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“Thanks?” I stared at the tower and then chanced a look at my sister. Aubrey was scary even when she wasn’t hopped up on hormones. I wasn’t sure what version of her I’d get today, and I’d learned well enough to tread lightly.
“It’s a joke,” she said, sounding annoyed that I wasn’t rolling on the floor with laughter. “I had to look everywhere to find enough to make you a little tower.”
“Well, we won’t run out, I guess,” I said, moving to the computer to check the activity schedule for the day. I needed to make sure I’d have time to take Emily to check out the church.
“No, but the shop might. And the bar. And the kitchen.” Aubrey giggled.
I shot her a look and blew out an exasperated sigh. “Funny.”
“So,” she said, drawing the word out in a way that told me my sister was about to ask a favor.
I steeled myself, already knowing I’d say yes. I would bend over backwards for my sister. She was all I had. Plus, the fear of tears was a driving force within me. “What?”
“Better plan this whole wedding thing.”
I swiveled to face her. “You said you wanted a summer wedding. Next summer. This is November.”
Her smile dropped and the big eyes filled immediately with tears.
No, no, no, no. Crying-Aubrey was not a good version of Aubrey. “Or yes? I mean yes. Just...what changed?”
She sniffed and wiped the single tear that had escaped as her kaleidoscope moods shifted yet again and a tiny smile appeared. “I don’t want to have to worry about it afterwards. Wiley and I know we want to get married and there’ve been so many reasons to delay, and now we’re running out of time.”
She looked so desperately upset, but I didn’t see the rush. “Aubrey, there’s no law that you have to be married before the baby comes. You’re a family no matter how you decide to tackle the paperwork.”
“I know that,” she snapped, and I took a step back. Then she softened again. “It’s more about logistics. There’s going to be a ton to do once the baby is here. I just don’t want to put this off until then because I’m afraid we’ll just keep putting it off. The kid will graduate from college and we’ll still be finding reasons why it’s not a good time.”
I understood her point. It was one of those line in the sand things—there was never really a good time. “Okay, we can figure it out.”
“Plus, I don’t want the baby to be excluded from society.”
I looked around, pointedly gazing at the small groups of writers clustered here and there, one of the bellmen pushing a broom out on the sidewalk. “You need to stop watching those shows about marrying off young women and finger sandwiches.None of that applies anymore. The only ‘society’ you have to worry about here wears flannel and owns three different kinds of snow shovels.”
Aubrey sniffed. “None of that matters. I just want to be married when the baby comes so it’s one less thing to worry about.”
“Okay.” It was best to agree, though I didn’t know that thinking of a wedding as something to worry about was quite right. “But Aub, the baby’s due really soon.”
“The week before Christmas.” She said this defiantly, as if she could change the date just by being angry enough about it.
I nodded, pulling up the whole calendar on the screen in front of me. “So we’ve got this conference until Sunday, then a week and a half until Thanksgiving, and then the holidays. For which we have planned two full weeks of events.”
Aubrey’s chin was beginning to wobble as she looked at me with those wide, watery eyes.
Shit.
“So that means,” I amended quickly, “that we can definitely do a wedding...in two weeks?” It was sudden, but it was the only space we had between fully booked holiday events at the resort.
“That’s so soon,” she said.
I shot her a narrow-eyed look and her hands went out in front of her, palms to me, as she added, “which is totally perfect. I’ll just tell Wiley.”
“Wait, Wiley knows you’re planning this, right?” Not that Wiley would ever complain about a single thing Aubrey did or wanted. He was utterly smitten, and I was glad.
“He knows we’re getting married, yes. I’ve got the ring to prove it.” She slid carefully off the high stool.
“I mean, he knows you’re wanting to do it soon.”
“He will in a minute,” she said, and then my sister turned and moved across the lobby, every step demonstrating how uncomfortable it was for such a small woman to carry what was clearly a big baby inside her. My sister was a badass, though. If anyone could handle it, she could.
