The Wedding Kiss

by Lucy Kevin

  That thought had her looking beyond the glass, to the chalet’s garden. RJ wasn’t there at the moment, but he’d been outside working for most of the morning.

  He hadn’t started on a new setup yet, but the gazebo was now gone. For a moment, the garden didn’t look quite right to Rose’s eyes.

  “Are you sure about changing your wedding this late?” Anne asked, moving to stand beside her.

  “It just wasn’t right anymore,” Rose said.

  She’d spent so long imagining her perfect wedding over the years, even before she’d known that it would be Donovan she’d be marrying. Every so often, she would just shut her eyes and picture herself on her wedding day, with the gazebo around her, wearing a wedding dress that now looked in her mind’s eye so much like the one Anne had designed for her. She’d have all her friends around her, and her perfect man would be standing beside her, ready for that perfect kiss of true love when—

  Rose started as she realized the features of the man in her imagination were more rugged, unshaven, and square-jawed than those of her fiancé.

  They were features she could imagine coming close to kiss her all too easily, because they’d nearly done just that the day before.

  Rose’s eyes shot open as she realized that she was imagining RJ.

  Why did she keep doing this to herself?

  Why did her brain—and heart—keep spinning back to what had almost happened yesterday...and what had actually happened last Valentine’s Day?

  She was going to be marrying a handsome, intelligent, successful man, so why wasn’t Donovan the one she was daydreaming about? Shouldn’t she want to spend every second with him?

  “Rose, are you okay?” Anne asked.

  Before she could reply, Phoebe stepped into the room. “Rose, I don’t want you to panic, but I think there might be a small problem.” She frowned. “Actually, quite a large problem.”

  “What’s wrong?” Rose asked.

  “It’s the orchids for the wedding arrangements.” Phoebe gestured to the sample ones she’d put together. The elegant white orchids had such delicacy and class that they were perfect for the elegant wedding Rose was trying to put together.

  “What’s wrong with the orchids?” Rose asked. “They look perfect.”

  “They would be,” Phoebe agreed, “if I could get enough for the wedding.”

  “You’ve never had a problem sourcing the right flowers before.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry, but evidently there’s a mite that’s spreading through the local orchid suppliers. Until they get it cleared up, they can’t provide me with enough white orchids for another dozen bouquets, let alone a whole wedding.”

  Rose forced herself to take a mental step back and think about what she’d do if it were a client’s wedding being affected like this.

  “Can we try someone who isn’t local? I know it would be a long drive in from Southern California, but I’d be willing to pay the extra transportation fee.”

  “I’ve already called around quite a bit,” Phoebe said. “I was hoping that I could figure it out without having to bother you, but I can’t find anyone who can guarantee enough flowers of the right quality. At least, not anyone close enough to drive them over, and once we start flying them in we could run into problems with the effects of unpressurized holds on the plants, and packaging, and—”

  “I get the idea,” Rose said.

  “I’m going to have to come up with an alternative before the wedding,” Phoebe explained in a regretful voice. “Which means we’re going to have to sit down and talk about arrangements again. I’m so sorry about this, Rose.”

  “It sounds like you’ve tried everything you can,” Rose reassured her friend. “I really appreciate it, Phoebe. And really, if it’s just the flowers that are a problem, then we’re not in bad shape at all.”

  Tyce walked in just as she was finishing her sentence, a grimace on his face. He ruffled his already fairly messy hair further as he said, “You know how Donovan wanted a particular string quartet to play the wedding?”

  “Yes, I saw the paperwork. They’re booked for next Saturday.”

  “That was before they performed for a guy who books string quartets for tours of Europe,” Tyce said. “They’ve just found out they’re going to tour around Germany, shoot over into Austria, and then do a week-long residency in the Vienna Concert Hall. I tried telling them that we had a contract, but they don’t care. It’s just too big a gig. They’re getting on the plane tonight.”

  “Okay,” Rose said slowly, “so we’ll just have to hire a new quartet.”

  “It might be a bit more complicated than that,” Tyce explained. “Most of the established quartets are booked within a week of the event. At this point, the best I can do is to hit some of the local music colleges and try to put one together. Which means auditions, and rehearsals, and maybe changing the set list just so that we’ve got pieces everyone has up to concert standard.” Just as Phoebe had said moments earlier, now he was saying, “I’m so sorry about this, Rose.”

  “No, no, you’re doing the best you can with a difficult situation, Tyce. I appreciate it. At least the food isn’t a problem—”

  Of course, that was right when Julie walked in. “Rose, can we chat for a minute? My seafood supplier just told me the crab fisherman just went on strike and I’m afraid I won’t be able to get in enough for the first course, so—”

  Rose put her head in her hands, which stopped Julie mid-sentence. When she lifted her head up, she said, “Whatever you need to do to the menu, however you need to change it, I trust you, Julie.”

  And, honestly, the worst part wasn’t that her dream wedding was blowing up piece-by-piece.

  No, Rose thought, the very worst part about all of this was that none of this was distracting her from thinking about RJ for even one second.

  Instead, Rose found herself thinking about the ways he’d be trying to make her relax if he were here, probably telling her a joke, or even throwing out solutions one after the other, rapid-fire. In situations like this, he was so reliable, so safe.

  Yet, whenever she thought back to his mouth on hers in the bar on Valentine’s Day, it didn’t feel safe.

  It had been dangerous and wild.

  Which wasn’t what she wanted.

  Or was it?

  “Rose?” Anne said as the others went off to try to fix the various issues that had just cropped up. “What’s wrong?”

  She managed a half-hearted smile. “Only you could be in the middle of a situation where practically every detail of my wedding has just collapsed and still manage to ask what the problem is.”

  “True,” Anne said. “But that’s because I’m the only one who knows you well enough to guess that this has nothing to do with any of those things, does it?”

  No, Rose thought, Anne wasn’t the only one. RJ would have spotted it pretty quickly too.

  Of course, that thought didn’t make her feel any better.

  “There it is again,” Anne insisted, “the frown that hasn’t quit since your wedding shower. What’s going on? I want to help.”

  “Have you been taking investigating lessons from Gareth? How is he, anyway?”

  “He’s great. But changing the subject won’t work today.”

  Rose didn’t know what to tell her best friend. “It…it’s crazy.”

  Anne put a hand on her shoulder. “Whatever it is, it’s not crazy if it’s upsetting you.”

  Finally, Rose gave in and admitted, “It’s RJ.”

  Anne didn’t say anything for a long moment. “What about him?”

  Oh God, Rose couldn’t believe what she was about to say...but she had to tell someone or else she was going to burst.

  “I almost kissed him yesterday. And last Valentine’s Day, I did kiss him. And it was good. Really good. I…I’ve been thinking about him a lot.” She paused for a moment before admitting, “I can’t seem to stop thinking about him, actually.”

  “Well, obviously.�
�

  Rose paused at that. “What do you mean, ‘obviously’?”

  Anne gave her a knowing smile that had Rose wondering if she and RJ had been fooling anyone?

  “Sparks have always lit between the two of you. And he obviously cares a great deal for you.”

  “I care for him, too,” Rose said, “but I’m marrying Donovan. I can’t keep thinking about another man.”

  Anne was quiet for a few seconds, like she was trying to work out whether to say something. “Can I ask you a question without you getting angry?”

  “You’re my best friend. Of course you can.”

  “Why are you marrying Donovan?”

  Rose’s brain felt like it emptied out and then filled back up again too fast. “Why wouldn’t I marry him? He’s a great guy. He works hard in a business that helps people. He’s handsome. And he makes me feel safe. With Donovan, I’m never going to end up with the life my mother has.”

  “But do you love him?” Anne asked her.

  “Of course I do,” Rose shot back. Maybe just a little too quickly.

  Anne looked out the window to see that RJ was back, measuring up the ground outside the chalet. “It seems to me that a lot of the qualities Donovan has also apply to other people.”

  “No,” Rose disagreed. “Every time I’m in the same room with RJ lately it feels like the world is disappearing out from under me. The last thing I feel is safe with him.” She looked around at the hall, turning her back on where RJ was working because she couldn’t look at him without the knot twisting tighter in her stomach. “I can’t feel like this right before my wedding, Anne. Please, just tell me that it’s all going to be okay.”

  If there was one thing that she could rely on the world’s biggest optimist for, it ought to be that.

  “It will be okay,” Anne promised her. “Of course it will. Because if you really love Donovan, and if he’s the one your heart aches for every time he’s not there, then when you marry him everything will be fine.”

  And as Anne gave her one more hug before heading back to the dress, Rose tried desperately to pretend that her stomach hadn’t sunk further with each word her friend had said.

  Chapter Seven

  RJ finished taking measurements out in the garden while watching Rose through the windows as he worked. She looked incredibly lovely in the wedding dress Anne had created.

  By the time he went back inside, she was in her skirt and blouse again. With her hair tied back, the whole ensemble looked just a little too formal, the way so many of Rose’s clothes did these days when he hadn’t persuaded her to work with him in the garden. With her sleeves rolled up or dirt-stained overalls on, she always looked so beautifully natural.

  Today, however, she looked so tense that he immediately tried to ease her mind by saying, “I’ve been working on the new setup and it’s going well.”

  “That’s great, RJ,” Rose replied. “It’s nice to know that one thing is going right.”

  He frowned. “Are there problems with the rest of the wedding plans?”

  “Let’s put it this way, anything that can go wrong is going wrong.”

  “Not your dress,” he said. “It’s beautiful, Rose.”

  Their eyes held for a long moment before she said, “Thank you,” and then, “unfortunately the food, the flowers, and the music all have to be practically redesigned from scratch for one reason or another.” She laughed, but there wasn’t much humor in the sound. “I never thought I’d see the day when Anne was the one person I didn’t have to worry about being ready by the wedding day.”

  “She’s not the only one,” RJ assured her. “I’ll get this new setup finished in time.”

  “I know you will, and it’s good to have someone I can rely on. Although at this rate,” she continued, “we’ll probably find that the dress has gone missing right before I need to walk down the aisle.”

  “You’re worrying too much.” RJ didn’t step closer to put an arm around her shoulders, even though he badly wanted to. “How about if we get some lunch and I’ll go through some of the details for what I have in mind for the new setup. I know a place that does great chili fries.”

  “Chili fries?” He could see the hungry gleam in her eyes before she said, “Actually, I need to watch my weight so that Anne doesn’t have to re-adjust the dress.”

  “Don’t worry,” RJ said with a grin, “one plate of fries won’t hurt anything.” Before she could protest again, he put his hand on the small of her back, gently but firmly. “Come on, a change of scenery will do you good.”

  He managed to keep her moving all the way out to his truck, then drove quickly to the place he had in mind, a small diner he’d come across on the way to get materials from a local lumber yard. It was a place working men went to in the middle of the day, and definitely not somewhere Rose would go with Donovan. If the plastic surgeon ever found himself touching something in a place like this, he’d probably spend the next day or so scrubbing up.

  Apparently, Rose thought pretty much the same thing when they pulled into the diner’s gravel parking lot.

  “This is the place you’re taking me?”

  “You’re going to love it,” RJ said with a smile. It was time to remind Rose of who she really was, not who Donovan wanted her to be.

  “But there are plenty of other places we could go.”

  “None that serve chili fries like these.”

  “But this looks like a total dive.”

  He turned off the engine and got out of the truck to make it clear that they were staying. Rose seemed to get the message, or maybe she was just finally able to admit to herself that she wanted the chili fries more than she wanted to avoid the diner. He helped her carefully climb down from the truck and they headed inside together.

  One basket of chili fries later, and Rose had taken off her jacket and was no longer sitting bolt upright in the booth.

  “You’re right, these are really good fries,” she admitted. “They remind me of when I was working at the bowling alley to save money for college, only with maybe just a bit more grease,” she said with a grin that he loved seeing.

  “You never told me you worked at the bowling alley.”

  She flushed. “It’s not exactly something I like admitting to, working the same dead-end job as my mom.”

  “I don’t see what’s wrong with doing the same job as your family. And you’ve accomplished a lot since then.”

  “Not compared with the people I meet at Donovan’s parties. The ones who aren’t doctors are lawyers, and the ones who aren’t lawyers are in politics.”

  RJ wished Rose could see how important she was to the people she’d worked with at the Rose Chalet, and to her employees and friends.

  Most of all, he wished she could see how important she was to him.

  “Why don’t you tell me your new idea for the wedding setup?”

  Rose was obviously trying to change the subject, and RJ decided to let her. He didn’t want to make things harder for her. He didn’t ever want to do that.

  “And thank you, RJ, for doing all this at such short notice.”

  “I’ll do whatever you need me to do,” he said with feeling. “Knowing how much you like roses got me thinking about the traditional rose ceremony.” The traditional version was simple: an exchange of roses between the mothers of the bride and groom during the ceremony. “Just two people exchanging roses might be nicely symbolic,” he explained, “but it feels like it isn’t big enough. So why not have everyone at the wedding exchanging roses? All the guests on your side and all the ones on Donovan’s.”

  He watched her face light up at the idea, before she too-quickly stamped out her obvious pleasure. “Thank you for the idea, RJ, but I don’t think it will work. Not when Donovan will have so many more guests than I will. His family, his colleagues, his most important clients.”

  “We can figure it out,” RJ insisted, even though it annoyed him that Donovan should have more guests than Rose at their weddin
g, as if Rose’s friends and family didn’t matter the same way his did. “I was thinking of rigging up a topiary runner over everyone. If I put it together as a lattice work, I can make it look like it’s raining rose petals as you walk along the aisle, and then as you walk past each pair of people in the ceremony, they can step in and exchange roses.”

  For one more short moment, RJ thought Rose might go for it. Her eyes certainly seemed eager, maybe even a little dreamy, yet he could see the instant when she reconsidered…and made her final decision.

  She shook her head. “No, we can’t do that. It’s too messy. Too showy. And the rose ceremony has been done too many times before. It has all the problems that getting married under the gazebo did.”

  Which, as far as RJ could see, mostly consisted of Donovan’s mother not thinking it was up to her standards.

  Was Rose really going to try to design her entire wedding to live up to what she thought Vanessa McIntyre would like?

  “It’s not elegant enough,” Rose continued. “I want my wedding to have style. I want it to be absolutely perfect, with nothing going wrong.”

  Rose, of all people, should have known that weddings were big, messy, fun events. Yes, there was space for style and elegance, but even then, most couples tended to let their hair down a little during one of the most important days of their lives.

  Only, to RJ’s ears it sounded like Rose wanted her big day to be like a catwalk show. Beautiful to look at, but without any actual substance.

  He felt like there were two Roses these days. There was the woman she so obviously thought she ought to be, the person Donovan wanted her to be. That was the woman who seemed to be so willing to put aside her wedding arrangements just because of what people thought.

  Then there was the real Rose. The woman who rolled up her sleeves and helped him pound in nails and dig in the garden. The woman who devoured chili fries in diners.

  The woman who had kissed him.

  Yet he knew if he said any of that, Rose would simply deny it and pull away from him.

  So instead of saying it, he needed to show her the difference. Chili-fries in the diner had been a start, but he needed to do more.