8. Emergency Brownies and Bad Decisions
EMERGENCY brOWNIES AND BAD DECISIONS
Felicity
Just one wedding. That’s all I’d asked for. One single, solitary wedding where I didn’t end up elbow-deep in disaster before the sun had even bothered to clock in.
Seattle rain I could handle. This? This was something else entirely.
The forecast had cheerfully promised a light drizzle— the meteorological equivalent of a bald-faced lie—and instead delivered what I could only describe as God personally trying to drown my career.
It hammered against my window at five this morning like it had a vendetta, and my stomach dropped straight through the mattress.
The ranch. I had to get to the ranch.
Which meant one thing: Nonna.
The woman was already awake, naturally, because Nonna operated on a schedule that made farmers feel lazy. When I Facetimed her, practically begging to drop Maverick off two hours early, she didn’t even hesitate.
“Bring him over, bella. I’d love the company.”
I could have proposed to her on the spot.
“I’m nominating you for sainthood,” I told her when I arrived, soaking wet, mascara already surrendering.
She pursed her lips and waved me off. “Don’t waste the ink. I’m no angel.”
“You’re my angel.”
Something flickered across her face—warm and quiet and real—and I filed that small moment away carefully, because something told me it was going to be the only thing that went right today.
By five thirty, I was pulling up to the ranch in full damage control mode.
The only reason the bride wanted to get married at the ranch was for the ocean and vineyard view from the ceremony location on the south pasture.
She had no problem with the ceremony being covered by a clear tent, the problem was that, with this weather, there was no way we could hold it in the pasture.
Guests would be trudging through mud, and the chairs would sink into the ground.
The barn would not give her that same view.
After getting to my office, I pulled up the map of Lockhart Ranch. There was a building near the south pasture that I’d never been to. It wasn’t named on the map, it was just a structure.
I called Wes Bennett, head of maintenance.
When he picked up, I asked what that structure was.
He explained it was basically a concrete slab with walls and a roof.
Apparently, Selma had planned to build a chapel out in the field, for brides who wanted a church wedding, but once Dean took over the finances, the project was put on hold.
I asked if he could take me to go look at it. A few minutes later he’d pulled up in his truck. I ran from the side door to the passenger side as I was assaulted with raindrops.
“Isn’t raining on your wedding day good luck?” he asked as he drove us out to the field.
“Rain, yes. Flooding, not so much.”
He pulled up to a structure, and we went inside. I saw it was exactly how he’d described it. A shell of a building, with exposed wooden beams, cathedral ceilings and the entire north facing wall was glass overlooking the vineyards and ocean.
“Do we have electricity?” That was my main concern.
He nodded. “We have electricity and plumbing.”
“So we could have the wedding here,” I thought to myself, but realized I said it out loud.
“I just need to make sure everything is up to code before I can let you put people in here.”
“Okay.” I looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to check.
“I’m going to have to go back to my office and pull permits,” he explained, clearly sensing my eagerness. “I’ll drop you off on the way.”
“Thanks.” I left the structure, already planning what I could do with the space.
“So how is little man doing?” Wes asked as he made the short drive back to the admin buildings.
“He’s good.”
“His dad around?”
I wasn’t used to people being so forward and asking such private questions. But since I’d relocated here, I’d found there was no filter when it came to asking personal things.
“Sometimes,” I responded honestly.
Tanner came around when it was good for Tanner. He’d never been a stable influence in Maverick’s life. If anything, he was the opposite. He’d promise him things, camping weekends, trips to Disneyland, toys he wanted, and then would flake.
“He’s a good kid,” Wes declared as he pulled back up to the admin office.
“Thanks, I think so.” Everyone at the ranch had been so welcoming of Maverick. They treated him like he belonged, like he was one of them. They’d even made him his own employee badge.
I got back to my office and waited with bated breath for Wes to give me the green light on whether or not the “chapel” could be used. I sat at my desk planning for both contingencies. Once I got the go-ahead, or not, I needed to be ready. I didn’t want to speak to my bride until I had solutions.
Within five minutes I drafted a plan for what we’d need to accommodate not only the ceremony but also the reception in the chapel so the guests wouldn’t have to change venues in the pouring rain and/or mud.
Then I spent the next five minutes drafting a plan to sell the bride on the barn location.
Both were in play until I heard otherwise.
Finally, after what felt like five hours, but was most likely fifteen minutes, my phone vibrated with a call.
I answered it.
“It’s a go,” Wes cheerfully reported.
First comes the crisis. Then comes the cavalry.
The instant Wes gave me the all-systems-go, my hands were already dialing—call after call as I delegated the war plan in my head.
There’d be no time to wait for the rest of the staff to trickle in.
I needed bodies and brains and brawn, and I needed them now.
I sent out an S.O.S. Before I knew it, half the kitchen had mobilized, the head of security was laying down rubber mats, and the Lockhart brothers were out there debating the merits of open seating versus fixed aisles in a building that, an hour earlier, had been considered little more than a shell.
I’d known the Lockhart men for all of three weeks, but it felt like they’d been rehearsing for roles in a heist movie ever since I set foot in Valentine Bay.
There was Dylan, youngest and perpetually tan, who gave off substitute PE teacher energy and wore a baseball cap indoors.
Damon, whose sole purpose in life seemed to be winning gold medals in competitive flirting and shit-talking.
And, occasionally, there was Dawson, the oldest, looming and monosyllabic.
He wasn’t just a horse whisperer so much as an everything whisperer.
Horses, cattle, dogs, cats—if it had four legs, it apparently took one look at him and decided he belonged to it.
Damon had this uncanny way of making the entire disaster feel like an elaborate prank we were all in on together.
He named the chapel “The Love Fortress” and spent a nonzero amount of time strategizing how to get a chandelier hung from the apex of the unfinished rafters.
Whenever I started to panic-spreadsheet the headcount for emergency chairs or bread baskets, he’d just flash that movie-star smile and say, “Just breathe. I know it’s hard since I give you plenty of reasons to be breathless. ”
And then there was Dean, who stuck out in this circus like a single, perfectly ironed napkin in a toddler food fight. The financial wizard, all sharp analytics and cynicism.
But out of all the brothers, Dean was the one who joined my side in the mud, a measuring tape in one hand and a utility knife in the other.
He had the air of someone who’d only seen weddings from the vantage point of an Excel spreadsheet, but he still rolled up his sleeves and built an altar like he was on a competition reality show.
It took a full hour to lay the temp flooring, which had to happen before we set anything else up, there were so many people running in and out, it was like a clown car with a union contract.
Selma Lockhart herself made an appearance around 7:15, clutching a container filled with what she called “emergency brownies,” and immediately began conscripting anyone under the age of thirty-five to haul folding chairs, benches, and tables for the reception set up.
Dean coordinated the whole operation with the unyielding calm of a surgeon on a caffeine drip, but every time we worked within arm’s reach, I could feel all my best intentions start to fray at the edges.
Somewhere in the process of zip-tying eucalyptus garlands and moonlighting as a sound tech, I realized Dean was making me laugh.
Not just polite, work-appropriate laughter, but the kind that starts in your gut and bubbles out before you can remember it’s not supposed to happen at work.
And once it started, I couldn’t stop noticing the other things: the way he never complained even when he had to parkour up a pile of lumber, how he’d made sure I drank water and brought me a bagel when my energy was slipping, and—most dangerous of all—how he’d look at me like he was recalculating a risk equation, and the answer kept shocking him.
By the time the sun started to break through the rain clouds, the inside of the chapel glowed.
We’d traded the musty construction smell for the perfume of wet pine, the glass wall facing north gleamed clean as a lens, and the benches were crowded with borrowed cushions from every couch and armchair in the Lockhart family arsenal.
The bride and her mother walked through the doors just as Dylan finished taping down the aisle runner, and for the first time all day, I felt like we’d engineered a miracle.
With ninety minutes to guest arrival, Dean and I were the only two left.
I was putting on the finishing touches, and he was testing the sound system.
I queued up the processional mix on my phone, but the wireless speakers were having a full-scale emotional breakdown.
It was the kind of malfunction that would have thrown any normal, non-insomniac, caffeine-addled wedding coordinator into a full meltdown. But for once, I didn’t panic.