“Ten—oh. So they want to postpone the wedding?” A tingle started at the base of her skull. Postponing the wedding would mean George would be around that much longer.
“Well, no. They’d like to move the wedding up to the last weekend in August.”
Anne’s fantasy of George being around for an additional two or three months crashed into a heap of anxiety. “Last weekend in August? With everything we have left to do? Are they still determined to have it the same size?”
“Yes. Everything still the same, just moved up almost two months. Anne, I know this is an imposition on you. But Mr. Ballantine has instructed me to spare no expense in making it happen. Do you—do you think it can be done?”
Her stomach started churning again. Six weeks to do what was going to be difficult in four months. “Of course. But I think instead of going out for dinner tonight, we should have something delivered to my office and work on a new timeline.”
The relief in his sigh was palpable through the phone. “I’ll meet you at your office at six. I lo… I’ll pick up dinner. What do you fancy?”
Anne left the choice of meal up to him—she wouldn’t be able to eat anything anyway—and bade him farewell for the time being.
So much for a leisurely, romantic dinner.
Chapter 25
The weeks between the engagement party and Courtney’s wedding sped by, even though Anne did everything to utilize every minute of every day. After a quick trip to New York to get Cliff settled into his Manhattan condo, George returned to Bonneterre to assist her with anything she needed.
He helped her avoid the media—including Kristin and Greg, the couple who’d pretended to be potential clients to try to pump her for information on the wedding. The looks on their faces when George had walked into the office and recognized them brought a smile to her face every time she thought about it.
She admired and respected him…and she was falling madly in love with him. She couldn’t start her day until she’d talked to him on the phone, and she couldn’t sleep at night until they’d prayed together to close out the day. At least once a week, they went out on what she called “real” dates—just the two of them with none of her family present—where they didn’t discuss anything remotely related to their jobs.
He enjoyed spending a lot of time with her family, which was understandable, given his estrangement from his own relatives. She could be happy for him that as adults, he and his youngest brother had reconnected with each other and were now friends, even though Henry lived in Australia. George’s pride in his brother’s success as a barrister specializing in entertainment industry law shone through whenever he spoke Henry’s name. She imagined Henry to be a lot like Forbes, explaining the close friendship between George and her cousin.
As the wedding drew closer, Anne saw more of George but spent less time connecting with him. She was past the point of no return in the relationship, yet had no confirmation George felt the same.
The memory of their conversation about whether a marriage based on friendship could survive continued to haunt her, especially given the fact George didn’t exhibit any more romantic interest than he had in the beginning— saying good-bye with a kiss on the cheek, taking her hand only when assisting her in or out of the car or when they prayed over their meals.
Between the doubts over their relationship and the details of the impending wedding, Anne barely slept the week before the event. She needed every minute of each day to make sure everything was ready, every contingency plan in place, every reservation confirmed.
In the early hours of Friday morning, she tossed and turned, going over the schedule for that night’s rehearsal and dinner. She’d only seen Cliff a few times since the engagement party. If she was going to resolve her past, she had to do it this weekend. She had to talk to him. No longer did she seethe with anger whenever she saw him. From the way he treated Courtney, she could tell he genuinely loved the girl. But he still had a lot of explaining to do.
Thunder shook the house, and she groaned. She couldn’t understand why anyone in Louisiana would want an outdoor wedding. One of two things inevitably happened: unbearable heat or torrential rain. Or both. The weather guy on Channel Six said the rain would move through today and the weekend would be clear. She hoped for once he knew what he was talking about.
She crawled out of bed and stumbled down the hall to her home office. She jiggled the mouse, and the computer screen came alive, showing the rain contingency she’d been working on before trying to go to bed at midnight.
Why couldn’t George just come out and say it?
She grimaced in wry understanding. He had as many issues with cultivating a relationship as she did. She just needed to give him time. If he could get his visa status worked out and join her as a partner, they’d have all the time they needed.
She saved the document, shut down the computer, and returned to bed, lulled to sleep by the rhythm of the rain against her bedroom windows.
George rolled out of bed before the alarm sounded. He took his Bible and prayer journal out onto the back porch, along with a large mug of Mama Ketty’s strong coffee, and tried to still his thoughts long enough to concentrate on God’s Word.
“I know the plans that I have for you,” God had said through the prophet Jeremiah. “Plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.”
He clasped his hands, elbows on the edge of the iron scroll table, and leaned his forehead against his thumbs. “O God, the King Eternal. I haven’t always tried to follow Your plan for my life. But now I ask You to bless my steps as I walk in what I believe is Your plan in asking Anne to marry me. I love her more dearly than I ever knew possible, and she is my hope for the future. I know it was Your divine plan that brought us together. Thank You for blessing me with her. Please prepare her heart to receive my proposal…and to understand the haste with which I will ask her to wed with me so we do not have to part.
“As we go into the whirlwind this weekend, I ask You to strengthen Anne and give her the courage and grace she needs to speak with Cliff and finally, once and for all, forgive him. I pray You’ll bless Courtney and Cliff in their new life together. Amen.”
He leaned back in the chair and sipped his coffee and watched as the rain fell in sheets across the lush green yard. Even if it stopped in an hour or two, would the ground still be soggy Saturday? It wouldn’t do to have the guests’ chairs sinking into the newly leveled and sodded yard.
“George, what are we going to do?”
He stood at the sound of Courtney’s voice. “Don’t fret. It’s not supposed to last the day.”
In loose-fitting, blue-plaid seersucker pants and a misshapen white T-shirt with no makeup and her dark hair pulled into a ponytail atop her head, Courtney looked more like a thirteen-year-old desperately in need of loving parents than a young woman about to get married in a public spectacle. She sat in the other chair, pulled her knees up, and wrapped her arms around them.
“What are you doing downstairs? I thought we discussed how the ground floor is for employees. It’s not appropriate for you to be down here. Mama Ketty or I will bring your breakfast to you upstairs—on the balcony, if you wish.”
“It’s boring upstairs. George, before I moved here, I was living in a sorority house just off the UCLA campus with two other girls in the same room, and nearly one hundred others in the house. I’m not used to being alone so much.” She rested her chin on her knees. “I wish Cliff hadn’t gone off to New York right after the party. Or at least that he’d been able to come back for longer than two days at a time. It’s so hard to be separated from the one you love.”
