Wooing the Wedding Planner

by Amber Leigh Williams

  As he slowly drew to a halt, she tried not to stare too lovingly at him. Even after it all, even with the razor’s edge of hurt he’d caused still alive inside her, she couldn’t help but turn her face up to his like a UV-starved sunflower that had survived the storm.

  Yuri cleared his throat behind her, snapping her out of the haze. She blinked, not offering one word in greeting; she just stood and stared at him like a lovesick moron.

  “How was the wedding?” he asked.

  “Hello,” she said back. She frowned. Oh. That wasn’t right.

  He smiled at her anyway, slowly, until it dug into his cheeks, and he nodded. “Hi. How was the wedding?” he asked again.

  She spread her fingers, searching herself. How had the wedding been? It was difficult to think when he was looking at her in that unbroken manner. “It was...sweet. Very sweet. How did you find me?”

  “Adrian. She told me you had a wedding today.”

  “And you were just passing by?” she guessed, knowing Fairhope was almost an hour away.

  “No. I drove like a bat out of hell to catch you before it was all over.”

  Why? “Is everything all right? Priscilla and the baby? They’re still...?”

  “Wonderful,” he finished with a fond smile. “Yeah.”

  She nodded. “Good. That’s good.”

  Yuri groaned from somewhere behind them. “Do you know the banana slug is the world’s slowest mollusk?”

  As Roxie glanced back at him, confused, Byron asked, “Oh, yeah? What do those bad boys top out at? Point zero zero something, I’m sure.”

  “Slower,” Yuri drawled, pointedly narrowing his eyes on Roxie. “Glacial. Like coral.”

  “Coral doesn’t move,” she informed him.

  “No. It does not.”

  Roxie frowned at him and looked back to Byron. “Perhaps we should talk—in private,” she said so that Yuri could hear.

  “The honeymoon suite is currently available,” Yuri noted handily.

  Byron chuckled as Roxie sighed. “Come on,” she said, bending to retrieve her shoes. He beat her to it. “Thank you,” she said, taking them by the center straps. To Yuri, she asked, “Downstairs, can you and Jasmine manage things without—”

  “Go,” Yuri said as he broke down the last of the arbor.

  Byron offered her his hand at the stairs. She was flustered by the gesture. She held it as she put her shoes on and they climbed down to wait for the elevator with other members of her team. By the time they reached the garage level, neither had said much. She gave the others some instruction about what to put where. Byron waited near his Camaro next to the half wall that looked out onto the beach. He’d retrieved a knapsack from the car. “What’s that for?” she asked, joining him.

  “I’ll show you,” he said, offering her his hand again.

  He led her to the beach, stopping only at the end of the empty boardwalk to remove his shoes. She kicked hers off again and followed him down to the sand. Sea oats bowed under a steady northeast wind. The waves pounded the shore. The sea foam was thick. Wishing she’d thought to grab her jacket, she crossed her arms over her chest as he picked a spot along the last tidal line. “Here’s good, huh?” he asked, looking out over the water.

  “For what?” she asked, putting her back to the wind.

  He glanced at her and saw that she was cold. Unzipping the knapsack, he pulled out a plush blanket and laid it on the sand. Tugging her hand, he said, “Have a seat, duchess.”

  Duchess. It had been a while since anyone had referred to her by the fond nickname. It put her at ease because it had arisen from her friendship with him.

  She folded her legs beneath her as she lowered to the blanket. He knelt beside her and unraveled another blanket from the sack. Draping it around her shoulders, he pulled the ends closed over her front. “Better?” he asked.

  She squinted as next he revealed two drinking glasses from the bag’s contents as well as a bottle-shaped package in brown wrapping. Champagne, she saw as he removed the paper. “Byron, what is this?”

  “Hold these for me?” he asked, putting a glass in each of her hands. He unraveled the foil from around the cork and worked it until it popped free into his cupped palm. After pouring champagne into the glasses, he took one for himself, then plunked the bottle down into the sand. Stretching his long legs out, he extended the glass to hers. “Cheers.”

  “What are we toasting to?” she asked with a bewildered laugh.

  He stopped just short of taking a sip, then shrugged. “Another great wedding on the books?”

  He’d driven a chilled bottle of champagne all the way out to Fort Morgan to wish her a job well done? As she tipped the fizzy substance to her mouth, her heartbeat lightened. She licked her lips, tasting Dom and trying not to remember the taste of him. Was this her friend Byron, the one she’d thought she’d lost?

  The longing was great for both Byrons she’d known—the friend and the lover.

  “I’m glad you’re still wearing your cocktail dress,” he pointed out, eyeing the blanket over her shoulders.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Don’t you always dress up for champagne?”

  She smiled, recalling the conversation they’d once had over a bathtub and Billie Holiday. Unable to help it, she ran the back of her fingers over the outer seam of his jacket sleeve. “So...that’s the reason for all this?” she assumed, encompassing the blankets and bubbly with an upturned hand.

  “Mmm.” He drank and turned his gaze out to sea, a hint of a smile dwelling around the corners of his eyes. The wild air blew the hair back from his brow. Roxie shivered, bringing his attention back to her. He set down the glass and adjusted the blanket so that it fell over her legs, too. “Still cold?”

  She shook her head. “I’m fine,” she said. “Byron, you need to tell me what’s going on here. The last time I saw you...it convinced me we’d never be here in this place again.” She sighed when he only looked at her. “It made me think we’d never be friends again.”

  “I told you, duchess,” he said, the words as soft as his gaze, “I’d always be your friend.” When she swallowed, he edged closer. “Hey.” He canted his head against hers and murmured, “You never lost me. I’m right here.”

  Her hold on his sleeve tightened. His scent teased her and she squeezed her eyes closed as she turned her nose into him the slightest bit.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry, Rox.”

  She nodded, too overwhelmed to speak.

  “I hate that I made you think you’d lost me. And I hate that I acted like a chicken when you did something incredibly brave.”

  “I did?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I saw you get hurt last year, the kind of hurt that most people don’t come back from. But most people aren’t you.” His smile was tender. “You opened yourself up, enough to maybe love someone whose issues know no bounds.”

  When she said nothing, his arm linked around her waist. “You know what I love about you most, Rox?”

  Her eyes opened. The bodhran was back again. It pounded into the quiet between them.

  “I love that you knew I could move on even when I was convinced that I couldn’t. I love that your belief in me was stronger than my fears.”

  “Was it?” she asked, tilting her face up to question his.

  He held her tighter. “Yeah, it was,” he said, back to a whisper.

  She took a deep breath. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Anything.”

  “Do you think there’s one great love for everyone?” she asked as she had once before. “Only one?”

  His eyes caressed her features and he said, “I believe there’s love and there’s the extraordinary. I know that that’s not something many people find once. Once is a mir
acle. Twice is a phenomenon that I know now not to take for granted.”

  She couldn’t breathe.

  “It was foolish and cruel of me to claim that we don’t love each other when it’s me who loved you first.” He exhaled raggedly when her hand came up to cup her mouth. “I think I fell in love with you the first time you smiled at me. The day we met. Do you remember when that was? You were getting married. You were getting married to somebody else and I thought, ‘It’s okay. It’s okay if I love this one because she’ll always belong to somebody else and I’m safe.’ And then you didn’t.”

  “And you weren’t,” she realized. “You love me.”

  “Yes,” he said, pressing his cheek to hers. “Yes, Roxanna Honeycutt. I love you very much.”

  “Is...” She slid her hand up his collar. “Is it okay if I cry now?”

  He laughed. “Yeah. Yeah, go ahead.”

  He held her as she wept silently into his shoulder, absorbing the quiet hitches that rose from her chest and shook her. He held her for a while in the peace that bloomed on the cries’ heels.

  Words spilled into the blissful void. His. “You know...” His voice was the slightest bit husky and it danced along her skin. “I’ve always liked beach weddings best, I think. There’s something about ’em. Waves. Flip-flops. Tradition dictates sunset, but I’m starting to think dawn is more symbolic.”

  “Hmm.” She thought about it, aware again of the endless whoosh of water and wave. “People would have to get up early to attend. Really early. Who would show?”

  “The ones who matter,” he said simply.

  She beamed at the thought. “Oh. I like that. I like that very much.”

  He nodded as her gaze climbed back to his. “Think about it. Champagne and shrimp cocktails for breakfast. Everybody could bring swimsuits and call it a beach day. Everybody loves a beach day, right?” When she only smiled at him, he continued, “Then they all leave and the happy couple retires to the honeymoon suite—early. And check out late the next morning.”

  “Have you been thinking about this for a while?”

  “Yeah, I have. And I think it could work. But you’re the wedding planner. What’re your thoughts?”

  “It sounds wonderful,” she said wistfully. “But somebody wise once told me that it’s not the wedding that counts. It’s the marriage.”

  “You’re right. That person was wise.” The amusement fled his face though the fondness remained as his gaze drank from hers. “I haven’t just been thinking about it. I want it.”

  Her lips parted in surprise. The glass she’d been lifting to her mouth lowered as the words seized her.

  “I want it all,” he continued, “and it’s you who’s made me want it again—the wedding, the marriage, everything and anything that comes with it. All of it. I want you and me in Athena and Ari’s old Victorian, day in and day out, doing them proud.”

  She shook her head, dizzy with the beautiful pictures he painted. “I...”

  “You make me believe that it can be extraordinary,” he told her. “You are extraordinary. You make me feel extraordinary.” He took her glass and set it in the sand with his own. Shifting, he took something out of his pants pocket. A small box. He set it in the cradle of her palm.

  “I...” she said again, blinking at the box. She wasn’t imagining it. It was there.

  “Open it,” he invited.

  She lifted her other hand to the lid and pried it back. “Oh,” she sighed, reaching up to touch it. She stopped herself just in time.

  It was gorgeous. The ring was vintage. A halo diamond in rose gold. The band was etched with a significant pattern: Greek key. She knew just by looking at it that it was a family heirloom of some kind, which made it mean that much more...

  “And so,” Byron said, cupping his hand underneath the one cradling the box. “I promise you this, duchess. I promise that I will be that man at the altar waiting for you as you walk down the aisle in your white dress. I promise that it will be me giving you those vows and honoring them all the days of my life, without exception. I promise that, no matter what color you paint the walls of the Victorian—and I’m sure there will be many—those walls will see us love and fight and make up, unremittingly. I promise I won’t give up—on me or you, on us, whatever comes...family...”

  “Byron,” she breathed, swelling with emotion as she saw the possibilities in him. All the possibilities he spoke of and more. “Oh, Byron.”

  “It’s not a question of if,” he continued. “It’s when. Until then, what do you say? When dawn breaks on this beach that day will you take me...and my parents—and a handful of siblings and one kooky great-aunt?”

  She could do nothing but stare at him. Just stare and wish and dream.

  “Do you know what the key pattern represents?” he asked, talking fast as he took the box from her. He wedged the ring from the cushion and took her hand. “As far back as ancient Greece, it meant love and devotion. It means unity. Infinity. But most of all, it represents the bonds of friendship, because even those old pagan fuddy-duddies knew that a marriage should begin with nothing less.”

  Her pulse washed against her ears. There were no words to match his—she was out. Yet she wasn’t the least bit empty. In truth, she’d never felt so full.

  “It’s Athena’s ring,” he explained. “Ari gave it to her. Not when they were first married. They barely knew each other then. He gave it to her after they admitted finally that they loved each other as a husband and wife should.”

  “It’s so beautiful,” she said. And its history made it more so.

  “She gave it to me to give to you,” he told her. “Just as she gave me the house so I wouldn’t go on thinking that I have to grow old alone. After you came along, I stopped wishing for that.”

  Roxie looked beyond the ring. She looked beyond the words. She looked at Byron, all that he was and would be. He’d loved the old Roxie and the new one. He’d seen her at her best and her worst, and still he loved her. He knew what forever meant. And after everything he’d been through, he offered her his forever.

  Grabbing his face in both hands, she kissed him. She kissed him long and deep, buffered against the wind by his strength and buoyed against the tide by his love. “Say it again,” she murmured against him. “Say it. Once more.”

  “I love you, matia mou.”

  Roxie nodded, blind. “Yes. Yes, I will take you...just so long as you promise not to make me wait too long—”

  “No. No, duchess. I couldn’t.”

  “—because it all sounds so wonderful.” She wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. “So wonderful, I could just...dance and dance and dance.” She finished laughing, her eyes full. And she was sure they danced with stars—beaded, crystalline, and fiercely luminescent—because the stars were dancing inside her. Her laugh turned watery as she asked, “How’s that for a rebound?”

  “Let those who talk call it a rebound,” he challenged. “Because we followed it up, didn’t we? A three-point shot from the top of the key to clinch it.”

  “Just like in polo. Right?”

  He shook with silent laughter and kissed her. “I still have a bone to pick with that tribe of yours,” he murmured, smiling against her lips.

  They lingered that way for some time. Lips grazing. Her cheeks growing wetter, his smile broader as he used the pads of his thumbs to wipe her tears.

  After a while, he reached under his coat into the lining of his jacket. Music floated, muted and slow, into the night. At her questioning glance, he raised a brow. “You said you could just dance. So...” Rising, he offered her a hand. “Will you dance with me, duchess?”

  She let him bring her to her feet. Wordlessly, she led him beyond the blankets, down to the line in the sand where the water had risen and the surface was packed and stable. There she pulled him clos
e as waves kissed their feet.

  Before they linked together, he placed the ring on her hand and kissed it. She draped her arms over his shoulders in answer, pressing her cheek against his chest.

  The moon rose as they swayed to Ella and Louis, as his chin came to rest above her brow. They danced until the tide and the sea changed. Lightning webbed across distant clouds, but they didn’t stray from the beach, their beach. They stayed long enough to greet sleep from their blankets on the shore. Long enough to greet the first light of the new day that came after.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from MOLLY’S MR. WRONG by Jeannie Watt.

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