TWENTY-NINE
ALEX AND SOL stood in their tuxedoes beneath a lighted floral arch, eager to see the other half of the bridal party. The women entered one by one, Serena first, accompanied by Nash. Her floor-length silver gown sparkled in the chandelier light. Alex had always known his mother was a beautiful woman, but in sequins with her hair done up, she looked more like a fairy queen than ever.
He smiled at her. She blew him a kiss as she settled into her front-row chair.
Nash took his place in the groomsmen line right as Dora walked into the room. Her yellow hair was gigantic, her lipstick bright. Amazingly, she didn’t glower her way down the aisle. She smiled the whole way, careful to time her steps to the beat of the classical music playing in the background. She winked as she passed by Sol before taking her place at the end of the line, her gloved hands clasping her bouquet to her middle, her eyes fixed on the doorway.
Theresa came next, and seeing her was a punch to the gut. Alex sucked in a breath, his hands balling by his sides. Black was Theresa’s color. It made her pale skin go to pure cream. The contrast against the rubies around her neck and the scarlet lipstick was breathtaking, and he was absolutely sure as she glided past him, regal and dignified and not once sparing him a glance, that he would never in all his life see anything so beautiful again.
I am the world’s biggest fool.
It’s simple. So very simple.
The organ heralded the arrival of the bride, and the guests stood to greet her. Alex forced his attention away from Theresa so he could properly appreciate Rain. She paused in the doorway of the room, her eldest brother at her side, and oh how she beamed. She was a small, golden sun in her layers of silk, with her oodles of curls and glittery smile. Sol’s smile ratcheted up to obscene proportion as she walked toward him dripping in pearls and diamonds, and he gleefully accepted her hand when Richard offered it.
“Kitten,” he said quietly. “You look perfect.”
She smiled. “I know.”
Sol’s laughter filled the ballroom, and everyone—even Alex, who was still struggling with the stupidity of his Theresa decisions—found a smile.
The officiant wasted little time getting into the ceremony. It was a lot of poetry, some song lyrics, and extensive talk about loyalty and devotion. Alex shifted his weight from foot to foot, eager to get out from under the floral archway. Eager to get through all of it so he could talk to Theresa, could tell her that he was going to buy their lottery ticket. He wasn’t going to be a stupid Charlie for the rest of his life, praying and hoping for something to happen to him. He was going to take the risk, pay to play the game, and live his best life.
He glanced out at the audience and looked for Darren. Seeing him there in his navy suit, a smile plastered to his face, his arm looped around Maddy’s shoulders, made Alex feel better.
Thank you, my friend, for your best joke yet.
“No, seriously, we need the rings now. This isn’t optional,” Sol hissed quietly.
Alex jerked his head back and blinked. The eyes of the gathered were upon him, guests and wedding party alike, because it was time to present the rings, and he hadn’t noticed because he’d been too busy gazing at the maid of honor . . .
You’re really bad at this best man thing.
“Pardon,” he mumbled, reaching into his jacket for the diamond-encrusted band. Sol snatched it from him, and though Alex very much deserved a scowl for his shoddy showing, Sol winked at him instead, turning back to Rain and committing himself to light and love and “other stuff”—Sol specifically said “other stuff”—which Alex probably didn’t want to know about given the wife-to-be’s collar.
Alex adjusted the cuff of his tuxedo jacket, his feet itching to move, move, move.
It wasn’t a long ceremony, nor was it a proper Catholic one, considering it didn’t happen in a church with a Mass, but Alex refused to find fault with that. Maybe this was a step in the right direction. After all, Sol had been nonpracticing for as long as Alex could remember. Rain was a Protestant Congregationalist. They were married not by a person of the cloth, but by a justice of the peace, and while it wasn’t what Alex would have wanted for himself, it suited them. The words were full of love. The promises were earnest. The kisses were passionate.
Too passionate, perhaps.
They kissed once, sweetly, and then they kissed twice, not so sweetly, Sol grabbing his new bride a second time and bending her backward from the waist to steal her breath away. On any other day, Alex would have rolled his eyes and called Sol a pig. That day, he clapped just like everyone else in the room, because Sol was a man in love. It was on his face. It was in the way he held Rain in his arms. It was how he kissed her, his fingertips oh so gently cradling her skull as he whispered intimate things to her that made her squeal, giggle, and hug him tight.
They were well-suited. Alex had had his doubts before coming to New Orleans, but now that he’d seen them together, there was no doubt about their obvious love for each other.
The recessional music played and Sol looped his arm through Rain’s. They looked good together—her in her pretty white dress, Sol in his white tuxedo jacket with the black slacks—and they walked down the aisle to ecstatic people throwing sparkly confetti at them. Alex stepped up to the arch and looked at Theresa. She never made eye contact with him, not as she looped her arm through his, not as they followed along behind the new Mr. and Mrs. DuMont to their own glittery fanfare. Theresa smiled the whole way down the red carpet, overjoyed by all appearances, but not once did she cast him a glance.
Please, oh please don’t let it be too late.
Often at weddings there was a long break between the wedding and the reception for photographs, but considering the festivities were confined to one room—and considering one of the photographers was actually in the wedding party—Rain and Sol forsook that, instead going straight to party time. Some trendy band would play during the reception, but it was Maddy who played for the first dance. She ascended the stage to the piano in a gold sequined dress and matching heels, looking very much like that gilded woman from the James Bond movie. She bowed at the guests, she flashed her million-watt smile, she blew Darren a special “just for him” kiss, and then she sat at the bench.
And she played. Oh, how she played. It was a beautiful, jazzy arrangement of “Moon River,” and after the emcee announced Mr. and Mrs. Sol DuMont to wild applause, Sol guided Rain to the dance floor. Alex stood on the sidelines, arm still locked with Theresa’s. The temptation to look at her was overwhelming, but he forced his attention to remain on the new couple. They were lost in their own little world, totally enraptured with each other, and Alex realized for all of the shit he’d given his brother over the years, this was one thing Sol had figured out far before him.
It was what Alex wanted for himself one day, too. Unbridled, uninhibited love and devotion.
A minute into the song, the emcee invited the rest of the bridal party onto the dance floor. Nash guided Dora out. It was the oddest of odd couples, but they seemed to be getting along well enough, Dora even laughing as Nash twirled her around the floor with some impressive footwork. Alex shouldn’t have been so surprised that Nash could dance, considering Nash’s extensive knowledge about damned near everything else, but there he was gawking at Nash’s obvious ballroom technique.
“We have to dance, too,” Theresa said quietly, disrupting his reverie.
Alex looked down at her, and for the first time since the wedding’s start, she met his gaze. She smiled faintly as she put her bouquet on one of the round tables and offered him her hand. She continued to smile as he led her out onto the dance floor, one hand settling on the small of her back, the other clasping her gloved fingers.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. It wasn’t the first thing he wanted to say to her, and it wasn’t complete by any stretch of the imagination, but it was what escaped his lips. “I’m sorry. I screwed up.”
She quirked a brow at him. “Oh?”
“Yes.” He paused. “I want you. Just . . . you. No moral dilemmas. No complications. No nothing. I just want you and to see what we mean for each other. I feel like this is . . . there’s something here. And I keep messing it up, and I might mess it up again—”
“You will,” Theresa interjected. “But I’ll mess it up, too. That’s what happens in relationships. The people who make it are the ones who learn from their mistakes and don’t repeat them.”
“Then consider me an apt pupil. I want this, and I can only hope you want it enough to try it with me. I don’t know how, with you traveling the world and me in Dallas, but if Sol and Rain can make it work, if Maddy and Darren can, I have to believe we might have a shot, too.”
She looked thoughtful for a moment. “And the guilt?”
“No guilt. Well, not about us—this. Guilt is part of the Catholic tradition.”
She chortled and leaned back so she could better look him in the face. “Isn’t that the truth? But, being frank? I was scared after Scott. I could have dated and wouldn’t, because I was afraid of being crushed again. But now I want to try. I don’t want you to think I don’t. It’s just hard for me, especially when I think about you running away from me because you’re wrestling with your conscience.”
“I’d be stupid—completely stupid—to do that. I’m scared, too, but I also want to try. I’m willing to risk it if you are.” After Lyn, he’d shut down completely. He’d hidden in the gym, in his office, at church. He’d kept himself isolated because that was easier than letting someone get too close. He didn’t trust people not to disappoint him the way Lyn had—to injure him bone deep and never look back.
But Theresa . . . he trusted her.
Implicitly.
“I trust you,” he said out loud after a while, whirling her so they didn’t collide with another couple on the dance floor. “Even if we don’t work out, I trust you to be careful with me. I’m a little more fragile than I look, I’m afraid.”
“You can trust me, but I’m not so sure about the fragile part. I do have a Scottish temper, you know,” she murmured.
“And I just have a temper period, but you make me want to do better, to be better. Isn’t that what we should be looking for in a partner? Someone who brings out our best selves even when we’re at our worst? I like you, Theresa. I know how trite that is, but I like you. That’s all there really is to it, I guess.”
Alex wasn’t trying to “win” by saying the right words. He wasn’t smooth like Sol and couldn’t manipulate conversations to yield a desired outcome. He just wanted to communicate his feelings in such a way that she’d see how much she’d impressed him—how much she already mattered to him. And it seemed that his raw honesty resonated. Her irritation was tapped. It drained from her shoulders, it loosened her posture so she was less ironlike in his grip. She went from stone to honey in the blink of an eye.
“I like you, too,” she said gently. “More than I should for knowing you only a week. But God help you if you turn out to be an arsehole, Alex. God help you, I will kill you.”
“And I’d hold still and let you do it because I’d undoubtedly deserve it.”
She smiled and stepped in close, and instead of the awkward, rigid dance of two strangers stuck together because of wedding tradition, it was Theresa dancing with Alex. Her cheek pressed to his. She looped her arm around his neck to hold him close. Relief rushed through his body. It quickened his heart and curled his toes. His hands dropped to her waist, and then they slid around behind her back and locked. He could smell her perfume. He could feel the heat of her body. His head dropped to her shoulder, his face burying in her neck as he took solace in the goodness of their shared touch.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay?” He pulled up so he could look at her. “It’s that easy?”
Her hand reached up to trace along his cheek, over the curve of his ear and down along his jaw. Her fingers ended on his lips as she gazed at him a long while, their bodies still swaying to Maddy’s sweet, sweet melody.
The smile that bloomed on her ruby mouth stole his breath away.
“I guess so. I’ll book my Dallas tour on Monday. I want the Happy Ending Special with the bath service, though.”
He kissed her. There was no forethought. There was no worry that someone would see, that it was inappropriate to be so demonstrative. He leaned in, he pressed his mouth to hers, and he kissed her. She was soft and sweet. She was everything he knew she’d be and more; her tongue flicked out at his lip, teasing him, and he grinned against her before crushing her in his arms and hauling her even closer. She gasped in surprise before she gave herself over to him, clinging to him. One kiss turned to two, two to three, and soon he lost count of the many times his lips glided over hers.
It was perfect.
Right up until Sol said, “For Christ’s sake, Alex. Get your own wedding.”
And Alex did what he probably should always do when Sol needled him.
He ignored him.