“Really, Betz?” Rachel mumbled. “The ninth of never? That’s pathetic.”
“Maybe you’ve met him, maybe you haven’t. But that’s what makes it fate,” Grandma said with a dismissive wave. “It’s got timing of its own.”
Rachel was already standing behind her tripod. She adjusted its height while squinting across the room. “Turn more toward the window.”
Betzy turned, but she kept her gaze on Grandma as a sharp, prickly irritation bubbled within her. “How do you explain fate when everything we do alters our future? It’s like you opening up this boutique after the plane crash. You saidwe’rein the driver’s seat, remember?”
Sure, Betzy’s voice was getting tight and her tone had turned high, but this wasn’t a nonchalant conversation. In fact, Betzy had made some very important life decisions based on what Grandma said in the crucial months following the tragedy that took both Dad and Grandpa Benton to an early grave.
Grandma merely chuckled under her breath with the shake of her head. “Oh, we’re in the driver’s seat, all right. And we map out our course and go on our way and think we have it all planned out, down to the time of arrival. But then fate takes the wheel.”
“Okay,” Rachel said from behind the lens, “can we save this conversation for another time? We’ve got a lunch date, remember?”
“That’s right,” Grandma agreed, her gaze darting to the crystal clock above the entrance. “Let me just fix this…”
Betzy held still as she gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. There was no point in reminding Grandma that her face wouldn’t be in the pictures—just the dress. She had to primp Betzy just the same.
“Ah, there! Beautiful!” She attended to the dress’s train next, laying it just so before hurrying out of the shot, hands squeezed together in delight.
“If youwereto walk down the aisle anytime soon,” Rachel said as she adjusted the lens, “who would you marry?”
An image of Sawyer Kingsley shot to Betzy’s mind. Dark hair, perfectly trimmed five o’clock shadow, and hazel eyes that tugged at her heart like nothing else.
A sigh slipped from her lips. “No one.”
“Oh, you’ve got to come up with one or two,” Grandma said. “Definitelynot Marcus Creighton—that jerk.”
“Yeah,” Betzy agreed firmly. “Not him.” A guy who let her rescue his company before publicly taking credit for that rescue wasn’t even worth a mention.
Rachel tipped her head past the camera. “Move your hands behind your back now.” After Betzy did just that, Rachel sparked up the conversation once more. “I think if you had to pick someone right now it’d be Sawyer. You two have a marriage contract and everything.”
Heat filled Betzy’s face, but it was nothing compared to the explosion in her chest. That was the problem with keeping the same friend for so long—they knew all your childhood secrets.
“Heisstill single,” Rachel continued.
Grandma shuffled closer to Rachel, watching over her shoulder as she worked. “What marriage contract is this?” she asked. “Go down a little lower, will you? Get the reflection of the floors in a few shots.”
“It’s nothing,” Betzy assured. “We were just kids.”
“If it really was nothing,” Rachel said, “your face wouldn’t match the roses Lo had delivered this morning. Sheesh, good thing I’m shooting from the neck down.”
Betzy could hardly believe the irony of it all. What were the chances that fate, Sawyer, and stupid Marcus would come up in the same conversation?
Still, if she were being honest, Betzy had always felt as if she and Sawyer were meant to be orfated,as Grandma might say. Especially after that kiss.
But then Sawyer left. Five years later, just when Betzy thought he’d return and life would go back to normal, Dad and Grandpa were killed in the plane crash, and life shifted to a new kind of normal.
Mom, who’d always been closer to the boys, went quiet. Retreated to her room for days, sometimes weeks at a time. Grandma had swooped in to pick up the pieces. Forget the fact that she was hurting too.
Amongst it all, Lorraine Benton, after burying her husband and her son, opened the wedding boutique of her dreams. Not to make money—heck, the family had more than they could spend—but to fulfill an inner desire: to be at the place where happiness begins. In essence, she’d taken fate into her own hands.
An act that inspired Betzy to do the same with one bold move. It hadn’t gone well.
She mused back on that time in her life while driving to the clubhouse. Outside, shoppers hurried along the bustling sidewalks. Christmas lights hung from the palm trees along the storefronts, reminding the city of Los Angeles that it was Christmastime indeed.
She couldn’t help but wonder if Sawyer would come home for the holidays this year. And if he did, would he reach out to her? Try to get together for a drink and catch up?
After flying in for the double funeral, Sawyer veered from the norm and flew his mother out to New York for the holidays instead. Betzy hoped he wouldn’t do the same this year.
