Page 66 of Tempting Mr. Knightly

Knox stood very still while Tessa’s florist threatened his lapel with a sprig of ranunculus. He was in charcoal, the good charcoal. He looked over the florist’s shoulder and found her in one second flat, like he’d known exactly where she was all along.

After the wedding. Everything. I promise. K.

That had been Friday’s text, the last one. She’d stopped answering, because answering required choosing between the two women currently sharing her body, the one who wanted to throw a sheet tray at his head and the one who wanted to understand what was going on.

She turned back to the roses and kept piping, petal by petal. Her hands stayed steady. She was getting tired of being impressed by her own hands.

Devney found her at noon, already in her dress, carrying two coffees. She’d clearly been managing other people’s emergencies since dawn.

“The cake is obscene,” Devney said. “I mean that as the highest compliment available.”

“Accepted.”

“How are you?”

“Working.”

“Lucy.”

“Devney.” Lucy took the coffee. “It’s Tessa’s day. Whatever is wrong with my life keeps until tomorrow. It’s been informed of the schedule.”

Devney studied her over the cup. Whatever she knew, and Lucy was certain by now that she knew, she folded it away with visible effort.

“For what it’s worth,” Devney said, “Gabriel’s been watching Knox like you watch a proofing box. Like the timer matters.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. Tomorrow. Everybody keeps saying tomorrow. I’ve decided to believe them.”

The ceremony started at four. Lucy stood at the back with Marco and Bree, in the black dress she wore to weddings she was working and watched Tessa Sterling-to-be come down the aisle through panels of late sun while two hundred people stood and Gabriel lost his composure completely, gorgeously, without one ounce of shame.

Whatever had been alive between Knox and her on Thursday had gone two days in a gutting silence.

Knox stood beside him holding the rings. He held them like he held everything that mattered, with both hands and a visible awareness of what dropping them would cost. When Gabriel’s voice broke on the vows, Knox put one hand on his shoulder and kept it there until the sentence recovered.

Lucy watched that hand and felt her anger and her ache trade places, then trade back. She’d been so sure of him on Tuesday. She was so furious with him by that Sunday. He was twelve feet from her, and she had no idea which Knox she would get tomorrow.

The vows were said. The kiss landed. Applause broke from two hundred chairs and rang against the glass.

The reception spread into the garden behind, long tables under the open evening, and the dessert program ran like a service she’d drilled for, because she had. The cake came out at seven to an actual gasp, which Lucy received without expression and stored away to live on for a year. Tessa cried. Gabriel cried because Tessa cried. Ronan, holding his wife’s champagne and his own, informed the nearest table that he was experiencing joy and would categorize it later.

Knox found her at the dessert table at half past seven. For a breath neither of them said anything, and the not-saying had more in it than any sentence would have.

“Don’t,” Lucy finally said.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were about to.”

“I was looking for a word that wasn’t an apology.” He stood at the correct professional distance, hands at his sides, and looked at the cake instead of her, which was cowardice and mercy in the same gesture. “It’s the best thing you’ve ever made. You built it in four days, on no sleep, while I gave you every reason not to. I don’t have a word for that. I checked.”

“There’s a word.”

“Tell me.”

“Invoiced.”

His mouth tipped, and for two seconds he was hers again, the man at the sink with the dish towel. Then the weight came back into his shoulders, and Lucy set down the cake knife before her hands could do anything she’d regret in front of two hundred guests.