by Rachel Hauck
She didn’t bother turning on lights. The depressing mood of the place suited her. Slipping out of her heels, she walked to her cold fireplace and stood before it, her arms crossed tightly.
Ruthlessly, she raked through her thought patterns, trying to get underneath her fear. Why was she afraid?
She was afraid because she didn’t think a romance between Josh and her could possibly end well. She wanted to blame that certainty on the fact that he lived overseas, or on the fact that they’d run out of time in which to cultivate a relationship, or their past history.
But none of those things were the real, hard truth. The real truth was that she didn’t think it could end well for them because she didn’t believe she was . . . enough for him.
How humiliating! Maddening. She had good self-esteem. She liked herself and she liked her life. But somewhere along the line, a small voice had started whispering to her that Josh was too good for her. Maybe the voice had been there long ago, when they’d been dating, which would partly explain why she’d followed through on his mom’s request that she break up with him. In her heart of hearts, perhaps, she hadn’t thought herself worthy of him.
Or maybe the voice had begun in those dark days after they’d broken up, when she’d told herself their romance never would have worked anyway, in an effort to make herself feel better. Or maybe all the years of disappointing dates, of watching her family members move on to bigger and better things, of humble middle child syndrome, had given the voice credence. Unlike what they said about a lot of people of her generation, Holly was not filled with a sense of entitlement. No. Quite the opposite.
Somewhere along the line she’d become like Shadow the cat, content to remain alone in the place where she’d always lived, because this was where she felt she belonged and what she deserved. Martinsburg was safe and familiar. She’d closed herself off to opportunities for change. For adventure.
For love. Tears brimmed on her lower lashes before seeping over.
“Holy smoke, Holly. Enough already. Quit it.” She swiped the tears from her cheeks.
That sly voice that had been whispering to her wasn’t God’s voice. She saw that very clearly, standing before her fireplace in her bare feet and her beautiful dress. Josh might be intelligent and successful and rich. But God valued her every bit as much as He valued Josh. Her worth, just like Josh’s worth, was found in Him alone. Without consciously knowing it, she’d let doubts creep in and distort her vision.
If she cleared her mind, she could see how Josh’s return to Martinsburg might even be considered somewhat . . . ordained. Amanda and Ben could have married in any number of fabulous destinations. Instead, they’d decided to marry here, which had brought Josh back into her life.
It was as if God was saying, Do you trust me, Holly? Do you believe my timing is best? You’ve been asking me to prepare you for someone and someone for you, and I’ve been busy doing exactly that. You and Josh were too young the first time. You both had a lot of maturing and growing to do. But now I’ve brought him back because he’s ready and you’re ready and he’s the one. I’ve brought him back to you, Holly. I am, after all, a God of grace and second chances.
She dearly wanted a do-over of that moment on the patio when fog had encircled them like a blessing and Josh had been on the verge of kissing her. She might not get a do-over. But if she did, she’d draw on God’s strength and use it to kick her fears to the curb.
Then she’d risk all.
Chapter 9
“Chao ban,” Sam greeted Holly the next day.
It was lunchtime and they’d decided to meet at restaurant number ninety-five in their Year of Restaurants. Martinsburg’s only Vietnamese food place centered mostly around the take-out side of their business. They offered a mere two tables, both pushed up against a wall.
“Can you repeat that?” Holly took the seat opposite Sam. The restaurant’s interior had been painted in clean, bright shades of orange and pale green and white. The smells were promising.
“Chao ban. It’s Vietnamese for hello, friend.” Sam held up her phone. “I googled it.”
“In that case, chao ban.”
“Your appearance here leads me to believe that you were able to sneak away from the preparations for the wedding of the century.”
“Yes, but I have to hurry back. There are dozens of people at Trinity right now doing all sorts of decorating. It’s taking every bit of my energy to defend the church’s dignity.”
“Has Amanda’s professional wedding coordinator gone on a rampage?”
“On the contrary. Mitzi’s remained firmly in control of herself and everyone else. Especially me. I think she views me as her handy and inexpensive personal assistant.”
Sam sipped her ice water. “If I were you, I’d tell her to stick that assumption where the sun don’t shine.”
“But you see, unlike you, I’m a nice person.” Holly winked.
“Niceness isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
“No. Mitzi’s already informed me that she needs me to wrangle the seven flower girls and one ring bearer from the time they arrive up until the start of the ceremony.”
“Dare I ask the ages of these children?”
“Two through six.”
Sam rolled her eyes. “I recommend giving them all Benadryl. I’ve heard a rumor that it calms kids down.”
“Sam!”
“You disapprove? Fine, then give yourself some Benadryl. I have nieces and nephews that age. Trust me when I say you’re going to need an emergency stash of non-messy candy to pacify the kids. I suggest gummi bears.”
A server arrived and patiently explained the menu choices to the two Vietnamese food rookies.
“So?” Sam asked, after the server moved off. Her expression communicated expectancy.
“So?”
“Tell me about the rehearsal dinner.”
A memory of how Josh had looked last night, sitting beside her at dinner, turning his head to watch her with affection, filled her mind. She relayed all the critical information to Sam. Everything but the almost-kiss.
“Holly, are you totally in love with your high school love turned billionaire? Or are you merely halfway in love?”
“I’ve never admitted to any degree of love for my high school love turned billionaire.”
“You didn’t have to. It’s written on your face. Now fess up. If you asked me a pointed question about my husband, you know I’d give you a straight answer.”
“I don’t want to ask you a pointed question about Mr. Perfect. The answer would just depress me.”
Sam’s smile glinted with self-satisfaction as she flicked her long sable hair over her shoulder. “After he finished vacuuming this morning, he encouraged me to get a pedicure and do some shopping. He’s going to be busy all day building me a backyard water feature and planning next week’s menu.”
“See? Depressing.”
“Rob’s into you, Holly, lest you’ve forgotten.”
“I haven’t forgotten. I like him. He just doesn’t make my knees go weak.”
“And the billionaire makes your knees go weak. I understand why. I saw him at Das Lokal with my own eyes, remember. He has this really sexy, brainy, intense thing working for him. It’s not possible for mortal women to resist that kind of thing for long.”
“No,” Holly agreed. “It isn’t.”
Sam considered her, lips pushed to the side. “Have you been taking my advice? Remember the first part? Nothing ventured nothing gained?”
“I’m working on it.”
“What about the second part? Have you been viewing yourself as superior to him?”
“Funny you should mention that. I spent a lot of time thinking on that topic last night.”
“And?”
“I’m working on that part too.”
Sam released a long-suffering sigh. “Your time with him is almost done, Holly. I’ll be honest with you. At this point, there may only be one hope left for you and Josh.”<
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“Which is?”
“Divine intervention.”
Four forty-five p.m. Fifteen minutes until the wedding ceremony.
Fifteen minutes had never before seemed like such an impossibly long stretch of time. Holly had been corralling the flower girls and the ring bearer for an hour already. At first, she’d trailed the photographer around as the intrepid woman attempted to capture pictures of the little tykes. That hadn’t been too terrible, because most of their moms had been in the mix. But then the moms had deposited the kids in this boring anteroom that was beginning to resemble a prison and deserted Holly to go find seats in the jam-packed sanctuary.
The church was so jam-packed for Amanda and Ben’s wedding, in fact, that Holly had said a prayer asking God to keep the choir loft from buckling under the extraordinary weight. Here’s hoping the ceremony doesn’t include architectural collapse and death-by-crushing.
“I’m hungry,” one little flower girl stated.
“I’m thirsty.”
“I need to use the potty.”
The ring bearer! He’d climbed on top of the bureau with the help of a chair. Holly dashed over, scooped him up, and deposited him safely on the floor.
Each of the children were gorgeously dressed. The ring bearer in a mini-tux. The seven flower girls in dove gray gowns with satin bodices and full tulle skirts. Every hair had been combed into place by the moms. Every black ballet slipper tugged into position. Their angelic appearance had so far proved deceiving.
One of the flower girls screeched and pushed her sister, also a flower girl.
“Girls.” Holly placed herself in between the fighting siblings. “Let’s be sweet to each other.”
They both released a string of tattling aimed at the other.
Oh, no. The ring bearer and the tiniest flower girl were on their way back up the bureau. Determinedly, Holly intercepted the climbers. “Would anyone like some gummi bears?”
“Me!” they all chorused.
She went to her purse for the big package of gummi bears she’d purchased on her way back to the church after lunch. The itty-bitty set followed her as if she were the Pied Piper. God bless Sam.
“Sit down nicely in a circle, everyone, and I’ll come around and give you each gummi bears.” With child number two, she learned the importance of making sure she gave them each the same number of gummi bears in the exact same variety of colors.
After she’d dropped gummi bears into the final child’s hands, the door creaked open and Josh leaned in.
Joy suffused Holly at the sight of him, as if it had been months since she’d seen him instead of hours.
Josh’s face seemed to ease at the sight of her. He stepped fully into the room. He was wearing—Have mercy on me, Lord—a tuxedo that looked as if it had been made for him. Which it probably had been. It fit him the way James Bond’s tuxedos fit.
The children peered up at Josh while chewing loudly.
Holly skirted the circle of kids and approached him, slightly mortified at the thought of what she must look like. She’d dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved mint green cotton shirt this morning because she’d planned not only to oversee the wedding setup, but also to offer a helping hand if needed. She’d intended to return home before the wedding to change and fix herself up. The second part of her plan hadn’t materialized. Mitzi had kept her flat-out busy. A while ago, she’d gathered her hair into a low side ponytail, but even that felt bumpy and askew at this point.
“Hi.” She stopped near him, wishing she could blurt out how sorry she was about her kiss-fail.
“So this is where you’ve been,” he said, his voice pitched low.
“Yep. I’ve been hanging out here with the flower girls—”
“—and the ring bear,” the lone boy added. “Grr. I’m a bear.”
That set off a round of giggling and loud talking. The sisters began to fight again, so Holly plopped a curly red-headed flower girl in between them.
“Can we have more gummi bears?” one of them asked.
“I still need to go to the bathroom!”
“Keeping care of this group seems like a fun job,” Josh remarked.
“Oh, it is. My heart is full of thankfulness.”
Just then, one of the girls made an awful choking sound. The best behaved of all the flower girls, a dark-haired five-year-old girl with her hair in two side buns, was half-coughing, half gagging.
Holly knelt beside her. “Are you okay, Olivia?”
Olivia couldn’t answer. She was hunched over, wheezing too much to speak. Fear spiked deeply into Holly. What should she do?
Josh lowered onto his knee on Olivia’s other side, his hand on her back.
Should they give Olivia the Heimlich? she wondered, panicking. Get water? Thump her back? Holly wasn’t a mom and didn’t know—
Olivia hacked and threw up a wad of chewed-up gummi bears right into the lap of her tulle skirt. After a few deep breaths, she straightened and looked up at Holly, eyes round.
“Are you all right?” Holly asked.
She nodded.
Thank God! Holly smiled tremulously and patted her shoulder. Thank God she was fine.
What wasn’t fine?
Olivia’s dress.
“New rule, everyone.” Holly went to the cupboard and found napkins inside. “You may only eat one gummi bear at a time. Chew it very, very carefully before swallowing. All right?”
They chorused assent.
Josh calmed Olivia and the other kids by asking them questions like Are any of you married yet? and Who did you have to pay to get the gig of flower girl in this wedding?
With Olivia’s attention diverted, Holly did her best to keep her bile down while using the napkins to scoop the . . . mass from Olivia’s lap. Though she wiped the area as best she could, a stubborn round stain the color of red gummi bears remained.
Holly caught Josh’s eye and gestured toward Olivia’s skirt, asking him with a somewhat wild-eyed expression, What in the world should I do about this?
Mitzi would have her head. She’d been the one pumping the kids full of hard-to-chew gummi bears.
“Any scissors around?” Josh asked.
“I’ll check.” Was he thinking to cut the stain out? How? Inside a bureau drawer, she found a pair of scissors that looked like they were circa 1952. She handed them to him.
“How many layers of fabric do your dresses have, girls?” he asked the group. “A hundred?”
“Mine has forty thirty.”
“I think mine has a million!”
“I’m two,” the youngest flower girl offered.
“I think whoever said a million is probably right,” Josh said. “Your dress has so many layers, Olivia, that I don’t think it’ll miss the top few. What do you think?”
She just blinked.
He escorted her to an empty patch of floor and went to work cutting off the top-most layers of tulle.
When Olivia shot her an uncertain expression, Holly responded with a big smile and a thumbs-up. That dress had probably cost a bundle. If Holly had been the one with the scissors, she’d have hesitated and debated with herself. Josh didn’t.
When he finished, Olivia’s dress looked slightly less puffy and slightly more sheer, but otherwise as good as new. Olivia scampered to one of her friends. Josh hooked the ring bearer (who’d ascended halfway up the face of the bureau again) under his arm and walked over to Holly.
“I suspected that you were a superhero yesterday,” Holly said. “Now your secret identity is definitely busted.”
“And here I’d worked so hard to protect it.”
Mitzi tossed open the door. “Josh! The wedding is starting in two minutes. I need you to take your position at point D.” Mitzi’s method of assigning letters to ceremony positions would have baffled a field general.
“I’m on it.” He met Holly’s gaze, ruffled the ring bearer’s hair, and disappeared.
Mitzi’s huge earrings pulled at her lobes as she aim
ed her laser-beam focus on Holly. “It’s time for the children to assemble at point B.”
Holly passed the flower girls their petal-filled baskets. She handed the ring bearer his pillow, which didn’t actually cushion any rings since Mitzi would never have trusted a child with something so critical.
Out in the hallway, Holly worked to keep peace among the squabbling sisters. She pulled a gummi bear from where it had been hiding, stuck near the hem of the redhead’s dress. And she kept reminding the girls to keep the petals inside the baskets until the right moment.
Amanda’s mom passed by Holly’s group with an I’m-thoroughly-charmed-by-you “Mmm.” High praise.
Mitzi arranged everyone in the order of the procession, then the enormous group slowly made their way into the church’s foyer. The first piece of music gusted through the organ’s pipes, all but causing the church to vibrate with majesty.
The flower girls and ring bearer gradually edged closer to the front of the queue.
A dash of white caught Holly’s eye and she turned in time to see Amanda and her father enter the foyer. Oh, Holly thought, awe settling over her at the sight of Amanda as a bride. Amanda had always been stunning. But today, in her beaded ivory gown, so full of delight and excitement, she looked prettier than Holly had ever seen her look. The kind of pretty that could put a single girl in a mint green V-neck shirt into a trance of fascination.
Amanda had parted her blonde hair on the side and swept it into an intricate style at the base of her neck. Her veil had been positioned at the top of her updo. Its sheer fabric cascaded downward into a train. Her bouquet burst with fall colors of russet, apple green, pale orange, and trailing vines of autumn berries.
Holly earnestly wished Amanda and Ben the very, very best. She caught Amanda’s eye. “You look beautiful,” she whispered.
Amanda beamed. “Thank you,” she mouthed back.
When the flower girls and the ring bearer reached point A, Mitzi sent them down the aisle. The guests responded with a collective “Aww.” Then the grand notes of the wedding march began and Amanda and her father swept into the sanctuary.
Holly found a spot in the far corner of the foyer where she could listen and watch the ceremony unobtrusively through a window. If the choir loft came crashing down she’d be squashed like a bug.
