“Ooh, I can’t wait to meet all these women I’ve been hearing so much about—it’s gonna be like an issue of Vanity Fair magazine come to life!” Sylvia said gleefully.
The ladies entered the Tuscan-stone portico in front of the pavilion, where everyone involved in the wedding ceremony had assembled. The decorating crew was still putting the finishing touches to an intricate bamboo trellis entwined with wisteria and jasmine that led up the aisle to an arch where the couple would exchange their vows.
Belinda Chu rushed up to Rachel, looking rather distressed. “Your floral designer promises that the wisteria will be at its peak tomorrow, just in time for the ceremony, but I’m not convinced. Look at how small some of these buds are. They won’t be blooming for days! You’ll need to put hair dryers on them! Tsk, tsk, tsk, you really should have used my guy, who does the flowers for all the best homes in Palo Alto.”
“I’m sure it will be just fine,” Rachel said calmly as she winked at Nick, who was standing in front of the arch talking to Mehmet, Astrid, and one of the crewmen.
Astrid greeted Rachel warmly with a hug. “Everything looks so beautiful, it makes me want to get married all over again!”
Nick’s phone began to ring. Not recognizing the number, he ignored the call and put the phone on vibrate. The crewman standing next to Nick waved at Rachel shyly, and she realized with a start that it was Colin Khoo. With his shock of dark hair grown out to his shoulders, she hadn’t recognized him.
“Look at you! Now you really look like a Polynesian surfer!” Rachel exclaimed.
“That’s rad!” Colin replied as he gave the bride-to-be a kiss on the cheek. Araminta, who stood out from the crowd in her vintage Yves Saint Laurent safari jacket and gold leather caged thigh-high Gianvito Rossi sandals, was next to greet Rachel with a double-cheek kiss.
“That’s the heiress whose wedding Rachel went to where all the trouble started,” Auntie Jin murmured under her breath to Ray Chu.
“Who’s the fellow beside her in the torn jeans and flip-flops?”
“That’s her husband. I heard he’s a billionaire too,” Kerry Chu whispered back.
“It’s like all my patients these days—I never know whether the kid in my dental chair is homeless or owns Google,” Ray said gruffly.
After everyone in the wedding party had been introduced to one another and Jason Chu had snapped enough pictures of himself with the supermodel and Nick’s hottie cousin Astrid—who he swore had to be that babe from House of Flying Daggers—Samantha began corralling everyone into position for the procession up the aisle.
“Okay, after Mehmet has made sure all the guests have taken their seats, the procession can begin. Jase—you need to escort Aunt Kerry up the aisle first, before you come back for Mom. Once you get Mom to her seat, you’re done and you can take the seat next to her. Now, I need Alistair Cheng. Where are you?” Alistair identified himself as Samantha checked the chart on her iPad. “Okay, you’ll be escorting Astrid Leong up the aisle, since she is representing Nick’s family. That’s Astrid over there. Will you remember her tomorrow?”
“I think so. She’s my cousin,” Alistair said in his usual laconic manner.
“My bad—I didn’t realize you were a cousin too!” Samantha giggled.
Nick’s phone started buzzing again, and he dug into his jeans pocket in annoyance. It was from the same number, but this time it was a text message. Nick scrolled to the text, which read:
Sorry—tried everything I could to stop Mum. Love, Dad.
Nick stared at the text again. What on earth could his father mean?
Samantha began barking out new orders. “Okay, now it’s time for the groom and his best man to enter. Nick and Colin—both of you will be at the staging area to the left of the pavilion while all the guests are being seated. When you hear the cello solo begin, that’s your cue to walk down the path toward—”
“?’Scuse me for one sec,” Nick said, dashing away from the arch. He stood at the back corner of the forecourt, frantically trying to call his father. This time, it went straight to voice mail: “I’m sorry, but the person you called has a voice-mail box that has not been set up yet. Please try your call again later.”
Damn. Nick tried calling his father’s regular Sydney number, an avalanche of dread suddenly beginning to engulf him.
Colin came up to check on him. “Everything okay?”
“Um, I don’t know. Hey, don’t you have security wherever you travel?”
Colin rolled his eyes. “Yes. It’s a big nuisance, but Araminta’s father insists on it.”
“Where’s your security detail now?”
“There’s a team posted outside the gates, and that woman over there is Araminta’s personal bodyguard,” Colin replied, indicating a woman with a frizzy spiral perm seated inconspicuously among Rachel’s relatives. “I know she looks like a bank teller, but let me tell you, she’s former Chinese Special Forces and can disembowel a man in under ten seconds.”
Nick showed Colin the text message from his father. “Can you please call your security people and request extra backup for tomorrow? I’ll pay whatever it takes. We need to go into full lockdown and make sure that only the people on the guest list are allowed onto the property.”
Colin grimaced. “Um, I think it’s a little too late for that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look dead ahead. Twelve o’clock.”
Nick stared for a second. “No, that’s not my mum. That’s a cousin of Rachel’s from New Jersey.”
“I mean look up. In the sky…”
Nick squinted into the bright blue sky. “Oh. My. Fucking. Hell.”
? ? ?
“Viv, is Ollie ready?” Samantha said, bending down to give Rachel’s little toddler cousin the blue velvet pillow for the wedding rings. The boy took hold of the pillow for two seconds before it suddenly blew out of his hands. The branches on the towering oak trees began to tremble, and a deafening hum filled the air. From out of nowhere, a large black-and-white helicopter zoomed over the portico and hovered above the great lawn as it slowly began to land. Samantha and Rachel stared in horror as the wind gusts from the giant propellers began to tear apart everything on the portico like a tornado that had just touched down.
“Get away from the trellis! It’s coming down!” a workman screamed as everyone began running for cover. The arch toppled over just as the trellis began to collapse. Parts of bamboo began blowing off the structure at high speed, and the wisteria buds were blown clear off their stems. Aunt Belinda screamed as a big clump of jasmine hit her in the face.
“Hiyah, everything is ruined!” Kerry Chu cried.
When the propellers of the AgustaWestland AW109 finally ground to a halt, the forward door opened and a burly man in dark sunglasses jumped out to open the main cabin door. A Chinese woman clad in a chic saffron-colored pantsuit stepped out.
“Jesus, of course it’s Auntie Eleanor!” Astrid groaned.
Rachel went absolutely numb as she watched Nick sprint across the lawn toward his mother. Colin and Araminta rushed up behind her, followed by a Chinese lady with a bad perm, who was for some reason brandishing a gun.
“Let’s get you back to the house,” Colin said.
“No, no, I’ll be fine,” Rachel replied. Witnessing the sheer absurdity of the situation, a sudden realization had come over her. She had absolutely nothing to fear. Nick’s mother was the one who was filled with fear. She was so afraid of this marriage actually taking place that she would go to all the trouble of chartering a helicopter and landing right in the friggin’ middle of their wedding site! Rachel found herself involuntarily walking onto the lawn toward Nick. She wanted to be by his side.
Nick stormed up to his mother in fury. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Eleanor looked at her son calmly and said, “I knew you were going to be mad. But there was no other way to reach you since you refused to return any of my calls!”