Chapter Twenty-Four

“Best wedding yet,” Deb sang out above the band’s modern, upbeat version of “Make You Feel My Love” that actually wasn’t half bad.

“You really think so?” Tori asked, her pink playbook nestled like a heavy toddler on one hip.

“Oh yeah, hands down. Your other weddings have been amazing, but this one you can tell you really put your heart into.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Lettie added from Tori’s other side. She squeezed her arm. “I think your mom would be proud.”

“Thanks.” Tori couldn’t help but agree. The ceremony had been magical. And the joy on Dani’s and Collin’s faces as she walked down the aisle toward him beneath the cherry blossoms more than made up for the month of scrambling and chaos.

Now the reception was well under way, dinner—or should she say breakfast?—catered by their favorite restaurant, Bread and Butter, had been eaten, and the beautiful cherry blossom cake had been cut. For a woman who was convinced she’d been abducted by aliens, Mrs. Kawalski sure knew how to do a stunning wedding cake on short notice.

Dani and Collin danced in the middle of the floor surrounded by their friends and family and looking so blissfully in love it almost brought tears to Tori’s eyes.

Deb and Lettie were right. This was easily her best wedding to date. “It really is gorgeous, isn’t it? And speaking of gorgeous, can we please take a moment to acknowledge how incredible Deb looks tonight?”

Deb’s cheeks flamed. She was wearing one of the many dresses Lettie had expertly picked out for her during their shopping spree last month, a scarlet red one-shoulder number that hugged the beautifully toned body she’d worked so hard for but never had the nerve to show off. Lettie had also insisted on taking Deb to the salon in town where she’d had her hair cut and dyed a much deeper shade of red than her natural carrot orange.

Tonight Deb was a complete bombshell and looked at least fifteen years younger.

“That’s very sweet of you to say, Tori. Even if it is a bit exaggerated.”

Tori and Lettie shared one of their knowing looks. They’d helped her work on her outer confidence. Now it was time to help her with her inner one.

Tori grabbed Deb’s hand in her own. “No exaggeration at all. You look beautiful tonight.”

Deb beamed, her eyes sparkling. “Thank you, Tori.”

“Thank you for all the work you’ve done for this wedding.” She nudged Lettie with her shoulder on her other side. “And thank you for moving all the way out here with me. It was a huge change, not to mention a huge leap of faith, but you didn’t even hesitate.” She squeezed their hands. “I couldn’t have done any of this without you guys.” Tori pulled them both into a group hug until all three were teary eyed.

Once freed, Deb grabbed three glasses of champagne, handing one to Tori and Lettie each. “Let’s toast to all the great new things this wedding has meant for us, shall we?”

Tori lifted her glass. “Here’s to a new start.”

“To new friends,” Deb said next.

Lettie raised her glass highest of all. “To a new copier.”

The three of them laughed so loud they almost didn’t hear the band announcing they’d be taking a short break.

“Ooh, speaking of which.” Lettie pulled lipstick from her clutch for a quick touchup. The pale pink was an exact match to her cocktail dress. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go have a serious talk with a certain band member.”

“Oh why?” Deb asked. “I thought they were playing so well.”

Tori nodded her agreement. She herself had been surprised by how good the sandwich guy by day, musician by night and his band were.

“Exactly. If he keeps playing like this, he’ll get a million gigs and I’ll never see him.”

Tori placed a hand on Lettie’s shoulder. “We’ll just have to make sure we keep hiring him for gigs then.”

Lettie beamed. “I think that could work. I’ll see you guys later.” She sauntered off to where Reese and his bandages were descending from the small stage they’d set up.

Deb pointed across the room. “And I think I hear a piece of cake calling my name.”

“Really? What happened to ‘a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips’?”

She shrugged. “Life’s no fun if you can’t allow yourself to indulge every now and then, right? Now you should relax the rest of the night. I’ll handle everything from here on out.”

“Are you sure?” She hated the idea of slacking off while she was on the clock.

“I am.” Deb slipped Tori’s binder from her hands before she could argue. “Now you go enjoy your night while I enjoy mine.” She left for the cake table without another word.

Tori took one last look at the crowd of dancers; Dani appeared to have been swallowed up by a sea of navy while she danced fearlessly with her bridesmaids. Tori could help Mrs. O’Neal and her team clean up the rest of the food, or she could always check on the getaway car outside.

No, she would leave it like Deb said. She’d worked hard to get to tonight. She’d more than earned a little break.

She set her champagne glass down at a table, admiring how well the centerpieces had turned out—three vases of cherry blossom stems submersed completely in water and topped with a small floating candle.

She headed for a door in the back. It led out to a covered porch that overlooked the river. The sun was low in the sky, still another hour or so from setting, and it shone on her with golden warmth. She rested her elbows on the porch railing and took a deep breath.

“Am I dreaming, or did I just see you take off in the middle of your own gig? And without the famous playbook, no less.”

She smiled softly. “I thought I’d take a step back, enjoy the fruits of my labor for once.”

Wyatt chuckled as he came up beside her and leaned against the railing. “You deserve to let someone else handle things tonight.” He looked back through the windows. “What you pulled off, in only a month, beats anything I’ve ever done before. You really knocked this one out of the park.”

“We did. None of this would be happening if it weren’t for you.”

He shook his head, waved his hands in front of him. “No way—this is all you. I just helped you with a few design ideas.”

“Can you please just take my praise? There’s no telling when you’ll hear it again.”

At that, he full out laughed. “Okay, fine. We did an incredible job.”

“Thank you. And thanks again for agreeing to help me. I know you didn’t have to, especially after the way I treated you.”

“How could I possibly say no after such a heartfelt apology? Three ‘I’m sorry’s I could have turned down, but four? I’m not heartless.”

She nudged him with her elbow. “Too bad. If you’d held out just a little longer, you would have gotten to see me beg on my knees.”

“I bet that is a sight.” He spun around, taking in the view of the sparkling river below and giving her the perfect opportunity to admire his defined jaw and full lips, the way his thick, curly hair stuck up in weird places. It turned her heart to warm goo in her chest.

Dani was right. If she didn’t work up the guts now, she may never tell him how she felt. And it was only a matter of time before someone else swooped in and snatched him up.

Her lips parted, the words sitting at the tip of her tongue.

Wyatt let out a heavy breath. “I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect wedding to go out on.”

Tori’s jaw clamped shut, and she shook her head. “Wait, go out on? What do you mean?” Why did it sound like this was his last wedding?

He looked down at her, a small smile on his lips. “Have you ever heard of the prince of Bedland Shores?”

“A prince…in Bedland Shores? No, I can’t say that I have.”

He scratched at something on the railing. “His father was this great king and an amazing ruler, always finding ways to make his kingdom bigger and better. So much so that the prince wanted to be just like his father one day. Now this prince was clever, charming but a little shy, funny—”

“Handsome?”

His face scrunched like he wasn’t sure. “You know, I’ve never really thought about it before, but yeah, I think you could say that. You know, objectively speaking.”

“Of course.”

He grinned before continuing. “This prince was all those things, and given his lineage of successful…kings, he knew that he would make a great ruler just like his father.

“But when his time came, he realized ruling was a lot harder and less fun than he’d dreamed it would be, and soon he started entrusting the work to his right-hand man. Well, right-hand woman, technically. And he thought he was happy that way until something changed the course of his life drastically. The same thing that changes most eligible men in their youth.”

“He started balding?”

“He met a woman.”

“Oh, right. Sure.”

He grinned beside her. “And not just any woman. A beautiful princess. She was smart, playful, funny, and an incredible ruler just like the prince’s father.”

“I think I’d like her.”

“Oh, you would. As if all that weren’t enough to enchant the prince, he soon learned that she held magic in her eyes. All it took was one meeting for the prince to see that this woman would be someone very special to him someday soon.”

Tori’s breath hitched as his eyes slid slowly up to meet hers, his gentle smile impossible not to return.

“But as he watched the princess in her kingdom, he realized how poorly he’d taken care of his own. He was the prince, supposed to be this great ruler, and yet he’d left it all in someone else’s hands. With renewed determination, he started working on a plan to grow and improve his kingdom and prove to himself that he could be that great ruler he’d wanted to be all those years ago. As he planned, though, the prince became irritable and moody until he was taking his wrath out on his innocent subjects.”

“Oh no.”

He nodded slowly. “Fortunately, a wise old mage showed him that his happiness did not have to rely on his old dream of a grand kingdom, that there were other roads in this prince’s story. Roads that would lead to a true happiness he’d never believed possible before, should he choose to take them. And the prince, realizing the mage was right, decided to step down from his throne and follow a new dream.”

“I see.” So this really was his last wedding. “How did the prince feel about leaving his kingdom?”

“A little sad at first, then excited to see what adventures his story would hold. Plus it helped that he no longer had to compete with the magic-eyed princess and her kingdom. When he realized that, I think he was more than ready for a new start.”

Here’s to a new start. It was what she’d ended up finding in this small town, and she felt happier now than she had the last ten years in Atlanta. She knew exactly how necessary one of those could be. “What will you do?”

“Not sure. I thought maybe I’d get back into photography, try to find a place that would hire me so that someone else could be the boss for a change.”

Tori perked up, a metaphorical light bulb cutting on over her head. “I happen to know a place looking for a photographer…that is, if you don’t mind working for an old business rival.”

He grinned. “I think I could be okay with that if you really mean it.” His smile slipped a fraction of an inch. “You do mean it, right?”

“I do. I’ve been thinking about how helpful it would be to have my own in-house photographer for our wedding gigs. It would mean more business for us, and one fewer vendor to have to book. And I was also thinking…” She hesitated, not sure how he’d take this next one after his whole speech about starting over.

“What?”

She squared her shoulders. “How would you feel about being a wedding stylist? You’d still get to do the parts of weddings you love, the concepts and colors and bringing an idea to life. But you’d work for me, so I could handle the actually planning and scheduling and the business side of things. What do you think?”

“I think that sounds like my dream job. It’s all my favorite parts of wedding planning but without all the boring stuff.”

“And you wouldn’t feel weird working for me?”

One of his brows shot up. “On the contrary. I am quite looking forward to it. In fact…” He took a step closer, leaving less than a foot of space between them. “Now that we are no longer business rivals, I have a very important question.”

Tori’s breaths turned quick and shaky. “Okay, shoot.”

He gazed into her eyes for several long seconds, studying them the way he so often did. “Would you like to go to dinner with me tomorrow? And just so there’s no confusion, this will most definitely be a date.”

Her stomach flutters set off at a record speed. “I’d love that.”

The corners of his lips curved upward, and he took another step closer. Every inch of Tori crackled like static electricity just waiting to let go. His hand rose to cup her cheek, his thumb brushing gently over her skin.

Just when she thought she couldn’t take the wait anymore, he lowered his lips to hers in a soft kiss so sweet and gentle it sent goosebumps down her arms. His hand slid from her cheek into her hair. He pushed the kiss deeper, and she had to grip the sides of his dress shirt just to keep herself steady on her feet.

It was dizzying, everything she’d ever imagined it would be and yet somehow still better.

Wyatt eased his lips from hers, putting enough space between them to look into her eyes. “Huh.”

“What is it?” she asked, slightly out of breath.

He smiled softly. “They’re blue. With just a little bit of gold.”

The color that meant she was immeasurably happy.

“I believe it.” She pushed up on her toes and pressed her lips against his.

He kissed her back for only a second before pulling away a second time. “Would this be a bad time to ask about your interoffice dating policy?”

“Just kiss me again.”

He chuckled before doing exactly as she said. And this time, he didn’t pull away.

The End.

About the Author

A small-town Georgia girl, Shannon finds no greater joy than stepping into the lives and worlds created by the written word. Despite a severe aversion to reading as a child, Shannon has since found a passion for literature that she’s nurtured with incessant reading and a Bachelor’s degree in English. It’s this passion that lets her bring her own imagination to life. Living in Athens, Ga with her sister and their four-legged furry friends, she is almost always in the middle of a book, working on her own stories, or traveling to seek inspiration in the world around her.

Visit her website at ShannonStults.com.