“I know, but the hockey season starts on the fifth in Detroit, and Hugh can’t miss the first game of the season. Then he’s in New York and St. Louis before he’s back here on the ninth playing against Colorado, and he never misses a chance to best Patrick Roy. I checked our schedule and we’re real slow the first three weeks in October. So Hugh and I are getting married on the tenth, honeymooning on Maui for a week, then I’ll come back here to help cater the Bennet party, and Hugh is off to Toronto for a game against the Maple Leafs.”
“Three weeks,” Georgeanne whimpered. “How can I plan a wonderful wedding in three weeks?”
“You’re not going to. I want you to be in the wedding, not in the kitchen. I’ve decided to hire Anne Maclean to cater the whole thing. She operates out of a large banquet hall in Redmond, and she’s still hungry enough to take the job on such sort notice. I only want two things from you. I would appreciate it if you’d help me pick out a wedding dress. You know I’m clueless about that sort of thing. I’d probably pick out something hideous and never know it.”
Georgeanne smiled. “I’d love to help you.”
“And I want you to do something else, too.” Her grip on Georgeanne’s hands tightened. “I want you to be my maid of honor. Hugh is going to ask John to be his best man, so you’d have to stand next to him at some point.”
Tears clogged Georgeanne’s throat. “Don’t worry about the problems between John and me. I’d love to stand up with you.”
“There’s one more problem, and it’s a biggie.”
“What could be worse than planning a wedding in three weeks and standing next to John?”
“Virgil Duffy.”
Everything inside of Georgeanne stilled.
“I told Hugh that we couldn’t invite him, but Hugh doesn’t see how to avoid it. He thinks if we invite his team members, and the trainers and coaches and management, we can’t overlook the owner. I suggested that we just invite close friends, but his teammates are his close friends. So how can we invite some and not others?” Mae covered her face with her hands. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Of course you invite Virgil,” Georgeanne managed, feeling her past coming back to haunt her. First John, and now Virgil.
Mae shook her head and dropped her hands. “How can I do that to you?”
“I’m a big girl. Virgil Duffy doesn’t scare me,” she said, and wondered if it was true. Sitting in her kitchen, she wasn’t scared, but she wasn’t so sure how she would feel when she saw him at the wedding. “You invite him, and whomever you want. Don’t worry about me.”
“I told Hugh that maybe we should fly to Vegas and get married by one of those Elvis impersonators. That would solve the problem.”
There was no way Georgeanne would allow her friend to run off to Vegas because of her past mistakes. “Don’t you even think about it,” she warned with her nose in the air. “You know how I feel about tacky people, and getting married by Elvis is white-trash tacky. I’d have to buy you an equally tacky wedding present. Something from Ronco, like that glass cutter so you could make your own stemware from Pepsi bottles. And I’m sorry, but I don’t think I could love you any longer.”
Mae laughed. “Okay, no Elvis.”
“Good. You’re going to have a beautiful wedding,” she predicted, then went in search of her day planner.
Together she and Mae got down to business. They called the caterer Mae wanted to use, then jumped in Georgeanne’s car and drove up to Redmond.
Over the next week, they talked to a florist and looked at a dozen wedding dresses. Between Heron’s, her work on the television program, Lexie, and the rapidly approaching wedding, Georgeanne had no time for herself. The only hours she had to sit and relax were the Monday and Wednesday nights when John picked up Lexie and Pongo and took them to puppy-training classes. But even then she couldn’t relax. Not when John walked into her house, tall and handsome and smelling like a late summer breeze. She would see him and her stupid heart would flutter, and when he turned to leave, her chest would ache. She’d fallen in love with him again. Only this time it felt more wretched than the last. She’d thought she was finished loving people who couldn’t love her back, but apparently not. Even though he broke her heart, she would probably always love John. He’d taken her love and her child, leaving her empty. Mae was getting married and moving ahead with her life. Georgeanne felt left behind. Her life was filled with things she enjoyed, yet the people she loved were moving in directions she couldn’t follow.
In a few short days, Lexie would spend her first weekend with John and meet Ernie Maxwell and John’s mother, Glenda. Her daughter belonged to a family that Georgeanne couldn’t give her. A family she wasn’t a part of, nor would ever belong to. John could give Lexie everything she would ever want and need, and Georgeanne was left out and pushed aside.
Ten days before the wedding, Georgeanne sat in her office at Heron’s alone, thinking about Lexie and John and Mae, and feeling lonely. When Charles called and suggested she meet him for lunch at McCormick and Schmick’s, she jumped at the chance to get away for a few hours. It was Friday afternoon, she had a big job to cater that evening, and she needed a friendly face and pleasant conversation.
Over clams and soft-shell crabs, she told Charles all about Mae and the wedding. “It’s a week from this coming Thursday,” she said as she wiped her hands on a linen napkin. “With such short notice, they were lucky to get a small nondenominational church in Kirkland and a banquet hall in Redmond for the reception afterward. Lexie is the flower girl and I’m the maid of honor.” Georgeanne picked up her fork and shook her head. “I still haven’t found a dress to wear. Thank goodness this will all be over soon, and I won’t have to go through it again until Lexie gets married.”
“Don’t you plan to get married someday?”
Georgeanne shrugged and looked away. When she thought of getting married, she always pictured John as he’d looked in that formal tuxedo the day of the
“Well, why don’t you think about it?”
Georgeanne looked back at Charles and smiled. “Are you proposing?”
“I would if I thought you’d accept.”
Her smile slowly fell.
“Don’t worry,” he said, and tossed a clamshell onto a pile on his plate. “I won’t embarrass you right now by asking, and I won’t subject myself to your rejection. I know you’re not ready.”
She stared at him, this wonderful man who meant a lot to her, but whom she didn’t love as a wife should love a husband. Her head wanted to love him, but her heart loved someone else.
“Don’t reject the idea out of hand. Just think about it,” he said, and she did. She thought about how marriage to Charles would solve some of her problems.
He could provide a comfortable life for her and Lexie, and together they would be a family. She didn’t love him as she should, but given more time, maybe she could. Maybe her head could convince her heart.
John tossed his T-shirt on the heap of socks and running shoes on the bathroom floor. Dressed only in a pair of jogging shorts, he covered his lower face with shave cream. As he reached for his razor, he looked up into the mirror in front of him and smiled. “You can come in and talk to me if you want to,” he told Lexie, who stood behind him, peeking into the bathroom.
“What are you doing?”
“Shaving.” He placed the razor beneath his left side-burn and scraped it down.
“My mom shaves her legs and her pits,” she mentioned as she moved to stand next to him. She wore her pink and white striped nightgown, and her hair was messy from sleep. Last night was the first time she’d stayed with him alone, and after he’d killed the spider in her bedroom for her, everything had gone real smooth. After he’d smashed the insect with a book, she’d looked at him as if he walked on water.
“I get to shave when I’m in the seventh grade,” she continued. “I’ll probably be really hairy by then.” She peered up at him through the mirror. “Do you think Pongo will ever get hairy?”
John rinsed his blade and shook his head. “Nope. He’ll never get much hair.” When he’d picked up Lexie the night before, that poor little dog had been wearing a new red sweater with jewels glued all over it and a matching stocking cap. When he’d entered the house, the dog looked at him and ran into another room to hide. Georgeanne had speculated that he might be afraid of John’s height, but John figured that poor Pongo hadn’t wanted another
