So cowboy up then, he thought. Onward.
But the last word made him think of Mina.
Was he ready to go onward, forward, clear to move ahead with everything he’d been denying himself with her?
He glanced at his dad. No more regrets.
Onward. With everyone.
Feeling as if he had shed about a hundred pounds, Chet took up where he and Eli had left off yesterday at the rehearsal dinner, before they’d had that setback at the party.
He rested his hand on his father’s shoulder, neither of them needing to say much more as, in the distance, from the ballroom, the notes from the band rehearsing the wedding music floated through the air, celebrating today’s union s and reunion s.
The minute Mina saw Chet walk into the wedding, she knew everything had changed for the better.
As he came down the red-carpeted aisle behind Tyler and Jeremiah, he was all shined up, his normally tousled dark blond hair combed back to go along with the black suit he wore as one of the best men. When he caught her eye from his place by his brother near the altar, he gave her such a dazzling smile that her head whirled.
Whatever had gone on between him and Eli this morning, it’d been life altering.
Her pulse started bopping, and she hugged her hands over her belly.
The small orchestra, composed of three violins, a cello and a harp, played Bach while everyone got settled under the golden chandeliers. Outside the large French doors, the gardens bloomed under an overcast sky.
Eli came down the aisle next, dressed in a tuxedo with a bolo, and he and all the Barron boys exchanged a long glance before the older man took his seat in the front row.
Maybe it was pregnancy hormones, but Mina got the sudden urge to cry. She held it back magnificently until she realized that there were no more parents coming down the aisle because the bride’s mom and dad had died, so there was no one to give Ally away.
It made Mina think of her baby and what it would be like to miss her own son or daughter’s wedding because of a tragedy.
But she was being dramatic, maudlin.
Definitely pregnancy hormones.
Zoe, dressed in a blue sheath dress, slid into the seat next to Mina’s. She was holding Caroline, who was making little sucking noises while swathed in her blanket.
“Just in the nick of time,” she whispered as the symphony struck the first chords of the “Bridal March.”
The small crowd, mainly consisting of Ally and Jeremiah’s friends, plus a few work associates, stood, facing the back of the ballroom.
Ally entered, breathtaking in her Jackie O.–inspired gown, her platinum hair twisted into a classic upsweep. Her old housekeeper, Mrs. McCarter, was dolled up, too, wearing a sage satin dress with a matching cashmere sweater while using her cane to walk with Ally down the aisle. Mina realized that the elderly woman was the one who was giving Ally away to the groom, and that brought on the tears again. Ally had told Mina last night how Mrs. McCarter had just about raised her as the household manager for her parents. Even after they’d died, she’d been there through thick and thin, the closest thing Ally had to a family now.
Behind them, Ally’s aunt Jess wore the same dress as Mrs. McCarter, but without the sweater. They were all gorgeous, and Mina couldn’t help wishing that she and Chet…
No. She wouldn’t get ahead of herself. Not before she could have that heart-to-heart with him.
When Mina saw how Jeremiah’s love shone in his gaze as he watched Ally come to the altar, tears leaked out of Mina’s eyes.
But then she looked at Chet, who was watching her.
And he seemed just as smitten with Mina as she’d always been with him.
She drew in a breath just as the preacher asked everyone to be seated.
Don’t sob, she thought. No matter how happy you are, don’t do it….
She managed to hold it back to mere tears as the ceremony went by in a stream of color and longing. Afterward, the wedding party had to duck out for pictures, trying Mina’s patience.
As she sat at the bridal party’s table in a Victorian-wallpapered formal dining room that was even larger than the regular one, Zoe took a chair next to her. The other woman had gone up to Ally’s room to put a tuckered Caroline to sleep, and a babysitter would be watching over the baby until the reception ended and Zoe could take over again, leaving Ally and Jeremiah to their honeymoon night.
Zoe sipped from a glass of sparkling water garnished with lime, inspecting Mina, who tried to seem as if she wasn’t wishing for a certain cowboy to walk through the door.
Then she put down her glass. “He’s probably just as anxious about getting those photos over with as you are.”
Mina tried to play innocent, cocking her eyebrow. Whoever are you talking about?