Holiday with the Best Man (13 page)

She knew without a doubt that, unlike Cynthia, they'd be more than happy for Bella to be her bridesmaid. Just as Grace would be very happy to ask Philly and Susie to be her bridesmaids and Matilda to be the flower girl—complete with her sparkly butterfly tiara. And butterfly wings, if she wanted them.

‘My parents are in Italy right now,' she said, ‘but they're due home next weekend. A planning meeting sounds good to me. And your house is beautiful. I can't think of anywhere nicer to get married.'

‘In our private church,' Will said. ‘Or in the house—I'm doing the paperwork to get licensed to hold weddings right now, and I'm sure I can rush it through if you need me to.'

‘Or I could build the mini-Pantheon in the grounds,' Roland suggested. ‘That'd be a really spectacular wedding venue.'

Everyone groaned. ‘Roland.
No!
'

‘Spoilsports,' Roland grumbled. But he was laughing.

‘And, whatever anyone suggests, Grace gets the casting vote,' Henry added.

Coco and Napoleon barked, as if agreeing.

They were all on her side.

And Grace knew that this time everything was going to be just fine.

EPILOGUE

Three months later

O
N
A
PERFECT
Saturday afternoon in September, Grace got out of the car at the gates leading to Roland's ancestral home, and let her stepfather help her up into the old-fashioned coach pulled by four perfect white horses.

‘You look beautiful, Gracie,' Ed said. ‘Like a princess.'

‘Thank you,' she said shyly.

‘I know I'm not your real dad, but I'm so proud of you.'

She squeezed his hand. ‘You're not my
biological
dad,' she corrected, ‘but as far as I'm concerned you're my real dad and you have been ever since you came into my life. I'm a Faraday girl through and through. And you're the only person I would ever consider asking to walk me down the aisle.'

Moisture glittered in his eyes. ‘Oh, Gracie.'

‘Don't cry, Dad,' she warned, ‘or I'll cry too, and Bella took ages doing my make-up—she'll kill us both if it smudges.'

‘I love you,' he said, ‘and I'm so glad you're marrying someone who loves you and will always back you.'

This was so very different from what she'd planned before. And even making the plans had been different this time, too: because both families had arranged things together.

The horses pulled the coach up the long driveway. Grace's mother, the bridesmaids and the photographer were waiting outside the little private church where every member of Roland's family had been married for the last three hundred years.

The photographer took shots of her in the coach with Ed; then Ed helped her out and her mother made last minute adjustments to her veil and dress.

‘You look wonderful,' she said. ‘Now go and marry the love of your life, with all our love and blessings.'

Grace's smile felt a mile wide as she entered the church.

The string quartet—Hugh's latest signing—struck up the first movement of Karl Jenkins's
Palladio
as Grace walked down the aisle on Ed's arm. The chapel was filled with old-fashioned roses chosen by Philly from the formal gardens at the house, and the arrangements were echoed in the simple but elegant bouquets carried by Grace and her bridesmaids. Matilda walked in front of them, wearing her sparkly butterfly tiara and scattering rose petals. Grace could see Roland waiting for her at the aisle, and saw his brother Will nudge him and whisper something just before he looked round.

As he saw her walking down the aisle towards him, he smiled and mouthed, ‘I love you,' and the whole world felt as if it had just lit up.

She couldn't stop smiling through the whole service. Finally, the vicar said, ‘You may now kiss the bride.' And Roland did so lingeringly.

There were more photographs outside the church and in the rose garden; then they finally walked down to the lake, where the boathouse was newly renovated and ready to host its first ever wedding breakfast. The wall overlooking the lake was completely glass, giving perfect views across the lake; and as they looked out they could see swans gliding across the water.

‘This is so perfect,' Grace whispered.

Roland kissed her. ‘It certainly is.'

* * *

The tables were
set with more beautiful arrangements of roses and the last of the sweet peas. ‘Like the first flowers you ever bought me,' she said to Roland with a smile. ‘Philly's really done us proud.'

Everything was perfect, from the meal to the speeches and the music from Hugh's quartet. And Grace knew that it was going to get even better; they had a band for the evening reception, and Roland had planned a display of fireworks just behind the lake.

And there were fireworks indoors, too: because to Henry's pleasure they'd gone with his suggestion of using a tradition from the French side of the family, and instead of a tiered wedding cake they had a
croquembouche
with a spiral of white chocolate roses curled round it. At the top of the cone, instead of a sugar crown there was an array of indoor sparklers; as soon as they were lit, everyone oohed and aahed.

‘It's magical,' Grace said.

‘Absolutely. And that's how it's going to be for the rest of our life,' Roland agreed. ‘With our whole family behind us, helping us to make our dreams come true.'

She raised her glass of sparkling elderflower cordial to toast him. ‘For the rest of our life.' She paused. ‘Roland, do you think we can sneak out for a moment without anyone noticing?'

‘Why?'

‘Because...' She needed to tell him something, but she wanted to tell him in private, and so far she just hadn't found the right moment. ‘I need a moment with you. Alone.'

‘And you want us to sneak out, given that all eyes are on the bride and groom?' He grinned. ‘Well, hey. We're a team. We can do anything.' He put her glass down on a nearby table, and waltzed with her over to the corner of the room, then quietly danced with her until they were at a side door. ‘Righty. Let's slip out.'

Once they were outside, he found them a quiet spot by the lake. ‘OK. From the look on your face, it's not just because you want to be on your own with your new husband. What's wrong?'

‘Nothing's wrong. But... What you were saying about us being a team. A team means more than two, or it can mean a pair.'

‘You're splitting hairs, but OK,' he said. ‘You and me. Two. We're a pair, then.'

She coughed. ‘I'm trying to tell you something. We're a
team
.'

‘You just said we were a pair.'

‘But,' she said, ‘we went to Venice just over three months ago. We made love for the first time.'

‘Ye—es.' He frowned. ‘You're talking in riddles, Gracie.'

‘No, I'm not.' She stroked his face. ‘I thought architects were good with figures? And have an eye for detail?'

‘We do.'

‘So did you notice that I toasted you in elderflower cordial, not champagne?' she asked. ‘And alcohol is off the menu for me for the next six months. Along with soft cheese and lightly cooked eggs.'

She saw the second that the penny dropped. ‘Are you telling me...?' he asked, hope brightening his face.

‘I know we didn't plan it, but we're definitely Team Devereux,' she said. ‘I didn't want to tell you until I was completely sure—and I wanted you to be the very first to know. I thought I might be a bit late just because I've been rushing about sorting out wedding stuff. Not because I was stressed, because our joint family is brilliant, but just because...it's a wedding.' She spread her hands. ‘And it's not that. Because I did a test this morning.'

‘And it was positive?'

‘It was positive,' she confirmed.

‘I don't care that we didn't plan having a baby. It's the best wedding present ever,' he said, picking her up and whirling her round. ‘I love you—both of you.' He set her back down on the ground and cupped his hand protectively over her abdomen. ‘Team Devereux. You, me, and a baby that's going to have the best family in the world.'

‘The best family in the world,' she echoed.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from
THE WEDDING PLANNER'S BIG DAY
by Cara Colter.

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The Wedding Planner's Big Day

by Cara Colter

CHAPTER ONE

“N
O
.”

A paper fluttered down on her temporary desk, slowly floating past Becky English's sunburned nose. She looked up, and tried not to let her reaction to what she saw—or rather, whom she saw—show on her face.

The rich and utterly sexy timbre of the voice should have prepared her, but it hadn't. The man was gorgeous. Bristling with bad humor, but gorgeous, nonetheless.

He stood at least six feet tall, and his casual dress, a dark green sports shirt and pressed sand-colored shorts, showed off a beautifully made male body. He had the rugged look of a man who spent a great deal of time out of doors. There was no sunburn on his perfectly shaped nose!

He had a deep chest, a flat stomach and the narrow hips of a gunslinger. His limbs, relaxed, were sleekly muscled and hinted at easy strength.

The stranger's face was mesmerizing. His hair, dark brown and curling, touched the collar of his shirt. His eyes were as blue as the Caribbean Sea that Becky could just glimpse out the open patio door over the incredible broadness of his shoulder.

Unlike that sea, his eyes did not look warm and inviting. In fact, there was that hint of a gunslinger, again, something cool and formidable in his uncompromising gaze. The look in his eyes did not detract, not in the least, from the fact that his features were astoundingly perfect.

“And no,” he said.

Another piece of paper drifted down onto her desk, this one landing on the keyboard of her laptop.

“And to this one?” he said. “Especially no.”

And then a final sheet glided down, hit the lip of the desk, forcing her to grab it before it slid to the floor.

Becky stared at him, rather than the paper in her hand. A bead of sweat trickled down from his temple and followed the line of his face, slowly, slowly, slowly down to the slope of a perfect jaw, where he swiped at it impatiently.

It was hot here on the small, privately owned Caribbean island of Sainte Simone. Becky resisted a temptation to swipe at her own sweaty brow with the back of her arm.

She found her voice. “Excuse me? And you are?”

He raised an arrogant eyebrow at her, which made her rush to answer for him.

“You must be one of Allie's Hollywood friends,” Becky decided.

It seemed to her that only people in Allie's field of work, acting on the big screen, achieved the physical beauty and perfection of the man in front of her. Only they seemed to be able to carry off that rather unsettling I-own-the-earth confidence that mere mortals had no hope of achieving. Besides, it was more than evident how the camera would love the gorgeous planes of his face, the line of his nose, the fullness of his lips...

“Are you?” she asked.

This was exactly why she had needed a guest list, but no, Allie had been adamant about that. She was looking after the guest list herself, and she did not want a single soul—up to and including her event planner, apparently—knowing the names of all the famous people who would be attending her wedding.

The man before Becky actually snorted in disgust, which was no kind of answer. Snorted. How could that possibly sound sexy?

“Of course, you are very early,” Becky told him, trying for a stern note. Why was her heart beating like that, as if she had just run a sprint? “The wedding isn't for two weeks.”

It was probably exactly what she should be expecting. People with too much money and too much time on their hands were just going to start showing up on Sainte Simone whenever they pleased.

“I'm Drew Jordan.”

She must have looked as blank as she felt.

“The head carpenter for this circus.”

Drew. Jordan. Of course! How could she not have registered that? She was actually expecting him. He was the brother of Joe, the groom.

Well, he might be the head carpenter, but she was the ringmaster, and she was going to have to establish that fact, and fast.

“Please do not refer to Allie Ambrosia's wedding as a circus,” the ringmaster said sternly. Becky was under strict orders word of the wedding was not to get out. She was not even sure that was possible, with two hundred guests, but if it did get out, she did not want it being referred to as a circus by the hired help. The paparazzi would pounce on that little morsel of insider information just a little too gleefully.

There was that utterly sexy snort again.

“It is,” she continued, just as sternly, “going to be the event of the century.”

She was quoting the bride-to-be, Hollywood's latest “it” girl, Allie Ambrosia. She tried not to show that she, Becky English, small-town nobody, was just a little intimidated that she had been chosen to pull off that event of the century.

She now remembered Allie warning her about this very man who stood in front of her.

Allie had said,
My future brother-in-law is going to head up construction. He's a bit of a stick-in-the-mud. He's a few years older than Joe, but he acts, like, seventy-five. I find him quite cranky. He's the bear-with-the-sore-bottom type. Which explains why
he
isn't married.

So, this was the future brother-in-law, standing in front of Becky, looking nothing at all like a stick-in-the-mud, or like a seventy-five-year-old. The bear-with-the-sore-bottom part was debatable.

With all those facts in hand, why was the one that stood out the fact that Drew Jordan was not married? And why would Becky care about that, at all?

Becky had learned there was an unexpected perk of being a wedding planner. She had named her company, with a touch of whimsy and a whole lot of wistfulness, Happily-Ever-After.
However, her career choice had quickly killed what shreds of her romantic illusions had remained after the bitter end to her long engagement. She would be the first to admit she'd had far too many fairy-tale fantasies way back when she had been very young and hopelessly naive.

Flustered—here was a man who made a woman want to believe, all over again, in happy endings—but certainly not wanting to show it, Becky picked up the last paper Drew Jordan had cast down in front of her, the
especially no
one.

It was her own handiwork that had been cast so dismissively in front of her. Her careful, if somewhat rudimentary, drawing had a big black X right through the whole thing.

“But this is the pavilion!” she said. “Where are we supposed to seat two hundred guests for dinner?”

“The location is fine.”

Was she supposed to thank him for that? Somehow words, even sarcastic ones, were lost to her. She sputtered ineffectually.

“You can still have dinner at the same place, on the front lawn in front of this monstrosity. Just no pavilion.”

“This monstrosity is a castle,” Becky said firmly. Okay, she, too, had thought when she had first stepped off the private plane that had whisked her here that the medieval stone structure looked strangely out of place amidst the palms and tropical flowers. But over the past few days, it had been growing on her. The thick walls kept it deliciously cool inside and every room she had peeked in had the luxurious feel of a five-star hotel.

Besides, the monstrosity was big enough to host two hundred guests for the weeklong extravaganza that Allie wanted for her wedding, and monstrosities like that were very hard, indeed, to find.

With the exception of an on-site carpenter, the island getaway came completely staffed with people who were accustomed to hosting remarkable events. The owner was record mogul Bart Lung, and many a musical extravaganza had been held here. The very famous fund-raising documentary
We Are the Globe
, with its huge cast of musical royalty, had been completely filmed and recorded here.

But apparently all those people had eaten in the very expansive castle dining room, which Allie had said with a sniff would not do. She had her heart set on alfresco for her wedding feast.

“Are you saying you can't build me a pavilion?” Becky tried for an intimidating, you-can-be-replaced tone of voice.

“Not can't. Won't. You have two weeks to get ready for the circus, not two years.”

He was not the least intimidated by her, and she suspected it was not just because he was the groom's brother. She suspected it would take a great deal to intimidate Drew Jordan. He had that don't-mess-with-me look about his eyes, a set to his admittedly sexy mouth that said he was far more accustomed to giving orders than to taking them.

She debated asking him, again, not to call it a circus, but that went right along with not being able to intimidate him. Becky could tell by the stubborn set of his jaw that she might as well save her breath. She decided levelheaded reason would win the day.

“It's a temporary structure,” she explained, the epitome of calm, “and it's imperative. What if we get inclement weather that day?”

Drew tilted his head at her and studied her for long enough that it was disconcerting.

“What?” she demanded.

“I'm trying to figure out if you're part of her Cinderella group or not.”

Becky lifted her chin. Okay, so she wasn't Hollywood gorgeous like Allie was, and today—sweaty, casual and sporting a sunburned nose—might not be her best day ever, but why would it be debatable whether she was part of Allie's Cinderella group or not?

She didn't even know what that was. Why did she want to belong to it, or at least seem as if she could?

“What's a Cinderella group?” she asked.

“Total disconnect from reality,” he said, nodding at the plan in her hand. “You can't build a pavilion that seats two hundred on an island where supplies have to be barged in. Not in two weeks, probably not even in two years.”

“It's temporary,” she protested. “It's creating an illusion, like a movie set.”

“You're not one of her group,” he decided firmly, even though Becky had just clearly demonstrated her expertise about movie sets.

“How do you know?”

“Imperative,”
he said.
“Inclement.”
His lips twitched, and she was aware it was her use of the language that both amused him and told him she was not part of Allie's regular set. Really? She should not be relieved that it was vocabulary and not her looks that had set her apart from Allie's gang.

“Anyway,
inclement
weather—”

Was he making fun of her?

“—is highly unlikely. I Googled it.”

She glanced at her laptop screen, which was already open on Google.

“This side of this island gets three days of rain per year,” he told her. “In the last forty-two years of record-keeping, would you care to guess how often it has rained on the Big Day, June the third?”

The way he said
Big Day
was in no way preferable to
circus
.

Becky glared at him to make it look as if she was annoyed that he had beat her to the facts. She drew her computer to her, as if she had no intention of taking his word for it, as if she needed to check the details of the June third weather report herself.

Her fingers, acting entirely on their own volition, without any kind of approval from her mind, typed in D-r-e-w J-o-r-d-a-n.

Copyright © 2016 by Cara Colter