Going to the Chapel

by Deborah Cooke

  The senior partners arrived, both Ty and Theo in expensive suits and Nate was glad he’d lifted his game. He could dream of the day that he could afford to dress like them.

  Ty brought the meeting to order and there was even an agenda that Nate got on his phone.

  “We just joined the adults,” Hunter whispered to him and Nate bit back a smile.

  Ty welcomed Hunter, Sonia, Chloe, and Nate to the group, providing a quick review of the new positions. Ty reviewed financial stuff that made Nate’s head spin a bit, although Chloe seemed to be right on top of it with him. Kyle gave a summary of developments at F5 West and Nate realized he was building a similar team there.

  Sonia was already sketching out a plan for Hunter’s Yummy Mummy idea. Ty noted that they’d need better daycare for women who didn’t want their children in class with them. Damon pulled out the architect’s drawings of the building, and the partners pored over them, looking for locations to move or expand the tiny daycare they already had. Damon agreed to do a proposal and asked for Adele’s help with working up the costs.

  Then Cassie gave an update on the marketing programs that were in development.

  Nate’s heart skipped when Cassie showed three shots of him on the climbing wall, one of which would be used in the upcoming billboard in Times Square. In the first, he was focused on the climb. In the middle one, he was laughing at the camera. That was a surprise candid shot. In the third, he looked pensive, but was also looking at the camera. None of them hid his prosthesis and he liked that. He didn’t want to look like a victim.

  “Hot shot,” Hunter whispered. “You’re going to be a star.”

  Nate could hardly believe this was happening. He tried to concentrate on the conversation and contribute. Cassie debated the merits of the three shots and what messages they might send.

  “What do you all think? Should we vote?” she asked.

  “I think the middle one is best,” Sonia said. “There’s something about that smile that says he owns the world.”

  They laughed together at that. “That’s why I put it in the middle,” Cassie admitted. “It is my favorite.” She smiled at him. “You look really hot, Nate.”

  He smiled. “I think it depends on the slogan, don’t you?”

  “That’s true,” Cassie admitted. “We’ve played around with a few but I want to be very careful about the message. I don’t want to be excluding anyone or implying that there’s a division to be made.”

  “Not ‘we welcome cripples, too’,” Nate said, because he doubted anyone else would.

  Cassie looked relieved that he’d said it out loud. “Not “Get fixed at F5” either,” she said. “We want to be inclusive, and really, everyone has limitations of some kind or another. We just want to be our personal best and provide an environment that helps people to strive for that.”

  “Exactly,” Theo agreed.

  “Be all that you can be,” Kyle suggested.

  “I think that one’s taken,” Damon said and they laughed again.

  “Go for it at F5,” Nate suggested.

  “With the middle picture,” Hunter said, nodding agreement. “The one that shows you owning the world.”

  “And rocking it,” Sonia said.

  Nate smiled at the chorus of assent.

  “Do we even need a vote?” Cassie asked, raising her voice over the discussion and there was a resounding “no.”

  “Superstar,” Hunter teased.

  Nate found himself laughing. “You might be next.”

  “I should be so lucky as to look ripped and larger than life, with all the women drooling over me.”

  Nate couldn’t suppress his smile of anticipation. Then Damon asked him about the vets and service people who were already members, and any of their needs. They had a long debate about programs for people dealing with injuries like Nate’s, and he gave them his suggestions for programs in the weight room. Mostly it was a case of training the staff working there as to precautions and best practices. Nate knew that anyone who came to work out would probably already have a prosthesis that would work.

  “Anything else you can suggest that will help with this?” Kyle asked and Nate saw the chance to raise another concern.

  “The other thing is that amputees might be self-conscious about working out, especially the first time,” he said. “I wondered if we might be able to have a special time set aside in the weight room, so they won’t have to worry about being watched.”

  “We can try that,” Ty said as Damon reached for the building plans again. “But the women have their own weight room for exactly the same reason.”

  Damon nodded, his thoughts obviously having followed the same path. “We could add a smaller weight room here,” he said, indicating a room that had been set aside for classes but wasn’t as big as the others. “This room doesn’t get used enough, so let’s allocate it another way.”

  “We need to be sure we have enough members who are going to use it first,” Ty said.

  “Let’s start with the special hours,” Kyle suggested. “What day do you think, Nate?”

  “Saturday,” he said without hesitation. “Because most of them will have jobs during the week.”

  “And what do we call it?” Cassie said. “We want to be sensitive and positive.”

  There was a beat of silence and Nate knew they were all struggling with it.

  Then Damon snapped his fingers. “Nate’s Hour,” he said and there was a cheer. “And then Nate’s Place.”

  “With that poster on the wall,” Kyle said with excitement. “The room has a high ceiling, so we can get a big one made to have there permanently.”

  “What do you think?” Ty asked, inviting Nate’s opinion.

  “I think it’s perfect, although I’m overwhelmed to have even an hour named after me.”

  “You’re the one taking point on this,” Ty said. “You’ve got the insight and the experience that we lack.”

  “You’re going to be great at it,” Damon said with a nod and Nate was glad that he’d caught up with his former comrade.

  Nate got a nod of approval from both Damon and Kyle when they concluded that discussion and felt like he was really going to be able to contribute to the team.

  His own hour. His own weight room. His own schedule.

  “One last item.” Theo reviewed the plans already underway for the big New Year’s Eve party that was always held at the F5 club. He had numbers from previous years of attendance and revenue, mostly from the bar, and Cassie had a summary of the PR that had resulted.

  “We need to really ace it this year, Theo,” she said. “You can see that we slipped a bit last year, so a killer celebrity guest list would be great.”

  Theo nodded and showed the impressive list of contacts that he was already working. Nate could see that Hunter was almost bursting with something, but then the club was his turf.

  Theo must have noticed it, too, because he smiled. “I think Hunter has an idea to share.”

  “I do!” Hunter waved his phone. “There’s this model I follow on social media, and she’s huge. An international superstar. Anyway, she just tweeted that she’s spending Christmas in New York. It would be so awesome if you could get her to come here. She’d gorgeous and famous, and she’s got to have friends...”

  “Which model?” Damon asked.

  “Angel,” Hunter exhaled her name with obvious admiration.

  Everyone in the room straightened a little. “She’s almost as famous as Madonna,” Cassie said. “What do you think, Theo? Is she in your little book?”

  Theo was frowning down at his phone and Nate thought he hadn’t taken well to the idea. Maybe he felt that Hunter was stepping on his toes.

  “I just thought it might be a good idea,” Hunter said quickly, and Nate knew he’d just wanted to help.

  “It is a good idea,” Ty said with a nod. “Just the kind of glamorous celebrity that brings the right kind of visibility to the club. I’m glad you suggested it.”<
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  Theo said nothing. He was apparently searching for something on his phone, a frown between his brows, but Nate couldn’t dismiss his sense that the older man was agitated.

  “Go on, Theo,” Kyle said, his tone teasing. “Don’t tell me you don’t know her publicist? Have we found the Achilles’ heel we didn’t know you had?”

  “I thought I did,” Theo said gruffly.

  Hunter named Angel’s publicist and her manager. Theo gave him a poisonous glance. “I looked them up. They have a website.” At Ty’s nod, Hunter sent the information to Theo, whose lips tightened.

  “Had a bad experience with her team in the past?” Cassie asked, and Nate realized he wasn’t the only one to have noticed the change in Theo’s mood.

  “Of course not. I just don’t know them.”

  Kyle leaned back in his chair and spun it a bit. “Angel,” he said quietly. “You know, she’s beyond gorgeous, but she always reminded me a little bit of that girl you dated in college, Theo. What was her name? Lyssa something.”

  “Lyssa Monroe,” Theo said tightly. “I don’t think so.”

  “Come on,” Kyle said and Theo shot a look his way. “There’s a bit of similarity. In the lips.”

  “No, there isn’t,” Theo said, then smiled thinly. “There. I’ve got them now. Can’t hurt to ask, but such famous people are usually booked up early for big nights.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you, Theo,” Cassie teased. “You always make the miracles happen.”

  “Just not feeling positive about this one,” he said, his tone dismissive. “But I’ll try.”

  “Whatever happened to her?” Kyle said.

  “Who?” Theo asked but everyone knew who Kyle meant.

  “Lyssa, of course.”

  Theo looked grim. “I don’t know. It’s been a long time.”

  “Because you were really hot for each other,” Kyle continued. “I thought you were going to be the first one of us to get to the altar...”

  “Well, it didn’t work out,” Theo interrupted tersely. “Can we stick to the business at hand, please?”

  “I think that’s it for today,” Ty said. “Anyone have anything else?”

  “Just a party!” Cassie cried and the senior partners produced the kind of horns used at New Year’s Eve. They tossed them around the table and Nate sounded his along with everyone else. “Welcome to our new team members!”

  “Sonia, Chloe, Hunter, and Nate, we’re glad you’re on board,” Tyler said and blew his horn.

  “Welcome to the F5 family,” Kyle said, shaking the hands of each of them.

  Nate really did feel like he’d found his place in the world.

  Go for it at F5.

  The first butterfly landed when Cassie began to sing the wedding march and all the guests gathered in the garden turned to watch Haley leave the house.

  It was a monarch, and Damon watched it flutter onto a flower out of the corner of his eye. It made a bad landing, caught in a little crosswind at the last moment, then folded its wings back and began to sip at the nectar in the phlox.

  His mom had always loved monarch butterflies. He remembered her reading the articles about their migration to Mexico when he was a kid, and her insistence on having flowers in the garden that they liked. He was pretty sure they’d had the only patch of milkweed on the block, if not in Queens.

  The house they’d just bought still amazed Damon with its privacy. It was tucked behind the other houses and not visible from the street. There was a long laneway between two of their neighbor’s properties with a gate at the street and hedges on either side. He knew he’d never get used to the sudden first glimpse of the house at the end of the driveway, because it looked as if it was tucked into a park and a long way from the bustle of Queens. The previous owner had created English gardens of perennials that were beautifully maintained, and Damon knew that he and Haley would be learning a lot about gardening in the next year or six.

  Haley had fallen for the house at first glimpse. It was a little more expensive than they’d planned but they made it work and he knew they’d stay there for the duration. It felt like their own little corner of paradise. Her mom had helped them finish the painting and the unpacking—Haley had taken the week off to get ready for the wedding. Haley’s siblings had arrived on Thursday, and it seemed that the house came alive with their energy. Her older brother Brad and his wife Katie had three kids, two girls and a boy, and they’d spent a lot of time in the pool even though it was a bit chilly already at night. Haley’s younger sister, Tiffany, had come with her new husband, Stefan. The youngest brother, Matt, had arrived home from the Middle East the night before, surprising all of his family. Only Damon had known that Matt was coming because he’d wanted to surprise them all, and he had.

  On this day, there were long tables set up in the garden beneath pergolas decorated with ribbons and flowers and fairy lights. Haley had chosen a fall palette, and there were sunflowers everywhere, along with bittersweet vines with their russet berries and the delicate orange flowers of Chinese lanterns. In the garden, the black-eyed Susans were in bloom along with the chrysanthemums and sedum, and it seemed as if the garden had been chosen specifically to match the wedding decor.

  The sunlight was a little warm on Damon’s shoulders when Haley stepped out of the house to join him in the garden. Tiffany escorted Haley from the house, and Kyle was standing up with Damon. Haley was wearing a white dress that was both elegant and simple. It was feminine but perfectly consistent with her practical style. Her headdress was a sparkling crown and he already knew that her mom had worn it on her wedding day. She carried a bouquet of sunflowers and her smile heated him to his toes.

  As Damon watched her approach, his chest felt tight, both with the power of the love he felt for her and his awareness of his friends and new family, all gathered to wish them well. Ty and Amy had brought Michael, who had been passed around and admired. Cassie and Reid looked happy and would be going to Paris for their honeymoon the next day. Kyle and Lauren would be heading back to California the next day, too. Theo looked thoughtful and Damon wondered again what secrets were in his past. Nate had come, along with several of the other guys from the platoon with whom Damon had reconnected, thanks to Nate—and to Haley. Four of the nurses who worked with Haley at the hospital had come, two with husbands. Damon had met Teresa when his mom had been admitted there.

  Haley’s mom stepped forward to kiss her, then took her daughter’s hand and placed it in Damon’s. “Be happy,” she whispered and Damon nodded.

  He escorted Haley to the priest, who was waiting at the end of the garden. The priest was going to bless their match, not celebrate a formal exchange of vows. There would be no crowns, not unless Haley converted and they exchanged vows again at a later date. Damon didn’t care so much about the details. He just wanted to pledge himself to Haley forever, in front of everyone they loved.

  A second butterfly appeared, landing on the black-eyed Susans near the first one, as Cassie finished the last note of the song. Damon saw that the first one was still there, working over that flower.

  The priest’s voice rose in greeting, and he lifted his hands as he spoke. The fall sunlight glinted on the gold embroidery on his cossack and when he switched to Russian, inviting them all to pray with him, Damon suspected that he and Haley were the only ones who knew the words. He held Haley’s hand and bowed his head. He spoke the prayer clearly, not wanting anyone to doubt his conviction. He was proud that Haley didn’t stumble over the words she’d studied to learn.

  When he raised his head, there were half a dozen monarchs circling the flowers, joining the others there. He heard someone murmur behind them and guessed the arrivals had been noticed. He was aware that they kept arriving, as if they were gathering for the wedding, too. He took the candle from the priest and made his vows, then lit Haley’s candle. There were at least two dozen butterflies in the flowers. Haley made her vows with resolve, her gaze flicking to his. The priest blessed their
match and Damon was sure the number of butterflies had tripled. They seemed to be everywhere, their black and orange wings opening and closing as they sipped nectar from the flowers.

  Cassie sang again, her voice soaring as she sang Etta James’ At Last just as powerfully as she had at Kyle and Lauren’s wedding. Damon bent and kissed Haley before them all, loving how she more than met him halfway. Cassie finished the first chorus with a flourish and Damon broke their kiss, laughing with Haley as their friends and family broke into applause behind them.

  The priest introduced them as a couple and they turned as man and wife. Kyle gave a wolf whistle as the others cheered. In that moment, the butterflies took flight, swirling over the guests as if they were of a single mind.

  One landed on Haley’s bouquet and she froze to stare at it. It opened and closed its wings three times as they watched and Haley’s oldest niece came closer to study it. It then took to the air again, soaring high into the blue of the sky. The other butterflies spiraled after it, flying higher and higher. Cassie sang again as everyone watched the butterflies disappear into the blue.

  Damon gave Haley’s fingers a squeeze, unable to deny his sense of why they had come. “I told you my mom never missed a wedding,” he murmured, then kissed his new wife one more time.

  Haley had given him a future and Damon was going to make it count.

  Thanks for reading Going to the Chapel.

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  There’s information about Bad Case of Loving You after this, which is Theo’s story and the next book in the Flatiron Five series, as well as the Secret Heart Ink spin-off series set in the same world.