Cole and James had put several sofas on various parts of the lawn near the space heaters designed for comfort against the cool night air. Byron led her to a plush green antique sofa where Vivienne had parked her wheelchair and was sitting next to a woman late in years. A faux-fur blanket covered both their laps and they were speaking in secretive tones, hands clasped. Byron let go of Roxie’s hand as they neared. “Athena?”
The woman’s fond smile was like a joyous whisper. “Byron.” She gripped his wrist and cast a curious glance at Roxie. “Did you bring her?”
“This is Roxie Honeycutt,” Byron confirmed. “Roxie, this is the goddess Athena.”
As Athena bade her to come closer, Roxie knelt before the sofa and took Athena’s crepe-skinned hands. “Your family speaks of you so often, I was hoping to get a chance to meet you in person.”
Athena studied her face, not as judge or jury, but with all the wisdom of a lifetime and perhaps something more sentient. Goose bumps sprung along Roxie’s arms as Athena made her quiet verdict. She looked to Byron and said something unintelligible.
“Oh, my,” Vivienne purred, grinning widely at her brother and Roxie in turn.
“Greek?” Roxie guessed.
Byron shook his head. “Senile.”
Athena tutted at him as Vivienne belted a laugh. The older woman didn’t let go of Roxie’s hands. “My great-nephew tells me you are living in the Victorian.”
“Yes,” Roxie nodded. “It’s a spectacular home—”
“Is he treating you well?” Athena asked.
Roxie cut her eyes to Byron, a sly conspiratorial grin pulling at her mouth. “He has his moments.”
“Avoid him in the mornings,” Vivienne suggested. “He’s Henry VIII until he gets a shot or two of espresso. Before that point, he’ll say snarky things in Greek that would normally doom him to Hades.”
“So he does know Greek,” Roxie realized. “I wondered.”
“Of course,” Athena said. “He spent a summer on Santorini, where my sister and I lived. She and I came to America at the same time, but she never applied herself to English.”
“Mm, that’s because Grandpa Strong never spoke anything but French with her,” Byron noted, his statement laden with accusation. “She lived with us for a while after he died, when I was younger.”
“Taught you much Greek, didn’t Fillipa?” Athena said.
“Except how to say... What was it?” Roxie asked Byron. “What your father called your mother the other day.”
Vivienne gasped. “Matia mou?”
“Yes!” Roxie said. “Vera melted into a puddle when he said it. It melted me a little, too. I asked Byron what it meant...”
Athena frowned. “And he told you he did not know,” she said, turning to him for answers instead of Roxie.
When Roxie, too, frowned at him, Byron shifted on the spot. “It’s just a phrase. A common endearment.”
“Common endearment,” Athena muttered. She waved her hand from Byron to Roxie. “Tell her, Byron. Tell Roxie what it means.”
He sighed then faced Roxie fully and admitted, “Matia mou means ‘my eyes.’”
“Oh,” she breathed.
Athena leaned forward to explain. “It means romance. Something only lovers say to one another.” She pressed a hand to her heart. “You understand?”
“Yes.”
“It’s kind of like being called ‘precious,’” Vivienne pointed out. “Because sight is precious. Right, Athena?”
“Exactly, Vivienne. Exactly.”
“It doesn’t mean what it used to.” When both his great-aunt and sister frowned at him again, Byron said, “It doesn’t. It’s too familiar now. A girl sold me a map on the roadside in Messaria and called me matia.”
Athena scoffed. “In my day, it meant something. The first time Ari Papadakis called me matia mou, I knew what he was really saying was ‘I love you, Athena Maragos. I want you here with me in this life in America.’ And so I stayed. I stayed with him, for all the time we had left.”
“Athena,” Byron murmured, bending to the arm of the couch. He put his arm around her shoulders as her bottom lip quavered and she lowered her face. Tenderly, he touched the top of her head. “I’m sorry.” He pulled her to him. “Come here, Auntie. You know I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Vivienne stroked her arm. “No, no, he didn’t mean it, Auntie. I know he didn’t.”
Athena breathed carefully into Byron’s shirt for a moment before she straightened, fluttering her hands at the fuss. She stopped when Roxie offered her an embroidered hanky. “Thank you,” she said sincerely. She dabbed her eyes. Then she looked at Byron. “Look at you, Byron Atticus. Look at your face.” She reached for him, patting his chin and clucking maternally. “It’s all right, paidi mou. Auntie’s all right.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again, raising her hand to his lips for a kiss. “Forgive me.”
Athena offered him a good-natured chuckle and waved the hanky like a flag. “The way you speak sometimes...so offhand. So cynical, so male. It’s like Ari’s speaking to me all over again. It’s why it gets under my skin.” Dipping her chin, she added a significant “We know how people get under our skin, Byron, no?”
He smiled and lied, “No. Athena, tell me what to do for you. I’ll do anything you need me to do.”
“Ask Roxie to dance. It will do me good to see you two dance.”
“It will, huh?” Byron asked.
Roxie’s pulse did a funny pirouette as he looked to her, debating. To ask a woman to dance at a wedding—a woman who wasn’t his sister—was he ready for that? Was Roxie ready to be that woman?
She was afraid she wanted to be. Very much afraid. Standing and brushing off her knees, she said, “I’d love nothing more than to dance. But I’m afraid I need to steal Vivi for the bouquet toss.” Gripping Athena’s fragile fingers once more, she added, “It was lovely to meet you, Athena, finally.”
“Bless you, child,” Athena said, patting the back of Roxie’s hand. “We’ll meet again. Until that time, don’t let Byron here give you too much grief. If he does, you come see me.”
“Most definitely,” she said with a wink, narrowing her eyes on Byron in mock suspicion.
He smiled back with a softness that betrayed that light inside her again.
* * *
BYRON SPENT THE rest of the night debating with himself. As the reception rolled on into the late night, he danced with Priscilla. He danced with his mother. He saw Athena off with his father soon after Vivienne and Sidney’s exit to the honeymoon suite. The band had packed up and left, leaving an iPod playlist for everyone who lingered and the cleanup that followed. Grim insisted on taking a resistant Priscilla home because she was sore and tired. Byron stayed with his mother, the Savitts, Roxie and her few hired helpers to break down the tent, tables, and chairs and pack up everything else.
The music played all the while and his periphery was involuntarily tuned to Roxie’s movements.
It was soon after midnight when he’d finished taking three trash bags to the parking lot, where he and Cole had loaded them into the bed of his truck to be hauled off the next morning. He looked around. He didn’t see Roxie buzzing around like the bee she’d been for the last ten hours.
He felt a tap on his shoulder and found Briar behind him. “Down by the water,” she indicated. Her hands were full of platters, so she nodded toward the shore.
Byron looked and saw Roxie’s slender silhouette close to the dock. Briar began to walk back to the kitchen door. He stopped her. “Let me help you with those.”
“No, I’ve got it,” she assured him. “She might need some help, though.”
He caught the knowing gleam. Vivienne was right when she’d called him an open book. He’d figure out what to do about that later. Sucking it up
, he walked to the water.
Roxie carried a trash bag and a prod and was combing the shoreline for discarded plates. She’d taken off her heels and was walking tippy-toe across the sand, moving with uncommon grace on the uneven ground.
The music changed. From “Boogie Shoes” to something slow and brooding. A sign.
Since when did he believe in signs?
So cynical...
I heard that, Athena, he thought. Taking his cues from his great-aunt and Ed Sheeran, Byron stopped hovering in the shadows. “Almost done for the night?” he asked, sidestepping a large rock smoothed by years of bay tide.
Her head snapped around and she stopped what she was doing. “Almost. I thought you’d gone home.” When he shook his head, she added, “Byron, I appreciate your help tonight. You didn’t have to stay.”
“Yeah, I did,” he replied.
“That breeding of yours,” she said with a shake of her head as she went back to picking up waste.
Byron mused that it wasn’t so much his breeding this time. “You got a minute?”
“Just that. We still have to get the speakers in. There’s a rainstorm coming tomorrow. And the sofas, too.”
“Cole and the rest of the guys said they’d take care of that.” For the second time that night, he held out his hand to her.
She stared at his fingers.
“I can understand your confusion, but this is me asking you to dance, duchess. I owe you one.”
Her eyes widened. He could see them even in the dark. Her head began to shake. “You don’t have to—”
“I’ve gone over it in my head through most of the evening,” he informed her. “And, as it turns out, I do.”
“You want to dance with me?” she asked skeptically. “This isn’t just about Athena?”
“You’re a hard sell.” When she tilted her head, he released a breath. “Yes. I want to dance with you.”
Finally he saw the corners of her lips twitch in amusement. “Did that hurt?”
He thought about it for a split second before taking the bag and prod. “Surprisingly, no.”
“Oh,” she said as he set the items aside. She rubbed her palms on the hips of her dress in a nervous motion before taking the hand he was holding out again.
Tugging, he coaxed her out of the sand onto the dock. Without the aid of her heels, she could’ve laid her head comfortably on his breastbone, he realized as he drew her close enough to slide his arm around her waist, fitting it in the exact spot he had the last time he’d kissed her. She draped her arm over his shoulder and, as one, they clasped hands, raised them and began to sway in the night.
As if on cue, the lights on the inn facade, and those that had been put up for the event, flickered out. All that remained were the twinkly lights from Briar’s garden, the stars and the lights of Mobile on the far side of the bay. The music remained, as well. Had it not, the whisper of waves might’ve been enough to dance by. As the water rolled into the sand beneath the planks below their feet, it was as rhythmic and lulling as any tune.
They said nothing for a minute. Two. Until he let go with one hand. She stepped back briefly, paused before he brought her back against him and they circled some more.
“Not bad,” she murmured.
“I didn’t say I couldn’t dance. I only said I didn’t.”
Roxie licked her lips. “About the matia mou thing...”
“Yeah?”
“Is that what you called her?” she asked. “Dani?”
His brows came together. “No.”
“What did you call her?”
The quicksilver jet of a falling star caught his eye. “‘Spanish eyes,’” he said clearly. “Dani was always ‘Spanish eyes.’”
Roxie smiled as she turned her face into the lavender boutonniere Adrian had fastened to one of Byron’s suspender straps. “You’re not going to tell me what your auntie said about me, are you?”
Athena’s words came back to him. He let out a half laugh. “I’ll tell you she’s a piece of work.”
“Was it good at least?”
You two would have siren children. Now what are you going to do about it, nephew? “My Greek’s a little rusty,” he claimed, “but I’m pretty sure she likes you better than me.”
“That couldn’t possibly be true.” The smile melted away by gradual degrees before she asked, almost whispering, “What happened to Vivi?”
He’d known she would ask. He answered readily, staring over her head at the Fairhope Pier visible in the distance. “Bicycle accident. A drunk driver went off the road and clipped her. She was nine.”
Her grip on his shoulder tightened. “My God, Byron.”
“Yeah, when some intoxicated jack-hole breaks your sister’s spinal cord, you get angry,” he acknowledged. “Instead of wrestling with the anger like I did when I was younger, I decided to channel it into something constructive. So I dropped my accounting major and went to law school.”
“That’s why you became a lawyer,” she said, comprehending. “Will she and Sidney ever be able to...?”
“Have a family?” he asked when she couldn’t. At her nod, his face hardened. He gave the tension a moment to fall away. Regret and more than a little anguish stirred in its wake. “Not by traditional means, no.”
“Vivi’s wonderful. They’re all so wonderful. I’m so glad you asked me to do this.”
“Vivi’s the best of us,” Byron told her. “She’s the strongest. And you made my sister happy tonight. You made my whole family happy. I’m grateful, Rox.”
Her smile returned, feather-soft and true. “You’re softening me up so you don’t have to waltz or wear a cummerbund at my sister’s wedding.”
“I wasn’t,” he said, “but since you’re the one who brought it up, how ’bout it?”
She deliberated as they swayed some more. “Perhaps.” She touched the tip of her nose to the lavender, smelling it. Her cheek came to rest on his chest, right where he thought it would. Too close to his heart, he pondered.
Ed stopped crooning. Silence trickled over the landscape, then the familiar notes of a Marvin Gaye song convened. Byron stopped circling abruptly as Roxie stiffened. She was the first to let go, reaching up for her hair. “Ah...” she said, her gaze skimming up to his and away. “And here I’d thought Liv had gone home.”
“Olivia’s here?”
She shook her head, flustered. “Never mind.” She stared at a button on his shirtfront. “I guess I’ll finish cleaning up down here.”
“No. You go on up to the inn and regroup with the others.” When she refused, he said, “Go in, Roxie. You’re cold.”
“I am?” Her arms crossed over her chest. “I am,” she said. Her hands skimmed her arms, up and down. “My blazer...”
“You took it off.” He’d noticed. He fought the urge to warm her himself. He could think of four or five ways to manage it, none of which were technically legal in a public venue. “It’s on the banquet table.”
“You’re sure—”
“Go, duchess,” he said, not looking at her so much now. He sounded stern, but, damn it, even men accused of gentlemanly behavior had only so much self-control.
She waited a beat, then, “Okay. Good night, Byron.”
“’Night.” As he watched her bend to grab her heels from the grassy hill, he repeated what he’d told Vivienne before the ceremony. That she belonged to somebody else. That, regardless of where she stood with Richard—the pissant—she didn’t feel the same way Byron did. Letting the cold seep in, he waited until she’d found her blazer and was at the inn door before he picked up the bag and finished what she’d started.
* * *
A DAY OFF was rare during wedding season, particularly during weekends. Since spring would be starting in a handful of weeks,
Roxie decided to do something she rarely did and take the next day, Sunday, for herself. She got up early, as always, brewed tea and took it out onto the patio with a blanket to watch the wind stir the Japanese magnolia. Back indoors, she put three fat pink blossoms in a bowl of water where they could float face-up. She ate avocado on toast before padding back upstairs. She put on work clothes and tied her hair back with a patterned handkerchief.
She’d set the paint cans by the back door. She rolled out covers for the floors and furniture, pulled the furnishings away from the walls and pulled a ladder from storage. She fixed painter’s tape along the edges of the room and windowsills. Music flowed from the speaker on the coffee table as she began to paint the den of the Victorian the eggplant shade Vera had personally okayed.
It was one more step in making the house feel like hers, Roxie had thought. She’d painted the rooms of her and Richard’s French Colonial, one by one, with infinite care, selecting the various hues throughout the house meticulously. There was something therapeutic about painting a room, she’d learned through the experience. It was often a slow, delicate process, but it helped her balance and center.
Roxie had wanted to wait until after Georgiana’s wedding to start painting the Victorian, until her sister and mother stopped blowing up her phone. Until the stress of the family event was behind her. However, as wonderful as Vivienne and Sidney’s wedding had been, it had forced her to confront one big truth.
She didn’t know what she wanted anymore. Had she ever known? Would she have ever questioned it if she had?
Byron in his suspenders, leaning over his aunt, caring for his sisters, dancing with his mother... She couldn’t get the images out of her mind. They’d followed her home. They’d stayed with her as she drifted off to sleep, visiting her in dreams. She’d woken up with him on her mind, unable to shake him. Not wanting to shake him.
What do you want, Roxie? She mulled the question as Ella and Satchmo crooned together about dancing cheek to cheek and her painter’s brush cut in what the roller had missed.
Wooing the Wedding Planner Page 15
