The Best Man's Baby
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Bryony shrugged. “I’m sorry. That’s the best we could do. They aren’t that dissimilar.”
“Logan, don’t you think Tracy’s going to be mad about ranunculus?” Julia asked.
“I wouldn’t know a ranunculus if it walked up to me and introduced itself.” He flashed a wide and clever smile.
The florist tittered like a schoolgirl at Logan’s comment. “I’m sorry, but I can’t make pink peonies magically appear this time of year. I told your sister there might be a problem getting them.”
“I have to fix this.” Filled with dread, Julia pulled her phone out of her purse and dialed her assistant, Liz. If Tracy didn’t have the right flowers, not only would she freak out, by the transitive property of sisterly blame, it’d be Julia’s fault.
“Julia. Is everything okay?” Liz answered.
“Hey. I need you to do something for me. Can you call your flower guy and have four dozen stems of pale pink peonies overnighted to the florist in Wilmington? We need a very pale pink. Not rosy. Not vibrant. Does that make sense?”
“Yes. Of course. I’m on it.”
“I’ll text you the address. And make sure he knows it’s for my sister. I need this to go off without a hitch.”
“Got it. Anything else?”
Julia felt as if it was now okay to exhale. “That’s it for now.”
“Is everything else going okay? The press is really hammering you on this Derek thing, aren’t they? And I saw you’re hanging out with Logan. How’s that going?”
Liz had worked for Julia for years. She might’ve heard her complain and wax poetic about Logan a few dozen times. Or a few hundred. “Oh, um, it’s been fine.” She couldn’t say more, not with Logan in such close proximity.
“You know, if you wanted the press to go away, you could tell them that you’re with Logan,” Liz said. “They’ll run off and speculate about it for at least a day or two. Or they’ll turn it into more of a spectacle. Hard to know, but my gut is they’ll take pictures, write their stories and hound Derek with questions about being heartbroken.”
Julia watched Logan as he chatted up Bryony, who was blushing like crazy. If any man knew how to make a woman feel good about herself, it was Logan. His presence alone—just breathing the same air he did—made a girl feel special. Precisely why it hurt so much when he took it away. “Well, that’s one idea. I’ll think about it. Thanks. You’re the best.”
Julia hung up and took the florist’s business card, texting the address to Liz. “The peonies will be here tomorrow morning. Everything else looks great. Thanks for your help.”
She turned to Logan. He had the funniest look on his face—both bewildered and amused. She loved that expression, although if she were honest, she loved everything about his face—full lips shaping his effortless smile, square chin with a tiny scar obscured by scruff, and eyes so warm and sincere it was hard to imagine him ever doing something hurtful.
“Your sister is really lucky she didn’t put me in charge of this,” he said. “I mean really lucky. Imagine how horrified she’d be if she ended up with ranun...you know. Those flowers.”
Julia granted him a quiet laugh. “Ranunculus. And you know how much I love my sister. I’m just trying to make the mess I made a little better. Now let’s go deal with the cake.”
The throng of reporters outside had grown. Either Julia was losing her patience or they were getting pushier. Logan made sure she got into the car safely, making her truly thankful to have him there. On the way to the bakery, she stole a glimpse of his handsome profile, allowing herself to think about what would’ve happened last night if he’d proposed for real, because he loved her. If he’d never called it off. If the baby was his. They could hold hands, they could stay up late talking for hours, they could make plans. Perhaps that was why she was so dead-set on making everything perfect for her sister. If she couldn’t have the fairy tale, at least her sister could.
Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at the bakery and again had to sprint for the door as reporters shouted at them. They seemed to be at the end of their rope. There was much speculation about the reasons why Julia was running around town with Logan Brandt and not Derek. Not good.
Inside, one of the bakers led them to the work space where all three cakes were being decorated—one for the rehearsal dinner, the groom’s cake and of course, the grand, three-tiered wedding cake. Julia took pictures with her phone and sent them to her sister. She got a quick response that, to Julia’s great relief, everything except one of the shades of pink frosting passed muster. After straightening that out, and double-checking the delivery times and addresses, she crossed the bakery visit off the list.
She and Logan stood at the bakery window. The reporters were waiting, clogging the sidewalk out front. Logan was finishing a cookie he’d talked out of the girl working behind the counter.
“What happened to ‘the camera adds ten pounds’?” Julia asked as he wiped crumbs from the corner of his mouth.
“I will always relax the rules for a chocolate chip cookie. It’s my one weakness.” He cleared his throat. “Well, that, and my desire to pop one of these reporters in the mouth.”
“I don’t even want to go out there.” Julia hitched her purse up onto her shoulder.
He rolled his neck to the side as if working out a kink. “I don’t know if I can take an entire weekend of this. I’m tempted to just tell them I’m your boyfriend to get them to go away.”
Exactly what Liz suggested. “It might work,” Julia muttered. Of course then she’d have to live with the story. And the myriad ways in which her sister would pitch a conniption. “I’d say we could go out through the alley, but we’re still going to have to walk right past them to get to the car.”
He took her hand. “It’ll be okay. I won’t let anything bad happen.” He opened the door and out they went, back into the belly of the beast.
* * *
They narrowly escaped the reporters outside the bakery unscathed. One of them, a brutish man with a camera lens so long that Logan wondered whether he was compensating for some shortcoming, had become particularly curt with his questions. It was clear he just wanted an answer. And Logan was inclined to agree, only because he himself had reached the boiling point.
Now they were being followed in the car again. “Maybe it’s better if you just say something, Jules. The only thing you seem to be accomplishing is frustrating them.”