Page 39 of Save the Date
“Good luck with the wedding,” Cullen said, realizing he’d been dismissed.
“Thanks,” Cara said. “And good luck with yours.”
He arched one eyebrow in an implied challenge. “We’ll see, won’t we?”
16
The wedding party looked to Cara like a group of trick-or-treaters who’d gotten lost on their way to Halloween. The bridesmaids wore matching short black spandex dresses that resembled overgrown tube tops, over black fishnet hose and short black bootees. The groomsmen wore black leather pants, and T-shirts with custom screen-printed designs featuring snarling befanged monsters.
The bridegroom was dressed in black leather pants, too, but instead of a screen-printed shirt he wore a metal-studded black leather vest over his bare chest. And he’d shaved his head for the occasion.
Laurie-Beth Winship’s choice of a wedding gown was equally quirky—she’d designed it herself, with a bodice made of her grandmother’s tightly laced 1950s corset, and a skirt made of layers of another grandmother’s Irish lace curtains—but somehow, the wacky creation totally suited her pale complexion and long red hair.
It was a remarkably relaxed group. There were no hysterics, no panic attacks, no death threats issued. Even Payton, the edgy investment banker/punk rocker groom, seemed to be having a good time, as he and Laurie-Beth held their two-year-old son, Levi, between them as they swayed to “Brown-Eyed Girl.”
Best of all, the wedding arch stood firm throughout the ceremony, even when little Levi managed to yank off one of the deer antlers while his parents were saying their vows.
It was actually a very original party, Cara decided, happy that she’d made a deal with the wedding photographer to document everything for her look-book at the shop. Although most of her Savannah brides still clung tightly to tradition, the Winship-Jelks wedding would show that she could deliver the goods no matter how outrageous the request. She was getting positively misty-eyed, sipping her second glass of blanc-de-blanc champagne, leaning against one of the steel support columns, watching the swirl of black-clad guests, as they laughed and danced and table-hopped around the cavernous warehouse, the multiple bloodred candles sending their shadows dancing across the rustic walls.
“I notice you’re not wearing black tonight,” came a low voice in her ear. “Even though the bride decreed an all-black dress code for her guests.”
Cara recognized the voice at once. She didn’t bother to turn and address him face-to-face. “I’m not a guest. I’m just the florist.”
He stood so close she could smell his pine-scented soap, feel the tickle of his beard on her bare shoulder, which sent a delicious shiver down her spine, which she instantly regretted.
“And yet, here you are. What color would you call that dress of yours?”
She looked down at the vintage orangish-pink silk cocktail dress she’d found on eBay. It was an old favorite that she’d worn to half a dozen weddings since buying it. It was obviously homemade, with sweet pinked seams, a metal zipper sewn into the side seam that dated it to the sixties, thin spaghetti straps, and hand-appliquéd daisies around the hem of the frothing full skirt.
“Hmm. I guess I’d call this coral.”
“Kinda pretty,” he said grudgingly.
“Kinda?” Now she did turn around. What she saw made her raise one questioning eyebrow. Jack Finnerty had ignored Laurie-Beth’s blackout edict, too. Instead, he wore a blue seersucker suit, a pale yellow button-down shirt, no tie, and battered brown Topsiders on his sockless feet. “You sweet-tongued devil, you.”
He was sipping a Moon River pale ale from a plastic cup. “I gather you did all these, uh, arrangements tonight. Mind if I ask what’s with all the black flowers and skulls and heavy metal?”
Her smile was tight. “The bride and groom tell me their dreams. I make it happen.”
She sipped her champagne and wished he’d go away.
“Do you do all the flowers for all the weddings in Savannah?”
“Just the cool ones. Do you come to all the weddings in Savannah?” she countered.
“Not all of ’em,” Jack said. “I guess I get around. It just happens I went to school with Laurie-Beth’s older brother. And Laurie-Beth and I went out a couple times. You know, way back in the day before she met Payton.”
“You went to school with Austin?” Cara asked.
“Technically. He was a couple years ahead of me in school, so we never hung out together much.”
“I see,” Cara said, gazing across the room at the brother in mention, Austin Winship, a towering six-foot-five presence, who at that moment seemed to be in danger of teetering facedown onto the grits bar the caterer had set up in the far corner.
Jack followed her eyes. “Ol’ Austin seems to have gotten pretty caught up in the spirit of the wedding festivities. Is he actually a real justice of the peace or something?”
“Oh, no,” Cara assured him. “Payton was dead set on not having a real minister for the wedding, so Austin got himself ordained into some nondenominational denomination, just for tonight.”
“Is this one of those peyote-eating churches, by any chance?” Jack asked. “Because even a casual observer, like myself, can tell that Austin seems to have ingested some kind of pharmacologically enhanced substance.”
