The Wedding Kiss

by Lucy Kevin

  “I just hope that with us leaving them alone today, these two finally manage to tell one another what they really feel for each other.”

  Everyone murmured their agreement as they got the heck out of the bar.

  * * *

  As soon as Rose came back from the bathroom, she saw that the table they’d chosen was deserted. RJ was still there with six full drinks laid across the otherwise-empty table, but the others were gone.

  She knew exactly why they’d abandoned her there with RJ, and for a moment, Rose felt a flash of panic.

  Maybe, she tried to convince herself, it was actually a good thing. There were so many things she hadn’t said to RJ the day before, and floods of tears definitely weren’t the way she wanted to leave things between them. Maybe if they talked, they could get some closure. Rose had to believe that.

  “Did they at least say goodbye,” she asked as she sat down.

  “No. Clearly, they hoped that if they snuck out, we’d talk.”

  “They’re right,” she said in a voice that shook a little on the two words.

  “I’m sorry, Rose,” he said in a voice raw with emotion. “I know what you want from me. I know you want me to make it easy for you, but doing that is so damned hard.”

  “I don’t think anything about this is easy,” Rose said.

  She was so nervous suddenly that she grabbed one of the beers. She was surprised by how good it tasted, so much better than all the champagne she’d been forced to sip at the endless parties Donovan’s friends and colleagues had been throwing for them.

  “I want to be everything you want me to be, Rose. Everything you need me to be. It’s just that…I can’t do that and fight for you too. And I want to fight for you, Rose. Because I love you.”

  “Please,” Rose begged him. “Please don’t say that again.”

  “Why not?” RJ demanded. “Why can’t I tell you I love you when it’s the truth?”

  Rose put the beer back down on the table with such force that it sloshed over the rim and a drop slid down the side of the glass like a teardrop. “Because it makes things too complicated.”

  RJ sat on the other side of the table, so handsome, so strong. Yet despite that strength, she could see how much what she was saying—and everything that she wasn’t—was hurting him.

  After a few more seconds of silence, he spoke. “The situation wouldn’t be complicated if you didn’t feel anything for me. If I thought you didn’t care about me at all, then I’d walk away. But you do, Rose. I know you do.”

  “Of course I do,” Rose snapped back, frustration getting the best of her tongue. “But it doesn’t change anything, does it? I’ve had feelings for you for a long time, and you never did anything about it before. Why now?”

  “You were always so careful with me. Until Valentine’s Day, last year, when we were at this very same bar and you grabbed me and kissed me. Then I knew you had feelings for me, too. But you were with Donovan. So I waited for you to realize you wanted to be with me instead of him. But now...there isn’t any more time to wait.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “There isn’t. You’ve had months, RJ. You should have said something after we kissed.” Her hand started to rise to her lips at the still-potent memory of their kiss, and she barely stopped it in time. “You could have said something a hundred times. Why wait until the day before my wedding?”

  When he didn’t answer immediately, she started to get up. Maybe talking to him like this was a bad idea after all. Maybe their relationship just wasn’t destined to end well.

  RJ grabbed her arm and caught her, pulling her back into the booth. “You know that I was married?”

  “Yes, before you came to work for me.”

  “What you don’t know is that my wife had an affair with my best friend. I found them together, and that hurt worse than anything ever had before. I swore to myself that I would never ever do to someone what they did to me.”

  “So all this time—”

  “I know you aren’t married to Donovan, but I didn’t think I could live with myself if I came between you. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, even Donovan McIntyre, the way I got hurt. It wouldn’t have been right.”

  “But it’s right to do it now?” Rose asked. “So close to our wedding?”

  RJ looked terribly uncomfortable, but he nodded. “I have to.”

  “Why, RJ?” Rose demanded. “What’s changed?”

  RJ didn’t say anything for a second or two, but then he looked her in the eyes, and Rose could see without having to be told just how much he wanted her.

  How much he needed her.

  From time to time, she’d thought that he was letting too much of what he felt for her show through at work, but now she realized just what an amazing job he had been doing of holding back what he felt all this time.

  The intensity of what Rose saw in his eyes was almost frightening. Except that it was RJ, and nothing about him could ever frighten her, because if there was one man in the world who would rather die than hurt her, it was RJ.

  “What changed?” he repeated softly. “That’s simple, Rose. I realized that what hurts a lot worse than anything my ex did to me is not being with you. It hurts like hell to stand there on the sidelines every day while you’re with Donovan, while he’s trying to turn you into someone you’re not.”

  “Donovan loves me,” Rose said, and she believed that he did. Still, Donovan had never looked at her with anywhere near the burning intensity she could see in RJ’s eyes. Her fiancé was always so restrained, so controlled.

  “Not like I do. And I know you don’t want to hear it, but I’m going to keep saying it, Rose. I love you. I want to be with you. And I’m saying it now because it’s our last chance.”

  Oh my god, Rose thought at she paused to really let his words of love sink in, was she actually considering leaving Donovan and being with RJ?

  No, she couldn’t.

  What kind of woman would back out of her own wedding now?

  RJ had said he didn’t want to be a man who broke up a relationship. Well, Rose couldn’t imagine being a woman who walked out with so many people depending on her.

  Everything was set. The guests, the venue, even the gluten-free cake that Julie was likely already preparing. Not only did Donovan expect her to say “I do” to him on Saturday, but his family and friends would be horrified if she stood him up.

  Walking out not only wouldn’t be right, but it would be exactly what people like Vanessa McIntyre would expect from the poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks who didn’t know how to behave. Who fled at the first sign of trouble the way her father had, when he’d left Rose and her mother to fend for themselves so many years ago.

  Rose had worked her entire life to stop being that girl. She couldn’t go back to being her now.

  Not even for RJ.

  “I can’t do it,” Rose said. “I can’t just throw away my wedding like this. If you’d come to me months ago, then maybe, but now…now it’s too late. It’s far too late.”

  He sat there staring at her, obviously trying to work out what to say to make her change her mind. The trouble was, there wasn’t anything he could say. Because it wasn’t about how she felt now.

  It was about what was right. And that wasn’t going to change.

  “Please don’t hate me,” Rose asked him, even though she knew she had no right to make that request anymore.

  The look on RJ’s face would have broken her heart, if it wasn’t already crushed to smithereens.

  “I could never hate you. I could never do anything but love you.” He closed his eyes for a brief moment, before re-opening them and saying, “I can’t keep working at the Rose Chalet, being near you every day knowing that there’s no chance for us. I’ll stay on until you can find someone to replace me, but I can’t keep standing in the wings watching another man live the life I want with you, Rose. I just can’t.”

  She felt like every part of her would tear apart, one cell at a ti
me, at the thought of not seeing him every day.

  “I know,” she whispered.

  Just like that, it was done.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Somehow Rose made it through to the following night when her friends whisked her off in a limousine for her bachelorette party.

  “I love limos,” Julie said.

  “Me too,” Phoebe said, “especially the free treats and drinks. Who wants what?”

  Rose sat there quietly. She wasn’t in the right mood for partying. Not that they were exactly going out clubbing. Maybe an evening at the exclusive spa they had booked would make her feel better about everything that had happened with RJ. Or not.

  On the other hand, it probably would make her look her best for her wedding the next day. That was a good thing, right? At least assuming that they had everything in place for there to be a wedding.

  “How can we leave the chalet when there’s still so much to get done before tomorrow?”

  Anne leaned across to touch her arm, her expression one of concern. No one had asked Rose about her conversation with RJ at the bar. Then again, Rose knew it was perfectly clear what had happened by not only her distraught expression when she’d come back, but also because RJ hadn’t returned to the chalet with her.

  “Try to relax and enjoy yourself tonight, Rose. Everything will be fine.”

  “Anne, you’d say that if there were a five ton weight hurtling towards you.” Which was exactly how Rose felt right then.

  “We wouldn’t let you down, Rose.”

  “I know you wouldn’t,” she said softly, even though twenty-four hours ago, it had seemed like the whole wedding was on the verge of disaster.

  Phoebe, Anne, and Julie were more than just her employees. More than just friends. They, along with Whitney, had become her family. Even so, it was hard to see how they could have solved her wedding’s technical problems in so short a time.

  She had to know, “How could you possibly have solved everything that was going wrong so quickly?”

  “RJ,” Phoebe said simply. “He knew a guy who knew a guy who could supply all the roses we need at short notice.”

  “He came through on the catering too,” Julie said. “It turns out that he knows someone with a crab boat who does it as a pretty serious hobby, so I won’t have to change the menu too much now, which meant I easily had the time to re-work the cake to make it gluten-free.”

  “And I know he found Tyce a rehearsal space,” Whitney said, “so that the string quartet will be perfectly in sync with one another by the time they actually play.”

  Rose looked at Anne. “What about you? Did RJ find you more of that thread you couldn’t get?”

  “No, where would he have possibly found that?” Anne replied just when Rose was starting to think that RJ could do nothing wrong. “Although,” her friend added, “he did point out that if I quickly dyed the same make of thread a different color, I wouldn’t have to redo the whole thing. I really should have thought of that.”

  So RJ had saved the day there as well.

  He’d done so much, had put so much effort into making her wedding perfect, even though the idea of her marrying Donovan was tearing him up inside. And before that, he’d put everything he had into making the Rose Chalet a success. Whenever things had gone wrong, whenever she was starting to panic, he’d always been there.

  How, she wondered helplessly, could he continue to give so much to her when she knew his heart was breaking?

  And how could she possibly keep her heart from breaking too?

  Whitney reached out to touch her arm, not saying anything, and Rose was glad she didn’t. Because one sweet word would have had her bawling her eyes out in the back of the limo.

  They arrived at the spa, just outside the city, with beautiful hilltop views. Twenty minutes later though, while she was in the middle of a massage that she couldn’t manage to enjoy even the tiniest bit, her cell phone rang.

  “Can’t you leave it?” Phoebe suggested.

  Rose shook her head. “It’s Donovan.”

  He didn’t know about her crying in RJ’s arms. He didn’t know about what had happened in the bar, or even about how much RJ had done to pull off the perfect wedding for her.

  “Hi Donovan!” she tried to sound as bright and happy as she could, but failed miserably around the lump in her throat.

  “Rose, I just wanted to phone and see how my blushing bride is doing.”

  Desperately, she tried not to think about RJ kissing her, or declaring his love for her, or taking care of every last detail of her wedding.

  “I’m at the spa with the girls,” was all she could manage by way of a reply. She couldn’t have forced out the lie that she was “fine” if her life had depended on it.

  “I wish I could be with you tonight,” Donovan said.

  In response, Rose couldn’t stop herself from saying, “You deserve so much better than me.”

  That seemed to take Donovan momentarily aback. Finally, he said, “Rose, you’re a wonderful woman. I wouldn’t be marrying you otherwise. I know I’m not exactly the most demonstrative of men, but I wanted you to know that I love you.”

  “I—” Rose didn’t know what to say. “That’s—”

  She knew that she should be saying ‘I love you too,’ but with the tears that were threatening to overwhelm her, she couldn’t get the words out. Her problem was solved by Phoebe taking her phone from her.

  “Donovan? This is Rose’s bachelorette party and it’s girls-only. I’m hanging up now, and then I’m hiding her phone. Bye.”

  Trust Phoebe to do something like that. Something Rose would never have dared to do, but which she’d desperately needed someone to do right then. Because even as Phoebe put her phone down, Rose’s tears started falling.

  Anne rushed over from her facial, and both Julie and Whitney were quick to join them after waving away the aestheticians who had been giving them their treatments.

  “Rose?” Anne said, “You need to talk to us. What happened?”

  “It’s RJ. He told me—” Her voice broke. “He told me he loves me.”

  “Of course he does,” Julie said in a gentle voice. “And it’s about time he finally told you.”

  She wasn’t even surprised anymore that everyone knew. Besides, what did it matter if everyone knew how RJ felt about her when she was marrying another man?

  “He also told me he’ll be leaving the chalet after the wedding.”

  “I understand why he would need to do that,” Phoebe said, “but what I don’t understand is why you’re still marrying Donovan when RJ told you he loves you.”

  “Because I accepted Donovan’s proposal and we have a house we’ve built together and...it’s all been arranged forever! But now I feel so guilty for thinking about RJ whenever I’m around Donovan, and I feel guilty when I’m with Donovan for not clearing things up with RJ.”

  “Oh, Rose,” Anne said, moving in to wrap her arms around her friend. The others joined in.

  “I need to apologize for trying to push you and RJ together,” Whitney said. “I was so sure it was what you both wanted.”

  “Me too,” Phoebe admitted, “but we’ve just been making things harder for you, haven’t we?”

  “All I want,” Rose told her friends, “is to get through this wedding in one piece.”

  Anne spoke for the others. “If that’s what you want, then we’re going to make sure you do. We promise.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rose stared at herself in the mirror.

  Several minutes ago Anne had finished helping her into her wedding dress and Phoebe had put the finishing touches on her makeup. So many months of working towards this moment, and now she and Donovan were about to be married the way they’d planned.

  The wedding dress Anne had made for her was perfect, probably the best work Rose had ever seen her do, and Phoebe had done a fantastic job with her hair and makeup.

  “If you’re ready,” Phoebe said in a gentle v
oice, “everything’s all set to go.”

  Amazingly it had all come together. Julie had stayed up most of the night putting last minute touches on the cake decoration, and the finished product was astonishingly beautiful. The flowers were in place, covering so much of the interior that it seemed like a rose garden. Tyce’s musicians had sounded fantastic during their rehearsal earlier. The guests were waiting in their seats. The officiant was there.

  All they needed for the wedding to start was for the bride to actually walk outside.

  Anne put a hand on her arm. “Rose—”

  “I just need another minute, okay?”

  Phoebe and Anne gave each other a look before Rose’s best friend said, “We’ll be right outside.”

  But Rose didn’t hear anything her friends said as she stared at the total stranger standing in front of the mirror. Her stomach was roiling, her heart was racing, and her fingertips were numb as she pressed them hard into her palms.

  A knock sounded on the door, and even though Rose didn’t call out for the person to come in, her mother stepped inside. Susie Martin was wearing a deep rose-colored dress that Anne had made for her. She looked beautiful, and was suddenly the only person in the world Rose wanted with her.

  Her mother moved beside her in front of the mirror. “Your friends told me that something wasn’t right.” Their eyes met in the mirror, her mother’s warm, Rose’s full of deep-seated panic.

  “I just need a few more minutes to wrap my head around all of this.”

  “Oh, honey,” her mom said with a smile, “you know you can tell me anything, don’t you? Just like when you were a little girl.”

  Rose remembered coming to the bowling alley after school on days when some boy had made her cry, or when one of the mean girls had made awful comments about her being a poor girl who couldn’t afford the right clothes. She’d always tried to hide things like that from her mom, because her mom had been doing the best she could for both of them. But her mother had always known exactly what Rose was going through, without her having to say a word. That was when her floodgates would open up and she would tell her mother everything, until she felt better.