Four forty-five p.m. Fifteen minutes until the wedding ceremony.
Fifteen minutes had never before seemed like such an impossibly long stretch of time. Holly had been corralling the flower girls and the ring bearer for an hour already. At first, she’d trailed the photographer around as the intrepid woman attempted to capture pictures of the little tykes. That hadn’t been too terrible, because most of their moms had been in the mix. But then the moms had deposited the kids in this boring anteroom that was beginning to resemble a prison and deserted Holly to go find seats in the jam-packed sanctuary.
The church was so jam-packed for Amanda and Ben’s wedding, in fact, that Holly had said a prayer asking God to keep the choir loft from buckling under the extraordinary weight. Here’s hoping the ceremony doesn’t include architectural collapse and death-by-crushing.
“I’m hungry,” one little flower girl stated.
“I’m thirsty.”
“I need to use the potty.”
The ring bearer! He’d climbed on top of the bureau with the help of a chair. Holly dashed over, scooped him up, and deposited him safely on the floor.
Each of the children were gorgeously dressed. The ring bearer in a mini-tux. The seven flower girls in dove gray gowns with satin bodices and full tulle skirts. Every hair had been combed into place by the moms. Every black ballet slipper tugged into position. Their angelic appearance had so far proved deceiving.
One of the flower girls screeched and pushed her sister, also a flower girl.
“Girls.” Holly placed herself in between the fighting siblings. “Let’s be sweet to each other.”
They both released a string of tattling aimed at the other.
Oh, no. The ring bearer and the tiniest flower girl were on their way back up the bureau. Determinedly, Holly intercepted the climbers. “Would anyone like some gummi bears?”
“Me!” they all chorused.
She went to her purse for the big package of gummi bears she’d purchased on her way back to the church after lunch. The itty-bitty set followed her as if she were the Pied Piper. God bless Sam.
“Sit down nicely in a circle, everyone, and I’ll come around and give you each gummi bears.” With child number two, she learned the importance of making sure she gave them each the same number of gummi bears in the exact same variety of colors.
After she’d dropped gummi bears into the final child’s hands, the door creaked open and Josh leaned in.
Joy suffused Holly at the sight of him, as if it had been months since she’d seen him instead of hours.
Josh’s face seemed to ease at the sight of her. He stepped fully into the room. He was wearing—Have mercy on me, Lord—a tuxedo that looked as if it had been made for him. Which it probably had been. It fit him the way James Bond’s tuxedos fit.
The children peered up at Josh while chewing loudly.
Holly skirted the circle of kids and approached him, slightly mortified at the thought of what she must look like. She’d dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved mint green cotton shirt this morning because she’d planned not only to oversee the wedding setup, but also to offer a helping hand if needed. She’d intended to return home before the wedding to change and fix herself up. The second part of her plan hadn’t materialized. Mitzi had kept her flat-out busy. A while ago, she’d gathered her hair into a low side ponytail, but even that felt bumpy and askew at this point.
“Hi.” She stopped near him, wishing she could blurt out how sorry she was about her kiss-fail.
“So this is where you’ve been,” he said, his voice pitched low.
“Yep. I’ve been hanging out here with the flower girls—”
“—and the ring bear,” the lone boy added. “Grr. I’m a bear.”
That set off a round of giggling and loud talking. The sisters began to fight again, so Holly plopped a curly redheaded flower girl in between them.
“Can we have more gummi bears?” one of them asked.
“I still need to go to the bathroom!”
“Keeping care of this group seems like a fun job,” Josh remarked.
“Oh, it is. My heart is full of thankfulness.”
Just then, one of the girls made an awful choking sound. The best behaved of all the flower girls, a dark-haired five-year-old girl with her hair in two side buns, was half-coughing, half gagging.
Holly knelt beside her. “Are you okay, Olivia?”
Olivia couldn’t answer. She was hunched over, wheezing too much to speak. Fear spiked deeply into Holly. What should she do?
Josh lowered onto his knee on Olivia’s other side, his hand on her back.
Should they give Olivia the Heimlich? she wondered, panicking. Get water? Thump her back? Holly wasn’t a mom and didn’t know—
Olivia hacked and threw up a wad of chewed-up gummi bears right into the lap of her tulle skirt. After a few deep breaths, she straightened and looked up at Holly, eyes round.
“Are you all right?” Holly asked.
She nodded.
Thank God! Holly smiled tremulously and patted her shoulder. Thank God she was fine.
What wasn’t fine?