“Oh.” A soft blush came to his cheeks, and somehow, that was even hotter. “I guess I had this idea that we were going to dance all night. I wanted to show off my girlfriend to the rest of the world. And now, we’re back here. No dance. No showing off. And my sister is heartbroken.”
I finished the whiskey and set it back down on the counter. “Well, I can fix one of those things.”
I offered him my hand. He looked down at it for a second before putting his into mine. I directed him out of the kitchen and opened the back door.
“What are you…”
“Trust me,” I told him.
We stepped out onto the back deck and under the pergola. The May night was warm, but Lubbock was more desert than not. So, the nights were cool, and the wind blew in, making the heat more bearable. It was a perfect night. The stars bright and twinkling overhead. And the moon just a crescent sliver in the sky.
I wrapped my arms around Hollin’s shoulders and adjusted his hands to my waist. The back of my dress was incredibly low, and with the way he held me with his hands, his fingers brushed against the bare skin. I shivered slightly at the touch. So intimate.
Then, we swayed side to side. No music. No people. No big, beautiful gala.
Just the two of us, cocooned by the night sky. Wrapped in all her glory. The swelling depths of affection drew us together until there was nothing left.
I rested my head on his shoulder, and he pulled me even closer against him.
“This was what I wanted,” I said with a soft sigh of pleasure. “This was all I wanted.”
“Me too.” Hollin kissed the top of my head and held me close, repeating, “Me too.”
31
Piper
With Peyton’s wedding coming up so quickly, I spent all of my free time helping her prepare. And there was a lot more to do now that the wedding had to be moved to Wright Vineyard on such short notice. Nora was taking on the bulk of the change, but it was clear that after what had happened with August, she was only a shell of herself.
She wasn’t crying like she had been that night at the gala. But she wasn’t…happy either. In fact, the poor girl was in mourning. She hadn’t just lost her boyfriend. She’d lost her best friend, too. I tried to be there for her, as did the other girls, but it wasn’t the same. She’d known Tamara all her life. And the two people she would normally turn to with her heartbreak were the ones who had sundered her heart.
She’d even ditched her high heels for most of the week. I rarely saw her in flats off of the soccer pitch and sometimes forgot that she was only five feet tall. It was as if they had even stolen her extra height.
But the biggest problem of them all was still the wedding dress.
We’d found a few dresses in town that fit, but none of them were what Peyton wanted. Especially not compared to the designer dress that had been destroyed in the fire. Even though there was nothing I could do about it, I still felt deeply responsible.
“It’s not your fault,” Peyton said the morning before the wedding. “And anyway, we’re going to get this fixed. Katherine said she could handle the mission.”
Katherine Van Pelt was a friend of Peyton’s from her time in New York City. Her and her husband, Camden Percy, were flying down for the wedding. Katherine had once been a model and was in the know with designers. She’d reached out to a few with Peyton’s measurements and promised to fly in with what she found. She’d landed in Lubbock, and she would be coming straight to the hotel suite Peyton had gotten for the weekend.
“I know,” I said. “I feel like I put unnecessary stress on you.”
“You caused the fire in the barn?”
“No.”
“And you purposefully put the dress somewhere you couldn’t reach it?”
I rolled my eyes. “No.”
“Then shut up,” my sister said with a laugh. “It’s not your fault that my dress was burned to a crisp and that the venue was destroyed. It was a fluke. A one in a million chance. We’re here now. We’re making the best of it. I don’t want my maid of honor to feel guilty.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
I’d braved a burning building to try to rescue that dress. There was nothing else I could do at this point. I was just anxious to have the dress problem rectified. It would feel like tomorrow could go off without a hitch.
Finally, an hour later, a knock sounded on the door. I rushed to open it, and there stood Katherine Van Pelt in all her glory. She was tall with cascading brown hair and the kind of figure people would kill for. She was Helen of Troy or Aphrodite. Songs had been sung about her. Wars had been waged for her. Just a tilt of her full lips sent men falling to their knees.
“Well, your fairy godmother has arrived,” she said with an arch of one eyebrow. Her designer bag hung from one arm, and she was in a red dress that clung to her narrow frame with black stilettos.
She strode into the suite as if she owned it. Considering her husband was the CEO and majority shareholder of Percy Hotels, it was entirely possible that she did. Behind her, she enlisted the staff to wheel in racks of white dresses, all carefully hidden behind a variety of designer bags.
“Thank you,” she said, tipping each of them generously, as if money grew on trees. “Camden sends his regards. He has business to attend to, and then he’s going golfing all day. Apparently, he befriended a PGA golfer here. Who knew you had a PGA golfer in Lubbock?”
I grinned. “Landon Wright?”
“Oh, you know him?” she asked.
Peyton laughed and stood to embrace Katherine. “He’s kind of royalty around these parts. The vineyard we’re getting married at belongs to his cousin.”
“Charming,” she said. “Well, let’s get to it. You’re going to like one of these gowns. I just know it.”
“I can’t thank you enough for doing this,” Peyton said. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“Fashion is my specialty. Honestly, watching all the designers fall over themselves to get me what I wanted was pure entertainment in itself,” she said with a grin. “Now, where is the champagne?”
I popped open the bubbly and passed out drinks. We sipped from a rosé Moët & Chandon while Peyton worked her way into the dresses. I helped with buttons and zippers and clasps. There were so many of them on each and every dress.
Despite Katherine’s assurances that they were all to Peyton’s measurements, they didn’t all fit. One dress was all smooth edges, except for a pooch at the waist. One fit her waist, but the lace at the underarms was strangely long. One was just an inch too long, even in her wedding heels.
Katherine hissed at that and offered to shred the designer a new one. Height wasn’t going to change regardless.
Peyton laughed it all off. “There’s going to be the perfect one in here. Don’t worry about it.”
As someone who had spent most of her life being fitted for tutus of every style and variety, Peyton was having the time of her life. Trying on all of these dresses made her smile and preen and twirl. As if each one were a new costume she was putting on for a performance.
Finally, we fitted her into one. I finished buttoning up the dozen buttons on the back, and then I stepped aside. She stood before the full-length mirror with an awed expression before facing us.