by Taryn Quinn
Especially couldn’t let myself remember the late night full of sweat and rare laughter we’d spent putting it together. We were usually sniping at each other because everything he created was dense, manly man furniture. He had such a fine eye for detail and whenever I managed to rope him into a refinishing project, they were the ones that flew out of my shop.
Except this one. I smoothed my hand over the velvet. This one was all mine.
I nibbled on my thumbnail. I missed seeing those rare smiles. Now he just glowered at me.
All because I couldn’t control my-damn-self. So freaking stupid. If I’d just pushed him back faster, if I’d just bitten his tongue…
Perhaps that was a good move to have skipped.
The dressing room door opened, saving me from my runaway thoughts. “Wow.”
Macy put her hands on her hips then covered her middle before finally lowering her arms to her sides with a huff. “Are you sure about this? They feel like granny panties.”
I laughed. “They’re high-waisted shapers, and you’re rocking them. Goddess, your legs are miles long.” The champagne-colored lingerie was striking on her. While the look was a throwback to the days of pinups, it made her angular body seem softer.
“Handily, my guy is tall.”
I popped up and went right to the dress. “Well, I’m not, so this should be interesting.” I laughed. “Let’s start with you sitting there.”
Macy fluttered fingers through her hair. “I don’t know why I’m nervous.”
“Well, we know that gorgeous man is going to be waiting at the gazebo for you, so that’s not a concern.”
“Yeah. He knows I’d hunt him down if he wasn’t.”
“Drag him by the hair?”
She laughed. “Tempting. And I probably could. Might have to knock him out first, but I have my ways.”
I gathered the dress up so I could get it over her head. “Arms up.”
It took a few strings of inventive swear words, but we finally got her long arms into the lacy sleeves and over her head.
“Okay, stand up.” I guided her to her feet, and the dress simply floated down her to swish around her ankles.
She was breathtaking.
I was used to the café proprietress who wore an endless parade of denim and black pants with rude, colorful Halloween-themed shirts. This woman was striking with a surprising elegance.
“Oh, Macy.” Vee’s astonished voice had both of us turning around.
“I think that about covers it. You look amazing, Mace.” I held her in place. “Wait a second. Let me get the zipper so you can see the full effect.” I fussed with the hidden button and twisted the fabric so it fell in perfect lines. It didn’t quite go to the floor since it was an outdoor wedding. But the train had a special extra layer of material to support the elements and protect the lacy bats. I’d even sewn some citrine chips in with the appliqués for some sparkle and to boost her energy to get through the day.
Support from a few special crystals never hurt anyone.
I turned Macy around and ushered her toward the raised dais with the trio of antique mirrors so she could get a 360º view of herself.
Vee chased after her, followed by Ivy and the newly arrived Rylee.
“Holy shit.” Rylee rushed over to stand behind her and peeked around the dress to look at Macy in the mirror. “You’re a girl.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Rylee’s peal of laughter filled the room. “Yeah, but like really a girl. You’re gonna kill Gideon. Oh my God, are those bats?”
Macy’s lips twitched as she did a little sway in her dress to see the back. “I really am, huh?” She sniffed and tipped back her head. “You people are not going to make me cry.”
“It’s probably the hormones.” Vee was full-on sniffles with the waterworks on high.
Macy hugged her and patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Right. Hormones. You doing okay?” She glanced down at Vee’s mammoth belly. She had twins cooking in there. “Not going to go into labor at my wedding, are you?”
Vee laughed and dabbed at her eyes with a colorful handkerchief she pulled out of a magic pocket on her dress. “Would I do that?”
“Yes.”
We all laughed.
“Well, I’m going to try not to. We still have some cooking time, don’t we, babies?” Vee patted her belly under the blue and orange layers of tulle that didn’t do a thing to hide her very pregnant self.
“Why don’t you sit down? You’ve been running around all day.” Gently, Macy led her to the high-backed chair crammed in the corner.
“I could sit.”
I hurried to the drink station I’d set up. Mostly non-alcoholic for those in the baby way. Except for the punch. That was for Rylee and me, and maybe a little for Ivy now that she wasn’t a total slave to the breastfeeding deal.
I filled one tumbler with the punch and went for the sparkling fruity waters for Macy and Vee. “Here you go.” One cup said Bride in scrolling wedding lettering with a bat for the I in the word. I handed that to Macy who took a grateful sip.
“Not coffee, but pretty tasty, Cinnamon.”
I grinned at Macy’s nickname for me. She liked to hand out nicknames to give us a tiny clue of our specialty coffees she created for us. Not everyone got one, but we were all secretly happy when we did.
I gave the pink MOH tumbler to Rylee. “Spiked.”
“Yesss.” She accepted it and took a quick drink.
“Not spiked.” I handed the rainbow one to Vee.
I rushed back for my own and a smaller one for Ivy. After I was done passing out the drinks, I took a fortifying sip. “Now let’s get everyone else ready.”
Next time, I was buying much larger cups.
Two
“Shouldn’t this have been done earlier?”
“This is a public area. We had to wait until our scheduled time.” I grabbed half of the arbor. “Look, weakling, if you can’t handle your share of the load, let me deal with it.”
“Shut up and shove over.” Jared—known as Sheriff Brooks to most, but not to me since I’d been busting his balls for years—hefted one half of the freestanding arbor I’d created from pressure-treated wood, sweat, and a few not so metaphorical drops of blood when I’d hammered my own thumb.
“Hang on. I got it.” Murphy Masterson, otherwise known as Moose, hustled forward to grab the opposite end of the arbor. It wasn’t that heavy, but all we needed to do was to step into a hole and drop the thing an hour before showtime.
Carefully, we set the arbor into position. I adjusted the last minute addition of purple gauzy fabric with tiny silver stars, a Kinleigh suggestion. I’d figured white might be nice, but she’d said it looked as if it belonged in a church and didn’t match Macy’s Halloween aesthetic in any case.
I glanced at the orange lights and decorative bats fluttering from the trees. Couldn’t argue there.
“Damn nice piece of work, Aug.” Moose cocked his head, studying it. “Wish we’d had something like that at ours. Vee would’ve loved it.”
“Sign is sweet too.” Jared scratched his stubbed jaw. “Minus the add-on, but hey, if the bootie fits.”
I grinned. “That was a last minute fix.”
The ornate hand-tooled sign that hung from the top had been carved from cherry wood and bore the names of the bride and groom.
Mr. Jonathan Gideon and Mrs. Macy Devereaux Gideon.
Between them was a small emblem of sorts of a ladder and a coffee cup. It had been a bitch to etch into the wood, but the finished result was charming. I hoped. Then beneath that I’d etched two more names with a heart between them.
Danielle Alicia Gideon. Hell Baby Gideon.
The hell was just a post-it note that could be pulled off. Gideon was always joking how Macy was sure their kid was going to come out with horns and a tail because of her all-day sickness situation.
If everyone was in a good mood, they should both laugh. And if they weren’t in a good mood at th
The idea was they could remove the sign from the arbor and set it somewhere in their home, perhaps over a mantle.
“Wonder if you’d be willing to build us one of those things?”
Jared arched a brow and adjusted the badge on his pressed gray shirt. “If you’re looking to use that for possibly sordid means, Aug just might have time to finish it before Vee is ambulatory again after those twins.”
Only Moose, now a father of one with two on the way, would flush at a sex joke. I wasn’t quite sure what kind of sexual activities my arbor could be used for, but anything was possible with Jared’s filthy mind. “No, I was thinking for Vee’s roses.”
“How did you ever have trouble getting dates?” Jared shook his head. “I’d think women would eat you up with a spoon.”
Since a joke of my own came all too quickly to mind, I moved to the arbor and tugged at Kinleigh’s airy fabric. It draped perfectly down the sides, shifting in the growing breeze. Late December in Crescent Cove wasn’t pleasant to say the least, but we’d gotten lucky with a day without snow. I glanced up at the swiftly darkening sky with its sliver of moon and sprinkle of stars and hoped any flakes held off until the ceremony was over. Then again…
“Is snow considered romantic?”
Moose frowned. “Like in the context of a wedding?”
“Yeah.”
Jared reached up to take off his hat to smooth out his hair before putting it back on. God forbid if anyone forgot for even an instant he was sheriff. “Most people I know consider it a pain in the ass, including me. Do you have any idea how many MVAs I have to deal with from November to April?”
“We all have our crosses to bear.”
“Then again, didn’t your sister get snowed in with her Irish husband? Not that he was her husband then.”
I shut my eyes. I knew what was coming. Jared only razzed me a few times a month about asking Ivy “to cease and desist” while she was in the backseat of her car with Lucky Charms.
“I ticketed him once for double parking, and then there was the time I caught them in their vehicle at the lookout point—”
I held up a hand. “Haven’t I asked you repeatedly not to go there?”
“Too late.” Moose tugged on his tie.
I could tell he felt about as comfortable in his penguin suit as I did, though I’d gone with dark jeans and a shirt, tie, and jacket. I spent my days in T-shirts and jeans. I didn’t even own a full suit. The Ireland contingent at my sister’s fall wedding had been attired as if they were attending a royal event, while I’d worn much the same as I had on now. Lucky Charms’ mother had even worn a hat with feathers.
So far, their over the top style wasn’t rubbing off on my sister, who’d worn a simple white backless gown. I didn’t doubt some of her fashion sense was due to Kinleigh, who’d worn a long floaty dress that had only accented her willowy figure.
“What do you call that color?”
Her witchy blue eyes narrowed on mine as if she was looking for the punchline. “Soft peach.”
Peach, a color I couldn’t have precisely identified before that day yet had now been burned into my memory. She’d stood so proudly beside Ivy as my sister said her vows, her dress vivid against the flames of her hair—
I rubbed my temple. I really needed to stop working so damn late in the shop.
“Earth to Beck.” Jared snapped his fingers in my face. “I asked if you’d managed to con some poor hapless woman into attending tonight’s wedding with you.”
“Do I look like I have a woman with me?” There was no helping my cross response. Not hot on the heels of my most recent remembrance.
Talk about dumping a salt truck on the wound. Kinleigh and I weren’t anything beyond friends, but that didn’t mean I didn’t sometimes wish we could be.
Jared smirked. “No, but from the sounds of things, you should work on it.”
“What about you, smart ass? I don’t see you with anyone on your arm.”
He bristled. “Gina will be here.”
“So? Unless you two have finally stopped dancing around each other, she doesn’t count as a date.” I propped my fingers under my chin. “Or does she?”
“Gina is my best friend. It isn’t like that with us.”
“That doesn’t mean it can’t be.” At Jared’s sharp look, Moose cleared his throat. “If you want to change your status, you just have to alter your approach so you step out of the friend zone.”
Jared crossed his arms. “Now you’re an expert?”
“Well, he’s happily married,” I reminded him.
“Very happily,” Moose agreed. “Stupidly happily. So happy that—”
“That if you could, you’d knock her up again while she’s already pregnant.” Jared tapped his gloves against his thigh. “Yeah, yeah, we get it. Don’t be smug.”
Moose grinned and tucked his thumbs in the pockets of his suit pants.
Smug bastard was right. That expression he was wearing said it all.
His life was marital bliss. Jared was locked in the friend zone, whether he would admit it or not. And I…
I looked up and glimpsed Kinleigh gliding across the grass in her mile-high purple boots. Her sunset-colored hair streamed behind her in the wind, and she had on another one of her long dresses. This one was purple to match her boots with some kind of secondary lacy layer in dark blue that swished around her ankles.
I was thoroughly fucked.
“Oh, shit, look who it is. The man of the hour. John Gideon, ready to get hitched?” Jared slapped Gideon on the back as he joined us. He was already dressed in his tux and looking more than a little harried. And slightly green.
He nodded rapidly, his eyes wheeling in that panicked manner I’d seen at my sister’s wedding. Not from her. Nope, that expression had belonged to Lucky Charms, which I’d found ridiculous. He’d married up with my sister, no doubt about it.
Gideon pushed a hand through his hair and blew out a breath. “Yeah. I’m good. But I keep checking my phone.”
Moose, Jared, and I exchanged glances.
“In case Macy decides to bail?” Moose finally guessed.
Of course. He was the sensitive one among us. Jared and I had the combined emotional barometer of a rock encased in seaweed at least half the time.
Gideon nodded, swallowing hard.
“She’s not going anywhere. At least not until she sees all this.” I gestured to the wedding wonderland around us. I didn’t have a thing for Halloween like Macy did, but even I had to admit it was pretty cool with the mason jars hanging from the tree branches and the twinkling lights draped all over the place.
“Wow. You did this, Aug?” Gideon zeroed in on the arbor that we’d put at the beginning of the aisle where Macy and her ladies would proceed to the gazebo. A length of purple carpet led right up to the gazebo’s steps where the actual ceremony would take place, like many of Crescent Cove’s fine townspeople before them.
Minus the bats.
And the orange lights.
And the—
“Hell Baby Gideon?” Gideon glanced my way with a grin. “She’s going to roast your nuts for dinner tonight, brother.”
I held up my hands. “Blame yourself for that one. You’re the one who said she’s been cursing at you and threatening to Bobbetize you whenever she’s sick.”
Moose’s eyebrows lifted. “Really? Vee has never—”
Then we all spoke in unison, including Gideon.
“Macy, remember?”
Macy definitely made her own rules and had her own very unique personality. I was sure she wasn’t the first pregnant woman to threaten her man’s member while pregnant but she was doing it colorfully, that was sure.
Eh, his problem, not mine. I wasn’t going to have to deal with anything like that anytime soon.
Or maybe ever.
“It’s a very tumultuous time in a woman’s life.”
Gideon glanced at Moose. “You’d know better than any of us. Those twins almost cooked?”
“Soon.” Moose ran a finger along the inside of his collar. “She’s getting induced in a couple of weeks.”
“So you can knock her up again pronto?”
“It doesn’t work like that. You have to wait a certain amount of time.”
“Right, so you have been thinking about it.”
Moose just laughed and shook his head at Jared. “Three little kids are a lot, man. You don’t have any yet. Just wait.”
“And best of all, they grow up and become teenagers.” Gideon gave a not so mock shudder. “Not that Dani’s there yet, but she’s buying makeup now. She’s not even quite nine. Macy said it was better we let her use a little so she doesn’t decide to lift some while she’s with her friends.”
Jared angled his head. “Is your girl going wild? Do I have to keep an eye on her?”
Gideon snorted. “She’s an A and B student who’s obsessed with Macy’s cat’s kittens. Hardly wild. She’s just a kid. You were probably one once too, unless you were born wearing starched CCPD shorts.”
Jared pretended to pull back the waistband of his dress pants to check. “Oh, look at that, don’t have any shorts on period.”
At that, Moose dispersed to meet up with his wife, and Jared quickly followed suit, claiming he’d spotted a “ruckus” across the way he needed to check out.
More likely, he was headed over to the diner to see what was keeping Gina. Those two were always attached at the hip. And possibly at other things as well, if town scuttlebutt was to be believed. It usually wasn’t, but every now and then, the gossip was spot-on.
“This is really incredible, thank you. Macy will love it as much as I do.” Gideon stroked a hand over the arbor, smiling up at the sign with his family’s names inscribed. “I would’ve said more sooner, but the Sheriff turns anything into snark.”
“He was dropped on his head as a boy. Don’t hold it against him.”
Gideon grinned. “I don’t. I’ve learned to appreciate snark more myself in recent months.”
“Surprise, surprise there.” I reached up to remove the post-it note that said Hell and handed it to Gideon. “You can show your wife that later if you’d like. Don’t want her to decide to make a meal of me on her special day.”
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