Epilogue
Annamae
Daisy
I stood in the suite and stared out the windows at
the snow-covered mountains while Michelle closed the door behind the girls
who’d done my hair and makeup.
“Gosh, but you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
I turned to watch Marcus’s sister walking toward me and
smiled. “Well, thanks, sugar.”
She looked me up and down and then she got misty.
I moved to her, my skirt swaying with me, and it had to be
said, it felt nice. So nice, I never wanted to take that dress off.
Not ever.
But if I didn’t, it wouldn’t stay as pretty as it was.
And it’d be difficult for Marcus to give me some wedding
nookie. He could get creative. But I didn’t want any of his creative ruining my
dress.
I got close and took her hands in mine.
“You gotta quit cryin’, darlin’,” I advised, doing so because she’d burst
into tears no less than six times since she and Doug had met us up in Aspen two
days before. “You got your makeup done too and you’re pretty as a picture.
Marcus and Doug’ll be all upset you show puffy-eyed
and red in the face.”
“Marcus won’t even know I’m there.”
He loved his sister but I reckoned she had that
right.
She pulled a hand from mine, lifted it, and cupped my jaw.
“I’m glad he waited to find the right girl.”
In response, I gave her the understatement of the century.
“I’m glad I was the right girl.”
We grinned at each other.
A knock came at the door.
“I’ll get it,” she murmured, moving from me.
Taking another one of the half a million (slightly
exaggerated) opportunities I’d taken since I’d donned my dress, I turned and
looked into a mirror.
It had all come together perfectly.
I was Daisy but Daisy did her wedding just a little bit
differently seeing as it was the day she was going to become Mrs. Marcus Sloan.
That meant my hair was teased full at the top back, but the
sides had three soft twists in them, pulling them back to a big, swirly bun
that nearly took up the entire back of my head. There was a diamanté comb
tucked in one side (a girl’s gotta have her sparkle,
especially on her wedding day) and tendrils dangling around my ears. My bangs
were full and brushed my brows.
I’d given up the smoke, the makeup girl bestowing on me
subtle contouring, cheeks in pink, eyes in creams, browns, and pinks with
magnificent shading and a set of fake eyelashes that I’d memorized the brand
and style because they said perfection with a kapow!
My hair was romantically fabulous.
My makeup was understatedly dramatic.
My dress was d-i-v-i-n-e, divine.
It was white because I might not be a virgin but I was still
a good girl and I reckoned I’d earned white, one way or another.
The bodice was a V-neck that went low (I might be going
romantic for my Marcus but I was still Daisy, so if cleavage could be had, and
I was a woman who could have a lot of it, it was had—and
it was).
The whole top was made of lace, but the part from the
built-in bustier over my shoulders, the lace was see-through. I had a
rhinestone belt that was thin and pretty and made my waist look teeny-tiny. And
the skirt flowed down in huge, soft, angelic, slanted vertical gossamer ruffles
with a nice train at the back.
My wedding flowers (you could probably guess) were big cream
gerbera daisies with little black buttons in the middle mixed with some cream
roses, and subtle pretty pink velvet ribbons were bunched under the petals of
the blooms so you could just catch a touch of their color.
I had the diamond earrings Marcus gave me the night I
officially moved in with him in my ears. They looked like a passel of daises,
so big they had to drop down in loop after loop. I also had the diamond
bracelet on my wrist he gave me just because.
And of course, I had on the huge-ass diamond solitaire ring
he gave me when he asked me to marry him.
He’d gone ostentatious with the engagement ring.
My man knew me well.
I’d picked a fluffy, wide, lacy blue garter for my blue and
it was already on my thigh.
The dress and shoes (platform pumps with peek-a-boo toes
covered in lace, with lace crawling up the back of my heel, a lace rosette at
the toe with rhinestones in the middle, and high heels covered in
diamanté—again, I was Daisy) were my new.
I had a lacy handkerchief that LaTeesha
had given me stuffed in my cleavage that had been her grandmother’s. That was
my old.
And my borrowed I’d been in a panic about until I saw the
pearly pink fingernail polish that Michelle brought and had shown me that
morning. I’d loved it so I immediately replaced the one I’d picked because hers
was way more perfect.
I was set.
Like I said.
Perfect.
“You can’t see her,” I heard Michelle say at the door.
“Honey, I’m walking her down to the restaurant,” Marcus
replied and I craned my neck to see down the hall in an effort to catch a
glimpse of my man.
But Michelle had the door mostly closed, her rounded body in
its pretty, pink bridesmaid dress wedged in the part that wasn’t.
“You’re meeting her at the door and walking her in,”
Michelle returned.
“Will you just let me see my wife?” Marcus asked on a sigh.
His wife.
Oh my.
“She isn’t your wife yet and seeing her before the ceremony
is bad luck! Heck, walking her to the ceremony is bad luck even if it
starts at the restaurant doors! I don’t know how I agreed to this. Like I told
you two dozen times, you should let Doug give her away.”
Michelle was freaking out.
And she was super sweet, if right now acting a little crazy.
I’d thought that (except the crazy part) since I’d first laid eyes on her
(okay, maybe the crazy part too).
I shouldn’t have been surprised she’d be sweet. But since
the day I met her months ago, I’d thought the same.
Partly because she took one look at me, burst into tears,
and shouted, “You’re perfect!”
But mostly because she helped make my man all the man he
was.
And that man was a lot.
“We’ve had enough bad luck, every one of us,” Marcus
growled, and I watched him push in the door, doing this looking down at his
sister who had his hair, but she had warm brown eyes. “No god there is would
give a single one of us more.”
Boy, I sure hoped that was the truth.
But I did it holding my breath.
Because Marcus looked fine all the time, in clothes, but
especially out of them.
Though in a tux?
My coochie quivered.
Marcus was sauntering purposefully in the room, but the
second he turned his head from his sister to me, he stopped dead.
“Hey, honey bunches of love,” I called.
He said nothing.
His face was slack with wonder as he stared at me.
God, I loved my man.
I swirled my skirt side to side with a sway of my hips. “I
take it you like it.”
“Leave us,” Marcus ordered his sister curtly.
I stared.
He might get exasperated with his sister’s sweet brand of
crazy, but he never talked to her like that.
“Marcus!” Michelle cried in shocked surprise.
See?
He twisted at the waist to look back at his sister. “Don’t
make me shove my own sister out of a suite in a fucking five-star hotel.”
“Your language!” she yelled. “I thank God you had the
control to curb it in front of the kids.” She looked at me. “And he did. But barely.”
I giggled.
“Michelle,” he warned.
“God, you’re annoying,” she snapped.
She also gave me a look that included a roll of her eyes
right before she left.
But when she did, I panicked.
Because what I knew would happen, happened.
The minute the door clicked, Marcus stalked to me.
I lifted a hand his way, grabbed hold of the back of my
skirts with the other one, and retreated, warning, “Don’t you be messin’ up my face and hair, sugar. We got us a fancy
photographer and I’m gonna be picture perfect, not
have sex hair!”
“You take one more step away from me, darling, I’ll
guarantee sex hair.”
I halted.
Marcus got close.
“Christ, how can you get more beautiful?” he asked when he
stopped, looking me up and down.
I planted my raised hand in his chest, shoved
(ineffectually, I’ll note), and hissed, “Now you’re gonna
make me cry.”
“Yes, I am,” he declared. “But the makeup girl is outside. I
stopped her from leaving so she can fix it if she needs to.”
“I don’t have time to cry and have a makeup fix,” I
returned. “We’re gettin’ married in ten minutes.”
“Daisy, honey, I hired out the entire restaurant. The only
guests they have are you, me, Doug, and Michelle. They’re good to wait.”
Well then.
“I don’t want a red face and puffy eyes in my wedding
photos,” I tried.
“You won’t care.”
“Yes, I will.”
“No you won’t.”
“Yes I will!”
“Baby, every time you see it, you’ll remember the day you
married me was also the day I returned these.”
And with that, he lifted his hand between us and from it
dropped a necklace with a dainty gold chain and thirteen perfect pearls at the
bottom. The biggest one in the middle, they got smaller but no less beautiful
up the sides.
I’d know that necklace anywhere, if I’d seen it the day
after I’d hocked it or if I saw it when I was old, addled, and a
hundred-and-three.
My entire body seized.
Marcus moved behind me.
I felt the coolness of pearls and the tickle of a dainty
gold chain at my neck.
Then I felt his lips at my ear.
“You thought Miss Annamae wanted you to get married wearing
these pearls. And Miss Annamae helped make you the you for me. So you’re
getting married in these pearls.”
He killed me, every time so softly, the fall felt like
hitting a cloud.
“How—?” I started.
He kissed my neck and then wrapped his arms around me from
behind.
“Your life starts now,” he said all gentle and still in my
ear. “The one you’re meant to be leading. The one you’ve always deserved. I
thought it best to mark that occasion in a way you’d never forget.”
I twisted my neck to look at his handsome face.
“I would never have forgotten, sugar.”
“It’s my job to be sure.”
God.
Marcus Sloan.
“I love you so much, I don’t even know what to do with all
of it,” I whispered.
“I’m thrilled someone else understands that feeling.”
God.