“Me? I’m no threat to him.”
“Anybody who gets what he thinks he wants is a threat to somebody like Cullen Kane,” Wendy advised. “Remember that.”
21
Bert was standing at the worktable, fastening sprigs of rosemary and daisies together with floral tape. He looked up as Cara came in the door, weighed down with the flowers.
“Thought maybe you’d been abducted by aliens,” he said, putting down the boutonniere he’d been working on. “Everything okay?”
“Grrr” was her only answer. “Ask me later. I’ve got to get moving with these bouquets and arrangements.”
Fortunately, Maya had chosen only two attendants for her wedding. Cara went to work first on the most important bouquet. And as she bunched together the sunny reds, whites, and yellows for the bride’s bouquet, snipping their stems and stripping the lower leaves, she felt her anger and frustration melt away. She reached into the cooler and brought out a handful of lemon leaves she’d trimmed from the tree in the courtyard garden, and tucked the glossy leaves in and around the flowers, turning the bouquet in her hand as she worked, studying it to make sure it worked from all angles.
She put the bouquet down in a Mason jar of water on the worktable, stepped back, and thought. It needed a touch of drama, she decided. After another moment, she walked out the back door into the garden, and stood there, hands on her hips, surveying what she had in bloom.
Finally, she spied the happy green and yellow zebra-striped leaves of the canna plant that had been left behind by a long-ago gardener. Cara wasn’t normally a fan of the lowly canna, but she’d loved this zany striped foliage the moment she spotted it among the weeds and underbrush in the courtyard. With her scissors, she cut two of the long, straplike leaves and brought them back inside.
Bert watched while she split the leaves in half lengthwise, then wound them around and around the bouquet stem, like so much living ribbon, finally fastening the ends together with a large vintage enameled daisy brooch from the 1960s.
“Ohmygod, that’s awesome,” he laughed, when she held the bouquet up for inspection. “It’s so Maya! She’ll love it.”
* * *
Maya Gaines knew what suited her. She was Amerasian, petite, just over five feet tall, with a mop of shiny dark curls. Her wedding dress was a short, pale yellow eyelet frock with spaghetti straps and a yellow satin bow at the waist. Her shoes were red ankle-strap heels, and instead of a veil she wore a narrow-brimmed straw fedora trimmed with yellow ribbon and a jaunty red fabric daisy.
She hopped up and down and hugged Cara when she walked into the K of C hall and saw the tables, with their white paper toppers and centerpieces of flowers and candy. Hanging from the ceiling at random heights were oversized red, yellow, and white tissue-paper flowers Cara had assigned for Maya and her sisters to create.
“I love it,” Maya exclaimed, twirling around and touching the Mason jars. “It’s what I dreamed about, only better. Twizzlers! And Pixy Stix! Wait until Jared sees these.”
Cara laughed. “I really don’t think Jared is going to get all that excited about Twizzlers on his wedding day.”
“You don’t know Jared,” Maya replied. “He’s a total candyholic.”
* * *
The ceremony was brief, but sweet. Standing before a beaming white-haired Asian man, who Cara later learned was the bride’s maternal grandfather, Maya and Jared pledged to love each other and play nice, and hold hands through every adventure life would bring them.
When they’d exchanged rings and kissed, the crowd of around a hundred in the hall roared their approval and clapped and whistled.
Cara and Bert, who’d stayed for the ceremony, exchanged a look. “What do you think?” Cara whispered.
“They’ll make it,” Bert said solemnly. “She’s a sweetheart, and Jared’s the first non-asshole she’s dated. I mean, they’ve lived together for three years, the whole time Maya was in school.”
Cara raised one eyebrow. “Forever? Really?”
Bert nodded vigorously. “Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, I wouldn’t want to jinx them, but if anybody can make a marriage work, it’s those two zanies.”
* * *
Cara was in line at the buffet, about to serve herself a pig in a blanket from the steam tray, when for some reason, a couple on the dance floor caught her eye. She had to look again.
Jack Finnerty! He wore a dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves, khaki slacks, and a straw fedora not too unlike the one the bride wore. In fact, most of the men and many of the women at the wedding wore hats. It was the new hipster thing, Bert had informed her. He himself was sporting a straw boater.
The girl Jack was with was nearly his height, with long light brown hair. She wore a strapless navy-blue sundress, and she danced effortlessly with Jack, laughing and chattering away as they moved through the crowd on the dance floor.
Bert stood beside her in the line and saw what she was watching. “Hey. Isn’t that the dognapper? Who let him in here?”
Cara shrugged. “He literally knows everybody in Savannah. I don’t know how the man has time to work, in between going to weddings every weekend.”
They found a table near the back of the room; Cara sipped a glass of pinot grigio, and Bert ate what she estimated was his weight in boiled shrimp, pigs in a blanket, and Buffalo chicken drumettes.
“How do you eat like that and never gain weight?” she asked. “I bet you’ve eaten like, twelve thousand calories, just while I’ve been sitting here.”
Her assistant was as tall and gangly as a strand of sea oats, six foot three, weighing maybe 140 on his version of a fat day. He’d died his blond hair purple in honor of his best friend’s wedding, and he wore skinny white jeans, a red shirt, and a narrow yellow tie, loosened at the neck. Bert patted the vicinity of his belly. “I don’t know. I just like food. I guess I like it as much as I used to like Scotch. So now, I eat instead of booze.”
“You’re an exoskeleton, I swear,” she countered.
They stayed until the bride and groom cut the wedding cake, which in their case was actually a huge Key lime pie, and then Cara tried to leave. She’d already stayed longer than she’d planned, lingering only because she was enjoying attending a wedding with a happy, carefree bride and groom—a rarity in her business.
“C’mon,” Bert protested. “Stay awhile. You haven’t even danced with me.”
“You dance? With women?”
He looked around the room. “Sometimes. When there are no other attractive options.”
“Am I supposed to be flattered?”
Still, she allowed him to lead her onto the dance floor, where she tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to match the rhythm of the weird technopunk song the disc jockey was playing.
“I give up,” she said finally, after the third time her sandal-clad foot had been thrashed by another dancer.
She was headed back to her table when a hand touched her elbow. “Quitter.”
Cara turned and found herself facing Jack Finnerty, who was suddenly solo.
“It’s this music,” she said. “I’m only thirty-six, but I totally don’t get it. There’s no beat, no rhythm.”
“There probably is,” he corrected her. “But I think it’s like high-pitched tones only dogs can hear. You have to be under thirty to appreciate this music.”
She gave him a rueful smile. “Your date seems to get it.”
“Date?” He looked around.
“Your dance partner? The girl you were with earlier?”
As soon as she opened her mouth she regretted it. Now he’d think she was watching him. Which she had been, of course.
“The pretty girl in the blue dress?”
“Meghan? You thought Meghan was my date?” He chuckled. “Wow. That really makes me feel like a dirty old man.”
“Aren’t you?” She was making a beeline for the table, intent on getting her handbag and going home.
“Meghan’s my little sister,” Jack said. “Wait
until I tell her you thought I was with her, like with her.”
Cara narrowed her eyes. “You’re telling me you have a sister? She wasn’t at Ryan and Torie’s wedding. I know, because she’s so striking, I would have noticed her.”
“She was still in school. She just finished a semester abroad in Scotland,” Jack said, amused. “Had finals the week of the wedding.”
“I see,” Cara said, looking around to try to spy the girl again.
“Also?” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Meghan and Torie aren’t what you would call best friends.”
“Do I dare ask what you’re doing here tonight?” Cara asked. He’d followed her to the table and was standing by her side, obviously not in a hurry to leave.
“You want a beer?” he asked, deflecting her question. He snapped his fingers. “No. Wait. You drink wine. Pinot, right?”
“Riiight. But I was just leaving.”
“Why? The night’s young.”
“But I’m not. Remember? I stayed longer than I planned as it is. I’ve got to be back here in the morning to clear out the flowers and things, and then I’ve got an early appointment over in South Carolina. Besides, since I’ve already owned up to being a geezer, I gotta tell you, this music is giving me a headache.”
He smiled. “Grab your purse and follow me.”
Bert was dancing with the bride. She managed to catch his eye and gave him a signal indicating her exit.
She followed Jack as he threaded his way through the swirl of thrashing dancers out the door and onto the street outside.
It was cooler there, and a cluster of partygoers stood around on the sidewalk, smoking and talking quietly.
“Better?”
She nodded.
“What about that drink?” he asked.
“What about your little sister?”
He shrugged. “Meghan won’t mind. She didn’t want to show up at Maya’s wedding without a date, but now that the party’s revved up, she’ll never miss me.”
“So she’s a friend of Maya’s? Or Jared’s?”
“Both. Maya used to babysit her. And Jared used to work for Ryan and me.”
Cara shrugged. It was only nine o’clock. “Where did you have in mind?”
“How about Doyle’s? It’s just down the block. We can walk if you want.”
“All right,” she agreed.
* * *
Doyle’s Pub was a fairly new place, near the DeSoto Hilton on Liberty Street.. It was busy, but the hostess led them to a booth in the far reaches of the room and a waitress came and took their drink orders.
Sliding onto the bench opposite hers, Jack looked around the room appreciatively. “I remember when this was the old Shamrock Shop. My grandmother always bought all her birthday cards here.” He pointed to the far wall, where the bar was located. “And that was the candy counter. All the St. Vincent’s girls would come in here to buy candy and Cokes after school. Which meant the BC guys showed up too. It was a happening place.”
“Still happening,” Cara said, looking around. “I know they’ve been open at least a year, but this is actually the first time I’ve been in.”
“Did you ever come in here, back in the day? Where’d you go to high school?”
“Not here,” Cara said. “I’m an Air Force brat. I went to six different schools between elementary and high school, but I finished up in Columbus, Ohio.”
“I figured.” He nodded. “Not much of a Southern accent.”
“I’m working on it. I’ve learned to say ‘fixin’ to’ and ‘crank the car’ and ‘carry me to the store,’ but that’s as far as I’ve gotten.”
“You should hang around my aunt Betty,” Jack said. “Born and raised here, never lived anyplace other than Savannah. Half the time, even I can’t understand what she’s saying.”
The drinks came then. He seemed to be studying her, waiting for something. It was making her nervous. He made her nervous. Fidgety.
Say something, she told herself. “How’s your…”
“How’s your dog?” he blurted out, at the exact same time.
They both laughed.
“You start,” he said. “How is Poppy? Over her trauma?”
“She’s good,” Cara said. “How about Shaz?”
“Not as depressed. I’ve started taking her to job sites with me now, and she’s kinda into that. Although Torie’s not crazy about having her at the house—she thinks Shaz intimidates Benji.”
“Benji?”
“Torie’s dog. Some kinda purse puppy. I don’t know what kind of dog he is. Ryan calls him a shih tzu.”
“But not in front of Torie.”
“No.”
“I’m lucky Poppy can just come downstairs to the shop with me most of the time. When I’m not there—is it weird that I leave the television on for her to watch?”
“Don’t ask me. I leave the Animal Planet on for Shaz. Or Sports South.”
“Poppy loves that too,” she confided. “That and Disney.”
They sipped their drinks. Cara decided it was her turn to study him. See if she could make him feel as fidgety as she felt.
He was easy to look at. Intelligent hazel eyes with crinkle lines at the corners, that made her think he laughed a lot when he wasn’t around her. He had the dry, weather-beaten skin of somebody who worked outside, a trace of five-o’clock shadow on his strong jawline. He’d taken off his hat, and his dark hair was a little matted, but he wasn’t the kind of guy who’d be self-conscious about that. His hands, clamped around his beer stein, were strong, sun-browned, callused.
Ryan told her that Jack was getting over a bad breakup. Torie had told her about the Jimmy Buffett impersonator. Why would anybody leave somebody who looks like Jack Finnerty?
“Kinda weird our dogs look so much alike,” Jack said. “I’ve been wondering about that.”
“You don’t see that many goldendoodles in Savannah,” she agreed. “I had to go to Atlanta to find Poppy’s breeder. Where’d you get Shaz?”
“I think Zoey got her in Atlanta.”
“You think?”
“We’d talked about getting a dog, in kind of an abstract way. Like, we were running in the park one day, and she said, ‘We should get a dog.’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And a few weeks later, I come home, and there’s Shaz. Don’t get me wrong. I like dogs. I love ’em. But it would have been nice if she’d discussed it with me.”
He sipped his beer. “It wasn’t the best time to bring a puppy into the mix. Relationship-wise. We weren’t really getting along anyway. So I was pissed at her, and she was pissed at me for being pissed about the dog. And we were both pissed when Shaz pissed on the floor, which totally wasn’t the dog’s fault. She was a puppy! It went like that. Anyway, we split up. Probably just as well.”
“If it was her dog, I’m surprised she didn’t take Shaz.”
“Not as surprised as me.” They both laughed at that. “She was with one of her girlfriends at a bar on River Street, she met this guy, he was playing there. I guess they hooked up right away.…”
His face darkened at the telling. “He’s a Jimmy Buffett impersonator, for God’s sake.”
“Oh my.”
“That was a Friday night,” he went on. “It was late March. Ryan and I were working crazy hours, trying to finish this Victorian house on Huntingdon Street. A total gut job. So I worked all day Saturday and Sunday too. When I got home that night, we had this big blowout of a fight about it. And again, in hindsight, I know now it wasn’t about the dog, and it wasn’t really about me working too much. At some point, I realized I needed to cool off. So I got in the truck, and I went back to the job site, and I actually slept in the truck that night, because I was too pissed off to go home.…”
“And that was it?” Cara asked.
“Yeah. How lame is this? I go back home the next morning, to shower, and she’s gone. Packed up most of her clothes and crap, and just headed out on the road with this character, who calls himself … get t
his … Jamey Buttons.”
Cara groaned. “And she left Shaz behind.”
“And me. Now I’m like the opposite of what the song says. Come Monday, nothin’ was all right.”
22
There was a votive candle in a jar on their table, and the small flame lit Cara’s face in shades of pinks and peach as she leaned in, listening to him tell the end of the Jack and Zoey story. She had large, expressive brown eyes, and her nose had a weird little indent at the very tip, and her hair, which she’d worn up, was falling down, strands lightly touching the bare skin on her shoulders. Her lips were the color of ripe peaches. Or was that just the candlelight? She was wearing the same orangey-pink dress she’d had on the night of Ryan’s wedding.
Why am I telling her all this? Why does she care? Why do I care?
He cared because he’d been deserted, left behind. Because Zoey had found somebody else. Somebody better. And let’s face it, he cared because she’d beat him to the punch, leaving him before he could leave her.
But why should Cara Kryzik care about any of this? Maybe … because she’d been hurt, too. At least, that’s what Ryan had said. She was a good listener. Zoey never listened worth a damn. You’d start telling her something, and she’d interrupt, stepping all over your sentences, making you forget what you were talking about, turning everything around, until, inevitably, whatever you were about to say was somehow about her. Her day. Her crappy job. Her. Her. Her.
“Do you miss her?” Cara was asking.
“Who? Zoey?” He would have shrugged off the question, but there was something about this girl that made him speak the truth, even when it was painful.
“Maybe. Yeah, okay. Sometimes. And then she pulls some stunt, like letting hours go by before letting me know that Shaz has been turned in to the vet’s office, and I’ve abducted somebody else’s dog.”
She nodded.
“What about you?” he asked softly. “Ryan tells me you’re divorced. Pretty recently?”
Cara bit her lip and looked out the window. “Last April. Hard to believe it’s been a year.”
“Miss him?”
Save the Date Page 14
