Wooing the Wedding Planner

by Amber Leigh Williams

  Byron glanced back. “I’m beginning to understand how Han Solo felt when Calrissian took the Falcon out for a spin.”

  “In Star Trek?”

  “Your tribe failed you, duchess. Seriously failed you.” When she held him up from going any farther toward the white Georgian manor ahead, he asked, “What?” From the little beaded bag on her wrist, she produced a black leather half mask dotted with metallic studs. “You weren’t kidding when you said masked.”

  “Turn around,” she instructed. He did as he was told while she fit the mask into place over his eyes. She knotted it carefully at the back of his head. “How does it feel?”

  Adjusting it over the bridge of his nose, he considered. “Weird. But I guess weird’s not all bad.”

  As he turned around, she stood back, admiring the whole package. “Weird’s not bad at all. Weird’s kind of Roman gladiator, actually.”

  “A legit gladiator wouldn’t be caught dead in these suspenders,” he said as they began to walk again. She’d stood by her word—no cummerbund.

  He whistled as they progressed to the entrance. There was no artificial lighting. The lanterns’ flames danced on their wicks, giving everything they touched diaphanous shadows. As Roxie laid her hand in the crook of his arm, he felt as if he’d stepped back into a time before Camaros and Vizios, before badass visionaries like Franklin and Edison.

  As the masked vigils at the door opened the deep double panels with iron scrollwork, the wood creaked. “Welcome to Versailles,” Byron intoned as they passed into the black-and-white-marbled entry. Marabella had positioned herself and her wide tulle skirt in the center of the grand foyer, drawing the eye. “Crap, it’s the dauphine. How low should I bow?”

  “Just keep your eyes forward and avoid contact,” Roxie advised, steering him wide of the family matron. She came up short, however, when a rod-backed man in a white mask and black cape somewhere out of a Gaston Leroux story stepped into their path. Her fingertips twitched on his arm and her voice lifted a fraction. “Father.”

  He gave her a stiff nod to go with his passing glance. “Roxanna.” His attention strayed to Byron. “Mr. Strong, I presume?”

  “Sir,” Byron said with a nod. “We’ve met before.”

  “On the green,” Leverett Honeycutt remembered. “With Hudson Browning. How is he? I haven’t seen him in some time.”

  “Me either. I no longer work with Browning & Associates,” Byron informed him. “I operate out of Fairhope with a small accounting firm.”

  “Do you?” Leverett asked. “Hmm.”

  “This is the new Richard?” a woman asked, sidling up in a metallic gold evening gown. She was nearly as tall as Leverett and as big around as a cane pole. Her dark green gaze might as well have scooped Byron up and dribbled him over ice cream. She was gorgeous, but the snide grin she aimed at Roxie made her look harsh in the low lighting. “Did you order him from a catalog?”

  Byron thought he heard Roxie give an imperceptible sigh. “Byron, this is my sister Julianna. Julianna, this is my friend Byron Strong.”

  “A pleasure,” Julianna said, laying her hand in his, inviting a kiss to her wrist.

  Byron gave it a firm shake. Lowering his voice, he made sure it carried when he muttered aside to Roxie, “I thought I was more than your friend.”

  A small smile touched Roxie’s mouth. “Shh,” she said, touching a discreet finger to her lips.

  The smile faded quickly when Julianna asked, “Does he do party tricks, too?” Her laughter was high-pitched and incisive.

  “Julianna, don’t make a fool of yourself,” Leverett said, snapping the words off. He caught Marabella’s signal and parted without further ado.

  To Byron’s surprise, Julianna’s uncouth smile split apart and she seemed to deflate. Lifting a glass of pink champagne to her lips, she followed her father’s progress back to her mother before zinging Roxie. “He’s angry at you, not me.”

  “Why should he be angry at me?” Roxie asked.

  “Because you got Mother in a flying tizzy over the whole Richard fiasco,” Julianna told her. “You know how he hates her hysterics. He’s been hissing at Georgie and me for days.” She frowned at Byron. There wasn’t a trace of warmth or flirtation in her now. “It doesn’t help that you brought him.”

  Roxie opened her mouth to retort, but Byron spoke out of turn. “I asked Roxie to bring me. There’s not a lot she talks about other than her sisters. I’ve been with you people five...maybe ten minutes.” Raking Julianna over the coals with his expression alone, Byron said, “It’s been informative.”

  Frown lines bracketed Julianna’s mouth. She lifted the glass again, drank deep. Someone touched her arm from behind and she, too, left without a word in parting.

  Both of Roxie’s hands tightened on Byron’s arm. He looked down at her. Her gratitude had grown by leaps and bounds despite lurking embarrassment. “Thank you,” she mouthed.

  “When do the pony rides start?” he ventured.

  She laughed. They began to walk again. “Before the fireworks. After the parade.”

  “Ha.” At her knowing look, he backtracked. “You’re not joking, are you?”

  “About the pony rides, yes,” she said. “Everything else...”

  “Roxie,” Adrian said as she joined them in the queue for the outdoors. Like all other guests, she wore a black mask and black draping. Her dress was a long-sleeved neck-to-toe column with little fuss. It suited her well. “Byron, excuse me. I need to borrow the planner. The mother of the groom just knocked back three sherries and has announced a hostile takeover of the bridal suite.”

  “I’ll handle it,” Roxie said, nonplussed. “Tag a member of the waitstaff and ask them to send up coffee and ice water, pronto.” To Byron, she said, “I’m sorry. I was going to show you to your seat.”

  “I’ll find my way.” He noted her hesitation in front of Adrian and realized it was for his sake. Lifting her hand to his mouth, he bent to skim a kiss across her knuckles then stopped just short of grazing her skin. “Wait. Am I going to meet Shrek the sheep?”

  Roxie’s eyes danced, laughing, under his. “Sadly, neither my mother nor sister thought Shrek’s presence appropriate under the circumstances.”

  “Now that would have been a party.” He couldn’t resist a kiss to her hand, keeping his eyes locked with hers as he did so.

  Adrian let him linger for a second before speaking up. “Wasn’t Shrek euthanized?”

  Byron gawped at her. “You serious, Bracken?” He clasped a hand to his chest. “Ah, it hurts. It hurts right here.”

  Roxie rubbed a circle over the base on his spine. It was the same place she’d stroked a few days ago, in the changing room at the boutique after he’d spent himself inside her. “Have Adrian show you the bar. If I don’t see you before the ceremony...”

  “I’ll catch you later, Wonder Woman,” he assured her.

  Smiling, she walked away. He watched. Then he found Adrian watching him. Her mouth had curved wide and there was a perceptive glimmer there. “Did you eat a T-bone?” he queried. “I think the bone might’ve gotten lodged in your mouth there.”

  Adrian couldn’t seem to contain a smug waver of glee. “Here’s where usually I inform the guy that my friend—recently divorced, by the way—is far too good for the likes of him and he’d do well not to step outside the line. But you’re my friend, too, and you might be just as good as she is, believe it or not. So it seems I’m at an impasse.”

  “Good,” he said. “I know Briar serves ill-suited suitors on rye toast for breakfast at the inn, just as I know I don’t have a shot in hell against your scrutiny or Olivia’s shotty.”

  “So this is serious?”

  Byron toed over the question. “I don’t plan on hurting her, no.”

  “Well, anybody who does hurt her deserves
to be euthanized a heck of lot more than Shrek.” Staring him down over what he thought of as a nice button nose, Adrian added, “But that’s not what I asked.”

  “I heard the question,” he told her. “And I’ll tell you as much as I know at this point, which is that we like each other, more than a little. We’re attracted to each other. And, for both our sakes, we don’t want to screw whatever this is up. So, for the time being, we’re keeping it cautiously noncasual until we find out if we can handle the serious.” Before Adrian could speak again, he said quickly, “You don’t have to tell me she’s coming off fresh hurt. You don’t have to tell me there’s risk. We’re aware of it. I’m aware of it, and I’m still here. I’m here for her.”

  Her eyes had become narrow slits and she searched him with them until he might’ve felt sweat beading beneath the cross-strap on his back. However, her mouth slowly spread into her familiar, quiet grin and he watched her relax a fraction. “Well, I’m glad you’re the one she’s chosen, whether on a permanent basis or not. There’s not a lot of guys I trust. You’re one of them, though.”

  Yep, he was sweating. Swallowing, he gave her a nod. “I appreciate it, Mrs. Bracken.”

  She hooked her arm through his. “Come on. I’ll show you to your seat.”

  Byron cleared his throat. “Only if you give me the lowdown on the loonies who live here.”

  She eyed the line of his jacket. “You got a flask hidden under the Boss? You might need it.”

  * * *

  THERE WERE BIG weddings and then there were Honeycutt weddings. Big weddings were a tightrope walk and a juggling act. Every step had to line up; balance had to be maintained while balls stayed in the air. Roxie felt tired at the end of a big wedding, but it was the good, accomplished kind of tired.

  Honeycutt weddings were a different beast altogether. Georgiana was the last Honeycutt daughter to wed, so Marabella had thrown every detail and dollar necessary into the pot to send her off in style and extravagance. There was no vacancy among the five hundred chairs during the ceremony. The reception was coordinated between dance styles and complemented by ice sculptures and a sorbet station—impressive feats with the high-priced and high-powered portable heaters running hot into the night.

  Roxie never sat down at the weddings she coordinated. Yet as the reception blazed on passed midnight, she realized she hadn’t had a moment to spare for Byron beyond the waltz that he generously offered to participate in. She grinned at him during the dance, knowing he gritted his teeth through it. “I told you you could disappear for the dancing. Fake a stomachache. Blame the clams.”

  “It’s not every day Scarlett O’Hara gets married,” he ruminated.

  “Scarlett O’Hara was married three times,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Huh. Well. Laissez les bons temps rouler.”

  She couldn’t pretend not to be impressed. “Speak French, too, do you?”

  “No, baby, I speak Mardi Gras. This is ridiculous,” he muttered, rolling his eyes at the Swarovski crystals strung across the canopy. “Shouldn’t the wedding be simple and the marriage be...”

  “Extraordinary?” she offered.

  “Yeah. People get caught up in the send-off and forget the journey afterward. That’s where the real energy should be spent.” He tilted his head. “But then you’d be out of a job.” He spun her out again, then brought her back, close. Closer than the waltz entailed. “I’m impressed with you, though, duchess. Look at you, pulling off a to-do like this without breaking a sweat. You really are Wonder Woman.”

  “It’s not over yet,” she warned. No sooner had she said it than Yuri hailed her. She apologized and regrettably left to tend to another MOG-related emergency.

  A little while later the evening began to wind down, culminating with fireworks. And the newlyweds rode off into the night at the end of their parade procession in a classic white Rolls-Royce. The mother of the bride wept on her husband in dramatic fashion as the taillights disappeared. It didn’t take long for Leverett to pass her off to Roxie. She saw her mother settled in her wing of the house with a sedative, then went back down to aid her team in seeing every last guest off the grounds. Her father had wanted all evidence of the party gone by daylight.

  By the time Roxie had checked the grounds three times to be sure that every burnt sparkler stick and napkin had been disposed of, it was close to three in the morning. She didn’t so much walk back to the white facade of her childhood home as stumble, breaking rule number one in the landscaper’s book by picking her way across the St. Augustine grass.

  With her shoes and mask hooked through her fingers and her skirt caught up in her other hand, she was nearly to the portico when she heard the telltale tic-tic-tic of the sprinklers engaging. She couldn’t run if she tried so she sighed and took the icy spray-down in the face.

  Yuri met her at the door. “Please tell me my father’s gone to bed,” she begged, weary and bedraggled.

  He handed her a ready towel. “Minutes after I informed him the guests were all gone.”

  Thank God. If he saw her like this... If any of them saw her like this...

  Drying the ends of her loose hair, Roxie wondered how she was going to manage the drive home, as exhausted as she was.

  “I put your man in your mother’s drawing room,” Yuri informed her.

  She stopped and stared at him. “You what?”

  “Size 14 Adonis,” Yuri said, leading her further into the warmth of the house. “He’s just this way.”

  “But you said all guests were gone,” she reminded him.

  “He insisted you would need a ride home, so I had Jasmine fix him some coffee and show him where to go.”

  “To my mother’s drawing room?”

  “I thought it was better than your father’s study.”

  One was as undesirable as the other. Yuri wasn’t aware of that fact, though. “You were amazing tonight,” she told him. “You kept the team sharp and unobtrusive and earned yourself a big fat bonus.”

  “This is why you are such a delightful employer. I would kiss you but Adonis might spank me.” He touched his finger to his chin. “On second thought, that might not be such a bad thing.”

  Roxie kissed him, a bisou on each cheek, walked him to the door and waved him off. She closed the great oak panels and locked them. The quiet sounds echoed across the marble, as did the pads of her bare feet as she passed quietly from one room to the next. Even the servants had dragged themselves belowstairs and fallen into bed.

  The door to her mother’s drawing room was cracked open. Fragile light trickled out. Roxie felt her heart pick up its pace. It should have felt buoyant, the norm lately around Byron. She was robbed of that by nerves and discomfort. Filling her lungs with reinforcing air, she pushed the door open and peered inside.

  The floral patterns of the room bordered on chintzy. They were on the curtains, the chairs, the sofa and the cushioned window seat overlooking Marabella’s rose garden. Roxie’s aversion to roses had begun early when she hid among them as a youngster from her au pair after doodling on the walls of her room. The landscaper had had to untangle her skirt from the thorns and, to her mother’s horror, she’d had scratches on her arms and cheeks for days.

  There was a fire in the hearth. Byron looked too manly for the room, too big for the sofa. How Marabella’s hands would’ve fluttered if she’d seen his size 14s crossed one over the other on the table. He cupped a half-empty tumbler, arm propped on the sofa arm. With the mantel clock ticking off the seconds, he stared into the dying fire in the hearth, the only source of light.

  Roxie knew it wasn’t really the fire he stared at. It was the line of framed, oil-painted canvasses hanging above the hearth. Cassandra was front and center with a leather-bound ledger and their father’s now deceased harlequin Great Dane, Shep. A matching portrait hung alone in Leverett’s
study on the far side of the house.

  Cassandra was accompanied by the rest of them: Carolina to the left, outdoors in riding clothes with her cheek pressed to that of the albino pony that had led her to several state championships; Julianna to Carolina’s left, standing impossibly slim and straight in haute couture. Georgiana to Cassandra’s right, sitting behind the white grand piano that had belonged to their grandmother.

  Roxie couldn’t bring herself to look at the final portrait on Georgiana’s right. Her mother had had it commissioned six months after Roxie’s debut in New York. It was as excruciating to gaze upon as looking back on that stage of her life was. “Byron.” His head turned quickly and his feet lowered from the table to the floor. She lifted her shoulders, clasping her hands in front of her. “All finished.”

  He straightened on the sofa cushion, nodding.

  When he didn’t rise or speak, she licked her lips. “Would you like to go? Yuri said you wanted to take me home.”

  Pushing up from the sofa, he rose to his feet. “I do.” He didn’t approach her. His hands dipped into his pants pockets in slow motion as he searched her.

  Roxie took another breath, in and out. It was hard not to look away. Not with him regarding her with an unspoken perception that hadn’t been there hours ago. Crossing her arms, she sagged against the jamb. “Go ahead,” she invited.

  “What?”

  “Well, I assume we’re not going anywhere until you get some answers.” When he frowned, she added, “Byron, you’re a roadmap of questions. Just ask.”

  His attention strayed to the portrait and there was a sad cast to his face. She’d never seen him sad. The effort it took to follow his gaze, to see what he was seeing, cost her. But look she did.

  The position was first arabesque. It was the essence of perfection. Her left arm lifted high, the other level with her horizontal working leg. The pointe of her supporting leg was exquisite. The bones of her foot ached just looking at it, as if they, too, remembered all the hours she’d practiced to make it better than anyone else’s. Better than her sisters. Better than old photographs of her mother as a young prima ballerina. Better than anyone else in the New York company she had been hand-selected to join before the end of private school. She was wearing a costume from Swan Lake, one of Marabella’s own. The White Swan, a part Roxie had never danced. But her mother had had high hopes.