Page 44 of Cooped Up for Christmas

“What happened to the woman who believes in second chances?”

“I believe you’re talking about Farley.”

His hold tightened, just incrementally. “Don’t you believe in second chances?” The poignancy in his tone struck me.

I turned around and found myself in his hold. “I suppose I do.” Untrue. I only hoped. And it was the hope that usually undid me. Hope was a scary thing sometimes.

I was saved from further exploratory probing when Farley cried, “Oh yes. Yes!” from amidst her knot of admirers. Then she looked over at me and my heart dropped like an anchor. Because I knew that look. She was about to ask for something impossible.

“Could you do that?”

As this question was definitely directed at me, I smiled and said, “Do what?” because—call me crazy—I prefer specifics in situations like this before I say yes.

Farley’s eyes shone. “Can we have the wedding here? Tomorrow?”

Oh. A wedding tomorrow? Is that all?

“Of course, we can do that for you.”

Olivia did faint then, but fortunately, she was next to Jed and he caught her.

Teamwork. Yay!

All right. Today was Christmas day. They wanted a wedding tomorrow. Tomorrow.

My smile kind of froze on my face. How on earth was I going to pull this off?

First of all, I needed to get out of here. I asked my staff to cover for me and headed back to the servants’ quarters to panic in private.

Coop followed me back to our kitchen. When I dropped into a chair with my head in hands, he was right there with me.

“They want a pastor and a string quartet. Where am I going to get a string quartet on Christmas Day?”

“Be glad they didn’t ask for doves,” he said, nodding at the mounds of snow on the windowsills.

I glared at him. “Be nice. And let me think.”

“Mungo’s an ordained minister.”

I gaped at him for a second. “What?”

“Yeah. He was ordained online, but it’s legal.”

“Coop, I don’t even know if they have a license.”

“Do you care?”

Of their own accord, my lips curled. “If they don’t, they’ll have to do all this again.”

He chuckled. “And that would be a problem for these people…why?” His expression was wicked and delicious and, okay, that got me. I laughed out loud and, magically, all my stress melted away.

This, I decided, was going to be the fanciest, most fantabulous wedding ever, whether it was legal or not.

He kissed me and headed out to check on the snowmobiles that had been delivered for tomorrow. Because tomorrow was now a wedding, he decided to shift snow play to today to give us a chance to breathe.

While Coop and his team took the more adventurous guests out on snowmobiles, I started making calls. I was able to reach a local church that had a string quartet (of high school students) willing to come out and perform the day after Christmas. I nearly kissed my cell phone at that. Then Ken and I put our heads together over the decorations, but I’ll be honest and say he did most of the work. He’s kind of a genius that way.

We couldn’t start actually decorating until the guests vacated the living room, and Wren regularly reported that some were still drinking coffee, opening presents, and chatting, so that meant more time for me to get my head together.