perfectly illustrated what Rachel was trying to tell him. Tears formed in her eyes.