Married by June (13 page)

This particular edition with its stirring watercolors belonged to her soul.

She opened to the first page and drank in the opening words. Slipshod history and a poem that sometimes forced its rhyme. She loved every bit of it. On one of their first dates, she’d dragged him to see the copy in the Smithsonian. That was back before things got complicated—when she was just flying high because she’d hooked up with a guy who turned her on and kept her laughing. A guy who had spent summers working as a tour guide in the Capitol building and wasn’t bored by her idea of a fun Saturday at the museum. She’d been happy with that guy.

He came to stand behind her, looking over her shoulder at the page. “I was pacing around Bailey’s office this morning, trying not to kill my dad, and it was there, on his bookshelf. I never noticed it before. He got it as a gift from one of his old professors.”

“It’s beautiful. I can’t believe he’d let you take it. Doesn’t he want it?”

Cooper shook his head. “He wants you to have it. Honest.”

She didn’t know what to say. How could she thank him or Bailey for this?

“The last time I held this book I was five.” She glanced up at him. “I told you I stole it, right?”

He laughed. “You stole a book?”

“I can’t believe I never told you this story. It was a huge scandal. We were living in Chicago and I had just started kindergarten in this super exclusive private school. I found this book in the library and checked it out, but no one told me about renewing things. I had it in my mind that I could only take it out once. The day I had to return it, I was standing there in the library and I couldn’t bear to give it up.”

“You poor kid. You’ve got the best book ever in your hands and you’re thinking you have to give it back?”

“And I’d never see it again.”

“So you stole it.”

“Tucked my shirt into my underpants and stuffed the book down the front of my jumper.”

Cooper eyed the book. “I’m trying to picture how you hid it there. It’s kind of big and you were…five?”

“That was how I got caught. The teacher noticed that I suddenly looked like a box.”

“Did they call the cops?”

“Just my mom. I was mortified. I was sent to the principal’s office and everyone lectured me. It was awful.”

“You still love the book, though?”

“Once they explained renewals to me, I took it out twenty-five times. I used to pretend it was mine.” She turned to the last illustration. It showed Paul Revere walking home with his arm over his horse’s neck. They were both draped in an American flag. The artist hadn’t been so big on historical accuracy in his illustrations, but he knew how to make her heart beat faster. “When we moved, I think I missed the book more than anything else.”

Cooper put his hands on her shoulders, kneading with gentle pressure. Then he lifted her hair and kissed the side of her neck under her ear, sending shivers down into her spine.

“You want to read me a bedtime story?” he whispered.

T
HEY GOT READY FOR
bed and then lay down together. She skipped the fancy nightgown and just wore her usual shorts. He propped pillows behind his back and she put her head in the crook of his shoulder. He kept his arm around her while she read. He stroked her hair and her shoulder, but that was it. When she finished, she propped the book up on her nightstand so she’d see the cover as soon as she woke up and turned out the light. She lay back down and squirmed until her backside was resting against him and she could slide one leg between his.

“Good night, Jorie,” he said.

She patted his shoulder and then there was quiet. Jorie thought he’d fallen asleep until a few seconds later when she shifted positions to get closer to him. “Taft.”

“What did you say?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Trust me. It was nothing.”

W
ORKING FOR
A
LICE
wasn’t the easiest thing Jorie had ever done. Her friend had built her bakery’s reputation on hard work, skill and a devotion to customer service that was almost pathological. Eliot’s issues with the register and price chart were forgiven because he was perfection itself when difficult customers needed something.

Jorie did her best, but she had to admit the only part of the bakery business that really got her fired up was the packaging. Alice had fifteen different adorable boxes and matching bags to suit all sorts of baked goods. Jorie’s favorite was the tray that held six cupcakes in individual boxes. Each Lucky’s package could be tied with string dispensed from an elegantly simple machine.

Jorie enjoyed placing crystallized violets on the cake Alice had made for a bridge club luncheon, and Eliot turned out to be surprisingly funny.

Alice was grateful she was there and she chatted up Jorie’s wedding planning business to every customer who looked even remotely like a candidate.
Jorie couldn’t remember the number of times she’d had to shake someone’s hand while Alice listed her many virtues. This quest to revitalize her business was exasperating. And humiliating. And so sweetly supportive that Jorie couldn’t disappoint Alice by telling her to forget it. She hadn’t gotten any appointments out of her efforts, but she supposed it was hard to imagine the woman making change in the bakery as a wedding planner.

Everything would have been just fine if she weren’t so completely, bone-wearingly bored. During the lull after lunch and before Eliot had to leave for history class, she ducked into the back where Alice was setting up for a cake tasting that evening. She felt a stab of envy. Alice’s business was thriving enough that she could afford to hire and retain extra counter helpers, even if one half of them was incompetent.

“Who’s the bride?” she asked.

Alice handed her a menu card.

“Grace Blackwell? You’re doing Grace Blackwell’s wedding?”

“Fingers crossed. She hasn’t signed the contract yet.”

“Man, I wanted that wedding.” Jorie took another look at the card. “Is she really doing pink and powder-blue as her colors? What is it, a baby shower theme?”

“Don’t be mean.”

Jorie slumped into one of the white chairs. She wondered if it was the same chair she’d been sitting in when Cooper broke up with her. “Have you ever had anyone else get dumped during their cake tasting? Or was I the first?”

“The first in the bakery, but I’ve lost commissions because the wedding got called off. You have, too, I’m sure.”

“Remember the Garvin-Houston fiasco? What was that whack doodle’s name? Felicia, right? Remember when she told us her monogram was
F-G-H,
alphabetical order!” She made her voice rise at the end, the same way FGH’s voice always did. Sharp and shrill.

The bride and groom had requested an intimate setting where they could hold the ceremony and the reception without having to travel between locations. A nice plan, until FGH and the best man took off in one of the wedding limos while the groom waited at the front of the room with the justice of the peace. Mrs. Garvin-Houston dumped an entire bowl of shrimp over the head of the groom’s mom. Punches were thrown. Dresses ripped. The cake got knocked over and trampled. Jorie slipped on the icing and tore the knee out of her favorite black pants. Nobody got their deposit back for that one.

“Yeah, that was quite a night.”

She handed Grace’s menu card back to Alice. “I wanted to do Grace Blackwell’s wedding and I couldn’t even get a callback. If I had a contract like that, I’d be back in business.”

Alice dropped the card on the table. “I can talk to her. You want an interview?”

“She signed with Something Blue at least two months ago. She’s not going to talk to me now.”

If Alice had had a skinny black mustache, she’d have twirled the ends. “First of all, she needs to fire whomever she hired because those colors are hideous, and second, I can guarantee she’ll talk to you if I ask her.”

“What? Why?”

“When we were about twenty, we went to Los Angeles together for a few months. Grace did a very bad thing with a very bad man. She does not want anyone to find out about this bad thing or this bad man. Between you and me, she thinks I have a picture, which I don’t.” Alice smoothed the menu card on the table. “She’s always extremely accommodating to me.”

Alice pulled out her cell and made the call. Sure enough, Grace said she’d like nothing better than to meet Alice’s friend, the wedding planner.

Jorie went home about an hour before Grace was supposed to arrive at Alice’s for the meeting. She opened the French doors to her office and sat at
her desk for the first time in days. The plans for the
Rebel Without a Cause
wedding were still tacked on her inspiration wall. If she got Grace Blackwell to hire her, she’d be back in business.

Ace this one meeting and she could be up to her neck in wedding details. Brides and flowers and all the things that went into making one dream day.

Wedding planning was something she knew how to do. It wasn’t just her taste and creativity. She could read the deep wishes underlying a couple’s conversation.

She didn’t have enough time to do a full treatment the way she would have for a regular client meeting, so when she followed Alice into the tasting room that evening, she had the quick and dirty three-page binder she’d pulled together. It was pretty good considering how little time they’d had, and there wasn’t a hint of pink or powder-blue anywhere.

Grace, a tall, thin woman with a long face and fashionably straight blond hair, was talking to Alice.

They stopped when they saw Jorie, but not before she heard the words “James Dean.”
Perfect.
Her fame preceded her.

Grace scanned Jorie from head to toe. “So you’re Jorie, huh? I’ve heard about you. Nadine Richford said you suggested a war theme for her wedding.”

Jorie choked. “She misunderstood.”

Alice stepped in quickly before she could explain further. “Not everyone gets Jorie’s concepts, Grace. She’s very avant-garde.”

“You know how it is when you’re making art,” Jorie said. Alice had told her to be sure to praise Grace’s “career” in three low-budget films and one straight-to-video slasher flick.

Grace nodded. “Nadine has very pedestrian taste. She wore a pearl choker in her engagement photo.”

Right then Jorie started to see the concept. Grace would want something utterly original, something on the cutting edge that also was traditional enough to keep her front and center. Maybe steampunk—the modernist twist on Victorian styling that was so popular in graphic novels right now. She bet Grace would love it if her theme was a little challenging. She’d relish the chance to explain her complicated and artsy self to her friends and family.

Jorie knew what she needed to say next. She’d have to walk a careful line between enticement and flattery, but she could tell that Grace was ripe for the picking. If she followed this conversation through, she had a great chance of signing a contract for a huge, well-funded wedding. The drawback was that she’d have to spend the next year with Grace Blackwell talking over every detail of her wedding, and in the end, what would she have? A gorgeous
celebration, the perfect day. That was what Jorie was selling, what she’d always sold.

And then what? After the perfect day, what would her clients have? Was she contributing to the illusion that people could make a perfect marriage if they had the perfect wedding?

She knew what she was supposed to do, but she couldn’t make herself say the words that would lead to the deal. “Um, Grace? It was great to meet you, but I have another appointment.”

“Wait, what?” Alice gave her an are-you-insane look.

“I thought we were going to talk about my wedding,” Grace protested.

Jorie patted her shoulder. “You should ditch Something Blue. That’s my advice. If you go with them, your wedding is going to be insipid. Like vanilla pudding. Like something Nadine would like. Call Aria Hall and ask her about steampunk. She can pull it off, and I guarantee you won’t see a hint of powder-blue all day.”

“But you don’t have to call Aria when you have Jorie. You could do a killer steampunk wedding for Grace, since it was your idea. Right, Jorie?”

Alice was trying so hard for her and Jorie just wanted to let it all drop.

“You know what would really make your wed
ding stand out?” Jorie asked. “If you did a Wish Registry.”

“I heard about yours, but doesn’t that mean you don’t get presents?”

“You can do half and half, or a limited number of wishes. It’s up to you. What you do get is good press. I guarantee if you fill a couple of wishes through your wedding registry, you’ll get your picture taken.”

“I’m intrigued,” Grace said.

Jorie recited Miriam’s phone number while Grace put it into her phone. Then she headed out the back door to the street. Alice came out a few seconds later.

“What just happened?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” Jorie said. “Can we not talk about it? I really do have to go, Alice, but thank you. Thank you so much for setting that meeting up and for caring enough about me to keep trying to find clients and for being here with me.”

Alice shrugged. “It wasn’t that big a deal. I love it when I can mention L.A. to Grace. She’s so bitchy to everyone—it’s good if I remind her that she’s vulnerable.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

C
OOPER WAS AT HER PLACE
when she got there. He’d started stopping by every evening when he finished
with his dad. She said hello, but went right past him into her office.

“What’s going on? You get a contract?”

“No,” she said. “Alice got me a meeting with a client and it was all going great and then I realized I had to get out of there before I took the job.”

“What?”

“I don’t like weddings anymore. I’m not sure I ever really did.”

He hovered in the doorway.

“You know why I became a wedding planner?” She grabbed a stack of boxes off the shelf and piled them near the door. A white wire basket filled with fabric swatches from linens she used at showers was next.

Cooper shrugged. “I assumed you liked weddings.”

“No. My mom liked weddings. She loved weddings. As you know. After college, I was in Arizona staying with her and Marie at the spa. I didn’t have a job yet and I really didn’t want to take out the loans I’d need for grad school. But I was signed up for the LSAT and the GRE. I just needed a little time to figure things out. While I was there, Marie had a couple come in who wanted to do a destination his-and-hers bachelor-party thing. Marie asked my mom and me to help plan it. By the time the date
for the GRE came around, I had a wedding booked and Marie made me a set of business cards.”

She opened the cupboard beneath the bookcase next to the windowsill. The shelves were tightly packed with photo boxes where she stored a lot of her ideas. She wiggled the top box, trying to pull it out, and when it finally popped free, she sat down hard on her tailbone. “Damn it!”

Cooper came into the room and sat next to her. The contents of the box, labeled and color-coded index cards on which she’d glued or stapled photos, swatches, even paint samples, were scattered in front of them on the floor. He carefully pulled them back into a pile and started straightening them.

“Stop,” she said. “I’m going to get a garbage bag.”

“Jorie,” Cooper said quietly. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t want this anymore. I don’t want any of it. I don’t want this to be my life.” She held up a card showing a bouquet of calla lilies.

“But you’re good at it,” he said. “Don’t sell your self short.”

“I don’t want to be good at it. I want…” She sighed. “I want something else.”

“What?”

She stood up and used her foot to slide the empty
box and stacks of spilled cards under the desk. She’d come back later and clean up.

“Something that lasts,” she said. “I’ve been in business nine years,” she told Cooper. “In the beginning I was scraping by, but then I got established and I could pick and choose my commissions.” She stretched to open the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out a binder, which she dropped in his lap. “These are my records—one for every wedding. It’s fifty-four couples.”

“That’s a lot of happy people. People you helped. People who have wonderful memories because of you.”

“Happy couples? Want to bet?” She sat at the desk and turned her computer on. “The records are public, you know. You can see exactly how long a marriage lasts because it’s all recorded nice and neat at the courthouse. Give me a name.”

He started flipping through the binder. Each couple had a page. Their names and a photo were at the top, along with the date of the wedding and any of the other parties she coordinated for them, including showers and the rehearsal. Some people let her plan their bachelorette parties. She kept a database of wedding party members because it was so much easier to pick up a contract from someone who’d seen her work before. She called them legacies.

“Celine Marsh,” Cooper said.

“I remember her. She invited six-hundred and seventy people for the Case Mansion, which has a strict limit of four hundred. Luckily, either she wasn’t very well-liked or a lot of her friends and family were invited to a competing event because she ended up with a little over three hundred guests. She was furious, but I kissed every single
No
reply that came in.”

Cooper was smiling. The story was funny—now. It had been terrifying at the time, but she’d learned a huge lesson about how to keep control.

The search results were on the screen. “Divorced before the year was up.”

He turned the page. “Fiona Dempsey-Foley.”

She already knew the answer to that inquiry. “That wedding was beautiful. She was a step dancer and wanted this embroidered plaid fabric at the reception. I thought it wouldn’t work, but we made table runners that the guests loved. She saved them. Said she was going to use them at the christening when they had their first kid. She cheated on him, I heard. Their marriage was annulled, but at least it was before they had a baby.”