Sinners On Tour 06 Sinners at the Altar (48 page)

“You still there, Thomas?”
Jace said.

Yes.

“Go tell Katherine what’s in your heart, man. Just tell her.”

And if she doesn’t forgive me?

“At least you tried.”

Will you tell your lady what’s in your heart as well?

“Tomorrow,” Jace promised. “When I marry her.” He would lay his heart at her feet and pray she didn’t stomp on it.

Chapter Twelve

Jace stirred. The sound of rain lashing against the windows was a muted lullaby that made finding consciousness a challenge. He slowly opened his eyes to be confronted by a direct blue-eyed stare. He flinched, releasing a gasp of surprise.

“I’m not that scary in the morning, am I?” Eric asked with a wry grin.

“Why are you staring at me like that?”

“Trying to wake you with the power of my mind.
Did it work?”

Jace smacked him in the face with a pillow. “You are so fucking weird, Sticks.”

“That’s a given.” He gripped the pillow between both hands, stood up straight so he was no longer leaning over the bed staring in Jace’s face, and shrugged. “Did you sleep well?”

Jace stretched lethargically and grinned with contentment.

“Good,” Eric said. “I thought you might like to know that your wedding starts in twenty minutes, he-who-sleeps-like-the-dead.”

“What!”

Jace kicked the tangle of covers aside and leapt from the bed, searching the cottage in a mixture of disorientation and panic. Eric was already dressed in his tux, and the clock on the fireplace mantel made it clear that Eric had not been joking about the time. It was a quarter till one in the afternoon. “Where’s Aggie?”

“Somewhere getting ready with Rebekah and the rest of the women.
They wouldn’t let me watch them dress. Can you believe it?”

Jace dashed to the closet and pulled out the garment bag that held his tuxedo. He tossed it on the bed and yanked the zipper open.
“Yeah, you perv. Most women think that’s creepy.”

“They just don’t know what I’m missing.” He wet a finger and smoothed one eyebrow with it.

Jace shook his head and laughed. “Once a perv, always a perv.”

His highly polished black shoes tumbled out of the bottom of the bag, and he reached for his slacks. He decided he didn’t have time for a shower. Good th
ing he’d taken one last night before he’d climbed into bed alone. No Aggie, but also no ghosts, thank God.

“Takes one to know one.
Rebekah made me feel better by promising that I could watch her undress later.”

“Good thing you met that woman.”

“And I say the same of you and Aggie. I guess there really is someone out there for everyone.”

Jace hurried through dressing, one eye on the clock. “Why didn’t you wake me when you left this morning?”

“I did. Several times. You said you were up. Aggie sent me to check on you since you hadn’t shown up yet. Good thing she did. Only you would sleep through your own wedding.”

Jace didn’t remember Eric waking him at all. He had gotten to bed rather late. Once he’d made his way back to the ball—without Thomas infiltrating his thoughts—everyone had given him a hard time about trying to kill Aggie with a chandelier but chickening out
at the last moment. His friends had strange senses of humor.

“I suppose I don’t have time for caffeine.” Jace slipped the tuxedo jacket on and then sat on the edge of the bed to put on his socks.

“No, but do take the time to brush your teeth. You don’t want to melt Aggie’s face off with your dragon breath.”

Jace slipped on his shoes and darted toward the bathroom. Managing not to piss on his shoes while multitasking brushing his teeth and relieving his bladder, he went over his vows in his head. Forgetting what to say was not an option. Almost every person he knew would be there, but he figured he could get through it if he just kept his eyes on Aggie the entire time. Still, his stomach began to do its best impersonation of a roller coaster.

“You can do this,” he said to his reflection as he dabbed some gel at the ends of his bleached-blond tips to spike them haphazardly.

He gargled a bit of mouthwash and washed his hands. He ran a hand over his jaw and winced. His beard stubble was a little longer than he normally kept it, but he didn’t have time to trim it. Damn it, why hadn’t he woken sooner? Aggie would be furious with him if he was late. And as much as he’d enjoy her punishing him, he
did not want to disappoint her.

Deciding he didn’t look half bad for ten minutes of prep work, he hurried toward the sitting room at the front of the cottage. Eric was waiting for him with a large umbrella in his hand. He seemed to be tempting fate as he opened and closed the contraption indoors.

He glanced up when he noticed Jace had joined him. Eric twisted pursed lips to one side as he assessed Jace’s attire. “So you’ll wear a penguin suit for your wedding, but refuse to wear knickerbockers to your rehearsal dinner.”

“Is that what those ugly fucking pants are called?
Knickerbockers
? For real?” Jace chuckled and then burst out laughing, glad for something to release his tension. Eric was usually good at turning Jace’s naturally dark mood lighter. He wasn’t sure what he’d do with himself if he didn’t have the obnoxious goofball in his life.

“Those pants are not funny,” Eric bellowed indignantly. “They are historically accurate.” Eric tried to keep a straight face, but was soon busting a gut along with Jace.

After a moment, Eric wrapped an arm around Jace’s back and whacked him on the shoulder. “Better?” he asked.

“Uh huh,” Jace said, wiping tears from his eyes.

“Ready to get married?”

“Yep.”

Eric opened the umbrella, and Jace opened the front door. It was pouring.

“Sucks that it’s raining,” Jace grumbled.

“Rain on your wedding day is good luck,” Eric said. He tried shoving the large open umbrella through the door, but it was much wider than the wooden frame.

“This is a bit too much good luck for my tastes.” Jace scowled up at the dark clouds overhead. At least
he wasn’t getting married outdoors. He remembered the disaster Sed and Jessica’s beach wedding had been due to rain. Funny how the happy couple hadn’t been upset about it in the least. Had he been in their position, he’d have been pissed.

Grunting with feigned exertion, Eric attempted to get the black umbrella out of the house sideways.

“It’s not going to fit no matter how much you want it to,” Jace said.

“That’s what she said,” Eric said automatically. “Maybe this is why you aren’t supposed to open umbrellas indoors. Has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with geometry.” He tried sending it out handle first to no avail.

“Dude, I’m going to be late if you don’t stop fucking around.”

“She’ll wait,” Eric assured him, but he folded the umbrella slightly so it would fit through the door.

Jace was scarcely aware of his surroundings as they hurried toward the beautiful chapel where he would say his vows. What were his vows again? He wrung his hands together, trying to remember the words he’d agonized over for so long. The words that expressed exactly what Aggie meant to him. He couldn’t remember a damned one.

“Nervous?” Eric asked, giving Jace’s arm a much needed squeeze.

“I can’t remember,” he said dully.

“You can’t remember if you’re nervous?”

“I can’t remember what I wanted to say.”

“No one pays attention to that part anyway,” Eric said.

Eric’s assurance made Jace feel marginally better, even though he knew Eric was lying. Maybe the guys in the crowd would be thinking about the football season or which bridesmaid was the most doable, but the women—and one woman in particular—would be hanging on his every word, and he damned well knew it.

“Did you write them down?” Eric asked, looking at him as if he’d just checked into intensive care with no hope of recovery.

“About a thousand times,” Jace said.

“So just read them to her. She knows you get stupid in front of crowds and even more stupid when faced with topics of a romantic nature. She won’t care if you just read them to her. She’ll understand.”

Jace rubbed a hand over the scruff on his jaw. “I shredded all the papers. I didn’t want her to find them.”

Eric snorted at him.
“Real smart, dude.”

“You’re not helping,
best
man.”

“Was I supposed to be helping? I thought I was just supposed to stand behind you at the altar and catch you if you faint.”

Jace slugged him in the arm and when Eric jerked to the side to avoid a second blow, Jace got a face full of ice cold rain water from the edge of the dripping umbrella. Rivulets dripped down the back of his neck beneath his collar. He shuddered from the chill and sidled in next to a wary-looking Eric once more. Jace might have been a bit damp now, but at least he felt slightly more alert. He was surprised by how alert Eric was. The guy had drunk so much the night before that he and Rebekah had to practically carry him to bed.

“How are you not hung-over this morning?” Jace asked.

“Myrna,” Eric said.

Jace lifted a brow at him. What did Brian’s wife have to do with anything? “Myrna?”

“Yeah. She made me consume her banana and drink all her fluids.”

Baffled, Jace gaped at him. “What?”

“I always knew that chick had a thing for me.” Eric winked at him.

Jace chuckled. “Don’t they all?” He then muttered under his breath, “In your
imagination.”

“Keep talking like that and I won’t catch you when you faint.”

A few people were standing outside the chapel under umbrellas. Aggie’s mother happened to be one of them. As usual, she had a lit cigarette in one hand, but she looked quite elegant in her black bridesmaid gown.

“Wasn’t sure if you were going to show up, Maynard,” she said, taking a puff off her cigarette and releasing smoke in a drawn-out cloud as she looked him over.

He was used to her trying to sum him up, and he knew it was because she was overprotective of her daughter—the woman just had a weird way of showing it.

“You knew I’d be here,” he said.

She tossed her cigarette into a puddle and nodded, avoiding his eyes. He extended a hand in her direction and touched her chilly bare arm. She glanced up and blinked back tears.

“You make her happy,” she said, her voice quivering slightly. “Don’t ever stop making her happy.”

“I promise.”

Before he could dodge her, she was hugging him. Jace normally didn’t do hugs, but he made an exception in this case. He surrounded Tabitha’s slight frame with both arms and embraced her. Gently at first, but then more securely so she’d know that he meant it. Her entire body was trembling, at least partially from the cold.

“Don’t make me cry, damn you,” she said, and then she tugged away to slap him on the chest. “I’m not the emotional type.”

She looked up at him—eyes so similar in shade to Aggie’s that it was a bit disturbing—and then pinched his cheek
hard
before trotting into the open door of the chapel with her umbrella still in hand.

Had he just had a moment with Aggie’s mother? Maybe she’d stop calling him Maynard now.

Heads turned as he walked up the aisle. He knew he should greet the people in attendance and thank them for flying thousands of miles to witness his wedding, but he was afraid that if he focused on anything but the pulpit at the end of the aisle, he’d either come down with a case of the dry heaves or Eric would get to tease him for the rest of his life for actually fainting at his own wedding. Why couldn’t he be infallibly confident like the other guys of Sinners? None of them had been this nervous on their wedding days. Or if they had, they’d hidden it well.

“You were supposed to come in the back,” someone at his elbow said.

“I was?” He was so light-headed he wasn’t even sure who was talking to him or what the woman meant by “come in the back.” Sounded kind of kinky.

“Are you feeling unwell, Mr. Seymour? You look a bit pale.”

He glanced at the woman and recognized the wedding planner, Charity.

She smiled kindly and took his hand, which he recognized was like ice only when she patted his frigid fingers between her warm palms.

“A tad nervous?” she asked.

He swallowed and nodded.

“You perform music in front of thousands of fans, don’t you?”

He nodded again, and stared at her cream-colored lapel. There was a small ruby flower pinned there, and it gave him something to concentrate on other than the
backflips his stomach insisted upon doing.

“How do you deal with that?”

“I hide,” he said, and his mouth twitched in an attempted smile.

“But those are strangers. These are your friends. Would you be nervous in front of them at a gathering?”

“Probably not,” he admitted.

“And that’s what this is, Jace. It’s just a gathering of your friends. It’s just a bit more formal than most gatherings.” She leaned close and whispered, “Some say imagining them all in their underwear helps.”

“I’d rather just not look at them.”

“Whatever
gets you through this,” she said agreeably. “But when that wedding march begins, you
will
look at your bride. Promise me that.”