Page 49 of Save the Date
“Hope not,” Cara said, standing. She looked down at her phone. Two texts from Bert had popped up while she was dealing with this latest snafu.
WHERE R U?
And then,NEED THOSE DAMN FLOWERS.
Wendy followed her to the office door. “I hear business is looking up. You’re doing the Trapnell wedding?”
“Damn!” Cara said. “Word travels fast.”
“It’s a small town,” Wendy said with a smile. “People talk.”
“People like Cullen Kane?”
“I think he’s jealous of you,” Wendy told her.
“Me? I’m no threat to him.”
“Anybody who gets what he thinks he wants is a threat to somebody like Cullen Kane,” Wendy advised. “Remember that.”
21
Bert was standing at the worktable, fastening sprigs of rosemary and daisies together with floral tape. He looked up as Cara came in the door, weighed down with the flowers.
“Thought maybe you’d been abducted by aliens,” he said, putting down the boutonniere he’d been working on. “Everything okay?”
“Grrr” was her only answer. “Ask me later. I’ve got to get moving with these bouquets and arrangements.”
Fortunately, Maya had chosen only two attendants for her wedding. Cara went to work first on the most important bouquet. And as she bunched together the sunny reds, whites, and yellows for the bride’s bouquet, snipping their stems and stripping the lower leaves, she felt her anger and frustration melt away. She reached into the cooler and brought out a handful of lemon leaves she’d trimmed from the tree in the courtyard garden, and tucked the glossy leaves in and around the flowers, turning the bouquet in her hand as she worked, studying it to make sure it worked from all angles.
She put the bouquet down in a Mason jar of water on the worktable, stepped back, and thought. It needed a touch of drama, she decided. After another moment, she walked out the back door into the garden, and stood there, hands on her hips, surveying what she had in bloom.
Finally, she spied the happy green and yellow zebra-striped leaves of the canna plant that had been left behind by a long-ago gardener. Cara wasn’t normally a fan of the lowly canna, but she’d loved this zany striped foliage the moment she spotted it among the weeds and underbrush in the courtyard. With her scissors, she cut two of the long, straplike leaves and brought them back inside.
Bert watched while she split the leaves in half lengthwise, then wound them around and around the bouquet stem, like so much living ribbon, finally fastening the ends together with a large vintage enameled daisy brooch from the 1960s.
“Ohmygod, that’s awesome,” he laughed, when she held the bouquet up for inspection. “It’s so Maya! She’ll love it.”
***
Maya Gaines knew what suited her. She was Amerasian, petite, just over five feet tall, with a mop of shiny dark curls. Her wedding dress was a short, pale yellow eyelet frock with spaghetti straps and a yellow satin bow at the waist. Her shoes were red ankle-strap heels, and instead of a veil she wore a narrow-brimmed straw fedora trimmed with yellow ribbon and a jaunty red fabric daisy.
She hopped up and down and hugged Cara when she walked into the K of C hall and saw the tables, with their white paper toppers and centerpieces of flowers and candy. Hanging from the ceiling at random heights were oversized red, yellow, and white tissue-paper flowers Cara had assigned for Maya and her sisters to create.
“I love it,” Maya exclaimed, twirling around and touching the Mason jars. “It’s what I dreamed about, only better. Twizzlers! And Pixy Stix! Wait until Jared sees these.”
Cara laughed. “I really don’t think Jared is going to get all that excited about Twizzlers on his wedding day.”
“You don’t know Jared,” Maya replied. “He’s a total candyholic.”
***
The ceremony was brief, but sweet. Standing before a beaming white-haired Asian man, who Cara later learned was the bride’s maternal grandfather, Maya and Jared pledged to love each other and play nice, and hold hands through every adventure life would bring them.
When they’d exchanged rings and kissed, the crowd of around a hundred in the hall roared their approval and clapped and whistled.
Cara and Bert, who’d stayed for the ceremony, exchanged a look. “What do you think?” Cara whispered.
“They’ll make it,” Bert said solemnly. “She’s a sweetheart, and Jared’s the first non-asshole she’s dated. I mean, they’ve lived together for three years, the whole time Maya was in school.”
