Oops, Wrong Bride? Fine. No Wedding. novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Father-Daughter Dance

Liza crashes the reception to take back her own cake and watches her father dance with Shelby and give away her mother's bakery.

I looked down at the text standing on the church steps.

Then I put the phone face down on top of my suitcase.

Hayes was already halfway to the corner. He didn't look back to see if I was coming.

I liked that more than I wanted to.

His truck was an old green Ford with a dent in the tailgate and sawdust on the seats.

He swept the sawdust off with his forearm and held the door.

Getting a cathedral train into a pickup took both of us and a fair amount of swearing.

"There," he said, and shut the door on the last of the lace.

He got in, started the engine and didn't put it in gear.

"Where to?"

"I don't know yet. Somewhere with a bathroom so I can get these pins out."

"I've got a boatyard in Mount Pleasant. It has a bathroom. It's not a nice bathroom."

"Is there a bride in it?"

"Not lately."

I laughed. It came out of me sideways.

He looked over at me. Gray eyes, a white scar through one eyebrow, a beard that looked like he'd trimmed it for the occasion and lost interest halfway.

"You okay?"

"My father just told me to come back and smile in the background of my own wedding photos."

He was quiet a second.

"Gene paid for the reception?"

"He says he did."

"With what?"

I opened my mouth and shut it. I'd never once seen my father pay for anything that wasn't golf.

My phone buzzed again on the dashboard.

Shelby had posted a photo. The Harbor House ballroom, white roses, gold chairs.

My cake in the middle of it.

Four tiers. Lemon curd, Italian buttercream, sugar magnolias I'd sat up three nights shaping by hand.

The caption said, "Our cake is a dream!!"

"Turn around," I said.

"The boatyard's the other way."

"I know. Turn around. I want my cake."

Hayes looked at me for one long second.

Then he grinned, slow and wide, the first real smile I'd ever seen on him.

"Yes, ma'am."

The Harbor House sat on the Battery with the harbor shining behind it.

The valet took one look at my gown and opened the ballroom doors without asking.

The band was playing.

Not my quartet. A DJ with a laptop and a fog machine.

Trey and Shelby were turning in the middle of the dance floor in a white spotlight.

She wore a satin gown with a long slit up the leg.

And around her neck she wore my mother's pearls.

A single strand. My grandmother's. They'd been in a velvet box in my father's dresser since the funeral.

I stopped in the doorway.

Somebody saw me and stopped talking, and then the next table, and then the next.

The DJ's song ran on into a room that had gone silent.

Shelby saw me over Trey's shoulder.

Her face did something quick and ugly before the smile came back.

"Oh my God, you guys," she said, loud and bright. "She came! I knew she'd come around."

I walked straight past the dance floor to the cake table.

My magnolias were wilting a little under the lights.

I lifted the top tier off its pillars with both hands. Six inches of lemon cake on a gold board.

"What are you doing?" Shelby called.

"I baked it," I said. "I'll eat it."

Somebody at the bridesmaids' table laughed, and then caught herself.

Hayes took the tier out of my hands so I could pick up my train.

"I'll carry the cake," he said. "You do the walking out."

We'd made it as far as the bar when the DJ's music changed.

A slow country song. The one about a father and his little girl.

"And now," the DJ said, "the father-daughter dance!"

I turned around.

My father was walking out onto the dance floor.

Shelby went into his arms like she'd done it a thousand times.

He put his cheek against her hair and closed his eyes.

My father had never danced with me in my life. Not at prom. Not at my mother's fortieth.

He'd told me he didn't dance.

"Her own daddy never showed up for her," a woman at the next table whispered. "Isn't that sweet of Gene?"

The song ended.

My father took the microphone from the DJ and tapped it.

"I'm not much for speeches," he said in his soft deacon voice.

The room laughed politely.

"But I've watched this girl grow up across the street from me since she was a baby. She's always been like family."

Shelby put her hand over her heart.

"So Shelby, Trey, my gift to you is the place that's been my whole life."

He raised his glass.

"Sweetgrass is yours. The bakery, the building, all of it. Congratulations, sweetheart."

The room burst into applause.

I couldn't hear it.

Sweetgrass was my mother's.

She'd painted the sign herself the year I was born. She'd taught me to crack an egg one-handed on its back counter.

I'd run its ovens since I was twenty-one.

Hayes shifted the cake to one arm. His free hand settled between my shoulder blades, warm and steady, and stayed there.

Shelby took the mic from my father.

She found me at the bar and smiled right at me.

"And don't worry, everybody," she said. "Liza can keep her job. Every bakery needs help in the back."

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