Wooing the Wedding Planner

by Amber Leigh Williams

  She was balancing on top of the ladder to finish work around the first transom when a knock clattered against the door. She’d opened the windows to let the paint fumes out and the freshness of the midmorning in. Setting her brush on top of the bucket, she glanced at her hands. She picked up a cloth, then descended the ladder and made her way to the front door. She rubbed her hands as dry as she could make them, then swung the door open.

  “Roxie,” Richard greeted. He began to offer her a smile then stopped when he saw her paint-flecked outfit. “You’re busy.”

  “No,” she said automatically. She gripped the door and tried to collect herself. “I—” Dear God, it was him. He looked rested and relaxed, even trim. He’d barely had time to maintain his medium build over the last few years. He usually wore tweed jackets and khaki pants and the same pair of eyeglasses—rimless, rectangular and titanium.

  The glasses were the same but the cut of his hair was a touch different, more stylish. His oxford shirt was untucked from his khakis, no jacket, and sneakers covered his feet instead of the usual loafers.

  His eyes were brown and intelligent. Never acerbic, they carried with them a tinge of boredom even when he was engaged in in-depth conversation. His was the male equivalent of resting bitch-face. He smiled quietly, but it was hard to make him laugh. She was one of the few who could.

  Or she had been in the early years when such things were more natural.

  He was attractive. She’d always thought him so. But now he looked as he had when she’d first met him—his laser focus intent on her instead of ungraded papers, lectures or case notes...

  Roxie took a breath. “When did you get back?” she asked, trying for an easy tone. It sounded more like rain boots plodding egg shells.

  He offered a quick nod, moving his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “This morning. I came straight here.”

  “You did?” she asked, surprised.

  “Well, yes,” he said. “My father said you needed to speak with me. My retreat ended yesterday. I would’ve left sooner but the place was up in the mountains and there’s no way to get down without a shuttle.”

  “Oh.” She caught herself shifting onto the balls of her feet. “You’re...you’re different somehow.”

  “Good. That was the intent when I left.” When she only stared at him, blank, he asked, “May I come inside?”

  She hadn’t asked him, she realized. In fact, she stood with her feet planted on the entry rug. As if guarding the threshold.

  She frowned. She hadn’t wanted Bertie to come upstairs to her place above the tavern. It had felt...wrong. Similarly, she didn’t want Richard inside the Victorian. Numerous people had made themselves at home since she moved in. Constantine and Vera. Briar, Adrian, Olivia, their husbands, their children... Her mother had forced her way in a time or two.

  Byron had been in and out daily with the gym downstairs and his Perseus-like gestures—“rescuing” her from the lawn, playing doctor on her settee...

  She licked her lips, wondering over her hesitation. She couldn’t let Richard in. Not yet. Clearing her throat, she said, “It’s a bit of a mess. I’m a mess.” She passed a hand over the handkerchief knotted on her head. “Why don’t we meet somewhere later?”

  “For dinner.” Richard nodded. “We could go to that place in Montrose. The one we both like so much.”

  Again, she hesitated, frozen by indecision. Why did she feel so cold?

  “It is still there,” Richard said. “Isn’t it?”

  Roxie snapped to. “Yes. Yes, of course.” She lifted her shoulders. “I suppose it’s a date.”

  “I’ll pick you up.”

  “No,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’ll meet you there. Around six?”

  Richard’s shoulders moved as a puzzled frown touched his features. “A little early for dinner, but it’s your call. Six. See you there?” he added, obviously a bit unsure about the formality of meeting her. He took a moment, lingering. His gaze touched her face, admiring. “It’s good to see you. I’m...I’m happy to see you.”

  He’d never been good at expressing things verbally. Knowing how much it had likely taken for him to drum up the words, she offered him a kind smile. “I’ll see you later.” The four words held all the promise she could give.

  He seemed to seek more as he searched her, silent. Then he backed away, turned and walked down the front steps.

  She waited until he was in his car and out of the driveway before she closed the door. Resting her hand on its warm wood, she did her best to sort some clarity from her emotions. She’d done it. She’d seen him again. How did she feel about it? How would she feel going forward, starting with dinner? A formal dinner at their favorite restaurant.

  The confusion was still as heavy as ever. She squeezed her eyes closed, looking inward. Looking hard. Nothing lifted. Nothing lightened. It was just...blank uncertainty.

  Sighing, she pushed away from the jamb, hoping after dinner tonight she’d know what she wanted at last.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “SO YOU’VE BEEN COOKING.” Richard’s mouth smoothed into a wide grin, amused, as he forked a bite of his blackened salmon entrée. “Really cooking.”

  “Well, baking mostly,” Roxie admitted, shrugging one shoulder. She felt a bit easier here in the familiar setting. On even turf. At the table they’d always reserved. It overlooked the restaurant’s portico with its orange-spiked birds-of-paradise and tropical palms. In summer, there were honeybees there buzzing lackadaisically from flower to flower.

  “In an apron,” Richard surmised, laughing at the mental image.

  “Well, yes,” Roxie said. “Though it doesn’t stop me from making torrential messes. Baking involves flour. Lots of flour. I haven’t figured out how to contain it.”

  “How’ve the results been?” he asked, his interest genuine.

  “The reviews have been fairly positive,” she said, still surprised at that. “Briar’s my chief tester. Though I’ve had Kyle stop by on several occasions with Gavin, claiming to be victims of starvation.”

  “Young Kyle,” Richard mused. “How are they—the girls? Their families?”

  “Expanding by the minute,” Roxie noted. “It’s nice, having a front-row seat to it all.” She didn’t bring up the fact that for a while after the divorce, a great chunk of her enjoyment in witnessing her friends’ lives unfold had been stolen. And she’d resented him for that. Bitterly. She went back to picking at her choice pork chop with lemon vinaigrette. It was a fine meal served on a bed of baby arugula. A shame she couldn’t seem to get it to her mouth. “This...retreat,” she said, changing the subject. “What was that about?”

  He raised a brow. “I know. It doesn’t sound like me at all, does it?” There was something different about him. Relaxed. Seeing Richard truly relax had become a rare thing as the years stretched from the cusp of their relationship to its scorched ending. “I was resistant when my parents offered to send me there over Christmas. Then I got there and... The mountains. You wouldn’t believe them. They set me at ease in a way that nothing else has in...” He stopped when her face fell and she went back to cutting her meat into bite-size pieces. Dropping his fork, he scanned the other diners in the room, reaching for his water glass. “I’m wondering what the pool is,” he said, lowering his voice discreetly.

  “On what?” she asked.

  “On how long it’d take me to say exactly the wrong thing,” Richard said. He took a long drink.

  Roxie scanned him closely. He looked disgusted with himself. He set the water glass down evenly on the table and picked up his fork again, composed, but because she knew him, she could see the faint line etched at his brow.

  Richard had always been hardest on one person: himself. Nothing had changed. Sitting back in her chair, Roxie lifted her wine and crossed one arm over
her chest. “If there’s a pool on you then there’s probably one on me, too.”

  “On how long it takes you to slap me across the face?”

  “More likely how long it takes me to burst into tears and weep like the wronged female I am.” She shook her head. “It’s a small town. People talk, often without subtlety or decent regard. If I minded, I’d have left last summer.”

  “Yes, but you’re tougher than I am,” Richard said, the faint flicker of a smile tugging at his mouth. “You’ve always been.”

  She didn’t think she’d ever heard herself characterized as tough. She didn’t feel tough and wondered if she ever had.

  The waiter chose that moment to approach their table. “More wine, Mrs. Levy?”

  Richard cleared his throat as Roxie stared blankly at the man. “Uh, that’s fine, Wayne.”

  Roxie sat still as her glass was filled once more. Rubbing her lips together, she realized that her fine meal would be going to waste after all. She waved the plate away when Wayne gestured to it. “May I offer a dessert course this evening?” he asked pleasantly.

  Richard looked to Roxie hopefully. His chances seemed ridiculously hinged on her appetite for sweets.

  She studied the dessert card, once again uncertain. Whenever she refused dessert in the past, he knew it meant she was either sick or...well, sick. She didn’t turn down sweets, as a rule.

  Though she did feel a mite sick. Wasn’t it telling, what being called by her married name could do to her?

  She looked to Wayne and said, “I’ll take a slice of the French silk pie to go, please.”

  “To go?” he said, taken aback.

  “Yes,” she said decidedly, taking the napkin off her lap. She set it on the table where her plate had been. “To go.”

  * * *

  ROXIE INVITED RICHARD IN. The Victorian was dark and silent. She switched on a lamp as he roamed from the den to the kitchen, viewing her single living arrangements.

  His nerves were no longer well hidden beneath his newfound ease. A pity. Over dinner, she’d nearly grown to envy it. Even now in her safe zone, she felt as strung as a sail stretched too thinly against the wind, and she didn’t like it. Not here.

  She invited him out to the back porch, away from the paint fumes. Away from the rooms she’d come to think of as her own. Outside it was just the wintered yard, the breeze in the high boughs of the magnolia, and Richard sitting next to her on the patio bench. She’d made tea out of habit, arranged cups and a plate of cheese straws on a tray before seeking the outdoors.

  Unable to take another moment of the strained silence that had lurked, hardly broken, since dinner, Roxie asked, “What’s changed, Richard?” When he glanced sideways at her, she shrugged. “I mean, besides the hair. You’re more relaxed. Or you were before dinner took a turn there. You turned some sort of corner in the mountains. What was it about them that brought you back to where you need to be?” What did you find there that you had so much trouble finding here—with me?

  That was the real question.

  He set his tea in its saucer and his eyes narrowed as he sat back in his chair. “Well, at the retreat there was this guru...” He stopped and nodded when she frowned. “Crazy, I know. I was doubtful of him at first. But it wasn’t long into the retreat when he helped me see things in a new light. He helped me see me. I struggled with what happened last year. The divorce. Everything that led up to it. In the fallout, I tried to understand why I behaved that way. What kind of a newlywed strays? What kind of a man hurts the kind of woman most others dream of having?”

  Roxie looked away. Maybe silence was better. Ignorance could be bliss.

  She wasn’t going to move forward, however, unless she had all the answers she needed. And she refused to stay stuck in the same conflicted place she’d been living for the past year. “What did you learn?” she asked cautiously, reaching for another cheese straw.

  “That I’m a man of many faults,” Richard said slowly, “and that I want to fix my mistakes.”

  Her mind seized on the words. Wasn’t this what she’d been waiting for? “How?” she asked, measuring him and herself with care.

  “You never allowed me to apologize to you before, formally.”

  “Richard.” She shook her head. “I think enough time has passed where we can skip the formalities and get straight to the point.”

  He seemed to stumble a bit over her blunt delivery. “Can I ask if there’s any way you can ever forgive me?”

  A strong man asking for forgiveness in a sincere manner was a powerful weapon. But she’d seen him at his lowest and, try as she might, parts of her couldn’t get beyond it. “I’ve thought about it.”

  As she trailed off, he turned his body toward hers and said, “What happened with Cassandra was a mistake. A terrible, terrible mistake. I hope you know that.”

  “Why?” Swallowing past the lump in her throat, she forced herself to ask again. “You said this guru helped you see, and I need help understanding. Why did you do it? Cassandra said you two were communicating beforehand and that you had seen each other at a conference. Did you have...feelings for her?”

  “No,” he said with a shake of his head. Then he stopped. Something ticked over his face, as if he were checking himself. He started again. “Well, perhaps there were some feelings, but I didn’t know what they were until she and I had...”

  Roxie nodded away the rest.

  “So, could you ever forgive me?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she told him. “Whatever happens between us from this day forward, I’m not going to forget it. I have to live with it.”

  “I know you do,” he said. “I’m sorry. Seeing you standing there...your expression. I swear it felt like taking a bullet.”

  “Well, finding you there,” Roxie said, considering, “that was like taking the whole clip.” She scrubbed her hands over her face. “You were my safety net. You, our relationship, were the only truly normal things I had in my whole life. Did you know that? Did you know that I believed if there was anything in this world I could count on, it was you? Then, there you were with her.” Rising, she began to pace. She was on the verge of raising her voice and yelling, and she didn’t want to yell. Yelling had only ever made her uncomfortable. Or it had made him uncomfortable... “I gave us every part of myself there was to give.”

  His hands hung between his thighs and he lowered his head, ashamed. “I know. I know.”

  “So explain this to me,” she went on. “Were you giving your whole self or were you just pretending? Was I too blind to see that our relationship was a one-way street?”

  “No, it wasn’t,” he said, rising, too. “Roxie, I love you. I loved you then. I love you now.”

  “Then why?” Dear God, she was yelling. They’d been together for years, close to a decade, and she’d never yelled at him. Raising her voice, venting her frustration...it felt like a giant release valve rupturing after long neglect. By God, why hadn’t she done this sooner? “Was it because we didn’t fight the way other people do? Was it because the wedding got too big when you wanted it small? Was it me—did I not excite you anymore? Tell me!”

  “I was afraid,” he said simply, holding his arms out in a gesture of helplessness that disarmed her.

  She’d never seen him helpless. “Of what?”

  He took several breaths to center himself. Ever the calm one, he answered with equanimity. “Because for a while, nothing seemed like enough. I didn’t feel anything for my work anymore. I couldn’t bring myself to feel enough about fixing up the house. Or the wedding.”

  “Or us?” she prompted.

  “It scared me,” he said, “so badly. When you get married, it should be easy to feel excitement, but I couldn’t seem to drum up the energy. I was depressed. Severely depressed. And when I should’ve sought help, when
I should’ve told you, I shut you out. I shut everything out so that I could deal with the problem alone. But that only compounded the problem.”

  “You should have told me,” she agreed. She thought of what she needed to ask next and felt sick once more. She had to force herself. “When...when Cassandra came to the house that day...” His gaze snagged on hers. There was still guilt there—and a great deal of shame. “When you held her and kissed her and...undressed her, what did you feel?”

  Richard couldn’t bring himself to answer. Roxie stood looking at him—a smaller version of him—feeling like a smaller version of herself. Cupping her hands over her nose and mouth, she walked across the cool grass in her bare feet, wishing she knew how to center herself as skillfully as he had learned to. She went up on her tiptoes, relevé, and picked her way through the lawn en pointe, concentrating on the straightness of the leg, the placement of the knee over the ankle, the hip over the knee.

  The exercise was futile. The turmoil, the restlessness, continued to churn and roil and she couldn’t release it as she had released the anger. Pivoting back to Richard, en face, she banished the years of training to the back of her mind and summoned her courage. “You know what I’ve realized over the past few weeks? I don’t want to wait to be happy. I was happy with you. I was happy with my work. Only sometimes it felt like there was only one ball instead of two and I had to choose which court to put it in—home or work. But, damn it, I juggled because I loved both and I wasn’t going to let either fail. And then, when I moved here, I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I was completely happy with everything. Can you?”

  Richard frowned at her, at a loss.

  “Why do you want to fight for us?” she asked. “You know it’s going to be work—hard, grueling, emotional work, day in and day out until we get it right again. Is it really worth it to you?”

  “I need to make things right with you,” Richard told her. “I want to make things right.”

  “Will it make you happy, though?” she asked. “If we fall back into it, if we do right by each other, will that make you happy or are you just standing on principal?”