A Bride For Christmas

CHAPTER NINE

GUY CARVER was a wedding planner extraordinaire. His own wedding was no exception. He would have liked to have had more than a few hours’ notice but, given the circumstances, what was achieved was little short of miraculous.

Firstly he barked orders at everyone, while Jenny and Anna looked on in admiration-and with just a touch of the giggles. Then he swept Jenny into her wagon and carried her back to the farm.

‘For I’m not doing this without consent,’ he said. Ignoring Jenny’s protest that Jack was her father-in-law, and no consent was needed, he carried her into the farmhouse as a groom carried his bride. He woke the startled Lorna and Jack and Henry and Patsy from their afternoon nap and asked with all the deference in the world whether there were any objections to his taking Jenny for his bride.

They were delighted.

‘It’s so lovely,’ Lorna sniffed. ‘We’ll miss you, sweetheart, but we always knew you’d move on.’

‘Then you’ll be disappointed,’ Guy said roundly. ‘You’re stuck with the lot of us for ever. Me and Jenny and Henry and Patsy and whoever else comes along. Mind, I’ll have to make the odd trip overseas-but maybe we can all go. Maybe you’ll even like New York.’

They were speechless-for a whole two minutes-and then Lorna started to plan.

‘So you’re getting married this afternoon?’

‘We’re having a ceremony this afternoon, to get Anna out of a hole,’ Jenny told her. ‘The press will indeed see a Carver Wedding. We’ll repeat our vows in a month for the legalities.’

‘We’ll repeat our vows night and morning for the rest of our lives,’ Guy said exultantly, but Lorna was concentrating on more important issues.

‘You need a dress, Jenny. Not the one you wore for Ben.’

‘No,’ Jenny said. She grinned, delirious with happiness and ready to be silly. ‘Maybe I can wear togs and thongs?’

‘Togs and thongs?’ Guy queried.

‘Bikini and flip-flops,’ Jack translated, and Guy’s face brightened.

‘I can cope with that.’

‘You can. She can’t,’ Lorna said roundly. ‘Jenny, dear…’

‘Mmm?’ Jenny was hugging Henry, who was carefully thinking about all the rides he was now going to get in a Ferrari. ‘Yes?’

‘I never suggested it when you married Ben-to be honest I loved it that we made your wedding dress together. But now…I don’t suppose you’d consider wearing mine?’

‘Yours?’ Jenny said, awed. ‘Oh…’

‘You’re practically the same size as I was forty years ago, and the fashions have come back…’ So they all trooped into the bedroom to Lorna’s camphor chest, and then Lorna realised that this was serious and turned and shooed out the menfolk.

‘You get back to Anna’s,’ she told Guy. ‘You’ll see Jenny at the ceremony and not before.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

But as Guy made his way out through the front door Lorna wheeled herself out of the bedroom in a hurry.

‘I know it’s a minor detail,’ she called, ‘but we need to know when and we need to know where.’

The when was eight p.m. The where was on the beach. The very loveliest time of day.

The beach was crowded with celebrities from all over the world, and almost every inhabitant of Sandpiper Bay. In their midst was Anna, bouncing around as if she had the world at her feet. Whatever mortification she was feeling, she was hiding it with brilliance.

It would be Barret who was mortified now, Guy thought, watching as Anna attracted everyone’s admiration. He could even feel sorry for Barret. Anna was lovely.

She wasn’t as lovely as Jenny.

Guy was standing on the shoreline, where sun-warmed sand gave way to sand made damp by the receding tide. There was a temporary altar behind him, and the celebrant was beaming before it. In truth, the celebrant was a little put out-she’d expected to marry superstars-but the fact that she was marrying Guy Carver and the wonderful Jenny, who everyone knew, almost made up for it.

There was only one attendant. Guy’s best man was Henry, who held the ring-the Sandpiper Bay jeweller had been delighted to open for such a need-with the reverence it deserved. Henry had his own attendant-Patsy was right by his side-but she wasn’t diverting Henry from ring-minding. His hero was at stake-a stepfather who had the marks of life upon him. He kept glancing up to Guy as if he might evaporate, and every time he did Guy looked down at him and winked.

Henry was practising winking back.

‘They look like two cats with one canary,’ one of the reporters said to her photographer, and the photographer sniffed her agreement.

‘It’s beautiful.’

‘If you get that lens wet you’re dead meat,’ the reporter said, but she sniffed, too.

And then the bride arrived. By tractor. You couldn’t get over these sand hills except by foot or all-terrain vehicle, so Lorna, dressed in her wedding best, drove a trifle erratically but with aplomb, while Jenny stood on the side and held on for dear life. The crowd-wisely-parted before them. Lorna reached her destination, flushed with success. Jack helped his daughter-in-law down and Jenny was deposited by Guy’s side. To be married.

‘With this ring I thee wed…’

Maybe the photographer’s camera did get wet then, for there was hardly a dry eye on the beach as Jenny and Guy stood together against a backdrop of setting sun and sea and mountains and were made one.

‘It’s a perfect Carver Wedding,’ Jenny whispered as their wedding kiss finally ended, and Guy smiled at her with a smile that said life for both of them was just beginning.

‘I brought you lousy Christmas presents,’ he told her. ‘I had to make up somehow. Merry Christmas, Mrs Carver. With all my love.’