25

As hearty hugs and congratulations made the frosty air even more festive, I noticed a stranger standing by the gate near the back of the prayer garden area.

I didn’t recognize the man; it must have been someone my beloved Bailey invited. I thought it best to show him in. As I walked toward the gate, he turned and walked away. I broke into a jog. I caught up with the man and extended my hand. “Sir, are you here for the wedding?”

The man didn’t return my shake, but ran his hand through graying brown hair. His brown eyes and something about his nose looked familiar. “You’re off the beaten track, aren’t you? Had a time finding this place.” He took a step back and craned his neck to look behind me.

“Are you with the Browns? I’m afraid you missed the wedding, but come on in to the reception.” I reached to put my hand on the man’s shoulder and nudge him toward the party.

“I didn’t miss it. I saw the whole thing from the gate.” He took a step back from my hand.

A cold chill ran up my neck, and not from the temperature. “Look, can I help you? If you won’t join us, then I need to get back to my bride.” I turned to leave.

“Your bride, but my daughter.”

The sentence hung in the air.

I froze. Slowly I turned to face him. “You’re Kevin Brown.” Same color hair and eyes. If his nose hadn’t looked so much like Bailey’s, it would have been broken by my fist just then. Calm down, man.

“So, she’s told you about me.” Once again he strained to look behind me.

“Yes, she has, and I’ve seen that lame letter you left her as well.” Control yourself.

“I’ll be going now, but I’ll be back.” Kevin Brown turned to leave.

“You should have shown up a long time ago. Bailey is my wife now. I’m asking you not to come back here without talking to me first.” I took a card from my wallet. “Here’s my number.”

Kevin Brown simply nodded and walked away. I stood staring after him. I tried to shake off my anger, calm my pounding heart. My controlling nature kicked in, but it was hard not to feel protective of my wife.

“Scott, what are you doing over there?” Bailey called from the gate.

Had she seen her father? “Coming,” I called back. I joined her, put my arm around her and walked her toward the festivities. I looked back over her shoulder. Brown had disappeared. I tried to get a normal breath.

“Are you all right?” Bailey stopped and looked up into my eyes.

I pulled her to me and held her tight. How could I protect her from more hurt by her father? What did Brown have to gain by showing up now? At least we’d be gone for a time. I would not let this ruin the day, or our honeymoon. Father, I put this in Your hands. Maybe I should tell Toppy in case Brown showed up before we returned from our trip. “Sure, just scandalously happy. Come on, they’re calling us for pictures.” I breathed a prayer for wisdom.

Snow came down now, thick and soft. No one seemed to mind. In fact, the merriness increased.

I enjoyed every minute of the photo poses.

Greg caught the garter and Mandy the bride’s bouquet. That caused quite a stir. I’d never seen Greg’s face so red, or Mandy’s either, for that matter.

I couldn’t bear to mess up Bailey’s beautiful face with the traditional cake in the face at the bride’s table, but she had no qualms about mashing a piece into mine. I laughed until the trauma of Kevin Brown showing up nearly subsided. I took my bride by the hand and walked her to the gazebo.

We watched our loved ones enjoy themselves.

Todd put on a series of favorite Christmas carols.

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas is my all-time favorite, of the secular ones, I mean,” Bailey said. She held my hand and sang along with Judy Garland.

“I love Merry Christmas, Darling. I hope he’s got that one on the list,” I said.

Nearly everyone sang along.

Santa Baby began playing.

Toppy took his bride, and they began dancing on the gazebo. They twirled past Bailey and me.

“Mom, when did you learn to do that?” Bailey clapped and thumbs-upped her mom.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Gwen said and danced away.

“Let’s give it a try,” Bailey said.

“Uh, I’m no dancer,” I waved my hands in front of me.

“Oh, come on,” she said and pulled me to the center of the dance floor.

I couldn’t exactly say I danced, but I did have a ball. I mostly loved watching Bailey glow brighter than the twinkling lights.

We were joined by as many as could fit comfortably on the gazebo, and others just danced out in the snow.

I held her close as we danced. My mind wandered to the night to come. Was she nervous about it, too?

“It’s amazing what they did. All so perfect.” Bailey looked around and sighed.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Explains some mysterious behavior. I bet Toppy is rubbing his neck because he spent a lot of time with his hands over his head putting up lights.”

“Most likely. I noticed many strange things, but we were so preoccupied we didn’t realize. That Tracy and her faith in us. All of them.” Bailey’s eyes glowed with loving tears.

“I’m glad they had more faith in us than I did. What an idiot I was.”

“No more of that talk. It’s all over now, and we are stronger because of it. I love you, you know.” She leaned her head on my shoulder.

Emotion choked me. I couldn’t answer, but nodded and kissed her on the cheek. What a hard time life is sometimes. Today I could still say I still didn’t understand the whys of everything. But I knew the hand of God had been with me all the way. I gazed at my beautiful bride. What a gift. I’d live my life to make her happy, to be the best man I could be. I’d learned that I couldn’t even approach my best without the Father’s help.

“Get a load of that,” Bailey whispered as she nodded her head to our right.

I could only imagine what Pastor Jack, hat in his hand, talked to Phoebe about. Her pageant stance had morphed to a humbled head down, dabbing a tissue at her eyes.

Bailey smiled as she watched them, as though she knew something about it.

“Interesting.” I noticed that Bailey shivered. “Cold, Mrs. West?”

“Only slightly, but I love it.” Bailey snuggled into my side. She held onto her necklace.

“You found it.”

“Yes, I did. I didn’t know you were aware I’d lost it.”

“Your mom had everyone praying about it.”

“Ah, well, those prayers about lost things are being answered.” She grinned, a mysterious smile.

“There’s a story in that grin,” I kissed her mirthful lips.

She nodded toward Jack and Phoebe. “I’ll tell you when I know how it turns out.”

“Hey, Boss, we get the rest of the week off for Christmas, right?” Greg danced by with Mandy on his arm crunching snow under their feet.

“All right, slacker, if you want.” I shook my head in mock frustration.

Greg’s face fell.

“Just kidding, you nut,” I said.

A huge smile spread across Greg’s face.

Tracy and Liz cut cake while Lisa, Melissa, and Macy served guests.

I nudged Bailey down the steps toward the cake table. Maybe I could wrangle another piece out of Liz. “I’ll take an end piece there, with lots of icing.” I expected Bailey to protest.

“Here, Bailey,” Liz offered her a slice of cake.

“No thanks, but I will take the fork. We’ll share his.” She winked at Liz.

I rolled my eyes.

“I saw that.” Bailey stabbed her fork into our piece of cake. She fed me a piece.

Toppy and Gwen walked over to the cake table. “Fighting already?” Toppy asked.

“Not at all, sharing cake.” Bailey brushed crumbs from my lapel.

“You’ll be sharing everything now,” Gwen’s eyes glistened.

“Yes, and I learned it the hard way, didn’t I?” I shook my uncle’s hand and then wrapped them both up in a hug.

“Point is, you learned it, but you’ll continue to learn it day after day.” Toppy reached for Gwen’s hand.

Dr. Harkin approached me for a hand shake.

Melissa walked up, gave me a hug, and then took hold of the doctor’s hand.

“Looks like you took my advice, Doc.” I winked at Melissa.

“He did, and not a moment too soon.” Melissa pulled Dr. Harkin up onto the dance floor as Baby, It’s Cold Outside rang from the sound system.

My cell phone buzzed in my pocket. “Hello? Great. Yeah, just a few more minutes. Thanks so much.” I slapped my leg. “Snap!”

“What’s that all about?” Bailey asked.

“You’ll see. Well, Mrs. West, I think it’s time to go.” I rubbed my hands together.

“Go where? We never decided for certain what we’d do.” Her shining eyes choked me up, again.

“We can do whatever you want. Stay the night in town, or the Sweetheart Room at the inn, or go ahead to Dallas for the night. It might be hard to book a flight anywhere this close to Christmas, but it can be an adventure.”

“I like the sound of that. I love seeing you so relaxed and unstructured.”

“First, though, I have a surprise. Go put on something warm and meet me in front of the inn.”

“All right. Mom, will you help me out of this dress?”

Bailey and her mother held her dress out of the steadily falling snow that had begun to accumulate.

I followed behind.

~*~

My face ached from smiling, and tears hovered in my eyes every minute. Joy pulsed through my veins.

Mom helped me take off Gran’s beloved dress. We carefully returned it to the box. Surely Gran must be smiling from heaven. I donned a nice pair of light brown cords and a cream-colored pullover sweater.

Mom unpinned my hair, sniffling. She pinned a cute Christmas corsage on my shoulder.

“Don’t cry, Mom, you’ll get me started again.”

“I’m just so happy for you.” She embraced me.

“I’m happy for both of us. Wow, things were so different just a few months ago.”

Mom wrapped a bright red crocheted scarf around my neck.

I heard the sound of my friends coming from the back of the house to the front. I distinctly heard…wait…was that a horse? I ran to the window. My friends lined the driveway. At the end stood a shining black carriage attached to two beautiful white horses. They neighed and pawed the ground.

“Mom, a horse-drawn carriage! Look.”

“Don’t just stand there gawking. The rig waits for you.” She handed me a bright red cap and my coat.

We descended the stairs to find Scott standing there.

He wore a pair of jeans and a leather jacket. He wore a bright red scarf as well, and held a red cap in his hand.

Mom slipped past us and went outside.

“I have something for you,” I held up my crochet bag. He stood back as I pulled the afghan out.

“You did this? Gosh, it’s nice.” He held it up, admiring the lap blanket on all sides.

“The colors and rows mean something, can you guess?”

“Let’s see.” He draped it over the stair rails and studied it.

“My guess is the first rows in that aqua color represents the Washout Express. Then there are three rows of purple. Hmm.” He rubbed his chin and turned his head from side to side.

“Hint?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Purple is the color of royalty.”

“Of course, “Queen o’ Sheba,..” he began, and I chanted his father’s first nickname for me along with him, “Queen o’ Sheba, Queen o’ Sheba, Queen o’ Sheba.”

“Then all the colors are mixed together, kind of like our one big, mixed-up, happy family around here. This kind of represents your journey here.” He pulled it off the rail and folded it.

“Exactly. I’ve been working on it all these weeks as a wedding present. The last three rows are white, symbolizing our wedding. We might need it today in all this cold.”

“I’ll have to build another inn to house all the blankets if you make one for all our future goings on.” He tucked the afghan under his arm.

“Suits me fine,” I said.

Scott pulled me to him.

“Everyone’s waiting,” I said, but leaned into his embrace.

“Let them wait.”

~*~

“M’lady.” I offered Bailey my arm. “Sleighs are hard to come by around here, but I thought a Christmas carriage ride might do.” I stole another kiss.

“You thought right, but how on earth did you make this happen?” Bailey clapped her hands. She took my hand and walked through the double row of friends and family.

They blew a profusion of soap bubbles, promptly obliterated by falling snow.

Plenty of hugs and kisses, handshakes and back slaps surrounded us.

“Scott, it’s Jim Ballard in the driver’s seat.” Bailey waved at him.

“Yes, the rig is his. When it started snowing, I remembered he gives rides in town during Christmas week. I’m not sure how he got it here so fast, but he was more than happy to oblige.” I tipped my cap at Mr. Ballard.

“Congratulations, both of you,” he smiled down at us both, and tipped his top hat bedecked with holly.

I opened the door of the carriage.

Bailey turned and blew kisses to everyone and then stepped in.

Toppy stepped up to me and shook my hand. “You’ll be fine, son. I’m so happy for you. Have a good time and don’t hurry back. We’ve got you covered.”

“I know, and I appreciate it.” I gave my uncle a bear hug and then whispered in his ear. “Bailey’s father showed up here earlier. Just a heads up. I told him not to come back without talking to me first. Who knows what that means, but I wanted you to know.”

Toppy’s eyes grew wide.

“I know, we’ve got to protect our women,” I said.

“You did right to tell me. Don’t worry about it now.”

“Love you, and thanks for everything.”

“Love you too, now get out of here.”

I waved at everyone.

“Where to?” Mr. Ballard called from his perch above the horses.

“Take a right.” Dad had some property farther up the road I’d not shown Bailey yet. It might be a good place to build our own nest. I stepped into the carriage where a heart as beautiful as the quiet, snowy woods held out her hands to me. I tucked the afghan she made around her legs. Embracing her sent weakness to my knees, but strength, hope and love swelled my heart. Whatever faced us when we returned, we would face together with the Lord’s help. Right now I felt more of a man than ever before. A man in his right mind, if that was even possible when crazy, ridiculously in love.

A man with an undivided heart.