Married...Again. Stephanie Doyle

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       Chapter Two

      Two and a half years later

      “A TOAST! TO my lovely daughter and her fiancé. I, as I’m sure everyone here does, wish them the most happiness. And I know my dear husband, Frank, is smiling down on them from heaven.”

      Eleanor looked at her mother in the center of the room and smiled even as she lifted her glass in the air. She glanced at her sister, Allie, and her fiancé, Mike, and was happy to see they seemed to be having a nice time.

      The house was filled with family and friends for the engagement party. A party she knew Allie and Mike didn’t originally want, hoping to keep things as low-key as possible. They had just announced their engagement last week, and no sooner had that happened than Marilyn was planning the party despite Allie’s objections. However, Marilyn was insistent, and, in the Gaffney household, whatever Marilyn wanted, Marilyn got.

      Whether her children felt the same or not.

      The wedding was almost a year away, but Eleanor had already agreed to take time from her company to make sure she could attend all the various activities. Tonight was just the start. Eventually there would be a bridal shower, then the bachelorette party, the rehearsal dinner, all culminating in what Marilyn Gaffney was proclaiming would be the event of the season in the town of Hartsville, Nebraska, next June.

      Given that the population of Hartsville was just a little over five thousand citizens, any wedding that happened in town usually was the event of the season.

      “Some champagne?”

      Eleanor turned at the sound of the voice behind her. Daniel, her date for the evening, held up two flutes. She gladly accepted one.

      “Thank you. You may need to keep this coming.”

      “You seem to be getting along with your mother,” he said in a lowered voice. “From everything you had told me on the drive here, I was expecting something a little more dramatic between you two.”

      “I’m trying to do everything I can to avoid the drama. Mom and I are fine as long as I’m agreeing with her. It’s when I don’t that things become difficult. Take this party, for example. Completely unnecessary. We’re going to be seeing all these same people at the wedding. What’s the point of doing it twice?”

      Daniel raised an eyebrow. “What’s the point of any party? To have fun.”

      Eleanor looked at Allie and Mike again. They were still smiling, still chatting with the people around them. They looked like what they were. A couple in love. A couple who was excited about their future.

      And Eleanor was happy for them.

      All this wedding paraphernalia didn’t bother her. Not in the least. That’s what she was telling herself anyway, and she could be very convincing when she needed to be.

      Still, she knew everything on the surface wasn’t always as it appeared.

      “I know my sister. It’s going to be hard enough for her to be the center of attention for a day. To keep this up for the next year will be laborious. A wedding shouldn’t be that much work.”

      “Speaking of weddings...do you like big ones or small ones? Just so I can get an idea.”

      “Daniel,” she said with a soft sigh.

      “I hate that sigh, you know. I was only teasing.”

      Was he? It was hard to know with Daniel. He liked to call himself a man of action, and that was true. He was always very persistent in getting what he wanted. Much like her mother.

      Like convincing her to go out with him when she’d refused him for months.

      “This is only our second date. I think it’s a little too soon to talk about weddings, don’t you?”

      He gripped his chest in mock pain. “What? You’re not counting all those lunches?”

      “They were business lunches,” she reminded him.

      “One woman’s business lunch, another man’s date.”

      “So you’re saying you have no real interest in investing in Head to Toe?”