Epilogue
Kate watched Tamara and Nate leaving the wedding reception and had to admit she was glad they were going.
At least now she didn’t have to try so hard to pretend everything was okay.
She was happy for them—of course she was.
They were her dear friends here in America, and they were obviously meant to be together, and that was great.
Love was a wonderful thing. It was her own life that was making her feel like a plant whose roots had begun to wither, leaving nothing underneath.
Kate had seen so many of her friends at Married in Malibu find love in the past few months.
Not so long ago, she’d even joked to Nate that they were the only single ones left, but now he had Tamara, which meant that Kate was the only single person at Married in Malibu.
Everyone around her was deeply in love, and there she was, in the background, working on her plants.
Kate had always loved plants. They weren’t complicated.
They didn’t ask anything of anyone. As a child, Kate hadn’t had a lot of family around.
Only her grandmother had been there to give love freely.
Hers had been a closed-off existence, and somewhere along the line, it had gotten to the point where plants were just…
easier. Give them your time, your effort, and your love, and they rewarded you.
Nurture them, and they bloomed. Feed them, and they grew.
People were more complicated. She’d given as much as she could to the people around her when she was growing up, but it had never made a difference.
Her parents had always been too busy with their own lives to pay any real attention to hers.
Now she was standing in the middle of a party full of people, but she might as well have been standing in an empty room.
That said everything that needed to be said.
She could have struck up a conversation with someone, but her friends were all with the people they cared about, or else they were far too busy keeping the party running smoothly.
Kate didn’t want to barge in, and she certainly didn’t want to try talking to perfect strangers.
She wasn’t a hermit, not by a long shot.
She had friends. She had a life. But talking to strangers would have meant opening up to them, and that was something Kate didn’t do.
She’d learned to be cautious. The less you talked about yourself, the less of a problem it was when it turned out that they didn’t care.
She’d had relationships before, of course.
It was just… they tended not to last very long, especially when they reached the point of getting more serious.
So today, she’d turned down a couple of offers to dance, the way she normally shut guys down whenever they asked her out on dates or wanted her number.
All of that entailed getting to know people, and usually it was easier to skip it.
Except right now, that tactic didn’t seem to be making her any happier.
Maybe she should try to have fun for once?
“You’re looking a little lost,” a man said, having come close without Kate noticing. “Or maybe you’re in need of a dance partner.”
She turned, and she might have told him to go away if he hadn’t been quite so handsome.
He was sandy-haired, perfectly groomed, with blue eyes that seemed to see straight to her very core.
As he waited for a reply, his piercing gaze took in every detail—of Kate, the room, and the situation.
There was a slight quirk of his lip that suggested he probably thought he was the smartest guy in the room.
It was a slightly disconcerting experience to get quite so much out of someone’s appearance.
“I’m not lost,” Kate assured him. “I work here.”
“And does that mean that you’re not allowed to dance?” he countered. He held out a hand. “I’m Mitchell Macauley. My friends call me Mitch.”
“Katherine Bryson.” She took his hand, and he effortlessly pulled her close. “My friends call me Kate.”
“It’s good to meet you, Kate,” he said.
Instinctively, Kate wanted to pull back from the cockiness of his approach.
But she didn’t. After all, she’d just told herself that maybe this would be a good moment to open up and have fun.
And if she was going to do that… Well, this was exactly the kind of too-handsome, too-sure-of-himself guy Kate would normally have avoided.
In other words, he provided the perfect opportunity to take a risk.
Within seconds, he had her out on the dance floor.
And just as quickly, she had to admit, dancing with him was fun.
Dancing was fun in general. It was just that it didn’t happen all that often.
If she did go out to a club, she had to go with friends like Tamara, who was admittedly a lot of fun but not someone she could slow-dance with, or if she was out on her own, there would always be someone trying to hit on her.
Men always assumed that she couldn’t just be there for the music and the atmosphere.
Mitch knew how to dance. There was something about his confidence and directness that translated into a kind of fearlessness on the dance floor.
He didn’t seem to care if people were watching, or maybe he liked that they were.
Kate was less comfortable with the attention because she was so rarely on the receiving end when there were others around.
Somehow, though, Mitch’s presence made the whole thing feel okay.
Better than okay. In fact, there wasn’t anywhere else Kate would rather have been.
“If you’re Kate Bryson,” Mitch said, “then that means you did the flowers for the wedding.” He obviously caught Kate’s look. “I looked over Married in Malibu’s website before I came. I wanted to see what I was getting myself into.”
“You’re not a fan of weddings?” Kate asked.
“I’m a fan of this wedding,” Mitch said. “The flowers are particularly beautiful.”
“That was smooth,” Kate said with a smile.
“I’m generally smoother,” Mitch assured her.
Kate wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. He really was the kind of guy she’d have normally avoided like the plague, but there was something about Mitch that made Kate feel like doing anything but running away.
“What’s it like, producing the flowers for so many amazing weddings?” Mitch asked.
“It’s wonderful,” Kate assured him. It was what she usually said when people asked her, because it was and because it was really all that they wanted to hear.
They wanted to have a vague idea that her job was great, that everyone involved in producing their wedding loved doing it.
They didn’t want to hear all the details.
“But what does ‘wonderful’ mean?” Mitch insisted. “I’ve never had the chance to talk to someone who does what you do. I’d like to know.”
Kate had never had anyone say that to her before. They’d always taken her assurance at face value. They’d never been interested before. Given that, she suddenly found it was easy to start talking.
“Are you sure you want to know more?” Kate asked.
“Absolutely,” Mitch said. “You seem like a very interesting person.”
So Kate told him. She’d meant to give him only the basic details, but somehow it spilled out into more than that.
What it was like to try to keep all the gardens in order in the heat, what it was like to try to produce flowers on demand, and how she created arrangements that fit with the themes of the weddings.
“You must have to fight your corner with some of your colleagues,” Mitch guessed.
“Maybe, occasionally,” Kate said, “but mostly, it all works really well. Sometimes, the tricky part is getting things right from the start with new clients.”
“Do you ever have any clients who are just nightmares to work with?” Mitch asked.
“Mitch!” Kate laughed at the suggestion, but then she shook her head.
“No, they’ve all been great. The main problem can often be how little time they have to spare.
I mean, our first wedding, for Amber and Drew, we didn’t see either of them face-to-face until the wedding day.
Or often the clients don’t know enough about flowers to be able to make decisions.
Quite a lot of the time, I’m flying blind. ”
“And yet, you manage to produce such amazing results,” Mitch said. They were still dancing, probably closer than they should have been. It was impossible not to, with a man this gorgeous and this easy to talk to. “What about all the secrecy?”
“I can handle not talking to people,” Kate said. “Actually, I’m good at not talking to people.” She laughed.
“You’re talking to me,” Mitch said. “Seriously, though, how does it work? I mean, how do you find clients if no one is allowed to talk about what goes on here? Is it all secretive meetings in parking lots and bundles of cash?”
Kate had to laugh at that image. She couldn’t imagine Liz ever doing anything like that.
“Clients mostly find us through word of mouth. I think it’s helped that we’ve already put on some great weddings.
” She paused for a moment, looking around at the party.
“Just think how many people will have seen this one.”
“You sound a little scared,” Mitch said.
“I’m excited, I guess,” Kate replied. “It’s just… That many people, all looking at the things we’ve done? I really hope the flowers are perfect.”
Not for the first time, she wondered how many millions of people would have seen Zach and Yuriko’s wedding.
How many would have looked at her flower arrangements?
Oh, they wouldn’t be the main focus for anyone but serious gardeners—probably not even for them.
It was just… weird to think of so many people looking at anything she’d done.
At least she could be in the background.
That was one of the great things about Married in Malibu.
She got to do what she loved without ever being the one in the limelight.
She got to do great work, while all the privacy that protected the guests kept her feeling comfortable too.
“I thought it was very brave of the happy couple to broadcast their wedding to the world like that,” Mitch said.
“I couldn’t have done it,” Kate assured him. “The really hard part was trying to make it feel intimate at the same time. It turns out that cameras really do get in the way.”
“They can,” Mitch agreed. “And you’ve certainly succeeded in making some parts of the day feel intimate.”
Kate swallowed. This did feel intimate. More intimate than anything she had felt for a long time.
Talking with Mitch felt as though there were no barriers between them, and for once, it was a good feeling.
Maybe the impossible had finally happened.
Maybe she’d run into someone she could actually open up to without it feeling strange, or dangerous, or both.
“Is it wrong to say that I like where this is going?” Kate asked.
Mitch shook his head. “It’s certainly going better than my editor said it would. She said I wouldn’t get through the door.”
“Your… editor?” Kate asked. Something clamped around her heart like a vise, and she stepped back.
Mitch held out a hand again. “Sorry, I guess I didn’t introduce myself that well. Mitch Macauley. I write for the LA Times. I’m here to do a piece on Married in Malibu.”
Kate froze at those words. They couldn’t be right, could they?
The world couldn’t be that cruel. But of course it could.
No wonder he’d come up to her and had been so nice.
It hadn’t had anything to do with being attracted to her, or with wanting to get to know her.
And if he’d been easy to talk to, it was only because that was what he was paid to be good at.
She couldn’t believe that she’d fallen for this.
“Excuse me, I have to go,” Kate said, heading off into the crowd in search of Travis so that he could have Mitch removed.
How had he even gotten in here? Kate didn’t know the answer to that question, but she did know that she felt embarrassed in a way she never had before.
Maybe his piece would be great, a free ad for Married in Malibu, but Kate didn’t even care.
She’d gone and shared herself in what she’d believed was a private conversation, not something she’d thought would be broadcast to the world.
Obviously, she could not trust Mitch Macauley!