Your Love Came Late, I Chose Another novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Twelve-Thirty

Noelle tells the guests the truth from the aisle and marries Ronan, and Brandon walks into the reception with Tara wearing the family heirloom ring.

I'd made that woman's Christmas pies for five years.

Pecan, never walnut. Lattice, never crumble. Delivered warm to South Battery on the twenty-third.

She'd never once said thank you.

"Wait for him where?" I asked. "He's at Tara's hotel."

Her nostrils flared.

"Brandon is helping a friend who's ill."

"Tara Gilmore isn't ill. She landed at six-fifty. Your son's been with her since dawn."

"You don't know that."

"Darren came to carry me. You kissed him on the cheek at your gate and called him son." I picked up my bouquet. "You knew that too."

Her mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

Ronan stepped past her and held the door wide.

"Ma'am," he said politely. "You're standing in the bride's way."

She looked at him properly for the first time.

"I know you. You're the Ashe boy. From that inn on Church Street."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Tara's Ashe boy."

"Not since she texted me from Paris," Ronan said. "Excuse us."

I walked out past her with my skirt in my fist.

The garden was hot and bright and very quiet.

The string quartet had stopped playing.

A hundred and eighty people sat in white chairs under the live oaks, watching me come.

I didn't take the aisle slowly.

I walked it like the walk-in cooler was on fire.

At the arbor I turned around.

My hands were shaking, so I held the bouquet tighter.

"Brandon went to the airport this morning to meet Tara Gilmore," I said. "He sent his brother to carry me. He just left again because she called. I'm not waiting for him."

Four sentences.

Somewhere near the back, a woman said, "Oh, honey."

Somebody else said, "Good for her."

Brandon's father sat in the front row with his arms crossed and his face red to the collar.

He didn't stand up.

The officiant leaned toward me, an old man with a white beard.

"Miss Ashbury," he murmured. "The license is in Brandon's name."

"There's no license. He never picked it up."

He blinked.

"Then this won't be legal today."

"I know," I said. "It'll be legal Tuesday. The man who's marrying me is standing right there."

The officiant looked at Ronan.

Ronan looked back, steady, the peach still in his left hand.

The old man sighed through his nose.

"I've done stranger," he said. "Not many. Let's go."

Bree took her place at my side and grabbed my free hand so hard my knuckles cracked.

The quartet found its place, wobbled, and started again.

When he got to "Who gives this woman," there was a pause.

Bree said loudly, "She does."

The whole garden laughed.

Something in my chest unknotted a little.

"The groom has written his own vows," the officiant said, and looked at Ronan with real doubt. "Has he?"

"Just a minute ago," Ronan said.

He handed Bree the peach.

Then he turned to me.

"Noelle Ashbury. A year and a half ago you elbowed me in the ribs at the Marion Square market over the last flat of peaches."

"You put your hand on them first. That's not ownership."

"I paid for them first."

"You were holding cash out like a weapon."

The front rows were leaning in now.

Ronan's mouth twitched.

"You told me to my face I'd ruin them. You said I'd put them in a cobbler with too much cinnamon and kill them."

"Were you going to?"

"Yes," he said. "So I gave you half. And you made a hand pie with burnt honey and brought me one the next Saturday, and I ate it standing next to the flower stand like an idiot, and I haven't bought a peach without thinking about you since."

The garden went very still.

My face burned.

That wasn't in the deal.

"I vow to let you have the last of anything," he said quietly. "And to always tell you when I'm putting cinnamon in."

Behind me, Bree burst into tears.

Not pretty tears. Big, wet, honking ones.

"I'm fine," she sobbed at a groomsman. "Don't look at me."

I had to say something back.

Everyone was waiting.

"I vow," I said, and stopped.

My voice was gone.

Ronan didn't rescue me.

He just waited.

"I vow not to elbow you," I said. "Unless it's peaches."

"That's fair."

The officiant cleared his throat and pronounced us something he carefully didn't call legal.

"You may kiss the bride."

Ronan looked at me, a question in it.

I nodded.

He bent and kissed me once, warm and short and certain, his hand light at my waist.

His beard scratched my chin.

He smelled like starch and peach skin.

When he pulled back, a hundred and eighty people were on their feet clapping.

The reception was set up along the river side of the warehouse, long tables and string lights and my cake on its stand at the end.

Seven layers. Coconut. My grandmother's.

Bree shoved a glass of champagne into my hand.

"Drink. You're married. Sort of."

"Tuesday."

"Drink like it's Tuesday."

I'd gotten halfway down the glass when the room went quiet from the back forward.

I turned.

Brandon stood in the big warehouse doorway in his navy suit.

Tara Gilmore was on his arm in a cream dress, her platinum hair over one shoulder, her sunglasses pushed up on her head.

She lifted her left hand to fix her hair.

On her finger was an old mine-cut diamond in yellow gold, with a little sapphire on each side.

The 1910 ring.

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