Wedding Survivor (4 page)

A smile curved the corner of her lips, and Marnie marched on.

She rounded the garage, saw the walkway up to the main house, and proceeded—but she didn't make it as far as the keypad on the gate when a man the size of a mountain appeared from nowhere and stepped in front of her. He folded his arms across his chest and frowned down at her. "May I help you?"

"I hope so," she said smartly. "I was about to boil to death in the Lincoln. I'm looking for Eli."

"Who?"

"
Eli
," she said again. "The guy who drove me here."

"Right. And I suppose he's staying here, huh? A close, personal friend of Vince's?"

"Who?" she asked, but the moment the question was out of her mouth, she knew exactly who Vince was and gasped with delight. "
Vincent Vittorio
lives here?" she squealed. "Am I going to meet him?"

The guy laughed and grabbed her elbow none too gently. "
No
," he said, and pushed her back. 'Take a hike," he said, escorting her roughly down the path.

"Hey!" Marnie protested. "I'm here with Eli!"

"I don't know any Eli—"

"The Thrillseeker guy!"

The man stopped pushing her. "Oh. You're here for the auditions."

"What is the deal with the
auditions
?" she cried, and wrenched her elbow free of his grasp.

"Got me," he said, and pointed in the opposite direction, to a path that led into the garden. "That's their deal, not ours. They're down there. Up here is off limits. You understand me?
Off limits
," he said again, making a slashing motion across his neck.

"All right, already," Marnie said, pouting.

The guy turned around and started to walk away.

"But wait!" she called after him. "Is Vincent
here
?"

"
Off limits
!" he barked, and stalked off.

Whatever. Maybe Eli would introduce her before he took her back to the Farmer's Market. If she could find Eli, that was.

She wandered down another path and did indeed find him, as well as some other men, as she rounded a bend in the path through a large garden. They were standing inside a beautiful white pavilion with hanging ferns and cushioned seats and boxes of flowers along the rail. By the sound of it, they were arguing. Well wasn't that just great—she was roasting on a spit and they were having some sort of argument.

"Hellooooo!" she shouted as she made her way to the pavilion with her melon and oranges. "Hel-
loooooo
!"

All four of them stopped and jerked toward the sound of her voice. As she strode toward the pavilion, Eli stepped out of the group and moved quickly out from the cover of the structure and down the steps, as if he were somehow surprised to see her here. Another guy, almost as good-looking as Eli, stepped out with him and peered at her as if she were some sort of space alien who had just landed in the garden.

The other two men—okay, make that four gorgeous guys—walked to the edge of the pavilion to stare at her. Marnie halted directly before them and paused for a moment to lose the melon, which was beginning to feel like it weighed two tons.

She straightened up, eyed them curiously, and smiled as brightly as she could, given the circumstance. "Hi! I'm Marnie Banks."

No one said anything.

Oh come
on
! "Surely
you
remember me, Mr. Eli," she said with a forced bit of laughter. "You brought me here, remember?"

"Oh, I remember," he said and smiled a little. "Ah… this is Cooper," he said, gesturing to the man next to him, who extended his hand to her in greeting.

Marnie grabbed it and shook it vigorously. "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Cooper."

"Ah, it's Cooper Jessup," he said, withdrawing his hand from her grasp with a bit of a wince. "And these are our partners," he said, motioning to the others around him. "Eli McCain, you know," he said, indicating Eli. "And Jack Price and Michael Raney."

The two guys each moved forward to shake Mamie's hand. She smiled at the lot of them, straightened the only sensible blouse she had that was nice enough for an interview but might also be considered a "banging-around" blouse, and clasped her hands together. The four men stood there, towering over her, as if they expected her to say something.

What she wanted to ask was if any of them were single—she hadn't been in the company of so many good-looking, buff men in… well, never. But okay, she was here for a job, not to ogle the team. "Well!" she said, smiling. "Thanks so much for interviewing me. I am really excited about this opportunity!"

"Right," Eli said, glancing at the others. "So Marnie, there's a couple of things we'd like to ask you."

"Great! Fire away. I have some resumes here in case you forgot to bring the ones I sent you," she said, digging in the bag of oranges and pulling out a manila folder. "I didn't bring my entire portfolio, but of course I can make that available to you," she added, handing them each a double-sided, colorful resume. "Nevertheless, I think there's enough information here to demonstrate that my background is perfectly suited for this wedding," she added confidently. "So please, ask me anything you want." • "Great," Eli said, without looking at her resume. He seemed reluctant to ask whatever it was.

Marnie smiled brightly. "I'm ready if you are!"

He glanced at something over her shoulder and said, "Okay, well… first of all… can you can climb that rope over there?"

Marnie laughed politely at his lame joke.

No one else laughed. Eli nodded solemnly to a point over her shoulder. Still smiling, Marnie turned to look. It was a rope, all right, hanging from a sycamore tree.

"Climb a
rope
?" she asked, and jerked around, expecting to catch them snickering over some weird joke. Only they weren't snickering at all, and Eli nodded again, as if it were perfectly reasonable to ask a wedding planner to climb a rope.

Her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

"Just… you know, give it a quick run up and down," Eli suggested. "Nothing fancy."

He was serious. They were
all
serious. They were peering at her, actually, glancing anxiously at the rope then at her again.

"You want
me
to climb
that
rope."

"Yeah, it must sound really strange," Eli agreed. But then he patted her on the shoulder, leaned over so that his head was directly next to hers, and said softly, "But we really need you to climb that rope."

ELI caught her arm before she could grab her melon and run, and at least got her to agree to hear what they were trying to accomplish with the audition.

Thrillseekers Anonymous, he said, was an ultrasecret, ultraexclusive, members-only sports club catering to the extremely wealthy.

The "extremely wealthy" point instantly caught her attention, and she had stopped wrestling Eli for the melon and demanded suspiciously, "Like
who
?"

"Like… we can't tell you unless you get the job," Cooper said.

That clearly disappointed her, but she did agree to come into the pavilion and sit down to listen to their spiel—a spiel they'd given so many times that they all knew it by heart.

It went something like this: Eli, Cooper, and Jack had grown up best friends on the West Texas plains. Their love for anything sporting had started then—football, baseball, basketball, rodeo—whatever sport they could play with the goal of outdoing the other two. They were still pups when it became clear that regular sports were not enough to satisfy them. They began to create elaborate, double-dog-dare tricks using rooftops, trampolines, and swimming pools. And they created a dirt-bike trail through the canyons that rivaled the professional circuit. They made a game out of breaking horses without using a bit, and built motorized conveyances that they would race across fallow fields.

As they grew older, their competitive spirit grew more extreme, and they became experts in white-water rafting, rock climbing, canyon jumping, kayaking, surfing, and skiing—name a sport, any sport, and they had tried it.

After college, Jack went into the Air Force so he could fly higher and learn how to do stunts in airplanes. Cooper and Eli weren't as interested in flying as they were in jumping off buildings and blowing things up, so they headed out to Hollywood to hire on as stuntmen.

With Jack in the Air Force, Eli and Cooper got their start working on some of the biggest action films in Hollywood. Their ability to do any stunt and their willingness to go the extra mile eventually led them to choreographing huge action sequences. Through a series of big blockbuster films, they earned a solid reputation for being fearless, unconquerable, and astoundingly safe, given what they did.

And still, with all the action in their day jobs, Eli and Cooper routinely trekked out on weekends to ocean kayak, or kite surf, or helicopter ski—whatever caught their imagination.

But it wasn't until they got the bright idea to take along a couple of pals who just happened to be movie stars that their outings began to be the talk around movie sets. Their reputation as tough guys grew exponentially—the more Hollywood bigs they took along on their adventures, the bigger their adventures became.

Perhaps more important, and amazingly without a lot of forethought, what Eli and Cooper proved adept at doing was keeping these jaunts out of the press. In fact, they became masters at it.

It was Cooper who came up with the idea of making a business out of their love of adventure—after all, extreme sports didn't come cheap. And an increasing number of Hollywood moguls wanted the exclusive and exotic outings they offered, particularly if the adventure came with the guarantee of total privacy.

When Jack started making noises about getting out of the Air Force—he'd learned to fly anything with wings, and was ready to move on—they persuaded their old pal to come and join them in California. They figured if they could provide their own transportation and fly their clients to their adventure destinations themselves, they'd be that much more mobile and private.

Jack was more than willing to do it—he missed his old pals, missed the extreme sports with them. But he had one condition—he wanted to bring a friend.