Deciding he didn’t look half bad for ten minutes of prep work, he hurried toward the sitting room at the front of the cottage. Eric was waiting for him with a large umbrella in his hand. He seemed to be tempting fate as he opened and closed the contraption indoors.
He glanced up when he noticed Jace had joined him. Eric twisted pursed lips to one side as he assessed Jace’s attire. “So you’ll wear a penguin suit for your wedding, but refuse to wear knickerbockers to your rehearsal dinner.”
“Is that what those ugly fucking pants are called? Knickerbockers? For real?” Jace chuckled and then burst out laughing, glad for something to release his tension. Eric was usually good at turning Jace’s naturally dark mood lighter. He wasn’t sure what he’d do with himself if he didn’t have the obnoxious goofball in his life.
“Those pants are not funny,” Eric bellowed indignantly. “They are historically accurate.” Eric tried to keep a straight face, but was soon busting a gut along with Jace.
After a moment, Eric wrapped an arm around Jace’s back and whacked him on the shoulder. “Better?” he asked.
“Uh huh,” Jace said, wiping tears from his eyes.
“Ready to get married?”
“Yep.”
Eric opened the umbrella, and Jace opened the front door. It was pouring.
“Sucks that it’s raining,” Jace grumbled.
“Rain on your wedding day is good luck,” Eric said. He tried shoving the large open umbrella through the door, but it was much wider than the wooden frame.
“This is a bit too much good luck for my tastes.” Jace scowled up at the dark clouds overhead. At least he wasn’t getting married outdoors. He remembered the disaster Sed and Jessica’s beach wedding had been due to rain. Funny how the happy couple hadn’t been upset about it in the least. Had he been in their position, he’d have been pissed.
Grunting with feigned exertion, Eric attempted to get the black umbrella out of the house sideways.
“It’s not going to fit no matter how much you want it to,” Jace said.
“That’s what she said,” Eric said automatically. “Maybe this is why you aren’t supposed to open umbrellas indoors. Has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with geometry.” He tried sending it out handle first to no avail.
“Dude, I’m going to be late if you don’t stop fucking around.”
“She’ll wait,” Eric assured him, but he folded the umbrella slightly so it would fit through the door.
Jace was scarcely aware of his surroundings as they hurried toward the beautiful chapel where he would say his vows. What were his vows again? He wrung his hands together, trying to remember the words he’d agonized over for so long. The words that expressed exactly what Aggie meant to him. He couldn’t remember a damned one.
“Nervous?” Eric asked, giving Jace’s arm a much needed squeeze.
“I can’t remember,” he said dully.
“You can’t remember if you’re nervous?”
“I can’t remember what I wanted to say.”
“No one pays attention to that part anyway,” Eric said.
Eric’s assurance made Jace feel marginally better, even though he knew Eric was lying. Maybe the guys in the crowd would be thinking about the football season or which bridesmaid was the most doable, but the women—and one woman in particular—would be hanging on his every word, and he damned well knew it.
“Did you write them down?” Eric asked, looking at him as if he’d just checked into intensive care with no hope of recovery.
“About a thousand times,” Jace said.
“So just read them to her. She knows you get stupid in front of crowds and even more stupid when faced with topics of a romantic nature. She won’t care if you just read them to her. She’ll understand.”
Jace rubbed a hand over the scruff on his jaw. “I shredded all the papers. I didn’t want her to find them.”
Eric snorted at him. “Real smart, dude.”
“You’re not helping, best man.”
“Was I supposed to be helping? I thought I was just supposed to stand behind you at the altar and catch you if you faint.”
Jace slugged him in the arm and when Eric jerked to the side to avoid a second blow, Jace got a face full of ice cold rain water from the edge of the dripping umbrella. Rivulets dripped down the back of his neck beneath his collar. He shuddered from the chill and sidled in next to a wary-looking Eric once more. Jace might have been a bit damp now, but at least he felt slightly more alert. He was surprised by how alert Eric was. The guy had drunk so much the night before that he and Rebekah had to practically carry him to bed.
“How are you not hung-over this morning?” Jace asked.
“Myrna,” Eric said.
Jace lifted a brow at him. What did Brian’s wife have to do with anything? “Myrna?”
“Yeah. She made me consume her banana and drink all her fluids.”
Baffled, Jace gaped at him. “What?”
“I always knew that chick had a thing for me.” Eric winked at him.
Jace chuckled. “Don’t they all?” He then muttered under his breath, “In your imagination.”
“Keep talking like that and I won’t catch you when you faint.”
A few people were standing outside the chapel under umbrellas. Aggie’s mother happened to be one of them. As usual, she had a lit cigarette in one hand, but she looked quite elegant in her black bridesmaid gown.
“Wasn’t sure if you were going to show up, Maynard,” she said, taking a puff off her cigarette and releasing smoke in a drawn-out cloud as she looked him over.