“The last I heard from her was a few days ago, when she okayed potted lavender instead of tulips.” She scanned his face. “You still haven’t heard from Joe?”
He shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”
But she could tell it was. “I’m sorry.”
He obviously did not want to talk about his distress over his brother. Becky was aware that she felt disappointed. He was okay with their relationship—with being “friends” on a very light level.
Did he not trust her with his deeper issues?
Apparently not. Drew said, “It’s time you learned how to throw a Frisbee. I consider it an essential life skill.”
“How could I have missed that?” she asked drily. As much as she wanted to talk to him about his brother, having fun with him was just too tempting. Besides, maybe the lighthearted friendship growing between them would develop some depth, and some trust on his part, if she just gave it time.
“I’m not sure how you could have missed this important life skill,” he said, “but it’s time to lose ‘Barnside.’ They are calling you that because you could not hit the side of a barn with a Frisbee at twenty feet.”
“At twenty feet? I could!”
“No,” Drew informed her with a sad shake of his head, “you couldn’t. You’ve now tossed two Frisbees out to sea, and Josh risked his life to rescue the other one out of the palm tree today. We can’t be running out of Frisbees.”
“That would be a crisis,” she agreed, deadpan.
“I’m glad you understand the seriousness of it. Now, come here.”
He placed her in front of him. He gave her a Frisbee. “Don’t throw it. Not yet.”
He wrapped his arms around her from behind, drawing her back into the powerful support of his chest. He laid his arm along her arm. “It’s in the wrist, not the arm. Flick it, don’t pitch it.” He guided her throw.
Becky actually cackled with delight when it flew true, instead of her normal flub. Soon, he released her to try on her own, and then set up targets for her to throw at. The troubled look that had been on his face since he mentioned his brother evaporated.
Finally, he high-fived her, gave her a little kiss on the nose and headed back to his crew. She watched him go and then looked at the Frisbee in her hand.
How could such a small thing make it feel as if a whole new world was opening up to her? Of course, it wasn’t the Frisbee, it was him.
It was being with him and being with his crew.
It occurred to Becky she felt the sense of belonging she had craved since the disintegration of her own family. They were all becoming a team. Drew and his crew were a building machine. The pavilion went up, and they designed and began to build the dance floor. And Becky loved the moments when she and Drew found themselves alone. It was so easy to talk to each other.
The conversation flowed between them so easily. And the laughter.
The hands-off policy had been a good one, even if it was making the tension build almost unbearably between them. It was like going on a diet that had an end date. Not that they had named an end date, but some kind of anticipation was building between them.
And meanwhile, her admiration for him did nothing but grow. He was a natural leader. He was funny. He was smart. She found herself making all kinds of excuses to be around him. She was pretty sure he was doing the same thing to be around her.
The days flew by until there were only three days until the wedding. The details were falling into place seamlessly, not just for the wedding but for the week following. The pagoda and dance floor were done, the wedding gazebo was almost completed, though it still had to be painted.
Usually when she did an event, as the day grew closer her excitement grew, too. But this time she had mixed feelings. In a way, Becky wished the wedding would never come. She had never loved her life as much as she did right now.
Today she was at the helipad looking at the latest shipment of goods. Again, there was a sense of things falling into place: candles in a large box, glass vases for the centerpieces made up of single white roses. She made a note as she instructed the staff member who had been assigned to help her where to put the boxes. Candles would need to be unwrapped and put in candle holders, glass vases cleaned to sparkling. The flowers—accompanied by their own florist—would arrive the evening before the wedding to guarantee freshness.
Then one large, rectangular box with a designer name on it caught her eye. It was the wedding dress. She had not been expecting it. She had assumed it would arrive with Allie.
And yet it made sense that it would need to be hung.
Becky plucked it from all the other boxes and, with some last-minute instructions, walked back to the castle with it. She brought it up to the suite that Allie would inhabit by herself the day before the wedding, and with her new husband after that.
The suite was amazing, so softly romantic it took Becky’s breath away. She had a checklist for this room, too. It would be fully supplied with very expensive toiletries, plus fresh flowers would abound. She had chosen the linens from the castle supply room herself.
Becky set the box on the bed. A sticker in red caught her eye. They were instructions stating that the dress should be unpacked, taken out of its plastic protective bag and hung immediately upon arrival. And so Becky opened the box and lifted it out. She unzipped the bag, and carefully lifted the dress out.
Her hands gathered up a sea of white foam. The fabric was silk, so sensuous under her fingertips that Becky could feel the enchantment sewn right into the dress. There was a tall coatrack next to the mirror, and Becky hung the silk-wrapped hanger on a peg and stood back from it.
She could not believe what she was seeing. That long-ago dress that Allie had drawn and given to her, that drawing still living in the back of Becky’s dresser drawer, had been brought to life.
The moment was enough to make a girl who had given up on magic believe in it all over again.
Except that’s not what it did. Looking at the dress made Becky feel as though she was being stabbed with the shards of her own broken dreams. The dress shimmered with a future she had been robbed of. In every winking pearl, there seemed to be a promise: of someone to share life with, of laughter, of companionship, of passion, of “many babies,” fat babies chortling and clapping their hands with glee.
Becky shook herself, as if she was trying to break free of the spell the dress was weaving around her. She wanted to tell herself that she was wrong. That this was not the dress that Allie had drawn on that afternoon of girlish delight all those years ago, not the drawing she had handed to her and said, This is your wedding dress.
But she still had that drawing. She had studied it too often now not to know every line of that breathtakingly romantic dress. She had dreamed of herself walking down the aisle in that dress one too many times. There was simply no mistaking which dress it was. Surely, Allie was not being deliberately cruel?
No, Allie had not kept a drawing of the dress. She had given the only existing drawing to Becky. Allie must have remembered it at a subliminal level. Why wouldn’t she? The dress was exactly what every single girl dreamed of having one day.
But Becky still felt the tiniest niggle of doubt. What if Drew’s cynicism was not misplaced? What if his brother was making a mistake? What if this whole wedding was some kind of publicity stunt orchestrated by Allie? The timing was perfect: Allie was just finishing filming one movie, and another was going to be released in theaters within weeks.
With trembling hands, Becky touched the fabric of the dress one more time. Then she turned and scurried from the room. She felt as if she was going to burst into tears, as if her every secret hope and dream had been shoved into her face and mocked. And then she bumped right into