Eight Second Angel: The Ballad of Lily Grace (Lonesome Point, Texas Book 7) (14 page)

Three hours later, Lark was covered in a fine sheen of sweat and smelled like a campfire, but the appetizers and sit-down dinner had gone off without a hitch. All that was left was to set up the desserts.

She started for the groom’s cakes, but Melody stopped her with a hand on her arm.

“Go on. Go dance with the others,” she said, tugging at the bow on Lark’s apron. “Aria and I can handle it from here on out.”

“Are you sure?” Lark asked, attempting to smooth her heat-frizzed hair back into her up-do. “I can stay, I—”

“Go. You deserve to have some fun after how hard you’ve worked this week,” Aria said with a rare smile. “And I don’t want any of you klutzes dropping my cakes. I’ll bring them out myself as soon as Manny and George get the fountain set up.”

“All right.” Lark tugged the top of her sleeveless red dress up, and decided to ignore the tiny grease stain on the bottom of her skirt—it would be too dark out on the dance floor to see the stain, anyway. She headed for the kitchen door, determined to get in a few dances before she succumbed to exhaustion.

She hurried across the ballroom where Manny and George—her two oldest employees, the ones who had helped her start
Ever After
three years ago—were setting up the dessert tables, on through the foyer, and out into the warm Georgia night.

Outside, paper lanterns hung laced between the trees, casting the dozens of large tables with their centerpieces of massive gardenia blossoms in a warm orange glow. Dinner had been cleared awhile ago, but several of the older set still sat in their chairs, nursing coffee and chatting, smiling as they watched the younger generations jump up and down on the dance floor beneath the trees.

If Lark had planned an outdoor wedding in May, she was sure it would have rained and forced everyone to cram into the too-small-for-three-hundred-guests historic home and the celebration would have been ruined. But Lisa had better luck, and her wedding had gone off without a hitch. The weather was perfect, the ceremony was perfect, the food was perfect—if Lark did say so herself—and everyone looked like they were having an amazing time.

Dodging two flower girls playing a rough game of tag with what was left of their bouquets, Lark headed for the dance floor. She could see Lisa and Matt in the center, surrounded by friends and family, and couldn’t wait to join them. All the exhaustion and stress of the day began to seep away as
Celebrate Good Times
cranked through the D.J.’s speakers and the people she loved let out a whoop of appreciation.

It was possibly the cheesiest of all wedding reception songs, but Lark couldn’t deny she loved it. She suddenly felt ready to dance all night.

If fate hadn’t stepped in and altered the course of her evening, she would have thrown herself into the fray and danced for hours, singing along and stealing Lisa from her new husband to swing her around during
Dancing Queen
, their favorite best friend song.

But fate did step in, in the form of six feet, two inches of old flame.

At first Lark couldn’t believe it was really him, but there was no mistaking that strong jawline or the shaggy brown hair that fell over his forehead just so. No mistaking those wide shoulders or that narrow waist or how utterly delicious he looked in a suit.

It was Mason Stewart, all right. Mason Stewart, back home and brooding at the edge of the dance floor with a beer held lightly between two fingers like he’d never left town in the first place.

Mason hadn’t been back to Summerville in four years, not since the night he asked Lark to marry him, and then ran off to New York City to do his residency at some hospital in Queens the very next morning. He had been offered a residency in Atlanta, only an hour away, and he’d promised to take it. To take it, and to take Lark with him when he left Summerville. They’d planned to get an apartment and Lark was going to get a job cooking at an amazing restaurant and Mason was going to start saving the world, one family practice patient at a time, and after three years of dating, they were finally going to live together.

Finally live together, and do all those other boyfriend-girlfriend things they’d never done because Lark was waiting for marriage, and Mason was deathly afraid of saying “I do.”

By the time Mason turned sixteen, his mother had been married eight times. Shortly after his sixteenth birthday, she had left town with husband number nine and Mason went to live with his Uncle Parker, a man who made it clear he wasn’t thrilled to be saddled with his sister’s kid. Mason blamed his mom—and the ridiculous, outdated, backward institution of marriage—for the roughest years of his childhood.

Lark had known how he felt about marriage. She should have been suspicious the second he dropped down on one knee.

Instead, she had wept with happiness, slipped the ring on her finger, and stayed up half the night calling everyone she knew, telling them the happy news.

But instead of coming by her parents’ house for Saturday brunch the next morning to celebrate the engagement, Mason had run for it, leaving Lark to explain that all her giddy “I’m getting married” phone calls had been a mistake.

A mistake.

Like leaving the kitchen.

Like heading for the dance floor.

Like getting close enough to see Mason’s blue eyes flash when he spotted her across the lawn, frozen like a deer in the headlights.

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