Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 109608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
However, all his daughter had in her was to nod.
“Leave it with me,” Nora decreed, dropping her head to the clutch she was opening to retrieve her phone.
“The service is to start in twenty minutes, Nora,” Jamie reminded her.
“They can wait an extra ten minutes while I do my work,” she decreed. “I’ll spread word around your guests that there’s a minor delay. And I’ll see if the church can set up a coffee service in the meantime.”
Jamie knew nothing about flower arranging, but he did know how much those sprays cost, and he could see with his own eyes how elaborate they were, so he could surmise there was no way a florist in New York City could switch all six of them out in thirty minutes.
He opened his mouth to say the words he needed to say to let his daughter down gently so this could be done for the both of them, but Nora spoke before he could get the first one out.
“Jamie, leave it with me,” she stated softly, but nevertheless inflexibly.
What could he do?
He nodded.
She walked away, the phone already to her ear.
“Who is she?” Dru asked when Nora was out of earshot.
“A good friend,” Jamie murmured.
Dru moved her attention from watching Nora walk away to her dad. She then leaned into him, though it was more like collapsing.
He took her weight and wrapped his arms around her to give her his warmth.
Dru offered the same in return.
They both stared at nothing, because everything had been torn away from them, and nothing, but what was standing there in each other’s arms (except, for Jamie, he also had his son, who was currently greeting their guests in their stead), held meaning anymore.
Thirty minutes later, about two minutes after Jamie approved the opening of the doors to the sanctuary, was when the large team of florists scurried out of the cathedral.
And the six sprays adorning the altar sported bright red-orange roses.
Near-on the exact color of his beautiful wife’s gorgeous hair.
They were perfect.
“Sir, I’m so very sorry, so very sorry, but we have an issue in the foyer.”
Extreme irritation formed a hot ball in his chest, considering, during his dead wife’s memorial reception, there should be no issue that required his attention in the foyer.
“What is it?” he clipped at the venue manager.
The man cleared his throat and further lowered the already low voice he’d been using. “There’s a gentleman who’s demanding entry who says he’s Mrs. Oakley’s husband.”
Chet.
Dru’s biological father.
Not Lindy’s husband.
Christ, he hadn’t seen that asshole in years.
Jamie’s body stiff with rage, he moved toward the foyer, only to nearly run over Nora, who appeared for the sole purpose of blocking his path.
“Sweetheart,” he murmured.
“I’ll handle it,” she declared.
His head ticked. “You’ll handle what?”
“That man in the foyer,” she stated. And before he could ask how she knew, she told him. “I was coming back from the powder room, and I overheard what he was saying.” Her gaze drifted away, and she muttered to herself, “I should have stepped in right then.”
“This isn’t something you can handle,” he shared.
She tipped her head to the side, and for the first time in so long, it seemed a millennium, Jamie felt the urge to laugh at the openly confused expression on her face that there might be something…anything…in this world she couldn’t handle.
He didn’t laugh because he had to say, “Dru’s biological father is not a nice man.”
“I already ascertained that,” she huffed.
And with that, he knew Chet was causing a scene.
“I can do this,” he told her.
“I have no doubt. That doesn’t negate the fact you aren’t doing this,” she retorted.
He opened his mouth to refute her assertion, when several of his guests moved to his side.
Nora smiled benignly at them, coasted a glance through his eyes, and took the opportunity of Jamie being waylaid to hustle on her black pumps toward the foyer.
From where he stood, he couldn’t see what was happening in the foyer.
All he saw was, five minutes later, Nora returning. When she caught his gaze, she swiped her hands together as if cleaning dust from them, sharing without words the mission was accomplished. After doing that, she looked away in order to take a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter.
That was the last he saw of her that day.
He would never know how she handled Chet.
All he knew was that he, nor Dru, ever heard from the man again.
And that was all he needed to know.
Six weeks later…
Dru was, thankfully, spending the night with some girlfriends.
She needed that. To do normal things. To remember she was a teenager. To fiddle around with makeup and talk about boys and hopefully giggle and watch movies that Jamie (nor Lindy) would want her to watch because neither of them relished the fact she was growing up so fast.