“Run it by me one more time,” I said.
Penny settled deeper into the bus seat beside me, patient in the way that only truly excellent best friends can be patient. “The National B.I.N.G.O. Convention does not exist. Jules made it up so that we could move three hundred wedding guests around Aspen by bus without tipping off the paparazzi.”
“The website looked real.”
“She spent eleven days on that website. The registration form worked and everything.” Penny tilted her head. “If she ever decides she doesn’t want to dig around in people’s minds, she has a very promising future in elaborate fiction.”
“And our guests, the ones who think they’re at a rehearsal dinner right now?—“
“Are currently at a wedding rave featuring the stylings of DJ Baby Bokchoi, who took the red eye in from New York City this morning specifically for this.” Penny checked something on herphone. “He’s been described to me as, and I’m quoting here, absolutely going off.”
I looked out the window at the Bear Claw Mountain road winding past. The pines were thick and green on either side. July up here felt nothing like summer anywhere else, cool and clear and smelling like the inside of a snow globe, which was honestly lovely.
“And the bus we’re on right now,” I said.
“The B.I.N.G.O. Tours bus.” Penny paused, in the way she paused when she was about to deliver information she was personally very pleased about. “That stands for Bride Is Not Getting Overwhelmed.”
I stared at her.
“Jules’s idea,” she said.
Of course it was. I thought back to that wrap on the side of the bus that I’d noticed in the parking garage and written off as generic charter company branding. I thought about the twelve hours of wedding morning chaos and how none of it had felt chaotic, how every moment had been handled before I even noticed it needed handling, and how I had attributed all of that to Ciara Mosely Willingham’s professional excellence, which was real, but apparently had a very effective co-pilot.
Jules Kingman had invented a fake national convention and built a functional registration website to manage the logistics of my secret wedding.
I was so glad she was on my side.
“Pen,” I said. “I don’t really do well with surprises. You know this about me.”
“I do.”
“And yet.”
“And yet.” She took my hand. “He loves you so much, Kels. I have watched this man look at you every single day for the past year and he loves you in the quietest, most certain way Ihave ever seen. Whatever he has planned today, I promise you it is going to be the best thing you have ever experienced.” She squeezed once. “Trust him.”
The only person I trusted as much as Declan was Penny. If the two of them together were telling me to fall, I believed they would catch me.
“Okay,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I took a breath and let it out. “I trust him.”
Penny smiled. “Good. Now hold still.”
Rose appeared from somewhere at the back of the bus carrying what looked, at first, like a cloud. By the time she reached us it had resolved itself into a layer of diaphanous material that, when she held it up against my dress, made me understand what Declan meant when he’d told me to wait and see.
“Hold out your arms,” Rose said.
I did, and she worked quickly, adjusting and pinning. The overlay settled over my ballgown skirt and the fur wrap went around my shoulders, leading into long sleeves that were, I now noticed, fully lined.
“He didn’t want you to get cold,” Rose said.
“It’s July.”
Penny sang-hummed something from the far end of the chorus of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” and went back to her phone.
I ran my fingers over the snowflake beading and tried to get my songwriter brain to stop working for approximately five minutes. It refused, as it always did. The whole story was right there in the fabric. He had listened. Every passing comment I’d made about winter, about Christmas, about the way Bear Claw Mountain looked in December when the snow came in over the valley. He’d been filing it all away, quietly, for exactly this.
