Save the Date

by Mary Kay Andrews

  “Then why bother to talk to them?” Bert asked. “We’re not exactly hurting for work, Cara.”

  “I know, I know. I keep telling myself that. But I really liked Marie, the mom.”

  “That’s your problem, Cara,” Bert said, interrupting. “You like everybody. You get sucked into their dramas, become a part of their family, and then get stuck in the middle of their shit. You’re a florist, honey, not a family therapist!”

  “You’re wrong. I absolutely don’t like Gordon, and it took me about five seconds to decide I detest Patricia. But Marie—she’s a different story. She’s sort of a lost soul, and I just get the feeling Patricia will totally mow her and Brooke down, if I don’t get the job. But don’t worry. They are so not going to hire me. I told them about everything we had planned for Laurie-Beth’s wedding and they were really and truly appalled. Anyway, Patricia is totally gaga over this Cullen Kane guy from Charleston.”

  “Oh yeah, him,” Bert said, with a sneer. “Just what Savannah needs. Another flower fairy.”

  Cara laughed and gave his shoulder a gentle shove. “Go on, get out. We’ve both got to get our beauty rest. See you in the morning.”

  15

  Cara caught sight of the stranger just as she was finishing the last details of the elaborate arch she’d constructed out of fallen tree branches, Spanish moss, deer antlers, grouse feathers, ivy, and dried hydrangeas. Since it was where Laurie-Beth and Payton would stand to say their vows she wanted to make sure an errant antler wouldn’t fall off and bonk the couple on the head. Concussions were never fun at a wedding.

  She’d arrived at the cotton warehouse late Saturday afternoon, already behind schedule.

  He was standing just inside the propped-open door of the warehouse, his arms crossed over his chest, and a late-afternoon ray of sunlight seemed to catch and illuminate his blond tresses, almost like a halo. He wasn’t a guest; the wedding wasn’t for another two hours, and anyway, he was dressed casually, in designer jeans—7 For All Mankind, she was sure, a silky black T-shirt, and black motorcycle boots. He had deliberate beard stubble, piercing green eyes, and he was tall enough and slender enough to be a runway model.

  But she knew he wasn’t. The hair was the giveaway. She’d seen it on his website.

  He was watching her, spying on the competition, and he didn’t care if she knew. Should she confront him, ask him to leave? But that would make him think she had something to hide. She decided to ignore him, for now anyway.

  Cara stood on the top rung of her stepladder, and steadied herself with both hands on the side supports of the arch. She made another pass with the picture wire, looping it around and around Payton Jelks’s prized ten-point antlers, which she’d secured to the top of the arch, then tying it off on the backside of the arch, where it wouldn’t be seen.

  She reached into the bag of extra feathers and dried flowers she’d slung over her left shoulder, pulled her glue gun from the holster she’d rigged on her belt, and went to add another cluster of dried hydrangea blooms, leaning ever-so-slightly to the right. Which was a mistake. It was like a slow-motion cartoon. She tried to counteract the wobble, inching to the left, but she overcorrected, and it was too late. She grabbed for the right tree branch. Also a mistake. It came away in her hand, and she tumbled to the concrete floor.

  And her arch, her gorgeous, forest-fantasy arch, came tumbling right down around her.

  She fell flat on her ass, but instinctively shielded her head with her arms, as antlers and branches and feathers rained down around her. She felt a sear on her calf, felt the hot glue gun ricocheting onto the floor.

  “Shit!”

  He was at her side in a moment, kneeling down beside her, pulling her to a sitting position.

  “Hey! Are you okay?” He brushed feathers and moss and dried hydrangea petals from her hair and shoulders.

  “Shit!” she repeated, looking around at the ruins. “Shit. Damn. Hell. Piss.”

  He laughed, throwing his head back, displaying a set of perfect white teeth in contrast to his perfect golden tan. Actually, he was prettier than a runway model. He looked like something off the cover of a paperback romance novel. Biker boots and all.

  “At least you didn’t get impaled in the throat with an antler.”

  “At least,” she said sourly.

  “Can you stand?” he asked, extending a hand to help her up.

  “Guess I’d better, if I’m gonna get this thing rebuilt before seven.” She took his hand and managed to stand. Her tailbone was already starting to throb, her right shin was bleeding, and she could see a bruise blooming on her right elbow, where she’d tried to break her fall.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “I’m sorry about your arch,” he said. “It was really looking pretty kick-ass.”

  “I know,” Cara said. “Was.”

  He hesitated for a moment. “I could help you put it back together. You know, if you want.”

  Did she? Did she want his help?

  “I’m Cullen Kane,” he said. “The new kid in town.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “And you’re Cara Kryzik,” he said. “Bloom. I’m a big fan of your work.”

  “Thanks,” she said, feeling her face redden. Was he being facetious? How would he know what her work looked like? Unlike him, she’d never had a wedding published.

  “I was a guest at that wedding you did last weekend. Lillian Fanning’s sister-in-law used to be married to my cousin.”

  “Really?” She hadn’t noticed him at the Fanning wedding, but then, she’d been so distracted, what with Poppy and the creep who’d dognapped her, that that shouldn’t have been a big surprise. Cara arched an eyebrow. “I’m surprised Lillian didn’t ask you to do Torie’s flowers.”

  “Gawd forbid,” he drawled. “I’ve known Torie since she was in diapers, and she was hell on wheels even back then.”

  Cara wasn’t sure whether to agree or take the high road. “Torie was a … challenge,” she allowed.

  He smiled. “Tactful and talented. Anyway, I really did love what you did at their wedding. I’m sure Torie and Lillian were insisting on some blown-out Versailles-style designs. You did a nice job of reining them in, but still giving them what they thought they wanted.”

  “Well … thanks. Thanks very much. I appreciate the compliment, coming from somebody in the field.”

  “Not at all.” He gestured at the pile of branches. “I really would be happy to help you resurrect your arch. I’m pretty handy with a cordless drill and a glue gun.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” she tried to demur. But the minutes were ticking away. It had taken both her and Bert an entire day to build the damn thing back at the shop.

  “Professional courtesy,” he said, bowing from the waist. “I insist.”

  * * *

  True to his word, Cullen Kane was a whiz with power tools. With the extra set of hands, they were able to get the branch structure rebuilt in only thirty minutes. This time, though, at his suggestion, they added bracing with some extra branches she’d brought along. He tugged hard on both sides, and then at the top of the arch, and this time around, there wasn’t the slightest wobble.

  He was so tall he didn’t even really need the stepladder to wire the antlers to the top of the arch. So Cara worked on the side supports, attaching the antlers and feathers and flowers, while he positioned the ten-point antlers precisely at the top of the arch, adding sprays of dried flowers and feathers in a carefully contrived medallion shape, even fashioning a rough bow with a long strand of ivy, before applying more festoons of Spanish moss.

  “Dammit,” Cara muttered under her breath, looking up at his composition.

  “Too much?” He stood back.

  “No. Much better. Dammit.”

  “It was your vision,” he said. “All I did was follow directions.”

  He was really insufferable. She should hate him. And she kind of did hate him, making her grateful for his help.

  She
glanced at her watch. “Oh! I’ve gotta get out of here. Gotta get home and shower and change before the wedding party starts arriving.” She held out her hand. “Thanks for helping out. You were a lifesaver.”

  He shrugged. “It was the least I could do, after you caught me spying .”

  She took a half step backward. “I suppose Patricia Trapnell told you they’d interviewed me for Brooke’s wedding.”

  “She did. That’s Patricia. She loves intrigue. Loves to pit one person against the other.”

  “I’m really not your competition,” Cara told him. “I think they only interviewed me as a courtesy to Brooke’s mother. Our styles seem … very different.”

  “Not so different,” Cullen said, flashing those beautiful teeth again. “We’re both perfectionists.”

  “There is that,” Cara admitted. She grabbed a broom and started sweeping up the stray bits of moss and flower petals.

  “Good luck with the wedding,” Cullen said, realizing he’d been dismissed.

  “Thanks,” Cara said. “And good luck with yours.”

  He arched one eyebrow in an implied challenge. “We’ll see, won’t we?”

  16

  The wedding party looked to Cara like a group of trick-or-treaters who’d gotten lost on their way to Halloween. The bridesmaids wore matching short black spandex dresses that resembled overgrown tube tops, over black fishnet hose and short black bootees. The groomsmen wore black leather pants, and T-shirts with custom screen-printed designs featuring snarling befanged monsters.

  The bridegroom was dressed in black leather pants, too, but instead of a screen-printed shirt he wore a metal-studded black leather vest over his bare chest. And he’d shaved his head for the occasion.

  Laurie-Beth Winship’s choice of a wedding gown was equally quirky—she’d designed it herself, with a bodice made of her grandmother’s tightly laced 1950s corset, and a skirt made of layers of another grandmother’s Irish lace curtains—but somehow, the wacky creation totally suited her pale complexion and long red hair.

  It was a remarkably relaxed group. There were no hysterics, no panic attacks, no death threats issued. Even Payton, the edgy investment banker/punk rocker groom, seemed to be having a good time, as he and Laurie-Beth held their two-year-old son, Levi, between them as they swayed to “Brown-Eyed Girl.”

  Best of all, the wedding arch stood firm throughout the ceremony, even when little Levi managed to yank off one of the deer antlers while his parents were saying their vows.

  It was actually a very original party, Cara decided, happy that she’d made a deal with the wedding photographer to document everything for her look-book at the shop. Although most of her Savannah brides still clung tightly to tradition, the Winship-Jelks wedding would show that she could deliver the goods no matter how outrageous the request. She was getting positively misty-eyed, sipping her second glass of blanc-de-blanc champagne, leaning against one of the steel support columns, watching the swirl of black-clad guests, as they laughed and danced and table-hopped around the cavernous warehouse, the multiple bloodred candles sending their shadows dancing across the rustic walls.

  “I notice you’re not wearing black tonight,” came a low voice in her ear. “Even though the bride decreed an all-black dress code for her guests.”

  Cara recognized the voice at once. She didn’t bother to turn and address him face-to-face. “I’m not a guest. I’m just the florist.”

  He stood so close she could smell his pine-scented soap, feel the tickle of his beard on her bare shoulder, which sent a delicious shiver down her spine, which she instantly regretted.

  “And yet, here you are. What color would you call that dress of yours?”

  She looked down at the vintage orangish-pink silk cocktail dress she’d found on eBay. It was an old favorite that she’d worn to half a dozen weddings since buying it. It was obviously homemade, with sweet pinked seams, a metal zipper sewn into the side seam that dated it to the sixties, thin spaghetti straps, and hand-appliquéd daisies around the hem of the frothing full skirt.

  “Hmm. I guess I’d call this coral.”

  “Kinda pretty,” he said grudgingly.

  “Kinda?” Now she did turn around. What she saw made her raise one questioning eyebrow. Jack Finnerty had ignored Laurie-Beth’s blackout edict, too. Instead, he wore a blue seersucker suit, a pale yellow button-down shirt, no tie, and battered brown Topsiders on his sockless feet. “You sweet-tongued devil, you.”

  He was sipping a Moon River pale ale from a plastic cup. “I gather you did all these, uh, arrangements tonight. Mind if I ask what’s with all the black flowers and skulls and heavy metal?”

  Her smile was tight. “The bride and groom tell me their dreams. I make it happen.”

  She sipped her champagne and wished he’d go away.

  “Do you do all the flowers for all the weddings in Savannah?”

  “Just the cool ones. Do you come to all the weddings in Savannah?” she countered.

  “Not all of ’em,” Jack said. “I guess I get around. It just happens I went to school with Laurie-Beth’s older brother. And Laurie-Beth and I went out a couple times. You know, way back in the day before she met Payton.”

  “You went to school with Austin?” Cara asked.

  “Technically. He was a couple years ahead of me in school, so we never hung out together much.”

  “I see,” Cara said, gazing across the room at the brother in mention, Austin Winship, a towering six-foot-five presence, who at that moment seemed to be in danger of teetering facedown onto the grits bar the caterer had set up in the far corner.

  Jack followed her eyes. “Ol’ Austin seems to have gotten pretty caught up in the spirit of the wedding festivities. Is he actually a real justice of the peace or something?”

  “Oh, no,” Cara assured him. “Payton was dead set on not having a real minister for the wedding, so Austin got himself ordained into some nondenominational denomination, just for tonight.”

  “Is this one of those peyote-eating churches, by any chance?” Jack asked. “Because even a casual observer, like myself, can tell that Austin seems to have ingested some kind of pharmacologically enhanced substance.”

  That did make Cara laugh. “He showed up pretty glassy-eyed tonight. And I’m assuming that high-pitched giggle that he kept breaking into during the ceremony isn’t part of his day-to-day persona?”

  “As I said, we weren’t really friends,” Jack said. “Austin missed his senior year at Country Day because his parents enrolled him in what was billed as an ‘alternative school’ out in Oregon.”

  “Rehab,” Cara said.

  “Exactly,” Jack agreed.

  There was an uneasy lull in the conversation. Cara found herself wishing he’d go away and simultaneously hoping he wouldn’t.

  Jack Finnerty made her nervous. He’d made her nervous every time she looked out the window of the shop over the past week and caught a glimpse of him running past, with Shaz trotting alongside. It made her nervous to realize how much time she spent gazing out that same window, hoping for a glance of him. And it made her desperately anxious when she found herself driving past his hovel on Macon Street, telling herself she was simply taking a shortcut to the Kroger, which was actually not a shortcut to the grocery store.

  Jack Finnerty was taking up way too much space in her head. He’d looked so remotely elegant and reserved—and unbearably snotty—in his tuxedo the previous Saturday. And then when she’d opened her door Sunday and found him all sweaty and buff, standing on her doorstep with that look of chagrin on his face.

  And now, damn him, he’d turned up here tonight, in his stinking seersucker suit, striking just the right note between hopelessly preppy and effortlessly casual. He was just a guy, one of these obnoxious Savannah guys who knew everybody and fit in everywhere without even trying.

  He had to know the effect he was having on her, standing so close she swore she could see a bit of sawdust clinging to the lapel of his jacket. It
was all she could do to keep herself from reaching out to dust it off. She could even see a place on his chin where he’d nicked himself shaving, a tiny dot of dried blood standing out from the dark stubble. She clasped her hands behind her back, just in case.

  “How’s the dog?” Jack finally asked.

  “Poppy? She’s fine. Happy to be home.”

  “Any more accidents?”

  He was being deliberately annoying. Cara frowned. “I told you, she’s housebroken.”

  Which wasn’t completely true. If Cara left her alone for more than a few hours, Poppy would sometimes stand by the door, waiting for her to come home, even though there was a dog door that would let her out into the courtyard. Sometimes, Bert told her, Poppy would lie down in front of the shop door, staring at it, as though willing her to come back through it. Cara believed Poppy peed on the floor as revenge, or out of separation anxiety.

  Was she really raising a neurotic puppy?

  She gave Jack a sharp look. “How about your dog. Shaz? I’m guessing she hasn’t run away lately?”

  “No,” Jack said. He leaned in even closer, his breath tickling her face. She took a half step backward. “Listen. Let me ask you something about Poppy. Would you say she’s moody?”

  “Moody? No.” Cara laughed. “Why, is your dog moody?”

  “She’s just not very … peppy. I thought all puppies were kinda bouncy and off the wall and crazy. But that’s not Shaz. She’s pretty quiet. Seems to sleep most of the day. And when I come home from work, she kind of looks at me. Like, ‘What? You’re back? Who cares?’ When I get ready to go out for a run, I almost have to drag her out the door. I was thinking maybe it has something to do with the breed.”

  For just a moment, she was tempted to suggest that maybe it had something to do with him. But no. He seemed seriously worried about Shaz, and she was touched by his concern.