But the second he laced his fingers through hers, someone tapped on her shoulder.
“Picture time!”
The bride was beaming, and her smile could light up a midnight skyline, he reckoned. But then, that’s how it should be on your wedding day.
Julia brushed her hand once over the front of her dress, as if she were smoothing it out, then McKenna caught Clay’s eye.
“You made it,” she shrieked, then threw her arms around his neck. He angled himself so she couldn’t feel his hard-on. The last thing he needed was the bride thinking he was a pervert, or telling the groom that his new lawyer had been sporting wood.
“Congratulations, McKenna. I’m so happy for you and Chris,” he said, and when she pulled away he continued. “And I donated to the New York City ASPCA in your honor.”
“Oh, you didn’t have to,” she said, then patted the outside of her leg, and a blond Lab-Hound-Husky arrived at her side, parking herself perfectly in a sit. “But Ms. Pac-Man thanks you.”
“She’s even cuter in person,” Clay said, gesturing to the dog, before he extended a hand to the groom, congratulating him as well on the nuptials.
Soon, McKenna scurried her sister, her husband and her dog away for photos. Julia leaned in to give him a quick peck on the cheek before they headed to the bluff for a round of pictures.
Clay took a deep breath, and hoped the photographer made quick work behind the lens.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
Clay turned to see his buddy Davis. “Hey man,” he said, clapping his friend on the back, though Davis was joking—Clay had told him the other night that he’d be at the wedding. Davis was here with Jill, the groom’s sister.
“Guess we’re the odd men out,” Davis said, tipping his forehead to the wedding party that included the women both of them were involved with.
Wait. Was he involved with Julia again? Or was it crazy to think that, given the track record they both had of running? He didn’t know what they were, or what they would be.
“Yep. Looks like we are,” Clay said. “Think this’ll be you anytime soon?”
Davis nodded, a sneaky glint in his eyes. “As a matter of fact, I believe I will be popping the question at the Tony Awards next month.”
Clay smiled widely, then hugged his friend. “Congrats, man. That’s fantastic. You two are great together.”
“I think so too.”
As he chatted with Davis, neither of them did a very good job of looking anywhere but at the wedding party, Davis’s eyes on Jill, Clay’s on Julia. There was something both peaceful and right about this moment, this wedding, these people he barely knew who’d invited him into their most important day. It felt fitting to be here, and soon the gorgeous redhead would be back by his side where she belonged.
* * *
There was no time for a quickie. The moment the photographer had finished shooting the wedding party, the cocktail hour started, as waiters passed out flutes of bubbly champagne. The festivities had moved inside to a gorgeous reception room with a baby grand piano and floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the water. The decor reflected the bride’s and groom’s passion for games and animals with the name cards at place settings stamped with Mr. Monopoly, and the centerpiece flowers boasting a wooden cutout of a hound dog.
Chris tapped a fork against a glass, cleared his throat and stood next to his new wife by the head table. “First of all, thank you so much for coming. I’m pretty sure I’m the luckiest guy in the world simply because I have this woman as my wife. To also see so many friends and family here makes the occasion all the better, even though I’d have married her anywhere—in a box, on a boat, in the rain, on a train,” he said, then paused to look at McKenna. She rolled her eyes playfully. “What? It’s true,” he said to her, but loud enough for everyone to hear. He faced the guests again. “Anyway, I’m going to keep this short and sweet, and turn the microphone over to the best man and the maid-of-honor. And since I’m a ladies first kind of a guy, we’ll start with Julia. Take it away.”
Julia crossed the few feet to Chris and took the microphone, then turned to the crowd. “It’s truly an honor to be here and to be able to say a few words about my favorite person in the world and her favorite person in the world,” she said, stopping to gesture at Chris.
“Hey! You’re still a favorite,” McKenna called out.
Julia waved her off playfully. “I’m still a little surprised though as to why Chaucer isn’t here to give a toast. Do you all know Chaucer?” she asked the crowd. Most of them shook their heads. “Let me tell you a story. Chaucer is our friend’s Siamese cat, and he was something of a matchmaker for Chris and McKenna. He’s one of those dastardly Siamese cats who likes to make his mark in the world. But, lest everyone think cat pee is a bad thing all the time, there are the rare cases where cat pee brings two people together. Because when Chaucer peed on McKenna’s camera many months ago, she brought it to the electronics store to find a replacement. And who would she happen to meet there but this man,” Julia said patting Chris on the shoulder. “And Chris, being an industrious and resourceful fellow, and naturally, being completely smitten with McKenna from the second he saw her, gamely offered to repair her camera,” she said, a smile breaking across her face as she told the story. From across the crowd of glittering lights and gorgeously arrayed tables, she spotted Clay, his eyes fixed on her. Suddenly she felt as if the whole room had disappeared and she was talking only to him. Sharing a love story with her man. “Of course, it wasn’t always easy, and McKenna had a bit of a stubborn side about some things.”
“I’ll say,” Chris chimed in, as he draped an arm around his wife and planted a sweet kiss on her cheek, earning a collective aww from the guests.
“But here we are, despite the stubbornness from my big sis, because she realized what a good thing she had in front of her, and that giving up her stubborn ways was worth it.” She locked eyes with Clay once more, and the lightness of the speech drained away, replaced instead by the deeper possibility of whether she could give up the things she held too tightly. She’d never truly considered it until that moment, but was there a chance she was being stubborn, too, by clutching her secrets and her shame in her hands? She’d always considered her troubles to be completely solo problems, but they were growing far less solitary given Charlie’s encroachment on her personal territory lately, from his heated asides about McKenna to sending his heavy with the runny nose to her salon that morning.