Always the Baker, Finally the Bride (40 page)

“You’re joking, right?” she said, carefully unclasping her grandmother’s diamond choker and dropping it into his pocket. “You hold on to this. I’m wearing that.”

He helped her remove it from the box, and he secured the clasp around her neck. The marriage cross fell to just the right spot beneath the hollow of her porcelain throat.

“Yes?” she asked as he looked at it.

“It looks just how I thought it would,” he answered.

Emma leaned in and kissed his lips softly, and she thanked him in a warm-honey whisper.

The distant thumping of running feet approached, and they both turned toward the sound just as Russell Walker raced around the corner of the corridor.

“I make it, mate?” he asked Jackson in that deep Australian accent. “Whoa,” he interrupted himself as he got a look at Emma. “
Immah!
You’re a sight for sore eyes, aren’t you, love?”

“Russell, I can’t believe you made it!” she exclaimed as they embraced. Turning to Jackson, she beamed. “That’s everyone! Everyone we thought wouldn’t be here, Jackson. We’re all in one place after all!”

“I couldn’t miss this now, could I?” Russell asked her. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime!”

When the ballroom door opened and Sherilyn laid eyes on Russell, she squealed and flung herself into his open arms. The two of them had always been oddly connected, and Jackson laughed as she continued to squeal from within his embrace.

“Bloody oath, Red!” he exclaimed. “You look bettah ev’ry time I feast my eyes on you.”

“Russell, I’m so happy to see you,” she cried. Then, with a gasp, she added, “Kat is going to flip her lid! Get in there so she can get it out of her system before I unleash the bride and groom!”

“Later, then,” he said to Emma and Jackson before he disappeared inside. The wail of delight a moment later let them know that he’d found Kat, and they all shared a chuckle.

“Look what Jackson gave me,” Emma said, tapping the chain around her neck.

Sherilyn leaned in for a closer look before tossing Jackson a crooked grin. “
Niiice!
”

At least she hadn’t given him what-for over the missing wedding jewelry.

She pressed a button on her cell phone and spoke into it. “The bride and groom are about to enter. Are you ready, baby?
 . . . What about Ben? . . . Good!” She closed the phone and gave them a nod. “You’re on.”

“Hey, Sher,” Emma called over her shoulder as they walked into the ballroom. “Jackson says he’s giving you a raise.”

“What?” she gasped. Grinning at him, she asked, “Really?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Jackson followed Emma inside. A lavender spotlight drew his attention to Andy on the stage at the front of the ballroom.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said into a microphone. “It’s my pleasure to present to you . . . Mr. and Mrs. Jackson Drake!”

Everyone applauded and they greeted flocks of well-wishers on their way to the dance floor, which featured a muted lavender paisley design in front of the stage.

“Jackson, this is Bonnie Cordova and her husband, Ben,” Emma told him as she stopped to greet the couple. “Bonnie helped me pick the cake.”

Jackson grabbed both of her hands and shook them between his. “Bonnie, I can’t thank you enough.” He leaned in closer and whispered, “At Emma’s rate of confusion, I wasn’t sure we’d even have a cake.”

“I heard that,” Emma declared. She laughed and pointed toward the beautiful cake on the pedestal next to the stage. “I call it
Free to Be Me
. That’s how you make me feel. Completely free.”

Bonnie turned to her husband. “Ahhh.” With a second look toward the cake, she asked Emma, “Is it your crème brûlée specialty?”

“It is indeed.”

“Any chance I can get the recipe?”

Jackson cackled. “Bonnie, I’m not sure even I could get that recipe from her.”

“We’ll talk,” Emma mouthed back to her.

They moved forward toward the stage as Andy tapped the mic.

“I hope you’ll all help me welcome the magnificent Ben Colson as he performs the bride and groom’s special song for their first dance. ‘The Way You Look Tonight.’ ”

Jackson and Emma waved to Ben and strolled to the center of the dance floor. Jackson took his new wife into his arms as Colson crooned the very song that he’d sung for them on the evening of the hotel opening. With Emma pressed against him, Jackson closed his eyes, holding her close, remembering that special night.

Her eyes tightly shut, Emma recalled the first time Jackson had held her that way. She’d been so busy on the night of the hotel opening that she hadn’t had the time to have dinner. He’d persuaded Pearl to bring them something after all of the guests had left, and he’d arranged for a private concert for two with Ben Colson . . .

“Emma, have you met Ben?”

“I haven’t had the pleasure,” she said, shaking his hand. “But I’m a big fan of your music.”

“I appreciate that,” he replied, and she couldn’t help but notice what a picture-perfect man he was. The way he tilted his head and smiled, he looked like any one of his album covers. “Do you have a favorite song?”

“A favorite . . . Pardon?”

“Jackson tells me you didn’t get to hear one song all the way through tonight. We thought you might like to, now.”

Emma glanced at Jackson, then back to Ben. “Really?”

“What’s your pleasure?”

“Oh, I just love the classics from your second album. Anything. Really, anything would be great.”

Ben nodded, then he rounded the stage and climbed the stairs
.

Jackson smiled at her sweetly, and she shook her head. “Thank you, Jackson. Really. What a nice thing to do.”

On the first note from the piano, Jackson offered his hand. “Dance with me?”

Emma’s heart thumped against her throat and she hesitated, but only for a moment before taking Jackson’s hand and moving into his arms. As Ben Colson serenaded them with “The Way You Look Tonight,” Emma leaned into Jackson and they swayed in perfect sync to the music
.

It felt so good there in his arms, and she had the sensation of finally landing somewhere that she’d been struggling to reach for such a very long time. Emma nuzzled her face into his shoulder and closed her eyes, breathing in a deep whiff of the faint spicy wood and citrus scent that was becoming familiar to her now
.

The music came to a gentle end, but the two of them remained in one another’s arms, swaying softly to the silent song in the very large room
.

“What are you thinking?” Jackson whispered to her now.

“Remembering,” she replied.

“That first night? The night of the opening?”

“Mmm,” she hummed, and Jackson sighed.

“Yeah. Me, too.”

“Any regrets?” she asked him, lifting her face to his.

He thought about it for a moment before replying. “Regrets? Yes. But only one.”

Her heart throbbed inside her chest. “Really?”

“Yeah. I went my whole life without appreciating hazelnut,” he teased. “It took some irritating girl behind a bakery counter pushing it on me—”

“Many times before you gave in, as I recall.”

“Yes! That’s what I mean. I missed out on thirty-some years of hazelnut before that. I regret it. I really do.”

“You’re a jerk,” she said with a giggle.

“I know. And you love me for it.”

Emma smiled and nuzzled her head against his shoulder. “Yes, I do.”

Emma, can we see you for a moment?”

She looked up at Susannah’s very serious face and wondered,
Oh no. Now what’s happened?

“It’s nothing dire,” she said, as if she could read Emma’s thoughts. With a smile, she added, “In fact, it’s a good thing.”

Susannah offered her hand, and Emma excused herself from Carly and Devon’s table to accept it and curiously follow Susannah’s lead. When they reached the family cluster at the edge of the stage, the human sea parted for her, and Emma found herself at the center of the activity, standing next to Jackson. He slipped his arm around her shoulder.

“What’s going on?” she asked him.

“No clue.”

“Let’s all sit down,” Madeline suggested, and Emma followed them to the nearest table and sat in the chair between her father and Jackson.

Georgiann produced a small wrapped gift, about the size of a shoe box, and she slid it across the table toward them. Jackson nodded toward it with a smile, and Emma pulled the box the rest of the way.

“It’s just a little something from your families,” Norma explained. “Including Sherilyn, Susannah, and Fee, of course, because they’re family now, too.”

Emma’s eyes caught Fee’s, and her friend arched her eyebrows over the top of her small, rectangular glasses. “Have a peek.”

Emma lifted the lid with some degree of caution, but she didn’t quite know why. Inside, she found an array of folded cards in various pastel shades. She looked at her father and grinned, and he urged her on with a nod.

She picked up one of them, a mint green card that read,
Madeline & Georgiann—Shared Administrative
.

“What does this mean?” she asked Jackson in a hushed voice. He shrugged, and they looked around at the sea of eager faces. “I’m sorry,” she told them. “I don’t understand.”

“Keep going,” her mother urged her.

Emma pulled a lavender card from the mix.

Susannah—Delayed retirement
.

Jackson, reading over Emma’s shoulder, looked up at Susannah. “What’s this all about?”

Emma unfolded a light blue card and recognized Fee’s slanted penmanship immediately.

Fee—Bakery & tearoom admin
.

Poking through the rest of the cards, Emma recognized a United Airlines logo, and she pulled the envelope from the bottom of the box. Her pulse began to race as she unfolded it, and she glanced at Jackson. He looked as confused as she felt.

“Two open-ended tickets,” Georgiann explained. “Atlanta to Paris.”

Jackson and Emma stared at one another for a long and frozen moment before they broke free and scanned the crowd of people around them.

“What is this?” Jackson asked.

“Each card bears one of our names,” Madeline told them, “along with the role we will fill while the two of you go live out that dream you had of spending some time in Paris.”

“What?” Emma cried. “Are you—?”

“No, no,” Jackson interrupted. “You can’t . . . Susannah, postponing your retirement?”

“Just for six months or a year, Jackson.”

“And George,” he objected, “you could hardly wait to get out of here once the hotel was up and running. You can’t just—”

“I can, and I will.” She sliced her hand through the air with that no-nonsense, this-is-the-way-it’s-going-to-be expression Emma had come to know very well.

Gavin reached around Emma and placed his hand on Jackson’s shoulder. “Don’t fight it, my boy. This is bigger than you are.”

“We’ve been planning it ever since the day you decided not to sell the hotel,” Sherilyn told them.

“That’s what I walked in on at your house!” Emma cried. Sherilyn nodded and grinned with sheer delight.

“We’re all so happy that you didn’t sell, Jackson,” Sherilyn told him. “But it occurred to us that . . . well, why can’t you have it all?”

“The Lord knows you deserve it,” Avery chimed in. “Both of you.”

Emma’s voice remained stuck in her throat. Even though she didn’t know in the least what she wanted to say, she struggled to push the random words up and out of her mouth.

“You need to take care of yourself, Emmy,” her father said. “Nurse yourself back to health. I know a little bit about that myself.”

“And Jackson has a book to write,” Andy added.

“And there’s pastry classes to take.”

“And walks along the Seine.”

“And a marriage to begin.”

Wow. They’ve really been paying attention!

Jackson turned to Emma, searching her eyes for some sort of solid reaction, and she felt as if she’d let him down a bit when she finally shook her head and groaned in exasperation.

“You’ll still go to Savannah tomorrow,” Avery offered. “Spend a honeymoon week there, just the two of you. When you get back, you can take whatever time you need to set up your plans for the baking school, somewhere to live in Paris . . .”