“Sooooooo ….”
Gillian glared at Rachel, daring her to keep the sing-song syllable going. Being trapped at side-by-side manicure stations didn’t exactly give her any leverage, though.
Especially with Serena and Natalie joining in the cursed chorus of curiosity. “Couldn’t help but notice you ringing in the New Year,” Serena said. “But next thing you know, I look around and Vic is still taking pictures and I can’t find you anywhere.”
“You know I turn into a pumpkin at midnight.”
“First off,” Rachel said, “It’s the coach that turns into the pumpkin, not Cinderella. And second, we roomed together for half a decade, and now you’re trying to convince me you’re not a night owl?”
“Barely three years.”
“Regardless.” Rachel’s free hand flapped her way. “You definitely kissed Vic, and then you definitely were gone while the rest of us wrapped up the party, and he definitely was still there after you left. So. What’s the story?”
“Ditto.” Natalie and Serena looked at each other and grinned. Back when the four of them roomed together at college, they did that all the time—jumped in with ‘ditto’ when someone else asked for the latest gossip.
Gillian didn’t bother rolling her eyes, since only the manicurist would get the full effect, but she did sigh loudly at her best friends. “Is this really the first time in y’all’s thirty-odd years that you’ve heard of the tradition of kissing someone at midnight?”
“Oh, I didn’t realize the way you clung to him like he was keeping you afloat in a raging sea was just you being traditional,” Rachel said. The others snorted.
“Don’t deconstruct the moment just cause I was the only one without a fiancé in tow. I’m allowed my good luck kiss without it having to carry some massive big meaning behind it.” Even she could tell she was floundering, but she kept to her story. “Vic was the closest unattached person when midnight rolled around. It doesn’t have to be momentous that we kissed for a hot second.”
“That was not one solitary second,” Natalie said.
“It was hot, though,” added Rachel.
One hand with drying nails, one hand surrendered to the manicurist’s attentions, no easy way to flip off her friends.
She shrugged, like they weren’t becoming burrs wrapped tight into her bridesmaid coiffure. “It was just Vic. I’ve known him since he was, like, eight.”
“Not eight anymore.”
Gillian ignored the speculation in Nat’s tone. “Twenty-eight. Still a baby. Plus, he’s Anton’s best friend. Number of nights he spent at our house, he’s practically a second little brother to me.”
What happened that once in college was not a bit fraternal, but the others didn’t need to know that. Except Nat, who kept quiet. Besides, back then she’d finally gotten to accepting herself for who she was, instead of contorting herself into the pattern cut for her by her family. Once Anton—brave, amazing Anton—went and shattered his own mold, she’d figured out she could do the same. And part of that shattering was accepting her life wasn’t wife-and-mother bound. Free of the expectations of husband hunting, she figured out what she wanted out of her dating life. Fun, some intellectual stimulation, and lots of sensual stimulation.
For a flash of time, she got all that with Vic. But he was one of several. No reason to dwell on it then, or mention it now.
Serena caught her eye. “Just saying, the man is pretty. And don’t think any of us missed how he was watching you all night.”
“Or how he looked at you at the spa,” added Natalie.
“Or how you looked at his zoom lens.” Rachel had come over all madonna-like, running marigold-tipped fingers over the swell of her abdomen, acting like she wasn’t cracking up everyone in the room.
Even Gillian. So she stifled the speech she’d been contemplating, about how just because the three of them were set to marry over the next few months, they didn’t need to go inventing a relationship for her.
Bad enough all these weddings meant being trapped in make-up chairs and having her hair yanked around into fancy shapes and wearing form-fitting dresses and offering up her feet for pumicing and her fingers for shellacking. She didn’t need to compound the torment of beautification with the emotional and intellectual trial of rehashing all her reasons for staying single.
“Beautiful, perfect hold that. And a bit more of a squeeze in together. Okay. Everyone turn your heads to the right. Your other right. Now back at me and smile.”
He blathered on with his congenial patter, calculated to get the whole wedding group on his side so they could get their shots done and move on to the partying.
Not that he allowed himself to operate on auto pilot during these formal pictures. It was a matter of experience, of skill. Every happy family and all that—he knew what they wanted. The relatives moved out and he clustered the bridesmaids around Serena. "Okay, and the bouquets across your right arms. Rachel, are you okay to lean towards the left for me? Great, thanks. How about …?"
He shifted a foot to the side. It wasn't the light, it was the dresses. He just needed … he walked forward and found himself face-to-face with Gillian. "It's okay if I snag this?" He tugged one of the big orange daisies from her bouquet. She gave him a look but opted against the verbal tongue lashing he had a feeling was trapped behind her social smile.
She made it impossible for him to go away. To leave her alone. Probably she had all kinds of other opinions on what was and was not possible, but he knew what he knew. He snapped off most of the stem and tucked the daisy into her raven hair. Breathed past the tingle when his fingertips brushed her brow. Struggled to ignore her spice-sweet scent. Stepped back and considered the group. Nodded. "Perfect. Okay, Gilly-Bean, stop glaring and smile. Or laugh, like your friends." He snapped up her expression, not that it would go front and center on his website. The glower would scare potential clients. He had a feeling, though, that Serena would like it. She was clearly enjoying every moment of her wedding day, including his somewhat bratty treatment of Gillian.
Serena’s sense of humor wasn’t as snide as Gillian’s, but he’d noted her fondness for gentle teasing. Pics of a disgruntled Gillian would suit her funny bone, though she wouldn’t opt to display them. He’d keep that pleasure in reserve for himself.
He reigned himself in from thoughts of decorating his home gallery with portraits of Gillian. And of the two of them. And group shots of him flanked by Gill and Ton.
Lowering the lens, he winked at her. She was too busy basking in the moment with her friends to bother blistering him with any one of her many opinions. Bride and bridesmaids all had relaxed into comfortable body language, making it a breeze to capture all the ways their connection had them brimming with love for Serena.
"Okay, groomsmen and Dillon. Come join the fun." It all got companionable after that. Once they’d moved en masse to the reception hall, he packed up some equipment for his assistant to stash in the SUV and switched up what he needed for the indoor work. And reset himself while he was at it. Never mind the press and taste of her midnight kiss lingering on his senses, never mind her radiating beauty captured for eternity with his camera. Those things weren’t the job. And he knew enough about Gillian Linette Bellamy to understand that anything short of brilliance for her friend’s wedding photos would drop him so far beneath her consideration he might as well not inhabit her same universe.
So he did the job. Last thing he wanted was to give Gill any excuse to disdain him. They’d lived through too many years of close encounters that kept her from seeing him as anything but Ton’s pal and a tag-along nuisance for her family.
He had goals, and being considered a nuisance wasn’t among them.