Suddenly a Bride (18 page)

Elizabeth looked around her, at all the people who seemed to be collectively holding their breath as Will’s proposal played out on the big screen in center field.

“If I say no we’ll have ruined everyone’s evening, won’t we?” she whispered to him as he got to his feet.

“If you say no, I’ll have to move to Alaska and hide out in a cave,” he told her, taking her hands in his. “Say yes, Elizabeth. I want to spend the rest of my life loving you.”

A small smile began playing around the corners of her mouth. He was so sophisticated, so handsome…and such a loveable dope. “I’d miss you if you moved to Alaska.”

“So it’s a yes?” He really seemed worried.

“It’s a yes,” she told him, and then put her hands against his chest as he moved to kiss her. “But only because I love you. I love you with all my heart.”

There was a lot of cheering going on as Will kissed her, but Elizabeth heard only her sons’ simultaneous exclamations of “Oh,
yucky!
”

That is until the lady in the next row down exclaimed, “I got it! I got it all! I told you, Tom, this new phone would come in handy. Video
and
sound! Hey, you two want me to send you a copy?”

E
xactly one month, three days and six hours after Elizabeth had walked into Second Chance Bridal and made a fool of herself by crying all over Chessie Burton, she was walking toward the rose-covered gazebo on Richard’s estate, her hand on his arm as he hummed along with the string quartet he had managed to produce out of his magic bag of tricks.

Ahead of her, Chessie, dressed in a simple blue bridesmaid’s gown that she’d confided had seen more than one wedding, but she still loved it, kept the pace purposely slow.

Danny and Mikey walked behind Chessie, each carrying a satin pillow heart, Elizabeth’s wedding ring on one of them, Will’s on the other. They were supposed
to lead the small procession, but when Chessie suggested a dress rehearsal a few hours earlier it became clear that the boys thought “slow and measured” was a synonym for “full speed ahead.”

They were so handsome, her boys, Jamie’s boys. Although they knew their father only through photographs and the stories she told them about him, Will had made it clear that he would do his best in helping her raise her sons—but never at the expense of Jamie’s memory.

For now the boys called him coach, but they’d come to her only this morning to point out that their friend Todd had a dad, and they’d like to have a dad, too, if that was all right with her. She’d kissed and hugged them both so hard they’d squirmed and asked her if she was going to cry.

Someday, maybe very soon, Will would hear himself be called dad by her two boys. Someday, not that far from now, maybe he’d hear other children call him dada, then daddy, and then, “Hey, Dad, can I borrow the car?”

The walk across the lawn and along the aisle set up between the rows of white chairs continued.

Elizabeth’s mother had flown to Allentown for the ceremony, and she was already dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief, even as Eve stood beside her, patting her on the back while managing to wink at Richard.

Matt Peters, Will’s best man and business partner, stepped down from the wide shallow steps of the
gazebo to offer his arm to Chessie, and Elizabeth experienced a small shock when she saw a quite intense look swiftly come and go in Matt’s eyes. Did Chessie know she had an admirer? It didn’t seem so, as she’d flashed him the same happy smile she bestowed on everyone.

But then Elizabeth forgot Chessie, forgot Matt, forgot her mother, the boys, or even, for a moment, who she was…because Will had moved out from behind the wall of white trellis and red roses, and was walking toward her.

A man, not a nervous boy.

A woman, not a giddy girl barely out of her teens.

They were here to promise themselves to each other.

A promise, yes, but also a stunningly serious commitment, made not with wide-eyed dreams of happily ever after, but with full knowledge that there would be both good times and bad, joys and heartaches, triumphs and defeats.

“Here we are, Elizabeth,” Will whispered to her after Richard had kissed her cheek and transferred her hand to Will’s forearm. “The most beautiful woman in the world and the world’s luckiest man. Are you ready for this?”

“I’ve never been so certain of anything in my life,” she told him, a single tear running her cheek. “I love you so much.”

She and Jamie had spoken their vows with smiles on their faces, firmly believing in the love and cherish part, barely concerned with the “until death do us part” that came at the end of those vows.

How little they had known, those two so deeply in love innocents. And maybe that had been a good thing. Would anyone dare to marry, dare to bring children into the world, if they were to first consider everything that could go wrong?

Yes,
she told herself as she gazed at Will.
People would. She and Will would. People did it every day. Because more than anything else, they loved each other. And love was the best reason, the only right reason….