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“You’re absolutely dead set on a full moon wedding?”
I just looked at him. I didn’t think that was unreasonable, the circumstance being what it was. Full moons gave powerful blessings, and in my opinion, it would be only prudent to have our marriage blessed right from the very start.
“I take your silence as a yes.”
“Correct.” I paused. “You do know my reasons, right?” He should. I mean, I’ve explained it to him in detail before.
He nodded and sighed. “Yeah, I do. But you do know that limits the days we can actually get married to basically one a month, right?”
Hence our current discussion on the matter. We’d been engaged now going on two whole months, and we still weren’t any closer to setting a date for the happy occasion. I’ll admit my one requirement of a full moon did put a bit of a hamper on things.
“I still say that Halloween would be perfect. It falls on a Saturday, so a late-night wedding wouldn’t inconvenience anyone, and the moon will be full. Perfect, if you ask me.”
Now I was the one on the receiving end of the look. He’d gotten pretty good at that Ravenswind look over the years. Even if he wasn’t blood-related. Thank the Goddess. If he was, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
“You really want to wait almost half a year to get married? Personally, I’d like something a lot sooner than that.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek, considering the options. Full moons didn’t just conveniently happen on the weekends. There was always next month, June, when the full moon would at least be on a Friday night. But that was only a month away. Planning a wedding took time.
Orville pulled out his cell phone and brought up a calendar showing the full moons. “How about June 5th? Full moon, Friday... and not almost six months away.”
Plus, it wasn’t on Halloween night. He’d never really come right out and said it, but I truly felt that was the real issue here. Orville didn’t want to be married on Halloween. I couldn’t understand why not. If nothing else, it would make forgetting our anniversary practically impossible.
“You know how much work goes into planning a wedding?”
He grinned at me. “Oh, come on, how hard could it possibly be?” Then he sobered a little, his eyes meeting mine with a touch of worry in them. “We are still keeping it to close friends and family, right?”
“That is correct. But even with just a few dozen guests, there are things to be done. We’ll need to arrange food, a wedding cake, invitations, my dress and your tux, someone to officiate...” I could easily have gone on, but he reached out and put a finger on my lips. A pretty effective way to get me to stop talking.
“We make a dang good team, Opal. We can do this. You know we can.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “Are you volunteering to help with the planning?”
The grin was back. “Well, you aren’t the only one getting married, you know. Of course, I’ll help.” He gave a somewhat dramatic pause. “In fact, I’ll take care of the preacher myself.”
That had been one of my early compromises. I had to make some. Orville was right. I wasn’t the only one getting married here. And having a preacher say the words somehow made it ‘official’ in his eyes. Who was I to say no to that?
Besides, to my mind, the Goddess would be the true one giving our marriage her blessing. That was what really mattered to me. Not that she’d be there in all her shining glory. Although, now that I thought about it, that wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. If she did come, though, and there was a preacher involved, I hoped She would add a bit more to her wardrobe. It might not be a bad idea to have a slip on-hand for her, just in case.
Though who in their right mind would be brave enough to ask her to actually wear it?
“I take it you’ve already asked Reverend Castle then?”
“Yup. He was a little shaky about the whole late-night thing, but I got an okay from him all the same. It’s not exactly like we’ll have to compete with another wedding at that time of night, is it? So he should be free.”
I snuggled a little closer into his side as I thought about it. It would be nice to have this on an every night basis. And that wouldn’t happen with my old-fashioned fiancé until we said our 'I do's. Besides, he was right about the whole team thing. Plus, I was pretty sure I could recruit family members to help out too.
“Okay. June 5th it is.” Goddess help me, we were really going to do this thing.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. When I felt his body tense slightly, I knew that something was up. I was right. What can I say? I know my man.
“I have something I probably need to tell you. But first, you have to promise no magic on this one. I handle it, okay?”
I pulled away enough to see his face. He was dead serious. How did a witch answer that one? A promise for me was set into stone. How could I make a promise before I knew what I was promising not to do?
“As much as I love you, Orville, I don’t do blanket promises. I’m gonna need a little something more to go on first.”
He reached up to scrub at his chin. “Kind of figured that would be your answer.” Well, yeah. My man knew me too.
“And?”
Orville took a deep breath. “Some people at the office aren’t all that happy about me getting married.”
I laughed and snuggled back in. Like that was news. I’d known that would happen. He had a fair number of female deputies on his small force. It was only reasonable to think more than a few had secret crushes on the man. They couldn’t be too happy about the upcoming nuptials at all. Kind of made me glad we had decided on an earlier date, actually.
“Well, that wasn’t exactly the reaction I was expecting.”
I was still chuckling. “Oh, Orville, you sweet, sweet man. Of course there are people not happy about you getting married.” I paused for just a second. “And I’m gonna take a wild way out there guess and say that most of them are female.”
His head swiveled down to look at me. “How did you know that?”
The chuckles grew to a full belly laugh. “I’m a woman too. If I found out that you were marrying anybody else but me, I’d be upset too.”
He shook his head. “No, that isn’t it at all. I think they’re more upset that I’m not running for reelection.”
Now my laughing stopped. “You thinking about changing your mind on that?”
“No. I’ve been sheriff of this district long enough.” His arm squeezed me a little tighter. “Besides, I honestly can’t wait to start our next adventure. Together.”
“Me too.” I hesitated. “Look, Orville, I honestly don’t know how you feel about what you see in the mirror every morning. But you are a very strikingly handsome man.” I reached over and squeezed his arm. “Good muscles too. A real catch. Those women are just jealous it isn’t them going down that aisle with you. And that’s the Goddess’s honest truth.”
“We’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one, Opal.”
Made no difference to me. I knew I was the one with the right way of thinking here. But the more I thought about it, the more uncertain I became of the whole situation. I didn’t really like the idea of a flock of females trying to talk my man out of getting married.
Especially that red-headed Trixie he had working on dispatch. Orville had once had a thing for redheads, as evidenced by his very red-headed son, Opie. It wouldn’t do to have her pulling out all the stops to get his attention this late in the game.
“I’m also gonna guess that the ringleader in the anti-marriage campaign is Trixie.”
He didn’t confirm it, but he squirmed. Just a little. Enough to let me know that I had hit the nail dead center on the head.
“Maybe I should go and have a little talk with her?”
“No!” Orville cleared his throat. “I mean, no. As I said, I want you to trust me to handle this.” He leaned down and gave me a soft kiss. “Can you trust me to take care of this?”
I took a deep breath and nodded. Trusting him wasn’t the problem. Not even a little bit. The problem was trusting that redheaded Trixie.
***
THE NEXT MORNING, ORVILLE had already left for work before I woke up. Yes, things had changed a little in our relationship. Now that the public at large knew we were a couple, there was no more reason for sneaking around, or for me heading home late at night after our standard Tuesday date night.
Now, I just stayed over. Funny how my old-fashioned beau had a problem with living together, but the odd and end one night here and there was more than fine with him. Made me kind of wonder if he was really as okay with living at the farmhouse as he’d said he was.
But then again, that whole thing had been his idea. I might just be reading too much into things. I did that sometimes.
I stretched out, enjoying the peace and quiet of a morning ritual that didn’t involve getting kids and a baby ready to go. One day a week, Kimberly handled that on her own. I’d be missing this once we were actually married. It was kind of nice.
To make it up to Kimberly, I opened the shop on my own Wednesday mornings and gave her the morning off. Her normal routine was to take the kids to school and then run personal errands until time to come in.
Today was a bit different as the older kids were off school for some kind of teacher paperwork day. The bad news was she didn’t get those few hours to herself. The good news was they all got to sleep in. It evened out.
I glanced over at the clock. I had another hour before my alarm would go off. As much as I was tempted to roll over and go back to sleep, now that we had an actual wedding date, there were things I needed to get a jump on.
My first goal was to order the blooming cake. My first thought had been to have my sister, Sapphire, make it. But while you can’t beat her baked goods, she wasn’t really up on decorating them for show. People came to her muffin shop for the way the muffins tasted and how they made them feel, not for how pretty they were. Trust me on that one.
The Flour Pot was my first choice. In fact, right now, they were my only choice. I was that set on them. They’d expanded their business into catering and, yes, wedding cakes. Their cakes weren’t all that extravagant, but they had that pretty fondant icing and came in as many tiers as you were willing to pay for.
I figured a smaller three-tier cake would do just fine. Or maybe even a two-tier cake with the bride and groom topper, and then some fancy cupcakes for the kidlings. I was willing to trust the Flour Pot for guidance on that one.
At least, that had been my plan. But when I showed up at their small little counter in their small little dining room, they turned my order down flat.
“I don’t understand. I thought you all did wedding cakes now.” I glanced pointedly over at the small decorated wedding cake in the display case.
The owner flushed but shook his head. “We do, but I’m afraid we’re totally booked up well into July.” He glanced at me sternly. “A month’s notice is not nearly enough for a well-crafted wedding cake, you know. We don’t knock those out in a day. And June is a very popular month for weddings.” He tusked. “Everyone wants that perfect June wedding. Like May or July isn’t just as good.”
I forced my brain away from the fact that an October wedding would have been no issue at all with the cake. Unfortunately, that did me no good now that June 5th was all but written in stone. I’d just have to go somewhere else.
“Can you recommend another place?”
He just looked at me, with one eyebrow flying high. “Weren’t you listening? If you want a well-crafted wedding cake, you need to give more than a few weeks’ notice. Good luck finding a place that can fit you in this late.”
I was more than a little deflated when I left the shop. So deflated, in fact, that I had decided to drown my troubles in Raspberry Delight donuts and coffee. And I even bought some to share with my man and his entire office.
My motives for sharing were purely altruistic, too. It wasn’t that I wanted to make a point to Trixie that I was here to stay.
Nope. Not my intention at all. And I’d keep telling myself that too.