“Don’t be mad at Max, love,” Ally said. “He means well, and he’s your best friend.”
“I’m not,” Nate said. He looked around at her and found the skeptical expression he expected. “Not really. It’s just….”
Ally finished the sentence for him. “Not how you planned it to go with Flynn?”
Actually Nate supposed it was exactly what he’d planned. He sighed and turned the tap on.
“Not how I wanted it to go,” he hedged. “But it’s not the first time I’ve been dumped.”
“Idiots,” Ally said staunchly. “All of them. Max is right. You’re better off without him.”
It was the sort of thing that mothers always said, and you did your best to believe because it was a lot better than the truth. But it didn’t ring true. Without Flynn he just felt… deflated, not better.
“I liked him,” he admitted. “It was nice, but I guess it was never going to work out. Max can’t stand him, he can’t stand Max, and Max has been my best friend since we beat up Michael Frances.”
“I remember that,” Ally said dryly. “His mother wanted you both sent to therapy.”
“She should have sent him to therapy. He ate a frog. It was disturbing.” Nate traded his mug for an insulated Granshire travel cup full of black coffee. Best friend or not, he abruptly couldn’t stomach the thought of thirty minutes listening to Max say “I told you so.” He popped the lid on the cup. “Tell Max I got a call, Mum. I have to go. Love you.”
He leaned over and gave her a quick, one-armed hug on his way to the door. Ally caught his arm before he could make his escape and tilted her head back to look up at him.
“No fashion show?” she asked.
Nate glanced down at his suit and realized he didn’t particularly care. “Eh, it’s just work. This’ll do. See you later.”
He escaped before Max could catch up with him.
SUNLIGHT STREAMEDthrough the broken stones of the folly and made the swagged lengths of silver fabric glow. Wildflowers spread up the walls in thick, bright ropes of soft color and greenery and dangled from a bower of twisted willow branches that hovered over the structure.
If it had been planned for months, it would have been stunning. For a makeshift design thrown together in a couple of days, it was astonishing. Nate made a mental note—his phone was on theater mode in his pocket and his clipboard tucked under his arm—to send Mahdi some token of appreciation. The man really could do magic with flowers.
Bradley had nearly sweat the starch out of his collar.
“What if she doesn’t come?” He stood at the top of the stairs and squinted anxiously down into the parking lot. “What if she’s changed her mind?”
Nate tugged Bradley back so he could straighten his collar.
“She’s not going to do that.”
“My mother—”
“Was your mother when Katie agreed to marry you.”
An hour of nervous fiddling had left the silver tie pin grubby with fingerprints. Nate pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and polished it up quickly. There was a click in the background, and he glanced around. Dale lowered the camera from in front of his face. He’d replaced his surfer-boy shades with blue-tinted glasses that suggested some artistic method was going on. The tint smeared the edges of his black eye enough that Nate wondered how often he’d had to do that.
“Candid shots,” Dale explained.
“What if shehaschanged her mind, though?” Bradley insisted.
Nate glanced at his watch. “Someone would have called me by now,” he said. “Since they haven’t, everything is still on schedule.”
It was the truth, but it didn’t seem to convince Bradley.
“She loves you,” Nate reminded him.
That dragged a sigh out of Bradley. The tension seeped out of him, and before he could work himself up again, the best man stuck his head out the door.
“Time to go,” he said.
