A Proposal at the Wedding

by Gina Wilkins

  She was still so angry with him that her hands wanted to clench every time he crossed her mind—which, admittedly, was often. She didn’t try to let go of that anger. She suspected it was the only thing keeping her from curling into a ball and sobbing.

  She could no longer boast that she’d never had her heart broken. Paul had pretty much stomped on it. The worst part was that he’d ambushed her to do so, giving her no chance to prepare herself. At least she hadn’t cried in front of him. She had the satisfaction of vowing to herself that she never would.

  She picked up a tray of tiny cakes covered in pistachio-green icing, each decorated with a piped W for Woodrow, the surname of Cassie’s fiancé and the name Cassie had chosen to adopt after the wedding. The cakes and pistachio-and-white-chocolate-chip cookies would be available on the back deck during the rehearsal, along with coffee, iced tea and bottles of water. Dinner would follow at an Italian restaurant ten miles away, where Mike had taken Cassie for their first date.

  The wedding would begin at five tomorrow afternoon with dinner on the lawn afterward, served by caterers hired for the occasion.

  To Logan’s satisfaction, Cassie hadn’t asked for elaborate decorations on the grounds. The event would be fairly simple but elegant, with white columns to hold baskets of pale green-and-white orchids, white folding chairs for the guests with each aisle marked at the end by knots of flowers and dove-gray ribbon, discreetly placed fairy lights and garlands of orchids and ribbon for the arch of the gazebo in which she and Mike would take their vows. The musicians would provide their own instruments and sound system, and the officiate would not stand behind a stand or podium, so setup for this wedding had been easier than most.

  Tomorrow, the caterer would take care of putting up the tent with hanging chandeliers and tables with white tablecloths and pistachio-and-gray linens and decor. It was going to be a beautiful wedding and Bonnie, for one, would do nothing to dim the celebration.

  It was inevitable, of course, that her path would cross Paul that evening. Apparently now was the time. She suspected he made a point to get it over with, approaching her as she set out a fresh tray of cookies just before the start of the rehearsal. He’d probably wanted to be the one in control of this meeting, too, she thought irritably, so he wouldn’t be the one caught unprepared if he turned a corner and found her there.

  She gave him a glittering smile. “Hello, Paul.”

  He searched her face with dark, unsmiling eyes. “Bonnie. Everything looks very nice.”

  Aware that they were being not-so-discreetly watched by the very few people who knew they’d gone out a few times, she kept her smile firmly in place as she said, “Thank you. I believe the rehearsal is about to start. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll refill the coffee carafes.”

  He made a quick, almost instinctive move to detain her. “Bonnie—”

  Her eyebrow rose in a cool expression. “Yes?”

  He paused, then shook his head and sighed. “Never mind.”

  Nodding, she sidestepped him and headed inside.

  She wouldn’t cry, she wouldn’t cry, she wouldn’t cry. The mantra swirled through her head as she busied herself indoors, and it helped her hold off the film of threatening tears. But still her eyes burned even as her heart radiated with pain.

  Logan was in the kitchen, pouring himself a cup of coffee when she carried in an empty cookie tray. He took one look at her face and scowled. “You’re sure you won’t let me pound him? I’d catch him in a hidden nook so none of our other guests would see.”

  Laughing softly, Bonnie leaned her head against her brother’s arm for a moment. “Thanks for the offer, but no.”

  “Damn.”

  She put her hostess smile back on and picked up a full coffee carafe to take outside, leaving her brother muttering unhappily behind her.

  She was on the deck when Cassie’s wedding planner called out for Paul to practice walking Cassie up the aisle. Though tomorrow they would exit from the dining room doors and cross the deck to the steps down, tonight they waited at the foot of the stairs for the signal. Bonnie couldn’t resist watching as the father and daughter negotiated the gravel path to the gazebo where the happy young groom waited. At the foot of the steps to the gazebo, Paul tenderly kissed Cassie’s cheek. Bonnie suspected plenty of eyes filled with tears at that moment, though her own remained stubbornly dry. Had she not been so angry, she’d have probably sobbed buckets.

  Standing at Bonnie’s side, Kinley sighed. “You think Dad will be in the country for my wedding?”

  “He said he’d try, didn’t he? Maybe he will.” Bonnie tried to speak with her usual optimism but she found that a bit more difficult these days.

  Given the signal that his role was completed, Paul turned away from the gazebo. Maybe it was just a coincidence that he looked up at the deck, that his eyes met hers at that moment. It took all the strength she had to make herself turn away.

  It was late, she was tired, and she knew she needed to get some sleep that night, but she couldn’t turn off her mind. She tossed and turned in the bed for a while, then paced the apartment, finally settling on the couch with the TV remote in her hand. And then she stared at the dark screen of the television, having no interest in turning it on.

  When someone tapped on her door, she thought it must be Logan. He’d probably been doing one of his midnight prowls and had seen her lights on. She sighed, figuring she’d have to reassure him again that she was fine. Maybe if she told him enough, she’d start to believe it herself.

  The sight of Paul standing at her door made her heart stop beating. At least, that was the way it felt when she finally started to breathe again. “What are you doing here?”

  His expression was impossible to read in the dim security lighting. “I saw the lights in your windows.”

  “You just happened to be driving by?” It was a sarcastic question, of course. The rehearsal had ended hours ago, as she was sure the dinner afterward had. And of course there was nowhere to drive except to the inn on the dead-end road up Bride Mountain.

  “Actually, I drove a couple of our guests back after the dinner,” he said, providing at least a partially credible explanation. He blew that by adding, “That was more than an hour ago.”

  Tightening the thin robe she wore over her pajamas, she asked, “And what have you been doing since?”

  “I sat in my car in the parking lot for a while. Started driving down the hill and got as far as the café. Sat in my car in the parking lot there, too.”

  She’d wrapped the ends of her robe belt around her hands so fiercely her fingers ached, but she didn’t loosen it. “Why are you here?”

  “I need to talk to you. May I come in? Or we could talk in the garden if you’d be more comfortable outside.”

  Their last talk in the garden hadn’t gone well. But she wasn’t so sure she wanted to invite him in, either. Not if it was only so he could kick her heart around some more.

  After hesitating for several long moments, she sighed sharply and moved out of the doorway. “Fine. Come in and say what you have to say. But if you’re here to convince me that we need to be coffee buddies, you’re wasting your breath.”

  He winced and closed the door slowly behind him. “I’m so sorry I hurt you.”

  “You did hurt me,” she agreed honestly. “But mostly, you made me furious.”

  “Yeah, I got that idea.”

  He offered a tentative smile that she didn’t return. His faded quickly. “I’ve thought very hard about what you said. I was arrogant.”

  “Yes.” She had no intention of making this easy for him, though her heart was beating so fast now she was almost afraid he could hear it.

  “I was condescending.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was terrified.”

  Having been prepared to agree with wha
tever derogatory adjective he’d come up with next, she blinked. “Why?”

  Squeezing the back of his neck, he sighed, looking so weary and sad that she almost reached out to him instinctively. She curled her fingers in her belt again to stop herself. “Because,” he said, “I walked into the inn and saw you holding a baby. And it knocked the socks off me.”

  “See, that’s what I meant by arrogant,” she said, her temper igniting again. “You just assumed I was angling for you to marry me and make babies with me. Maybe I was hoping something might happen between us, maybe I wasn’t, but the least you could have done was talk with me about what I wanted, how I felt. About what you wanted, or didn’t want. Making an arbitrary decision to end things between us because you assumed I want marriage and kids was way overstepping your bounds. I mean, if you were tired of me, if you were no longer interested in seeing me that way, fine. Say so. I’d get over it. But don’t give me that obnoxiously noble song and dance about doing it for my sake, and all because you aren’t prepared to give me what you’re so sure I want or need.”

  “Bonnie—”

  She was on a roll. “I don’t know exactly what I want for the future yet, okay? I mean, I’ve always vaguely envisioned having kids someday, but I don’t know. Maybe if you and I had grown closer and we’d talked about it, I’d have decided I could be happy without kids, like Uncle Leo and Aunt Helen were. Maybe I’ll have that talk with someone else someday. But you needn’t panic just because you saw me holding a baby. I won’t interfere with all this great new freedom you’ll have after tomorrow.”

  “Actually, you totally misunderstood the cause for my panic,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t because I was picturing you holding a child of mine. It’s because I had a sudden vision of you holding a baby you’d had with someone else.”

  “I— What?”

  He dropped the hand he’d been using to massage his neck, letting his arms hang loosely at his sides. “You just looked so young and fresh and pretty standing there. And there was my daughter, opening wedding gifts and being teased about having babies soon—and I pictured you meeting someone else, someone younger and with a less complicated history, and I could almost hear you giving me the speech about always being friends, so I thought maybe I should just save you the trouble. It’s the way all my relationships have ended, so I’ve just started expecting it. I’ve even told myself I liked it that way.”

  He shrugged. “Like you said, I made a prediction of what was going to happen between us, but it wasn’t the one you thought. It wasn’t even the one I expected, to be honest. But I suppose it was still arrogant. I came to apologize for hurting you—for making you angry,” he corrected himself. “Maybe it’s too late for us to be friends now, and maybe there was never a real chance that it could have been anything more, but at the very least I didn’t want it to end with a fight.”

  Bonnie was so confused now her head was spinning. She pushed her hands into her hair in an effort to stop it. “Are you saying you didn’t want to stop seeing me?”

  “Of course I don’t want to stop seeing you. I just—well, I don’t want it to be all fun and games between us anymore, knowing that any day you could pull out the let’s-just-be-friends talk. Trust me, this is as much of a surprise to me as I’m sure it is to you, but I’ve discovered that I want more than that this time.”

  She dropped her hands and studied his face intently. “And you wouldn’t necessarily rule out maybe getting married someday? Or maybe even having another child?”

  She could almost hear him swallow. “I, uh, I’d be open to the possibility. If it was what you wanted. What we both wanted,” he added hastily, maybe afraid she would take that wrong, again. “As I’ve told you, I’ve loved being a dad. Maybe—well, maybe it’s something I wouldn’t mind so much doing again.”

  Her heart was beating so hard, so fast. Did he know what he was saying? Could she really trust him to mean it this time?

  “And all this freedom you’re coming into? Your first chance since you were just a kid to do whatever you want, whenever you want?”

  She thought she saw the first glimmer of a smile in his eyes. “And if what I want is to be with you, whenever we get the chance…?”

  She gave him a wistful little smile in return, her shaky resistance to him shattering. “Let’s just say I’m open to the possibility.”

  He took a step toward her. “Bonnie?”

  She rested her hands on his chest, the tension easing slowly from her clenched muscles. “I’m still kind of mad at you.”

  He cupped her face in one hand, his expression soft with regret. “I know. And I’ll do whatever I can to make it up to you.”

  “I was really angry,” she warned, her hands sliding up and around his neck. “Making up could take a while.”

  “Whatever it takes,” he promised, his lips moving lightly against hers. “Have I mentioned that I’ve fallen in love with you, Bonnie Carmichael?”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “Okay, you just made a lot of progress in making up. I love you, too, Paul Drennan.”

  She felt tears pressing at the back of her eyes, but she melted into his embrace without letting them fall. They didn’t have much more time to be together on this glorious night. She wasn’t going to waste a minute of it with tears.

  The wedding was as beautiful as any bride could have wished. Cassie glowed in the stunning white dress she had designed and sewn for herself, a long, fitted sheath with the tiny cap sleeves she seemed to favor, a deeply draped back and a clever little train that draped into a V from midcalf. Her maid of honor wore pearl gray, and the two bridesmaids, one of whom was her half-sister Jenna, were in pistachio green. An adorable little toddler served as flower girl, her dress pistachio with a silvery sash tied into a big bow at the back and the ring bearer wore a tiny gray tux. The groom and his attendants wore pale gray suits with white shirts and pistachio ties. The flowers carried out the colors with pale gray ribbons, green orchids and accents of coral roses. The weather cooperated, warm but not horribly so, the sky clear and a light breeze to fan cheeks and ruffle hair.

  Because Cassie had wanted them there, Bonnie and Kinley were guests at the wedding as well as official hosts. They sat in folding chairs at the back of the bride’s side, Bonnie in the green dress Cassie had made for her, Kinley in one of her stylish summer suits. Paul had asked Bonnie if she wanted to sit at the front with him, but she’d declined, saying she thought it was a little soon for that step. She thoroughly enjoyed the wedding, watching as Cassie and Mike said their vows so confidently and contentedly in front of their friends and family.

  Afterward, there was much celebration around the food tables beneath the lawn tent. Cassie really did have a large support group, Bonnie mused, watching as Cassie’s mother, stepfather, siblings, maternal grandparents, a few aunts, uncles, cousins and dozens of friends mingled, ate and chattered.

  An arm went around her waist from behind and she gazed up with a smile at Paul, who looked so handsome in his gray suit and tie. “It was one of the most beautiful weddings I’ve ever seen,” she said sincerely. “And trust me, I’ve seen a few weddings in my time.”

  He smiled, and she was pleased to see that the gleam had returned to his jade eyes. “I thought it was nice, too. But I missed having you sitting beside me.”

  “Maybe at the next wedding we attend,” she said lightly.

  He lifted her left hand to his lips, placing a sweet kiss against the ring finger. “Or maybe you’ll be standing beside me at the next wedding we attend,” he murmured.

  She looked up at him with widened eyes. “That sounded almost like a proposal.”

  Whatever panic he’d felt only a few days before seemed to have melted away with the expressions of love last night, and the intimately heated hours that had followed. His grin was broad and bright when he looked at her in challenge and said, “A
nd if it was?”

  Her heart swelling in her chest, she leaned against him, resting her head against his heart. “Let’s just say I’m open to the possibility.”

  She and Paul were finally able to be alone together in her bedroom several hours later. The wedding guests had departed, except for the few that remained in suites upstairs. Amid tears and smiles and hails of good wishes, the newly married Cassie and Mike had taken their leave to begin their new life together. Some of the wedding decorations had already been taken down and stashed away, and Logan and his crew would take care of the rest tomorrow. Bonnie had the rest of the night free, until the morning when she would start all over again with her brunch preparations.

  She was happy.

  With the bedroom lamp dimmed cozily behind her, she moved to the window to draw the drapes. She paused for a moment with her hand on the draw-pull, looking out over the gardens. She was at ground level, looking out straight into the flowers and foliage at the path that led to the meditation garden. As she stood there, fog drifted in ribbons across that dark path barely lit by the discreetly placed security lighting and the bright late summer moon. The scene looked almost magical.

  Paul stepped up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and looking out over her head. “Looks very peaceful. I can see why you love living here so much.”

  “Yes. It never gets old for me.”

  As they stood there, a sliver of mist separated, swirled, coalesced into a shimmering column. For only a moment, Bonnie would have sworn she saw a pale face in that mist, smiling sweetly back at her. She blinked, and the illusion cleared, leaving only the fog dancing across the flowers.