Trust Falls Bonus Scene!
If you read Trust Falls and you aren’t ready to leave the world of the Rainbow House, this is for you! If you haven’t read it yet… snooze this for a few weeks and read the book first!
The night before the first wedding ever to be held at Sentinels Botanical Park, it rained three inches.
Charley Dupree splashed around the property with her mother, flinging tarps over newly-planted grass and weighing them down with stones and bricks and sticks, but she knew it was futile. Even in the dark, she could see the washouts. Tomorrow, the concrete path to the wedding chapel would be caked with red-brown mud. The day after, she’d have to start from scratch, raking out the ruts and reseeding. And there was not a blessed thing Charley could do about it.
She cursed the skies for lack of moderation. She cursed Mark and Julian for being out partying, Howie Yeager for insisting on tearing out grass that had been growing perfectly well for fifty years, thank you very much, and Julian again for talking her into this at all. The ink on the inspector’s approval for the wedding chapel was barely dry. Katie had no idea how close she’d come to getting married on the porch of the Rainbow House.
By the time Charley and Penny made it back inside, they were wet to the bone and too tired to talk. Water sluiced off their clothing as they peeled off layers and left them on the landing inside the door. Her mother went to shower, but Charley only stripped down and collapsed on her bed.
The next morning dawned perfect: cool as only a morning in May could be, the scent of honeysuckle and wild phlox a tantalizing strand on the breeze as Charley headed out with a shovel and a push broom to try to clean up the mess. She was nowhere near done when people started arriving.
“Charley!” scolded her mother, sailing by in a floral print A-line. “You haven’t even showered!”
“Yes, and the flowers still need to be put on the ends of the pews.”
“I can take care of that. You go clean up. You don’t want Julian seeing you like that!”
“Yeah, yeah.” Charley continued scraping clay off the sidewalk. She really ought to take a hose to it when she was done, but the ground to either side was so saturated, she feared it might do more harm than good.
Hands touched her shoulders, followed by the feel of impossibly soft hair and a smooth cheek against hers, smelling of citrus and cedar. “We really need some time, just the two of us, when this is all over tonight,” Mark said in her ear.
Would there ever come a day when the sound of his voice didn’t make her heart leap? “Mark,” she said, turning. Man, he looked good in a tuxedo. She was all too aware of the mud on her jeans, the sweat dripping off hair that had escaped her ponytail.
She didn’t care to have her heart on her sleeve out here where anyone could see. “Where have you been all morning?” she demanded.
He grinned as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “Performing my duties as best man. And now, as your mother’s messenger. I am instructed to tell you, and I quote: your accompanist will be here in fifteen minutes, and you’re supposed to be dressed and warming up, not still shoveling mud.”
“Well…” Charley gestured with the shovel. “There’s still mud. And you’re certainly not going to finish for me, dressed like that.”
“No, but he can.” Mark jerked his chin, and Charley looked past him to see Howie Yeager, wide-brimmed cowboy hat and all, smiling as he reached for the shovel.
Charley tried to scowl. She really did. She could acknowledge her business partner was not such a bad guy without actually liking him.
But she couldn’t quite manage a frown, not with Mark standing there looking like that, smelling like that, smiling at her like that.
He leaned closer. “I mean it, Charley.” His voice was a caress. “I want some time with you today that’s just us. No worrying about the building project or wedding logistics or the nonprofit. You and me. That’s it.”
Holy shit, he was going to do it. They’d been talking about it for a while—impossible not to think about their own future when everything for the last six months had revolved around preparations for today. She’d wondered if he might piggyback on Julian’s wedding day, but she hadn’t really expected it.
Her lips curved upward despite her best efforts. “Fine.” She shoved the tools toward Howie, then looked at Mark. “Tell Mom I’ll be there in twenty.”
Mark touched his fingers to his lips and pressed them against her mouth, with a look in his eyes that felt like a cool morning breeze and a bonfire all mixed up together. He headed down the sidewalk toward the glass-walled chapel tucked into the woods above Salvation Creek.
Charley sprinted the opposite direction, toward the house and the shower, before she tackled him and got mud all over his tuxedo.
*
By the time the wedding started an hour and a half later, it was a different world: white flowers on the ends of the pews, sunlight and green beyond the chapel windows, and a buzz of anticipation from the people gathered inside. Half the guests were friends of the couple and their caregivers, which seemed to Charley like a beautiful preview of how this place would operate once the nonprofit got off the ground.
Yes, there was mud on the floor. But even as Katie walked down the aisle—well, more like waved and danced her way down the aisle--Mark kept looking at Charley. And somehow that made the thought of having to mop tomorrow feel like a privilege.
It was a simple ceremony, only Mark and Katie’s friend Lorena for attendants. Charley sang “If I Loved You,” accompanied by a guitar player she’d known at Northwestern, brought in as a wedding gift for the couple who needed nothing at all.
Afterward, everyone trooped over to the event space. There, they launched the most boisterous dance-karaoke party Charley had ever attended. She’d cried her makeup off long before the happy couple climbed into the car with another of the Hoffman cousins and took off for their long-awaited Roller Coasters of the Eastern U.S. honeymoon.
When the last guests had left, she helped the caterer load chafing pans and buckets. Mark was waiting as she came back inside. He’d shed his jacket, tie, and vest, and his shirt hung open over the t-shirt beneath it. The look on his face, tense but eager, sent a shiver of excitement through her body.
She stretched out a hand, but as he started forward, her mother called from the other side of the building. “Mark, can you put these tables away? I kind of forgot Julian wasn’t going to be here to help.”
Mark sighed, laughed, and shook his head. “Sure thing, Miz D.”
Charley leaned in and went up on tiptoe. “I’ll be in the chapel taking down flowers,” she whispered before planting a kiss at the base of his ear. “Come find me.”
The glass chapel was blessedly quiet. Different from the stillness she’d grown up with, but good nonetheless. Her feet hurt; she kicked off her heels and set to work pulling flower arrangements off the ends of the pews. The floor wasn’t as dirty as she’d feared.
She felt Mark’s presence before his arms went around her. She leaned back into his embrace, closing her eyes and hugging his arms.
“They just got to the hotel in St. Louis,” he murmured in her ear. “Tomorrow is Six Flags.”
“Are you sorry you decided not to go with them?”
His arms tightened. “Not even a little. I just…” She felt his head shake. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”
The thickness in his voice made her tear up again. She turned in his embrace. “Me, either.” She put her hands on his cheeks. “I’m glad you stayed,” she whispered. “I don’t know if I could stand to be here without either one of you.” She kissed him and then rested her cheek against his.
It felt good to be out here, just the two of them. There wasn’t much solitude on the farm these days. Engineers, architects, construction crews. Soon enough, there would be visitors paying to walk the woodland trails and accessible walkways winding through native plantings and manicured gardens. She’d clawed one precious day a week—Monday—to have the farm for herself alone. But this place she had loved so long and so well was forever changed. Moments of solitude like this one were as fleeting as they were beautiful.
Mark stepped back and tugged her hand. They settled on a bench, his arm around her shoulders. Overhead, wood rafters glowed as the setting sun pierced glass walls and fell across sycamore trees. But he did not speak.
Maybe he needed a little help.
“It’s been a good day,” she said, watching the treetops sway beyond the windows. “This is a good wedding venue.”
“If you do say so yourself.”
“I do.”
“So you’d be up for doing it again?”
Ahhhh. She suppressed her smile; she was too happy to tease. “Well, I wouldn’t want to put on a wedding every week, but I suppose I could do one more. Why?” She gave him an arch smile. “Are you proposing?”
He reddened and opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, his phone went off, a burst of organ music which took all of two beats to identify as the bridal march from Lohengrin. “What the—” Mark said, pulling it out, and then shook his head as he answered his Facetime. “Julian. Did you change my ring tone?”
“Of course,” Julian said. “Did you, do it?”
“Aren’t you on your honeymoon, man? What’re you bothering me for?”
“Did—you—do it?” Julian repeated.
Mark sighed and closed his eyes. “I was just about to.”
“Well, get on with it, then!” This from Katie, whose face appeared beside Julian’s on the screen.
Charley laughed, covering her mouth to try to keep it from becoming a full-fledged giggle. It was so very, very her, being proposed to with Julian on video chat to supervise.
Mark gave her a pained glance and handed the phone to her. “I suppose it’s just as well,” he said ruefully as he reached into his pocket. “I hadn’t really figured out what to say. But I guess you get the idea, right?” He held the box out and popped it open.
On the other end of the connection, Julian and Katie cheered so loudly, the sound distorted. Charley winced, still laughing as she held out her hand for him to slip the ring on. Then she waggled her fingers for the camera.
“I hope you’re happy!” Mark called to the phone.
“I am, happy! We will, help, you plan!”
Charley traded a wry glance with Mark and then said firmly, “Goodbye, Julian.” She punched the red button and tossed Mark’s phone on the bench.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m not good at romantic stuff, but I did intend that to be a little more...”
Charley silenced him, mouth to mouth, kissing him thoroughly and deeply, until her heart was pounding and every nerve ending alight, and there was no chance of mistaking her answer. When they came up for air, he let out a shaky breath, and Charley smiled.
“You did great,” she said.
THE END