Read Save the Date for Free Online Page B

the vestry and into the wedding melee.

 
    5
     
    Cara didn’t stick around the church to watch Torie Fanning pledge her troth to Ryan Finnerty. She rarely did. Weddings were her business, not her pleasure, she told herself.
    Instead, she raced for the van, pausing only to give the sky an anxious look. She and Ellie Lewis, the wedding planner, had done their best to talk Torie out of an outdoor reception. It was already hot in Savannah, and tornado season to boot. Cara had witnessed way too many weather-related wedding disasters, including one memorable reception where a sudden lightning storm had pinned seventy-five black-tie and cocktail-gowned guests huddled together in terror under the Victorian wooden gazebo in Whitfield Square.
    But Torie was determined to have her reception at home, on the back lawn at the Shutters, her parents’ gracious old home on the bluff at the Isle of Hope, facing the Skidaway River. And amazingly, it looked as though the weather was going to cooperate. A fresh breeze was blowing in off the river, and the humidity was actually bearable.
    Cara pulled the van into the long driveway at the gray-shingled Fanning house, relieved to see Bert’s car already tucked beside the carriage house, in front of the caterer’s trucks. The brilliant blue sky had faded to a pale lavender—one of Torie’s wedding colors, of course. The setting sun sparkled on the pale green water (also one of Torie’s colors) lapping at the long dock opposite the Shutters.
    The Fannings’ dockhouse had been torn down and rebuilt just for the wedding, and now green-and-white-striped canvas drapes fluttered from its open corners, and a large wrought-iron chandelier hung from its peaked ceiling. This was where the guests would mingle and sip cocktails to watch the sunset while waiting for the wedding party to arrive from the church.
    Cara hurried across the wide expanse of front lawn, her boot heels sinking into the grass. She crossed the road and found Bert standing in the dockhouse, directing a helper who was fastening baskets of flowers to the tiki torches dotting the corners of the dock.
    “Well?” he asked, turning to face her. “Is the deed done?”
    “The soloist was just starting when I left. Everything at the church looked great. And Torie actually cried when I handed her the bouquet with Ryan’s pin. I’d say we have twenty more minutes before the first guests arrive.”
    Bert nodded. “You didn’t try to talk the groom into making a run for it?”
    “Hah! And foul up my biggest wedding of this season? No way. Anyway, even if I had, Ryan wouldn’t have run. The poor guy is totally koo-koo for Cocoa Puffs over Torie.”
    Bert wrinkled his nose. “No accounting for taste. So … what do you think?”
    “I think they might just have a shot at making it for the long haul,” Cara admitted. “But only because Ryan Finnerty is a total teddy bear. You?”
    He shrugged. “I give them six years. Although, if she gets knocked up sooner, I could be wrong.”
    Cara giggled. “I’ve got news for you, sport. She’s already preggers. That gown fit her with room to spare when it was delivered in March.”
    Bert’s eyes widened. “You think?”
    “I know,” she assured him. “At the rehearsal dinner? She stuck to iced tea all night. And did you see the way her boobs were about to fall out of the dress? I promise you, we’ll be doing baby-shower balloon bouquets for her by fall.”
    Cara took a brisk walk around the dockhouse, straightening tablecloths on the caterer’s highboy tabletops, brushing at the stray fern frond or fallen petal. Technically, this was the wedding planner’s job, but Cara Kryzik never left anything to chance.
    “I’m going to head back over to the reception tent,” she told Bert. “All the flowers in the baskets here have water?”
    “Check,” Bert said.
    “And you’ve misted the ferns with water?”
    “Not my first rodeo, boss lady.”
    She patted his shoulder. “I think