The Wedding Kiss (8 page)

Rose barely stopped herself from frowning. “Oh yes,” she made herself say, “you’re right. Donovan’s wonderful.” And he was. He was nice and kind to her and they enjoyed art and opera together. What more could she want?

“You’re very fortunate, you know,” Tiffany said. “Everyone was wondering which lucky girl would get Donovan, and it’s
you
.”

It was the same thing Millicent had said to Rose in the gallery that morning. Only, Rose couldn’t help but think it made her sound more like a lottery winner than the woman Donovan McIntyre loved with all his heart and couldn’t wait to start a new life with.

Rose was still thinking about that while Donovan drove her home a while later, but there were plenty of other things on her mind too. The party. The baseball game before that. The hundreds of times RJ had made her laugh over the years.

And how wrong it would be to keep what had happened last Valentine’s Day from her fiancé.

“RJ and I kissed once,” Rose blurted.

Perhaps another man would have crashed the car at hearing her confession, but Donovan didn’t do that. He didn’t even pull over, either, though he did glance at her when they stopped at a red light.

Why wasn’t he reacting?

And why, oh why, did she want to push him until he did?

“It was last year on Valentine’s Day, and we did it for a contest in a bar, but we still did it, and I wanted you to know.”

Now, Rose could see the tension in Donovan’s jaw as he kept driving, but he didn’t slow down, and he didn’t shout. Instead, she watched him spend the next few seconds thinking it all through.

“Well,” he said at last in a very reasonable voice, “I guess that’s only to be expected.”

“Only to be expected?” Rose repeated. “Is that all you have to say? That it’s ‘only to be expected’?”

“You’re a very beautiful woman, Rose, and it has been obvious for a while now that your gardener likes you.”

“But…” Rose wasn’t sure what to say. She wasn’t sure exactly what reaction she’d been hoping for, only that it should be more than this, shouldn’t it?

Donovan was the man she was marrying, but he was reacting to the news that she’d kissed another man like it was nothing. Like it didn’t matter to him at all.

“Don’t you care?”

“Of course I care,” Donovan said. “I just don’t see that getting angry about it will help matters. This accidental kiss you had with your gardener is simply something we need to talk through rationally, like the two reasonable adults that we are. Or were you expecting me to drive straight over to his house and punch him in the face?”

“Well, no.” Though that might at least have shown her how passionately he felt about her. And she felt a nearly irrepressible urge to correct Donovan when he called RJ a gardener. Because he was so much more than that. The truth was, she couldn’t run the Rose Chalet without him.

“Besides, you just told me that it wasn’t anything serious, just a contest on Valentine’s Day.”

“Doesn’t it bother you that it was a contest that involved kissing another man?”

“Perhaps a little,” he said, “but I can understand it, too. You wanted to see what it would be like to enjoy a brief forbidden moment. Let’s face it, Rose, that’s all it was. Perhaps if it was someone else that you kissed, I might be more upset. But it isn’t like your gardener is actually a threat to us.”

“RJ isn’t just a gardener,” she finally had to retort. “Not only has he designed and landscaped pretty much the entire Rose Chalet property, he’s also helped with the important details in putting hundreds of weddings together.”

“Okay, so he’s a useful
gardener who is also good with a hammer and nails,” Donovan said. “It still doesn’t mean he’d ever be good enough for you. It was just a silly moment of fun for you, but it was nearly a year ago now, yes? A meaningless kiss from a year ago.”

“But that’s…Donovan, why are you being so reasonable
about this?”

“I love you, and more importantly, I trust you, Rose. I trust you to make the right decisions, and to know just how good we are together. You obviously feel guilty about the kiss, but you don’t need to. You really don’t.”

“But
—
”

“You’ve unburdened yourself and I’m not upset. Everything is fine between us. Perfectly fine.”

It was all so reasonable and neat, so sealed off and free of emotion. In that moment, Rose felt like screaming...and that just made her feel worse.

Why couldn’t Donovan
react
? Why did he have to be so measured about things? Why, for once, couldn’t he just go with what he felt, like so many other men would have?

Like RJ would have.

She tried to push the errant thought back, but it was true. If RJ had heard that she’d kissed another man, he would have reacted so passionately, so intensely.

Beside her, Donovan just kept driving, his expression as calm and even as if she’d never admitted to kissing another man at all.

Chapter Eleven

RJ went to work early on Thursday morning. He wasn’t going to give Rose anything less than her dream wedding, even if it meant he had to put in extra hours before anyone else was on the property. In fact, it was probably better that way, because then she wouldn’t see all the details as he built them. Some surprises, he wanted to keep for her big day.

He was using a nail gun to get two-by-four beams into position in the main hall, and wanted to get them in place before Rose could see them. It wasn’t exactly an elegant solution, but it would give him a strong core to build the rest of the setup around.

The same strong core that Rose seemed to be so determined to ignore in herself.

“Hey, RJ.” He looked up to see his brother approaching.

“Patrick, I thought you’d be busy working on Rose and Donovan’s new home. Aren’t they planning on moving in after the wedding?” Thinking about the two of them together in the new house had RJ’s gut clenching.

“We’re actually pretty close to completion,” Patrick told him.

“I bet it goes even quicker when Donovan is willing to spend the money for additional contractors.”

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” his brother told him. “It means that I can come down here to offer my services. Or was Phoebe wrong when she told me you have to re-build the entire wedding setup from scratch?”

“She wasn’t wrong.”

“I’m surprised to hear that Rose changed her mind about the whole thing. That isn’t like her.”

RJ didn’t want to go into the details, even with his brother. “The important thing is that it needs to get done by Saturday.”

Patrick shrugged and picked up a hammer without asking, starting to nail a crossbeam into position. “We’ve both done plenty of jobs like that. It starts out one way and ends up as something else entirely.”

Just then, Tyce arrived. RJ checked his watch in mock surprise. “Isn’t this the earliest you’ve ever been in to work? All that time around Whitney has changed you, man.”

Tyce grinned. “I hope so, but that’s not why I’m in early. Since you’re working on a new setup, I’m going to need to put up a new lighting rig.”

“Are you still having trouble getting enough students for your string section?” RJ asked, with genuine concern. Rose
deserved
the wedding of her dreams.

She also deserved the right groom, of course.

“I’ve been speaking with a talented quartet, but whether they have enough pieces together to play the whole gig, I’m not sure. I’m going to have speakers ready as insurance.”

“I’ll tell you what,” RJ offered. “If you can help Patrick and me out with this, I’ll help you with the lighting rig and the speakers.”

They set to work, and soon the three of them were making better progress than RJ had hoped for. After an hour or so, they paused to inspect their handiwork. It was looking good.

“RJ,” Patrick said from out of the blue, “I need to talk to you about something important.”

RJ’s brother pulled a box out of his pocket. Inside was a platinum wedding set, sparkling with small diamonds.

Patrick was going to ask Phoebe to marry him?

RJ had known that his brother was serious about his friend and co-worker at the chalet, and that Phoebe was serious about him too. Yet he’d never thought that they’d move this quickly.

Tyce immediately joked, “It’s lovely, Patrick, but you know, you just aren’t my type.”

“I know it might seem a little soon, but I love Phoebe so much, and if she’s ready, I’d love to get married.”

“Welcome to the club.” Tyce said with a grin. “Whitney and I have been talking, and I was going to speak to Rose about setting a date here next year. Apparently, it’s going to take that long to arrange for all the Bannings to turn up at once.”

RJ stood there, trying to take it all in. Here were two men who would previously have been as likely to discuss their feelings as they would have been to run naked down the streets of San Francisco, yet here they were, talking about weddings and how in love they were.

Suddenly, RJ couldn’t keep from admitting his own feelings.

“I’m in love with Rose.”

His words hung in the air for a second or two before Patrick slapped him on the shoulder.

“At last, he confesses the truth. Does she know yet?” his brother asked.

“Wait a minute, you already knew how I felt about Rose?”

“Of course we do,” Tyce broke in. “The two of you have always had something special between you. So,” he said echoing Patrick’s question, “have you told her?”

“She’s getting married to another man,” RJ reminded them. “In three days.”

“They aren’t married yet,” Patrick pointed out, before frowning. “I hope you haven’t put off going after Rose because of what happened with your ex-wife.”

“Of course I have,” he told his brother. “I never wanted to break up a relationship that way, by encouraging Rose to cheat on Donovan.”

No, he’d simply wanted her to realize that Donovan was all wrong for her and to dump him so that he could cleanly ask her out. But that had never happened.

“Look,” Patrick said in a no-nonsense manner, “I’m not sure you and Betsy were ever meant to be. You were both young when you got married and when she cheated on you, I know it hurt. But I also know that you’re happier since leaving her than you ever were in that relationship. My guess is that you both are. Take it from me, RJ, the important thing is whether you’re with the person you really love, and that she really loves you, too. Not how you end up there.”

“Your brother has a point,” Tyce agreed.

RJ shook his head. “It isn’t that simple, guys. Because what if it turns out that Rose
would
be happier with Donovan?”

“Then she’ll marry Donovan,” Patrick said. “It’s simple, really. If she loves you, she’ll be with you. If she loves Donovan, she’ll be with him. But if you don’t fight for her, then you’ll never know who she really loves.”

All this time, RJ had been hanging back, not saying anything, hoping that Rose would somehow notice how much he loved her. But his brother was right; he couldn’t keep doing that.

At the same time, he couldn’t go behind Donovan’s back to steal her away. Because no matter what Patrick said, that would be too much like what his ex-wife had done to him.

“I need the two of you to handle things from here. Here’s a rough sketch of the new plans.” He shoved the paper into his brother’s hand. “There’s something I’ve got to take care of. Immediately.”

Chapter Twelve

The building where Donovan worked didn’t look like any medical clinic RJ had ever seen. It looked more like a spa. Yet this was definitely the place, as the brass plaque outside had Donovan’s name in gold tipped letters, right at the top.

RJ bet that wasn’t an accident. Donovan wouldn’t settle for his name being anywhere but at the top.

Inside, the reception area was carpeted, with expensive armchairs and discrete prints around the walls. The receptionist was very pretty in an understated way; a balancing act RJ was sure was deliberate. They’d probably looked at head shots when making a decision, wanting someone good-looking enough to suggest that their plastic surgery services worked, then putting her in a soft and unthreatening outfit and hairstyle that would make clients feel slightly superior.

The young woman looked up as RJ approached. “Hello, can I help you?”

Her smile indicated that she thought he was attractive, if not exactly like the usual potential clients who came into the practice.

A month ago, RJ might have taken that hint that she was interested. He’d been out with plenty of women since his divorce. But now there was only one woman who would do. In fact, maybe that had been true the whole time. It would certainly go a long way towards explaining why none of his relationships in the past five years had lasted very long.

“I’m here to see Donovan McIntyre. Is he in the building?”

“I believe he’s in his office on the fourth floor. If you’d like to take a seat, I’ll find out if he’s available to see you.”

“He’ll see me,” RJ assured her, and headed towards the elevator door.

“Wait!” the woman called after him when it opened immediately and he stepped inside. “You can’t just head up like this.”

But the elevator door had already slid closed behind him and he knew better than to wait around until McIntyre decided to invite him up. For all RJ knew, the plastic surgeon would keep him waiting for hours to try to show how superior he was.

He got out on the fourth floor and walked along the hall, looking for the right office. It didn’t take more than a few seconds to locate it, because of course
Donovan was going to take the biggest office with the best view.

As RJ approached, out walked a woman who was clearly pleased with the work the surgeon had done on her face and body. “I’ll look forward to seeing you at our follow-up consultations,” Donovan told the woman a beat before he noticed RJ.

He let himself into the other man’s office without waiting for an invitation.