Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
S cott found Micah’s office with Bella’s directions. Like so much of the town, it was in an older building with historic charm. Nothing in Two Hearts was like the five-year-old house in the Chicago suburbs he owned. Everything in his home was new, modern, and up-to-date.
At first, having everything older had been unsettling, as if he’d stepped back in time and was missing modern conveniences. But the history of the place was growing on him.
After a walk down a wood-floored hallway, he found the office door with a sign that announced Micah’s legal practice and knocked on the door.
“Come on in,” a voice replied.
By this time, he’d met all the guys, but he knew Bella better than he knew her husband. Micah stood when he entered.
“Bella texted that you’d be stopping by but that it wasn’t about a legal matter. Since that’s my whole reason for being in this office and my specialty . . .”
Scott laughed. “That may be easier than what we have to do. We’re supposed to work together to get Greg to attend a guys’ meeting tonight.”
“Sit down.” Micah pointed to the chair in front of his desk. “You sure you don’t have any legal needs while you’re here?” He chuckled.
“None that I’m aware of.”
“This must be about the wedding the women have started planning.” He shook his head. “It’s ambitious.”
“Do you think it will work? “
“Yes, but the hard part will be keeping Cassie in the dark. She usually has her finger in the town’s events.”
Scott hadn’t thought about that.
“Pizza night would be common enough that Cassie wouldn’t bat an eye. The guys get together maybe once a month, sometimes more, to have pizza. I can run over and get a stack and bring them back to town. We often squeeze into Greg’s place because he’s a bachelor, and we aren’t displacing anyone. When Nick is in town, and he is, we’re wall to wall humans. We need a larger space for this.”
Scott looked around. “You definitely don’t have enough room here, and I don’t have a place to offer.” He considered Amy’s newspaper office, but they wouldn’t have enough seats.
“Let me make a couple of calls. Nick’s commercial kitchen doesn’t have enough chairs. But CJ and Paige have the largest house with plenty of room for all of us.”
Scott leaned back in his seat and waited while Micah called Paige first to make sure they could go there tonight. With that confirmed, he dialed CJ.
“I already talked to your other half. She said we could use your house tonight for a guys’ meeting to tell Greg about the wedding.” After a few seconds pause, Micah said, “ Ask , right.”
Scott chuckled as he realized Paige had told CJ to use different wording.
Micah furrowed his brow and held the phone closer to his ear. “Six o’clock.” He glanced over at Scott, who nodded in agreement. “What? It’s getting noisy there.” He raised his voice. “I’ll reach out to the rest of the guys. See you tonight.”
He hung up. “Whew! CJ was at a noisy construction site. I could barely hear him after a saw fired up at the end.” Micah made a few other calls, and everything had soon been planned for the men they knew well to show up at Paige and CJ’s house, which Scott was informed sat on the lake. He must have driven by with Greg, but he hadn’t pointed it out to Scott.
“GPS doesn’t always work here, but it will be easy to find. Have you been to the park on the lake?”
Scott nodded. He remembered that one because he’d wondered if it would be a good place for one of those proposals.
“They’re just a few houses down from that. Can’t miss it because it’s the pink one.”
Scott cringed. “Pink?”
“That was the same reaction CJ had when Paige told him she wanted to keep the color it had been in the past. He seems to have gotten used to it, though.”
Scott didn’t think he could ever get used to a pink house. The amount of pink in this town was unnerving.
Instead of going to Amy’s office this afternoon, he went for a long walk around the town. He passed by the veterinarian. When he reached the hardware store, he went inside to browse. He saw a couple of women buying things, but the place oozed testosterone.
Mid-afternoon, he called Mrs. Brantley when he remembered he needed to tell her he wouldn’t be home for dinner. She already knew they’d been able to plan the guys’ pizza dinner for tonight. Of course she did.
When it was almost 6:00 p.m., he got in his truck and found the pink house on the lake. He vaguely remembered noticing it when he’d done the rounds with Greg.
Still wearing his sheriff’s uniform from the day, Greg was walking up to the house as Scott pulled in.
His friend waited for him mid-sidewalk. “This is a last-minute get-together. Do you know what’s going on?”
Scott did but didn’t want to spill the news. “Let’s go in and find out.” He thought he’d nicely evaded the question, but Greg stared at him a beat too long. Scott may have been on the streets for a year before moving to computers, but Greg had been out there a lot longer, and he was street savvy.
“Everyone isn’t going to jump out from behind furniture and shout Happy Birthday, are they?”
Scott patted him on the shoulder. “If I remember correctly, we’re nowhere near your birthday.”
“That’s true, but it feels as if something is going on, and I don’t know what it is.” His eyes widened. “Someone’s not sick or dying, are they?”
“No! If anything is going on here—and I’m not saying there is—I’m sure it’s good news.”
Greg opened his mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it and turned toward the door again. “You’re not completely off the hook yet. But I’ll wait and see before I ask you again.”
Cassie was going to have her hands full being married to this guy. If she tried hiding Christmas presents in the house, he’d ferret the secret out of her over breakfast.
Scott smelled the pizza through the screen door. Inside, they found the guys gathered around a big dining room table.
“Now that everybody’s here, let’s dig in,” Micah said.
Greg took a seat but watched them, still seeming to want information no one was offering. As he opened one of the cardboard pizza boxes and reached for a slice, he said, “Anybody want to tell me what’s going on?”
The five men around the table froze.
CJ and Scott had each taken a bite of pizza, so they stayed mum. Micah was only pulling a couple of slices out of a box, so he had no excuse not to speak up.
“There’s something we wanted to . . . ask you, Greg.” Micah had caught himself as he was about to say the word tell, and Scott almost burst out laughing. “If, hypothetically, a wedding were to be completely planned, and all you and Cassie needed to do was show up to say I do, would that be something you’d be interested in?” Micah’s lawyer persona had come to life. Scott could see him in front of a jury, making his point. He’d said nothing, but he’d said everything.
Greg put his piece of pizza on his plate and brushed off his hands. “So, hypothetically, there could be a wedding being planned in which I showed up and didn’t have to do anything except say I do?”
“If there was such a thing, would you be interested?” Micah leaned forward and focused on Greg as if he was the only one in the room.
“Are you kidding? I’d be there in a heartbeat.” He looked around the room as the situation seemed to dawn on him. “Are you guys telling me a wedding is being planned right now?” The excitement and happiness in his voice were contagious.
All the guys grinned.
“So you would definitely think that was a good idea?” CJ asked.
“Absolutely. Tell me when and where to show up. But how’d you get Cassie on board with this? She plans everything with infinite detail. That’s really what’s been the holdup for us getting married. She has struggled to plan her wedding after the last fiasco.”
The tone in the room shifted dramatically.
“Let me rephrase my earlier question,” Micah said. “If you were to know about the wedding and you just needed to show up, would that be acceptable?”
“And Cassie doesn’t know,” Greg said the words slowly. He processed the idea for a moment before responding.
Scott said, “It would be a complete secret to Cassie until the day of the wedding.”
“My first thought was that she would be upset because she hadn’t been part of the process,” Greg said thoughtfully.
That was what Scott had wondered.
“I realized that she’s said over and over again that she wants to marry me, but she freezes every time she even thinks about making the plans. She even hinted at a possibility of an elopement but knew her mother would freak out and never speak to her again.” He looked around the room at the guys. “Honestly, I didn’t see the flaw in that.” He shuddered. “Even though her mother’s a handful, Cassie loves her, so she wants her to be there when she gets married.”
Scott processed everything his friend had said. “So you believe Cassie will be okay with this?”
Greg nodded. “I believe she will. It has to be beautiful, of course. Like something Cassie would plan. But I know that’s exactly what her friends here would do.”
“The women have planned it well so far. Bella says she has Cassie’s measurements so she can make a dress with no problem.” Micah took a bite of his pizza, seeming to consider his part in the conversation over.
“Paige is going to take the photos, and James is going to help her so they know they’ve gotten every possible picture Cassie would request from a photographer.” CJ pulled another piece out of a box.
“Simone is making a cake that she assures everyone Cassie will love.” Nick grabbed a slice of pizza but was stopped midway back to his plate when Greg put his hand on Nick’s arm. “It can’t be a regular cake.”
Everyone stared at him.
Nick asked, “What’s a regular cake?”
Greg sliced across the air in front of him several times with his hand. “She’s tired of those cakes with many layers. Just the other day, she said she’d seen a million of them, and she’d like to see something different.”
Nick reached for his phone, and Simone was on the line seconds later. He held his phone out for Greg to repeat what he’d just said. Nick asked his fiancée, “What would be different than a wedding cake for a wedding? I know you can come up with something, Simone.”
Without missing a beat, she said, “How about cupcakes? Then I could do a couple of flavors.”
Greg grinned. “That sounds perfect.”
Nick set his phone on the table. “As long as I have you on the phone, why don’t you give details to Greg.”
Simone continued. “We’ve got everything covered. For the venues, the ceremony will be in the church, and the reception will be in Cherry and Levi’s barn. Does that sound like something that will work?”
“It sounds perfect. One other thing Cassie has mentioned is that she wants casual elegance. I’m glad you guys are on this because I don’t know what that means.”
“That’s where we were going with it. You’ll need a suit, Greg. You know Cassie and details, so you’d better go to Nashville and get something tailored to fit you. The tie needs to be in the wedding’s colors of yellow and pink. Oh, and Scott’s working on the invitations, so he can probably tell you more about those.”
After they’d hung up, Scott did as Simone had asked.
Still grinning, Greg leaned back in his chair. “When is this wedding of mine?”
Everyone laughed.
“Two weeks from last Thursday,” Micah said.
The groom-to-be picked up a piece of pizza, and they all went back to their meal. Between mouthfuls, Greg said, “Cassie and I have been saving money for our wedding. You can’t go wild and have ice carvings of swans—not that I’d want those, but we can pay for some things. It’s in a joint account we set up for this purpose, so I think I can sneak the money out without her noticing.”
“Amy told me that your mother is in charge of the show.” Scott reached for another piece of pizza. When he looked up, all eyes were on him.
Greg smiled. “First, the invitations and now inside information from her. Is there something going on between you and Amy?”
Micah added, “I was wondering the same thing.”
The other men nodded.
Scott felt like he was being interrogated. “Not that I know of. To escape the mayor’s detailed plans for my—” He looked at Greg. For a second, he’d forgotten that his host was also his friend’s mother. “You know how she can plan.”
“Oh, I definitely do. So you escaped to the newspaper and have been helping Amy, I understand?”
“That’s all it is. I’ve been helping Amy.”
The men all grinned as though they knew something Scott didn’t. He had to admit that it was a little unnerving.