“Family on the groom’s side,” Chloe said.
“We’ll sit with Ben and Ed,” Nathan contradicted from just behind her. “They’re up near the front.”
Chloe glanced around as she paced up the aisle beside her escort. When Nathan had mentioned a chapel, she’d expected something small and intimate. This was a huge open space of white walls lit by arched stained-glass windows under a ceiling supported by heavy, dark trusses. Row upon row of straight wooden pews marched down the nave in a neat military progression. She wasn’t sure how big a battalion was, but she imagined you could fit one in the church.
As they got closer to the altar, the pews were filled from the aisle to their midpoints. She spotted Ben and Ed three rows from the front and steered her escort toward them. Nathan gestured her aside so he could slide in first, giving her the aisle view.
Ed and Nathan exchanged murmurs, neither of them looking happy, and she suspected Ed was trying to persuade Nathan to sit in the front pew. On the bride’s side there were several family members, but the groom’s family pew held only one older couple and a single man.
Nathan must have followed her gaze because he said, “Those are my other two uncles and my aunt-in-law.”
Chloe hesitated, but the pew looked so empty. She’d persuaded Nathan to bring the sword. She should at least attempt to push him another step toward reconciliation with his father. “I think we should sit up there. Otherwise the bride’s side wins.”
He looked down at her with an odd glint in his eye. “You’re being Machiavellian again.” He turned and said something to Ed before taking her hand. “You’ve played on my competitive nature.”
She gave him a dazzling smile as they stood and walked to their new seats. This time Nathan sat between her and his relatives, creating a barrier to conversation. He nodded to his uncles and aunt but didn’t offer to introduce her.
“You’re being rude,” she whispered.
“I’m keeping you out of trouble.”
“Trouble for me or for you?”
“Both.” He laced his fingers with hers and stared straight ahead. She felt his nerves in the sporadic press of his fingers and saw it in the tiny tic of a muscle in his jaw.
“At least we have a chance against the bride’s side now. There are only eight of them. And they’re all short,” she whispered.
His grip on her hand eased, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
The brash, festive notes of a trumpet rang through the church, making her start. A door near the altar opened to allow General Trainor and Uncle Fred to walk through it with the measured pace of soldiers on parade. They took their positions and stood ramrod straight and unsmiling.
The trumpet was joined by the organ in the “Trumpet Voluntary.” Chloe twisted in her seat to see a young man and woman, in uniforms from two different services, pace up the aisle in that same controlled stride.
“My cousins Emily and Christopher,” Nathan murmured. “Navy and Air Force.”
Behind them came one woman, dressed in a simple sheath of peach satin, holding a bouquet of cream roses.
“Angel’s sister, Sarita.” Nathan’s voice went tight.
As Sarita reached the front of the church, the music changed to the “Wedding March,” and the congregation stood. A small woman wearing a short, floating cream chiffon dress started down the aisle. Her bouquet held peach roses, and the same flowers were woven into the dark-brown braid circling her head like a coronet. As she came closer, a waft of air-conditioning flattened the chiffon against the bride’s stomach, and Chloe could see the telltale swell of pregnancy.
She turned forward as the bride passed and caught an expression of such heartbreaking joy and uncertainty on the groom’s face that tears pricked at her eyes.
“Your father loves her,” she whispered.
He glanced down at her. “He loved my mother. He loved me. It made no difference in how he treated us.”
Chloe sucked in a breath as the truth hit her. Nathan disliked Angel because his father treated her differently—better—than he had his first wife. He didn’t want his father to be kinder and more considerate of his second wife. It would make his mother seem less worthy somehow. She could understand and even sympathize with his feelings, but they would separate him from the father whose approval he still sought.
She tucked her hand into the crook of Nathan’s elbow, hoping she could pull some of the tension from him.
The minister motioned them to sit, and the ceremony proceeded. When Nathan’s father kissed his new wife, he did so with a tenderness and passion that brought forth a soft, collective sigh from the female wedding guests.