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She was driving her own car back and forth between home and Cullen’s house, driving the SUV only when she needed to take the kids somewhere. Even if she could’ve chalked it up to distraction, thanks to her carelessness, here she was, stuck along the side of the road with the children she’d been charged with looking after.
“I want to go home, Lily,” Hannah whined.
“We can’t go home until we get my shoes,” said George.
“Why are we stopped?” Bridget asked.
“We’re out of gas,” Lily said matter-of-factly. She tried to keep her voice calm and even because the kids would follow her lead. Even though panic and frustration were clawing at the back of her throat, she wasn’t going to lose it in front of her charges. Running out of gas was humiliating. But that didn’t mean she was entitled to lose her cool in front of them.
“Out of gas?” Megan asked, an incredulous edge to her voice. “What are we supposed to do now?”
That was a good question. She searched in the glove box to see if the rental came with any sort of roadside assistance. She’d read somewhere that it was an extra that you had to purchase at the time of the rental. Cullen hadn’t mentioned it and she couldn’t find any indication in the paperwork that he’d opted in.
Fishing her phone out of her purse, Lily curved her lips into the most sincere smile she could muster. “I’m going to call someone to come and help us.”
“Uncle Cullen?” asked Bridget.
Heavens no.
“Uncle Cullen is so busy,” Lily said. “I don’t want to bother him. I’m going to call a friend of mine who doesn’t live too far from here.”
First, she tried to call the rental company, but they wouldn’t talk to her because she couldn’t supply the credit card used to rent the car.
Darn it.
Next, she looked up Sydney James’s number in her contacts and hit the call button. The phone rang and rang…three times…four times…before Sydney’s proper, crisp voice sounded on her voice-mail recording.
“Hello, you’ve reached Sydney. Please leave a message and telephone number after the tone and I’ll call you back at the earliest opportunity.”
The earliest opportunity might mean that afternoon, especially if Sydney was on location shooting a segment for Catering to Dallas, a reality TV show that chronicled the inner workings of the Celebrations Inc. Catering Company.
That was how Lily had met Sydney. The show wanted to give a local couple the wedding of their dreams. The only catch was that the wedding and the days leading up to the ceremony and reception would be filmed for Catering to Dallas and aired on national television.
Lily won the contest. She, who had never won anything in her entire life, had been named Celebration’s Bride. Little did she know the honor would also lead to the ultimate demise of her long-term relationship and near broadcast of her humiliation.
She and her boyfriend, Josh Stockett, had been dating for years. They’d talked about getting married…or, if truth be told, Lily had talked about getting married. They’d been together forever. She loved him. He loved her. After the deaths of her grandmother and parents, she knew the only way she would ever be part of a traditional family again was if she had one of her own. At that time, she was on the downward side of her mid-twenties, and she wasn’t getting any younger.
She hadn’t meant the Celebration’s Bride contest to be an ultimatum. Seriously she hadn’t. She hadn’t expected to win. So she told Josh she was entering and if she won—ha-ha—he would have to marry her.
And holy moly, she’d won.
Josh ended up breaking up with her while the camera was rolling. They had captured every painful second of it on film. To rub salt into the wound, one of the executive producers wanted to air the footage. Sydney, her angel of mercy, had stopped that from happening. Since then, the women had been fast friends.
As if Sydney hadn’t done enough for her, Lily hoped she could come through one more time and drive out and take her and the kids to get some gas. Then they could all get on with their day.
The last thing Lily wanted to do was interrupt Cullen at the hospital and ask him to come to her rescue. What kind of irresponsible person ran out of gas with a carful of kids?
