“What?”
“The sun and sky and mountains are perfect. Remember, we wanted to do a wedding walk-through to test the timing on the afternoon light.”
“Yes.” She glanced at the clock. “This is perfect, since the wedding guests arrive at four on the big day.”
“And Jack arrived at three-forty-five—today.”
She frowned. “Jack doesn’t need to be here. This isn’t the actual rehearsal. And doesn’t he have a sleigh ride scheduled?”
This year, the rides were already nearly back-to-back, even without Benny’s TikTok campaign. And that meant Jack was busy.
“He’s between rides and he said he has some ideas.”
Cindy made a face and MJ cracked up.
“I know, I know,” MJ said. “Grooms and…ideas. But he so very much wants to be a part of the planning process. As I recall, the first time, he basically showed up in a tux. He wants everything to be different for you two, Cindy.”
“Which is why I love him.” Cindy pushed up, grabbing a notebook and ducking so her shoulder didn’t bump the floating shelf as she avoided the guest chair.
Cozy, she told herself. Her new office was cozy—and tiny. The right size for asmallbusiness.
Picking up her phone, she followed MJ out and around the corner into the Starling Room. Inside, the space shimmered with soft, late afternoon light and suddenly that small business looked like nothing but potential.
“Oh, it’s perfect,” she exclaimed, imagining that this would be the time of day that guests began to arrive.
“Thank you.”
She turned to look at Jack, who stood on the platform under the trellis, dressed in jeans and the white shirt he wore under his sleigh ride driver’s costume. He gave her a smile as sweet as the twinkling lights behind him on the…wait.
Whatdid he put on that arch?
“I’m glad you like it,” he said, gesturing toward the thing she knew would cause a battle with Dominique. “I know you wanted to do something with it, so…”
He’d taken down the fabric and wrapped the wood with some artificial green garlands that looked like they were meant to spin around an outside railing and white lights that were…too white.
It was kind of awful, but he’d made an effort to dress up the trellis that he so firmly believed would somehow bring them good luck.
She wasn’t about to squash that.
“I love it,” she said, walking toward him. “And you.”
He angled his head like the words touched him. “Same, Cinnie.”
His sweet little nickname always got to her. And MJ was so right about the changes in Jack. At no point in their first marriage had Jack been this romantic, this attentive, or this much of a real partner.
For the past year, he’d been all those things, making it clear he wanted this second time around to work so much, and she loved that.
She greeted him with a warm hug. “Thanks for joining us,” she whispered into a quick kiss. “I know you value your downtime between rides.”
“I value this wedding more,” he assured her. “So, what’s the plan for today?”
“We’re testing light time,” she told him. “Right now, in light time, the people are arriving.”
He frowned. “Light time?”
“Light is everything, Jack,” MJ explained. “In fact, I’ll turn the chandeliers on and grab some of the candles. Cin, you can explain thenaturallight timing to Jack.”
“Of course,” she said. “MJ and I have been in this room all throughout the year, all different times of day, so we tracked the changes in the light and refer to them as ‘light time.’ We have a system to maximize the light for every ceremony.”
