Chapter 3
Chapter three
Noah
Levi and I pulled into the wedding venue in the shop’s sprinter van, and our boss, Carina, pulled in next to us in her car. We got out and met her at the back of the van. This was the biggest wedding we’d done, and we were on a serious time crunch to get everything set up.
“Okay, boys, here’s the plan,” she said. “Let’s knock out the easy stuff first. If you two can lay out the corsages and the boutonnieres, I’ll get the bridal bouquets in place and put out the aisle markers, then the three of us can work together to get the arch done.”
I reached in and lightly ran a finger over one of the peonies. “These make such a pretty bouquet, and they’re perfect flowers for weddings.”
I’d spent countless hours out in my mother’s flower garden with her. She was the one who taught me the language of flowers and how you could send a message with a bouquet. I missed her every single day, but being surrounded by flowers helped me keep her memory alive.
“Yep, fidelity, long-lasting love, and a fortunate marriage,” Carina said with a smile. “Anyway, let’s get to work.”
Levi and I spent the next half hour bringing in all the flowers from the van.
When we did an event like this, we always loaded up buckets with extra flowers just to be safe, but they couldn’t be left in the van on a day like today, or they would get hot.
Once those were inside, we got the boxes out of the van that were filled with the flowers we’d prepared yesterday and took them to the prep-room.
We spread everything out and inspected the corsages and boutonnieres.
We tried to be careful with them, but the flowers were delicate, and inevitably, there would be some loss.
Levi and I worked together to remove any bruised petals before laying them out so the wedding planner could see to their distribution.
Levi plucked a petal off one of the corsages and said, “My roommate and I are going to be hitting the clubs after work tonight if you want to join us.”
I focused on the flowers in front of me and answered him without looking up.
“Sorry, I have plans for tonight, but thanks for the invite.” I didn’t really have plans, but I didn’t want to explain why to him.
Truth was, I’d made a lot of progress with my therapist, but not enough to be comfortable going clubbing.
Getting drugged and kidnapped could do that to a guy.
He looked at me skeptically. Fair enough, since it wasn’t true, and I’d never been a good liar. “Well, if your plans change, just let me know.”
“I will, thanks.” I held up a flower. “Do you think this one looks okay? It got kind of squished.”
“I have no idea how that even happens when we were so careful when we packed them up yesterday.” He shook his head. “Do we have extras?”
“As long as we don’t lose any others, we should have enough without it. If not, I can make another one.” I laid that one to the side and went back to inspecting the flowers.
It took us longer than we expected, but eventually the corsages and boutonnieres were all laid out, but that was just the beginning.
We still had to assemble the arch and the centerpieces.
They featured peonies, ranunculus, and eucalyptus to complement the bridal bouquet, and they were going to be stunning.
The problem with peonies, though, was that you couldn’t do much with them ahead of time or they would wilt something awful, so we had to hustle to get everything set up.
The arch was next and Carina had already gotten started, so Levi and I hurried up the aisle to help her. She was under the arch, wrestling with a roll of chicken wire when I walked over.
“What can we do to help?” I asked.
“Get started with those,” she said, pointing at a massive pile of greenery.
Levi made a face as he handed her wire cutters. “This a lot of green.”
“It’s a spring wedding,” Carina said, tugging the wire tight. “Spring is supposed to look abundant.”
It took us a good thirty minutes, but we had indeed accomplished what I would call abundant.
I was up on the step ladder, and they were both on the ground.
I started adding the spray roses to the arch on my side.
The last flowers to be added were the peonies, and when we finished with those, we all stepped back and looked at it.
“What do you think?” Levi asked.
Carina smiled at both of us. “Fairytale achieved. That’s it for in here. Now you two go assemble centerpieces. I’m going to check in with the wedding planner.”
A few minutes later, Levi and I were on the fifth of twenty centerpieces when Carina came into the room. “Hey, Noah, can you do me a favor?”
“Of course. What do you need?”
“The wedding planner just asked me if we could add a bouquet to the table by the guest book. They thought they didn’t need one, but whatever they were going to do instead didn’t happen. So now she’s panicking.”
“Sure, that won’t take long. We have plenty of extras. I can put something nice together.” I smiled at Levi. “I’ll be right back.”
They shrugged. “No biggie. I’ll just be here gluing eucalyptus onto the base of the centerpieces.”
“Be careful not to scorch the peonies,” I cautioned.
“I promise not to go anywhere near them with the glue gun.”
I hurried out front to find the wedding planner, Kim, standing in the vestibule where everyone would come in. “I hear you need an emergency bouquet.”
She sighed and nodded. “Yes, they’d ordered an ice sculpture that was supposed to sit by the guest book, but there was a miscommunication on the date. It won’t be here.”
I gave her a reassuring smile. She really was one of my favorite wedding planners we worked with, and I could tell she was stressed. Of course, wedding planners always were on event day. “Don’t worry. We have plenty of peonies left. I can put something really nice together for you.”
“Thank you. The bride loves peonies, so that’ll be perfect. It needs to be big and impressive, though.”
“Impressive enough to replace an ice sculpture. I got it.”
“Thank you. How long will it take, you think?”
“Give me ten minutes.”
“You’re an angel. I’m going to go put out one of the thousand other fires and leave you to this one. I’ll meet you back here in ten.”
I hurried back into the prep-room where Carina and Levi were adding flowers to the centerpieces. “I’m going to use the peonies,” I announced. “I just need something to put them in. She wants it to be big.”
“That’s perfect.” Carina smiled at me. “Let’s use as many of them as we can so they don’t go to waste. Look in that closet over there. A lot of venues have vases and things available.”
I went over and opened the door, and sure enough, there was a decent selection of vases and urns.
I selected a heavy, wide-mouthed urn. It wasn’t fancy, but I could disguise it.
All I needed was something to hold the flowers.
I filled the urn with floral foam and then added hydrangeas for size, peonies for drama, ranunculus for detail, and enough eucalyptus to make it look intentional instead of rushed.
It turned out lush and towering, exactly what the table needed. It would smell incredible, and I knew she’d appreciate the dramatic look of the bouquet. I chuckled to myself as I added a few more peonies to make the arrangement extra large, you know, because…ice sculpture.
I stepped back and looked at a piece that had taken me less than 10 minutes but looked like it had taken hours. “What’d you think?”
Carina looked up from the centerpiece she was working on and smiled. “That’s beautiful.”
“Great, I’ll get these out to Kim.” I put the flowers on a cart because they were too big and heavy to carry, and pushed it down the hallway.
I rolled the cart through the door into the vestibule, the flowers just about completely blocking my view.
“What do you think?” I called out. “Impressive enough to replace an ice sculpture?”
“I don’t know. Ice sculptures are pretty awesome, but those are nice,” a deep voice said.
I peeked around the bouquet and froze. Shit. If Jackson Crowe was here, something really bad must have happened.
He towered over me, with broad shoulders, his face grim. Just like the first time I’d seen him—when he’d helped rescue me from a group of sex traffickers.
When I saw him, standing there in the event foyer, I wanted to run. But to him or away from him? Both impulses struck at once, leaving me rooted to the spot.
Crowe
Damn, Noah looked good. Not that he didn’t look good when he left Vesper, he did, but now he looked healthy.
He’d bulked up a little, and his hair had grown out.
He was wearing it in one of those messy styles that took forever but was designed to look like you hadn’t bothered with it.
He’d sounded so cheerful and so happy before he’d realized it was me and not whoever was here for the flowers.
I was glad to see that he was doing so well. Unfortunately, I wasn’t here for a social visit; I was here to destroy whatever peace he’d managed to find, albeit hopefully only temporarily.
“What are you doing here, Jackson?”
I could tell by the tone that he was less than happy to see me. I got that, though. It wasn’t about me; it was about his past showing up for a visit.
“You should answer your phone,” I pointed out.
“What?” He reached for his pocket and then wrinkled his brow as he patted all his pockets. “Shit. Must have left it in the van.”
“Wolfe’s been trying to call you all day.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously. Now, is there somewhere we can talk so I can catch you up on why I’m here? Plus, we’re going to need to call Wolfe.”
He opened his mouth to reply when the door opened, and a woman rushed in. “Sorry, the cake was delivered to the wrong room, and we couldn’t find it.” She stopped when she saw the flowers, and her face lit up. “Oh, Noah, they’re perfect.”
“Thank you. Hopefully, they’re pretty enough that no one will notice the missing ice sculpture.”