Ladies' Night, Andrews, Kay [best time to read books .txt] 📗

and thick-soled black rubber sandals. He didn’t appear to see or hear them—or Sweetie.

The old man wore a pair of enormous earphones connected to an unwieldy metal detector, and his eyes were glued to the sand as he waved the detector’s wand back and forth over a three-foot-wide swath of sand.

Grace nodded in his direction. “You think he ever finds anything valuable? From the looks of him, he must spend hours and hours with that thing.”

“He probably finds lots of bottle caps and pennies. Maybe the occasional set of keys or a piece of jewelry. Probably just enough to keep him in gas and beer,” Wyatt said.

“But he never gives up. And he walks for miles. I’ve seen him every day this week, on the beach outside Mitzi’s condo. I guess it gives him something to do,” Grace said.

“You said you had a couple growth moments this week?” Grace asked idly, her eyes following the treasure seeker’s progress. “What was the other one?”

“Mm-hmm,” Wyatt said. He rested his lips briefly against her right temple. “Callie showed up at the park again yesterday, begging me to give her a job. And another chance.”

Grace half stood and tried to pull away, but Wyatt gently tugged her back down beside him.

“I told her no,” he said, placing his hand on her cheek. “Hell, no. What you said just now—that there’s nothing there for you—back at your old house, with Ben. That’s how it is with me and Callie. I wish her well, for Bo’s sake, but that’s it.”

“You’re sure?” Grace held her breath.

“Never surer,” Wyatt said. “It’s you and me now, kid, if you’ll have me.” Slowly, he slid off the thick gold band on his left ring finger. He stood up, cocked his throwing arm back, and made his pitch.

“This is me, letting go,” he said.

The wedding band spiraled and looped, the dull gold catching glints of the fading sunlight. It landed fifty feet away, in the soft sand, maybe twenty yards in front of the old man, who seemed not to see it.

“Good arm, huh?” Wyatt said, admiring his own prowess.

Grace wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed her approval. “Good arm, good man,” she murmured. “Good everything.”

Epilogue

True Grace, Feb. 14

The old rules of etiquette for second marriages were stern and absolute. In her starchy 1957 Complete Book of Etiquette: A Guide to Gracious Living, Amy Vanderbilt opined that the second-time ceremony must be small, and that the “mature” bride should never wear white or a veil, or, heaven forbid, expect wedding gifts. She cautioned, too, that many ministers would actually refuse to perform a second wedding in a church! Invitations should not be engraved, as with a formal first wedding, but a handwritten note would be acceptable.

Thankfully, wedding rules these days have been relaxed, or sometimes, totally discarded. Although I’m a traditionalist at heart, for our own second wedding, my intended and I wanted something intimate and meaningful, with just a few close friends and family members.

We actually didn’t tell our guests that they were coming to a wedding at all. Instead, we invited them to what we simply billed as a garden party. Of course, we have the good fortune to have access to one of the most beautiful settings I can imagine, Wyatt’s family’s small but charming botanical park, here on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

The party was to be the last private family party at Jungle Jerry’s, an old-timey Florida tourist attraction founded by Wyatt’s grandparents shortly after World War II, before the park is turned over to the state of Florida.

Our guests arrived at the park’s front gate at dusk and were ferried to the party site by golf carts. When they reached the small enclosed butterfly garden, they were greeted with glasses of pink champagne, iced tea, or locally brewed beer.

Wyatt and I mingled with our guests and enjoyed the food he and I prepared together from local farms and fishermen—stone crab “martinis,” chilled shrimp and avocado gazpacho, and crab beignets with pineapple-mango salsa. All the food was set out on rustic wooden picnic tables that were hand-built years ago by Wyatt’s grandfather, with centerpieces of hibiscus, lilies, orchids, and other flowers picked right from the gardens.

Shortly before sunset, a small string quartet arrived and began to play classical music. At that point, we invited everybody to be seated in a semicircle of battered vintage lawn chairs and proceeded to the surprise event of the evening—our wedding!

The minister, a family friend who happens to be a regular at my mother’s bar, stepped in front of a weathered wooden trellis, which was lit by hundreds of tiny white fairy lights and blooming with pale pink New Dawn roses.

When the wedding march started, I joined Wyatt in front of the makeshift altar.

Amy Vanderbilt says that for a second-time-around wedding, the attendants should be limited to one each for the bride and groom and should be the bride and groom’s age. But, since Amy’s long gone, we broke the rules—just a little.

The bride (that’s me!) wore a 1960s vintage lace-over-silk minidress dyed the same exact hue as the roses. My bouquet was one made for me by Wyatt, from flowers he grew at the park, including hot-pink lilies, deep-violet hydrangeas, and my favorites—heavenly white gardenias. No other flowers were necessary, since the scent of the orange blossoms from the citrus gardens blanketed the late-afternoon air.

I promised Wyatt I wouldn’t ask him to get too dressed up, so he chose his own khaki slacks, a nice white dress shirt—and in a major concession to the importance of the occasion, a navy blue blazer, which he promptly ditched right after the ceremony. He also wore a boutonniere—of rosemary and white phlox clipped from the garden at our tiny newly restored cottage.

Since my own father is deceased, Wyatt’s dad, Nelson, agreed to give me away. Wyatt chose his six-year-old son Bo as his best man. Nelson wore his best (and only) good gray suit, and Bo was heartbreakingly adorable in