by Maggie Ryan
“And I have to invite all the teachers from school,” Piper pointed out plaintively.
“Don’t forget all the staff from the hospital. It’s a small town. Anybody who’s not invited will feel left out. Easier all around if we just have everyone.”
Feeling rather foolish, she still had to protest. “It’s not fair for you to pay for all of it.”
“It’s my pleasure to do it up right. If the whole town is going to be talking about it, let’s give them something good to say.” Blake tucked a stray strand of her hair behind her ear. “You weren’t hoping for a small wedding, were you?”
“Not exactly. I mean, the idea of a big affair is intriguing, but it will take some getting used to. The only thing I really had planned is Mr. Silberman giving me away, but come to think of it, I do have several friends from college who would love to be bridesmaids.”
“Excellent, because I have a lot of guys who owe me. I’ve been in my fair share of weddings. Time for them to return the favor.”
Piper smiled and shyly fiddled with the tiny buttons at his collar. “For a fancy event like that, there would need to be some really lovely flowers.”
“Whatever you want. Any kind, any amount. They just have to fit inside the church.” Blake narrowed his eyes in a thoughtful expression. “Actually, we could use any overflow blooms to decorate the front porch and line the gutters.”
Piper pushed him away with a light cuff to his shoulder. “Oh now really, Blake! Ugh! The thought of that beautiful stone church on the square with flowers on the gutters! Sheesh!”
He staggered back as if she had hit him hard. “All right! Have it your way. No flowers on the gutters. Now, about the honeymoon…”
Chapter 4
“What do you mean, you won’t sell me a van?” Piper demanded. She drummed her fingers on the desk in front of her while the late May rains drummed on the windows of the showroom floor. “I’ve got the down payment.”
The sincere salesman smiled apologetically, running his hand over what little hair he had left and adjusting his considerable bulk in the seat he had just resumed after a brief absence. “Miss Gowan, I’m sorry to have to say this, but I called your local bank.”
Piper grimaced. “What did Sharon tell you?”
“Nothing untoward. She just recommended that we encourage you to wait six months. Have you perhaps had any mistaken black marks on your credit report? Those can be cleared up with a little work.”
“No, not mistaken. I did lose my father’s old house, but that was more from procrastination than… I didn’t really want to keep it anyway. They know all about that situation. I thought that I would get some leeway from a local bank.”
“They didn’t say ‘no’ exactly. They just said ‘wait.’ It’s always smart to take advice from smart people, miss.” The salesman stood up and grinned at her. “You come back in six months and we’ll find just the van for you. These conversion vans cycle through here all the time.”
“But I wanted it for my work this summer. Now that school is out, I plan to work as a senior care companion. Being able to transport clients in wheelchairs would have been such a plus.” Piper tried to keep the whining sound out of her voice as she rose. “And I’ll need a van for my wedding in October.”
“Young lady,” replied the middle-aged man, suddenly serious. “If you’re getting married in October, you’ve already got your work cut out for you this summer. You’ll be busy enough getting ready for the biggest day of your life.”
“That’s what my fiancé says.” Piper slumped to her car imagining herself in her white wedding gown, slinging Mr. Silberman’s wheelchair in the bed of Blake’s pickup. She still thought of it as his even though she was paying him a small amount each month. She knew that once they got married, it would be a moot point, but she didn’t like taking unfair advantage of his generous nature. She dismissed out of hand the idea that she might tell Blake about her worries. Surely, one of his relatives would be honored to be asked to do the important job of picking up the man who was to give the bride away, but his family was already doing everything.
Piper fretted all the way home only to find a lovely flower arrangement gently wilting in the heat of a Tennessee May. The card contained the words to a popular song, only he had changed them slightly.
“To my old-fashioned girl.
Leave behind your hurry up modern world.
With the lights down low we’ll dance real slow
And good-byes we’ll never say.
No more loneliness getting you down.
Long walks together all around town.
You’ll always be the only one for me
My old-fashioned girl all the way.
I hope you enjoyed your last day of school.
Love, Blake.”
Her new smart-phone was in her hand before she realized what she was doing. Blake picked up so quickly that she knew he must have been waiting for her to call. “You’re so sweet,” she began without any other preamble. “I love the song and the flowers, too.”
“Did they just get there? I called them in this morning.”
“I just got home,” Piper explained. “Don’t worry. I’m giving them plenty of water. They’ll perk right up.”
“I thought you’d be home today or I would have told Brenda not to leave them outside. Where did you go?”
Piper hardly hesitated. The lie came so easily she almost convinced herself. “Nowhere. Just running around.”
“Okay. I wish I had known your plans, but anyway, I hope the flowers survive. How about a movie tonight? Or would you like me to help you work on the invitations?”
“Sure. A movie sounds good. The invitations are almost done. I don’t need any help.” Piper pursed her lips as she clicked the phone off. Those invitations should be more than half finished by now and she hadn’t started. Blake had offered to have a service print the addresses for her, but she had shot that idea down immediately. She loved doing anything connected with what she knew would be the best day of her life, so she had insisted on addressing the envelopes herself. Now, here she was behind again. Why hadn’t she told him the truth and accepted his help?
Feelings of frustration and guilt that had been building all week soured her mood as she tried to bake brownies for them to snack on during the movie and address a few envelopes at the same time. When Blake arrived, she covered up the mess on the kitchen table with a dishtowel but her kiss was short and perfunctory, then her silence was long and tense.
As the movie credits rolled, Blake turned to face her. “So, when are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
“What makes you think anything’s wrong?”
“You hardly said two words during the movie and I can smell the burnt brownies.”
“If you had wanted brownies, you could have brought them yourself,” Piper snapped.
“Hey, hold on there. What did I do to deserve that?”
Piper glared at him. “Just sat there all smug and organized. You never burn the brownies or put off chores or get turned down for car loans.”
“Car loans?” Blake got very still.
“I didn’t mean to say that. It’s not your problem.”
“Anything that involves you is my problem,” he corrected her sternly. “What car loan? Is something wrong with the truck?”
“Your perfect truck is just fine. I went into Nashville today to see about getting a conversion van with a ramp to accommodate wheelchairs. They turned me down. Can you believe that? Sharon at the bank told them I should wait! I thought she was my friend!”
Blake caught at Piper’s fisted hands. “Who else but a friend would keep you from taking on a debt you can’t afford?”
Piper pulled away from him. “A friend doesn’t interfere in your life. It’s my choice. I wish everybody would just leave me alone!”
“Whoa! Where’s all this coming from? What’s gotten into you?” Blake’s eyes raked her face, concern and calculation sharpening his gaze. “Have
I put too much on you? I thought you said you liked working on the wedding. Is this whole thing getting to you? Because we can scrap it if it’s too much stress. This is supposed to be fun. If you’re not enjoying it…”
That did it. Piper crumpled into tears. “How can you be so nice to me? I yell at you and lie to you and do stupid things and all you do is take the blame and try to make me feel better!”
“Lie to me?” Blake pulled her hands down away from her face. “When did you lie?”
“I told you I hadn’t been anywhere, but that wasn’t true. I went to Nashville today.”
“The car loan,” Blake said as if a fog had suddenly cleared. “That was today?”
“I wanted the van so I could work more this summer so I went behind your back to try to buy that van, then turned around and lied to you about it.” She took a deep breath and plunged on. “That wasn’t my only dishonest moment. I told you the invitations were almost done, but I hadn’t started. I know that with all your family and friends coming in from all over, we need to send them out super early. I just keep putting it off. You have every right to be boiling mad at me right now, but there you sit, all calm and unconcerned.”
“I’m calm, all right, but I’m not unconcerned. In fact, I’m going to show you how concerned I am.”
Piper got very still, knowing what was coming but powerless to prevent it. “Blake, wait! I’m sorry.”
“I know you are,” he told her as he flipped her over his lap. “But you’re going to be sorrier in about five minutes.”
“No, please! I’ll fix it. I’ll stay up all night and get the invitations done.”
“Oh, no you won’t! Not if I have anything to say about it.” He held her over his lap, one arm clamping her in place, the other resting on her thigh. “What you are going to do is quit stressing yourself out over this wedding! Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“And you’ll tell me the truth from now on.”
“Yes, I will. I can’t believe I told you those fibs. I’m not like that! I hate lying.” She waited for the first swat to fall, but instead felt both his hands lifted from her. Her first instinct was to jump up and run but just as she was levering herself off his lap she heard him speak.
“You’ve had your say and I think we’ve come to terms. Now, it’s my turn to have my say. Are you willing to let me express myself?” He paused to let his words sink in. “I didn’t ask you if you want to hear my views. We both know you won’t enjoy hearing them. Not in the way I’m going to express them. But I did ask you, are you willing?”
Her sense of fairness warred with her instinct for self-preservation. She didn’t want to be spanked. Not by any stretch of the imagination. It was going to hurt, both now and probably for days to come, but… if she stood up right now, she would be turning her back on the best sort of love the world had to offer. It was a selfless, giving, passionate love that consumed her even as it built her up, so she made the hardest move she’d ever made: she stayed where she was.
The first swat did fall then and it wasn’t alone. It brought with it a whole army of companion swats, lining up in rows to rain down on her backside. She thought she would surely burn up with embarrassment even as her rump roasted from his onslaught. It went on long after she had lost the ability to stay still, but he helped her by clamping his arm back around her waist early in the proceedings. He seemed to know just when to give her a slight break before following up with a fresh advance. She kicked and yelped but tried to keep her reactions in check as best she could. She wanted him to see that she was sorry and willing to make it up to him. If this was the way he chose for her to do that, so be it.
And then it was over and he was helping her up and holding her close. His hand on her hair and her back and then sometimes even farther down was comforting in a way Piper had not anticipated. She felt the rush of love flowing over her and through her in amazing and powerful ways. She was alive and she was in love and she was happier than she had ever thought she could be. She clung to him even as he spoke to her.
“So we both agree that this summer, you’re going to take a break from paid work. You’ll be busy enough getting ready for our wedding, which is going to be a big huge affair mostly because I need it to be. Since you’re doing that for me, it’s only fair that I help you out with your bills. Agreed?”
Piper nodded. “I agree.”
“So you don’t need the van because you won’t be working that extra job.”
“Agreed. But you have to admit it would have been nice to have that van come time for the wedding. How am I going to get Mr. Silberman to the church?”
“How about you let me take care of that?”
Piper looked up at him. “I want to arrive with him, Blake. I don’t know why, but that’s just the way I see it in my mind. I can’t ask you to manage anything so picky. I should.”
“You’re the bride. You’re supposed to be picky. You want to arrive together. Got it. I’ll handle everything. Trust me?”
Piper leaned her head against his chest and nodded. It was the most comfortable she had felt in a long time… with one very particular exception in one special portion of her anatomy, which she rubbed as often as she thought she could get away with and still escape his notice.
Piper’s best friends from college left her apartment on the morning of the wedding, waving and laughing in what Piper thought was a rather unusual way. It was as if they knew something she didn’t. Now that the day was finally here, she was glad she had spent her summer, and many hours after school as well, putting her heart and soul into making this day something special. She had established a good relationship with Blake’s mother and father at the same time, so she was looking forward to a fun day of meeting his other relatives and seeing her old friends, some of whom were even coming from out of state.
But she was by herself now, expecting the car at any second. There it was, the knock at the door. Piper opened it, expecting to see one of the flock of cousins she had met over the past few months of showers and parties, but instead she found a liveried chauffeur. After an exchange of polite pleasantries, she asked, “Do you have Mr. Silberman’s address? Or you may know where it is, if you’re from around here. The Shadestone?” Just then they rounded the corner of her apartment building and she saw it.
In an instant, she knew it had to be for her, but the shock set her back on her heels. It was a compact but roomy conversion van, just like the one she had seen at Ramp and Ride. The driver stood by the door but instead of opening it for her, he stood back and pushed a button. “No need, miss. We already have all the passengers.”
With a whir and a hiss, the van lowered itself as the side door opened. A small grey ramp slid quietly out of the side. Out of breath with excitement, Piper stooped a little and had no trouble climbing into the back, but when she turned around to settle herself into the leather covered captain’s chair at the back of the vehicle, her hands dropped the seatbelt fasteners at the sight that met her eyes. She knew those wheelchair handles and the man who had to be in the chair that was sitting so neatly where the front passenger seat would normally go. “Mr. Silberman?”
“A princess!” declared Mr. Silberman as he twisted around to look at her. “You look just like a princess!”
As the driver reversed out of the parking space, her companion could hardly stop chortling long enough to tell her about the features of the marvelous machine. “It’s no harder to park than a regular mini-van and the insides are very flexible. Blake can strap my chair where the middle row of seats usually goes if we’re all riding together, so you can sit up here. There’s a nice seat that goes in this space and I watched this young fellow demonstrate how easy it is to move.”
“I forgot to take it out before I picked him up, but it was no trouble,” the driver explained. “In and out in no time.”
“And you’ll take him home before you have to return the van?” Piper asked. “When does the rental company expect it back?”
“No problem,” the driver replied. “Dr. Karn has everything worked out.”
“I never doubted he would,” Mr. Silberman declared stoutly.
The trip to the church didn’t take long and Piper was able to see how easy it was for Mr. Silberman to wheel himself down the ramp. It made her all the sorrier that she hadn’t saved up enough money to buy one of her own. It would make it so much easier on everyone if she had one of these wonderful vans. It wasn’t that Mr. Silberman expected her to get something like that just for him. He’d probably fuss unless she could convince him that she meant to use it for work in the summers as well. It was just that she loved taking him places and Blake wasn’t always there to help with the transfer and then sling that chair around for her.
How her life had changed since he had entered it. How much easier and better things were for her. With his help she got more accomplished and found more joy in those accomplishments as well. Why did she hesitate to accept his help? Her gaze fell on Mr. Silberman and she thought maybe that she was a little like him. He didn’t expect to be completely independent, but he enjoyed doing most things for himself. She felt the same way. She loved depending on Blake, but she wanted to contribute as well.
As if he could read her mind, Mr. Silberman began talking to her as he rolled beside her into the church. “You’ve done a beautiful job on this wedding, doll. Everything looks great and the rehearsal went off without a hitch. You and the good doctor make a great team.”
Piper shrugged, trying not to sigh. “Yeah, I’m good at messing things up and he’s good at straightening things out.”
“He loves your creative spirit and doesn’t mind when it gets you in a pickle. He enjoys helping you out of your little scrapes.” Mr. Silberman stopped in front of the doors. “He’s a take charge kind of man but he won’t run you over. He might be the head of the family, but you’re the heart. One can’t live without the other. He needs you just as much as you need him. He’s a good man and the right man for you.”
