Even in the aftermath of their broken engagement, she couldn’t ask for a better friend. One she only felt the warmth of friendship for, rather than the white hot passion of true love.
“How about if you tell your relatives and I’ll handle mine? Just try not to make me sound utterly cold-hearted when you do it, okay?” she teased.
“That won’t be easy,” Kenneth said, in a tone that was mock serious. “I mean, you did call me up at midnight to break off our engagement.”
They both laughed again.
“I’m so glad we’re still friends,” Whitney told her ex-fiancé.
“Me too,” Kenneth said. “And now that I don’t have to rush back for the wedding, I may extend my time in China. I’ll see you in a few months, Whitney. I’m glad you called.”
As she put the phone down, she could hardly believe the way the last few minutes had gone. Turning around to stare out the window again, she waited a little while to let the whole marvelous mess of a breakup sink in.
Chapter Eight
Tyce rolled into work on time, ready for the big debriefing that followed every wedding.
“Good morning, Tyce.” Phoebe looked as beautiful as ever in her elegantly customized dress, with her dark hair tied back.
“Things are still going well with you and Patrick, I take it?”
Phoebe’s smile widened. “Not well. Perfect.” In the flirtatious way they’d always had between them, she teased, “Why? Are you jealous?”
He was, but not because he wanted Phoebe for himself. It was because he wanted what she had with Patrick for himself and Whitney.
He forced a smile, determined to keep up the appearance of everything being the same as usual as he said, “Obviously.”
Phoebe reached out to touch his arm. “Is everything okay, Tyce?”
“I’m fine,” he said, knowing it was a bad sign if he couldn’t keep up the façade of happiness. “Come on, Rose is going to start hollering for us soon.”
“Actually, Rose was busy staring at all the scuff marks on the dance floor and wondering if there’s time to replace it, the last I saw her.” Phoebe stepped in front of him. “So you have plenty of time to tell me what’s going on if you want to.”
Tyce shook his head. “Maybe some other time.”
Even if he were the kind of guy to talk about his emotions, he couldn’t tell anyone at the chalet about Whitney. Not if he wanted to keep his job.
They headed through to the main room where Rose was indeed staring at the floor, adding items to her inevitable post-wedding list. RJ was applying varnish to a small section of floor he must have stripped back to prove to Rose that fixing up the wedding venue’s dance floor wasn’t going to be a complete nightmare. Tyce could practically see her blood pressure reducing as RJ worked.
Anne was there too, wearing a dress with fabric that shifted and changed as the light came in through the windows. Like so many of Anne’s designs, it seemed to be so much more than the sum of its parts. Tyce couldn’t claim to be the world’s biggest fashion expert, but right then, with Anne staring out into the sunlight, she looked like a fairy princess.
“Hi Tyce. Hi Phoebe.” She hugged each of them. “It was a wonderful wedding, wasn’t it? The swans were beautiful, the bride looked lovely, and having a special song done for the two of them was so romantic.”
Not wanting to talk about the song, he told her, “The dress was lovely.”
She beamed at him. “Thank you.”
Rose turned and saw they were all gathered. “Why don’t we get started? Let’s do a quick recap of the Washburn wedding before we look ahead at the upcoming calendar.”
The five of them gathered round. They’d done this so many times that it was a comfortable ritual, more of a family than a bunch of co-workers.
“Now, I want to start by thanking all of you for doing a great job, as always. The wedding went really well,” Rose said. She checked something off on her list as she said it. Tyce tried to look over her shoulder to see if she actually had ‘say the wedding went well’ written down, but he couldn’t quite see. It would be such a Rose thing to do. “The Washburns were very pleased. All that’s left to take care of is returning the swans.”
“I took them back this morning,” RJ said.
“Thank you,” Rose said with a warm smile. “I don’t know what I’d do without you some days. There’s still a bit of clean up to do, and RJ, you were saying that it would take a few days to re-finish the floor?”
“It shouldn’t be a problem,” the handyman said, though Tyce wasn’t so sure. It looked like a big job to him. RJ was obviously determined to get it done for Rose, though. He’d always been there for their boss.
“I’m talking to Julie about the possibility of her and Andrew handling our catering on a long term basis. Having to scout out a different company for each wedding is getting tricky.” Rose paused to consult her list again before continuing. “The other news is that we’ve had our last Banning wedding here for a while.”
“What?”
Everyone turned to stare at Tyce’s outburst. He gestured for Rose to continue.
She frowned before saying, “Whitney Banning phoned me earlier to say that she was going to have to cancel hers.”
“She isn’t going to a new venue, is she?” Anne asked.
“No,” Rose said. “The wedding is off completely. We will be returning most of the deposit she left with us as a gesture of goodwill. We don’t actually have to do it, but I’d like to, so if you could all let me have a list of anything you’ve already spent in preparations, then…Tyce, where are you going?”
“Sorry,” Tyce said, heading for the door as fast as he could. “There’s something I have to do.”
“
Tyce!
”
He hurried out before Rose could say anything more. He didn’t think she would fire him, but right then, he didn’t care. Some things were simply more important than a job.
He’d wasted far too much time already; he wasn’t about to waste any more. After five years, another few minutes or hours shouldn’t have made any difference, but they felt like the most important minutes in the world.
Amazingly, there was a spot to park outside the coffee shop. Tyce took it, hopping out and checking the time. Yes, if he was very, very lucky…
He was. A quick glance through the coffee shop window revealed Whitney standing at the counter, ordering her regular morning coffee. She looked radiant this morning, happier than he’d seen her at any point in the last few days.
He strode up to her and looked deep into her beautiful, surprised, eyes.
“You cancelled your wedding.”
Four simple words, but there was so much behind them. How much he’d hoped for this moment. How perfect she looked standing there. How he wanted her right then more than anything else in the world.
“Tyce—”
If he couldn’t express everything in words, he could at least
show
Whitney how he felt.
So he cupped her face in his hands and he kissed her the way he’d wanted to on the morning the swan escaped.
The way he’d wanted to for every moment of the last five years.
It could so easily have been disappointing. It could have so easily failed to live up to his memories of their previous kiss, yet from the moment that his lips touched Whitney’s, she kissed him back with pure, sweet passion. He continued to kiss her back every bit as fiercely, as hungrily, wanting to relearn every last inch of her lips.
But then, Whitney pulled back from the kiss, far too soon.
Not just from the kiss, but from him, too.
“No, Tyce,” she said, her eyes wide and shocked, her skin flushed. “I…I can’t.”
Tyce moved forward to brush a hand down across her cheek. “You cancelled the wedding. You’re free to do whatever you want now, Whitney.”
She took hold of his hand, moving it away from her skin. “Tyce, I can’t. I just can’t.”
For the first time since he’d spotted her through the window, Whitney didn’t look happy. She took another step away from him. This time, Tyce didn’t close the distance. The last thing he wanted was to upset her.
“Why not?” he asked. “And don’t try telling me that you aren’t attracted to me, because I know I won’t believe it. Not after a kiss like that.”
“The kiss was good,” Whitney admitted in a soft voice that only he could hear, looking slightly embarrassed as she did it, like she wasn’t sure that she should admit quite how good it had been. “The kiss was
great
. But it isn’t that simple.”
“It’s exactly that simple,” Tyce countered. “What do you want, Whitney? Just say it, and whatever it is, we’ll make it happen. Together.” But the look in her eyes had him asking, “I am what you want, aren’t I?”
“I don’t know what I want right now, Tyce,” Whitney said. “I know how good I feel every time I’m around you, but I’m not ready to jump headfirst into a relationship the day after breaking things off with Kenneth. I haven’t even told my family yet. I need time to work out, for once, exactly what it is that
I
want.” Whitney turned towards the door. “I need to go now, Tyce. I have to get back to work.”
It was an excuse, and they both knew it. Tyce wanted to reach out and stop her. Wanted to kiss her again so that she saw how great they could be. His hands clenched with the effort of not doing it, but he didn’t reach for her to pull her against him.
Because he loved her.
And right then, it looked like loving her meant letting her walk away again.
Chapter Nine
Tyce played a scale on his guitar, bent the top note, then slid down the neck to repeat the riff. Milo blinked up at him from where he was lying beside the amplifier in Tyce’s living room, one ear up, the other flopping to the side.
“Yes, I know,” Tyce said. “It’s not really a song, but it’s better than nothing, isn’t it?”
He went into a quick legato sequence and Milo put his head under his paws. His dog had a point. Tyce had started off well, but now, his guitar playing had descended into aimless noodling. Just the same tired licks coming out from his fingers, with no input from either his brain or his heart. He’d thought there was a glimmer of melody there, but he’d gone after it too quickly, and the result was a mess.
Tyce forced himself to rein it in and settle down into a simple four bar sequence. It was only when he’d been through it a couple of times that he realized he’d unconsciously gone back to the song he’d started to write all those years ago.
“I can’t give up on Whitney, Milo.”
The dog looked up from under his paws, looking hopeful at the sound of her name.
Tyce reached down to ruffle the dog’s fur. “I want to see her even more than you do, if you can believe it. But she wants space, and I have to respect that. I just have to hope that if I give her a little time, she’ll come around to seeing how good we’d be together.”
Milo barked as Tyce started rooting through a stack of sheet music. Waiting was the right thing to do, even if it was hard, but he did need something to take his mind off thoughts of Whitney. He hoped working on the musical arrangements for the Rose Chalet’s next wedding would help with that for a while.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to do. Another wedding spent directing the same parts for the same musicians. He must have worked at least a hundred weddings with the string quartet over the years. The only difference in the routine was that they’d acquired a new viola player recently. The previous one had just taken a position with the San Francisco Philharmonic. Tyce couldn’t blame him. Moving on to bigger and better things was what musicians did.
Most of them, anyway. Tyce could still remember what it had been like in the early days. The bands he’d been in had broken up and re-formed, swapped drummers and fought over bass players, splintered and re-formed under a dozen different names. Being so passionate about music made every band a strange and fragile thing, perfect one night then gone the next, always reaching for that special blend of ability and chemistry.
Chemistry? It was more like alchemy with some of the bands he’d been in, but occasionally, just occasionally, the results were too good to ignore. Just like the way he and Whitney were together.
Pure heat. Perfect chemistry. And gravity that pulled them together every single time they were together.
What would that younger version of himself think of Tyce’s life now? Working the same wedding gig for years, occasionally guesting with another band to fill in for one of their players.
He’d probably think this “mature” Tyce was nuts, but then, he’d never cared about financial security when he was younger.
He’d still been convinced that he could write songs, too.
Tyce turned his focus back to his guitar again, working to find the faint melody playing out in the back of his mind. If he could only get it out through his fingers and onto the strings.
A beautiful picture of Whitney smiling, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright and intelligent, swam into his mind again, making him pause. He hated having to work so patiently around the edges of their relationship, when what he really wanted was to dive straight into the heart of their feelings for each other.
But he’d tried that before, had tried to force everything in place. And where had it gotten him?
No songs.
And no girl.
Maybe, he started to think, it would be better in the end if he didn’t try to force it...and just let every note play out as the one that was meant to be there.
Tyce slid his guitar onto the stand and reached for Milo’s leash. “How about if I take you for a walk? It has to be better than sitting around here.” The dog yapped his approval and they’d almost made it to the door when Tyce’s phone went off.
“Hi, Tyce, this is Sebastian. Whitney’s brother. I found your number online. I hope it’s okay that I’m calling.”
“Hi, Sebastian.” Praying Whitney wasn’t in trouble, Tyce asked, “What can I do for you?”
Her brother was silent for a long moment. Too long for Tyce’s peace of mind, before the teenager said, “It’s kind of embarrassing.”
Relief flooded through Tyce. It didn’t sound like it had anything to do with Whitney.