No Ordinary Day (31 page)

“Who says—”

“Sam,” Jeremy said, holding his cup away from his mouth, “I love you.” He put the cup down on the wet placemat, then pulled a box out of his shirt pocket. “In all my life, you are the only good thing that’s ever happened to me.” He looked up at her, and his eyes were gleaming, though he looked exhausted. “You’ve got every right and reason to kick my sorry butt to the curb; I’ve never deserved you, God knows. And if you tell me to hose off, you’re prolly makin’ a smart decision. But before I go drive off a mountaintop, which is all I feel like doin’ right now, I need to beg you one last time to give me another chance.”

He put the box down on the table across from him and nodded to the seat with his head.

Her eyes wide, Sam sat down across from him, ignoring the sharp glance from Louie.

She seized the small box and opened it.

The morning light coming through the blinds at the window made the small, central diamond sparkle as though it was set in one of the crowns in the tower of London like she had shown him once in
National Geographic
.

On either side of it were two small, clear pink stones.

“Rose zircon?” she asked as her voice clogged up with tears.

Jeremy nodded, his eyes locked on hers. “October, right?”

“Yeah.” Sam looked back up at him. “You remembered my birthstone.”

Jeremy ran his hand awkwardly over the hair at the back of his neck.

“You want me to get down on one knee?” he asked, his voice ragged.

Sam sat back against the upholstery, oblivious to Louie, who was getting off his stool.

“Yeah, I do,” she said, staring at the ring, then at Jeremy, then at the ring again. “An’ I want you to put it on me.”

“I’ll do that once I’ve said one last thing to you,” Jeremy said, looking hard at her. “You know I come with baggage—terrible baggage that’ll never get lost. I don’t know if it will come back to haunt me in the future, and that could be a problem for you. I told you my secret because it wouldn’t be fair to marry you without being honest about it. I
totally
understand if you don’t want to deal with it—or me.”

Sam’s eyes filled with tears. She started to smile, then saw Louie’s round stomach waddling over to their table.

“Buzz off, Louie,” she said in a threatening voice.

The manager froze in his tracks, then spun around and sauntered back to his newspaper and stool.

Sam’s eyes returned to Jeremy.

“Is there anything—
anything
—that you haven’t told me?”

Jeremy shook his head solemnly.

“You sure? Nothing?”

He thought for a long moment, then bowed his head. “OK, one thing.”

The smile fell away from Sam’s face. “What?”

Jeremy lifted his head and looked her in the eyes.

“Your nachos could use some Tabasco,” he said flatly.

Sam blinked. “That’s it?”

Jeremy nodded. “Otherwise, you’re perfect. And you know every secret I have now. The question is, are you willing to marry me in spite of everything you know about me?”

“I’ll let you know if you get down on one knee.”

Jeremy rose from the booth just as two older women and a man were making their way into the restaurant. He put up his hand, then got down on one knee.

“ ’Scuse me a minute, folks,” he said to the startled group, who stopped just past the doorway. He turned to Sam. “You are the best thing that has ever happened to me, Samantha Phyllis Melnicki. I don’t deserve you, but I’ll try real hard to be worthy of your love if you’ll marry me. So, uh, like, will you?”

She nodded, then smiled.

Jeremy took the little ring from the pasteboard box and slid it onto her finger. It took a moment to get past the knuckle, but once it did the fit was good.

He looked at her hand.

“Cool,” he said. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

The three people at the door applauded politely.

“I can’t,” Sam said regretfully. “I’m the only waitress on—and Louie’s useless—so drink your coffee and I’ll wrangle you up some toast and bacon while I wait on these folks. Then we’ll go home and never come back here.”

“Works for me,” Jeremy said, returning to his seat. “Wheat toast, if ya got it.”

He stared down into his coffee cup, hoping he had done the right thing.

Sam, grabbing water and menus for the three new customers, was hoping the same.

‡

ELEVEN MONTHS LATER, June

L
ucy was busy
applying her lipstick when the door of her room in the Obergrande Hotel burst open suddenly.

Kelly Moran, who was helping her with her hair, carefully winding pearls through her upswept curls, dropped the rattail comb and cursed quietly.

Which was good, because the open door was admitting five little girls, all of whom were dressed in white flower girl dresses, crowns of white daisies, tiny lilies-of-the-valley, and white violets in their hair.

“Oh, my goodness!” Lucy laughed as they crowded around her in her satin dressing gown, hugging her and dancing in place. “Look at you! What beautiful princesses!”

“You’re getting married in your
bathrobe
?” Corinne demanded, a look of disapproval on her pretty face.

“No, no, I have a princess dress too,” Lucy said.

“Well, that’s good, ’cause a bathrobe would be
embarrassing
,” Sloane decreed like a style maven.

“Miss Sullivan, will you be our teacher again next year?” asked Elisa, backing up and plopping herself in Lucy’s lap.

Lucy kissed the top of her head of beautiful, almost-black hair.

“No, honey,” she said, checking her makeup in the mirror again and discovering she had dotted her teeth with lipstick. “I’m moving away with Prince Charming.”

“
What?
Why?” Grace asked, her bottom lip suddenly quivering.

“He’s finished with the dam project,” Lucy explained.

“Miss Sullivan,” said Sarah, “let’s keep our talk nice, please.”

Lucy laughed out loud. “You remember that from last year?”

“Yes,” Sarah said, looking at her crown of daisies in the mirror and straightening it. “It’s about the only thing I do remember.”

Lucy took note, but didn’t say anything in response.

“Anyway, he spent the last year fixing the dam, building the new one, and helping design the buildings and houses that got lost in the flood or the fire, like the school and Pancake Heaven. He has other jobs to do for the Army, and we need to go where his work is,” she continued, touching up her eye shadow with her pinky.

“Where will you live?” asked Elisa.

“In a castle,” Sloane retorted. “Duh.”

“I’m sure it will be a castle to us,” Lucy said, pulling one of Sloane’s curls straight and tucking it into her crown. “OK, time to get into the dress.”

As the little girls danced in excitement, Kelly and Lucy went to the closet, a rustic Adirondack rough-hewn mahogany room with, in contrast, satin-covered hangers, and pulled out the dress.

While the flower girls oooohed and ahhhhhed and worked themselves into a frenzy, Kelly helped her into it, a classic style, sleeveless with a dropped waist that accentuated her slim figure and the curves Ace was so fond of. It was made of blush satin, and picked up all the pink tones in her otherwise-alabaster skin. The skirt was wide and simple with a sweep train.

The result received high ratings from all six judges.

“All right,” Lucy said once she was turned out properly, “let’s head for the limo.”

“Where’s your bouquet?” Sloane demanded as they each picked up their basket of flower petals. “You can’t be a bride without a bouquet. It’s
embarrassing
.”

“Well, actually, Sloane, I
don’t
have a bouquet,” Lucy said. “But I do have a flower.”

She picked up the long-stemmed red rose, around which was wrapped her grandmother’s rosary.

“Let’s go.”

At the top
of Tree Hill Park, at the approach of dusk, stood three men beneath what had once been a grand Northern Red Oak, now a smooth, black form, without leaf or twig, but massive and beautiful nonetheless. The stains of fire had been washed gently away by the rain that had fallen since the night it had died. A long, horizontal arm stretched out as it always had when it was covered in leaves, a place where children climbed still.

Father Charlie looked down the hill to where the torches had all been set up to light the way of what would shortly be the new married couple.

“Here she comes,” he said to the young man who stood, attired in the dress uniform of the United States Army, a smile on his face that competed with the stars for brightness.

Ace glanced around at the people standing a little farther down the hill, still encircling the tree. His best man, Jordan Nguyen, his longtime friend and bunkmate in the Guard, was grinning almost as widely as he was, happy to have been asked, and thrilled to be there. His mother and sister had traveled in from Colorado and were beaming at him. Mrs. Cox and the other teachers had formed a group, whispering excitedly.

As the bells of the carillon at Our Mother of Sorrows began to play the hymn of vespers, evening time, a procession of gorgeous little girls in white dresses and floral crowns began to ascend the hill, wiggling excitedly but staying mostly in step and time. Behind them, Kelly Moran followed, her dress a deep rose-red.

“It’s going to be a blessed life for you both from now on,” said Father Charlie, watching the bride begin to ascend the hill on the arm of Mr. Grimes. “The two of you have gone through more heartache in your time together than most people suffer in a lifetime.”

“Exactly,” Ace said, jockeying to get a better view. “All the bad is behind us now. What could be worse that what we’ve already vanquished?”

Then his power of speech was taken away from him by the sight of his bride.

Later, he would admit that he remembered little of the ceremony other than the sight of the beautiful woman standing next to him, pledging their love as so many other lovers had done in the past.

“We wrote our own vows, so it’s not like I didn’t know what I was agreeing to,” he told her on their wedding night, soaking in the two-person tub in their honeymoon suite. “But the picture of you in my memory, standing beneath the tree, will be the last thing I see before my eyes when I die.”

Lucy had just smiled, leaned forward in the soapy water, and kissed him.

But for now, when their ceremony was complete, their union pledged, and they were finally husband and wife, a few dramatic whispers had issued forth from the peanut gallery.

“Miss Sullivan?” Lucy recognized Sloane’s voice, followed by Corinne’s, correcting her.

“She’s Mrs. Evans now. Didn’t you listen?”

“Mrs. Evans? Mrs. Evans?”

As the assembly of guests chuckled, Lucy had turned around and smiled down at her students, the children she had walked through water to save.

“Yes, ladies?”

“Since you just married Prince Charming, are you gonna live happy ever after now?”

Lucy laughed. “Yes. Yes, I am. Very happily ever after.”

Father Charlie and Mr. Grimes had shepherded the guests down the hill, leaving the couple alone beneath the tree in the last rays of the setting sun.

Ace let his hand come to rest on his new wife’s cheek.

“I have one more thing I would like to do beneath Obergrande, before we head off to the reception,” he said, his eyes gleaming.

Lucy inhaled. “All right. What?”

“I’d like to start a tradition.” He got down on one knee and placed his hands on her hips.

Lucy stared at him. “What are you doing?”

“Shhhh,” Ace said. “Just listen—‘Mrs. Evans, I want to thank you for marrying me. It’s the greatest honor I will ever have bestowed on me.’ ”

The new Mrs. Evans laughed. “This is the tradition, passed on to a new generation?”

“Yes.”

“And those are the exact words your father said to your mother?”

“Yes.”

“Do you always have to kneel?”

“No, just tonight.”

She looked at him in amusement. “Why tonight?”

Ace leaned forward and kissed her abdomen.

“I wanted our boys to hear it from the very beginning—even if we don’t start on them any time soon.”

Tears welled in Lucy’s eyes. She pulled Ace to a stand and put her arms around his neck, then rested her nose against his.

“Copy that,” she whispered.

~ End ~

Polly Becks is a professional writer and has taught Spanish at the high school level for more than 25 years. She attended the State University of New York, where she met and fell in love with her husband of over 30 years.

She has a love/hate relationship with cats.

For more information, go to
www.pollybecks.com
and
www.facebook.com/PollyBecks
.

The first four books of this spectacular new series are being released each month from January 5, 2015, to April 1, 2015. Get yours now!