Six months later

“Oh, you make the most beautiful bride ever!”

“No, I don’t,” Tiffany assures me. “I look fat.”

“Tiffany,” I say severely. “You’re four months’ pregnant. You’re supposed to look fat.”

“Is it odd that that still frightens me?” Monique asks no one in particular. “The fact that Tiffany is going to be a mum, I mean? Does it frighten anyone else?”

Shari raises her hand, along with Sylvia and Marisol.

Tiffany glares at them. “I hate all of you,” she says.

“What’s nice about the fact that Tiffany is going to be a mum,” Monique goes on, “is that it’s turned her into such a sweet, caring person.”

“This gown is what’s making me look fat,” Tiffany says to her reflection in the gilt-framed full-length mirror in front of her.

“No, it isn’t,” I say indignantly, offended. “You’re pregnant. That’s what’s making you fat.”

“This is a fat dress,” Tiffany says, pouting. “You designed a fucking fat dress for my fucking wedding.”

“You know what’s awesome,” Shari says, slipping a Milk Dud into her mouth from the box she’s brought into the shop for the show she’s been anticipating for days. “When brides swear. Especially pregnant brides.”

Sylvia and Marisol making tsk-tsking noises and fuss over Tiffany, foofing out the train of the exquisite—and completely nonfat—original gown I’ve designed for her.

“I did not design a fat dress for you, Tiffany,” I say, restraining myself with an effort from strangling her. “And that’s not a very nice thing to say to the person who is responsible for paying you enough so you can work part-time for me and finally quit that job you hated at Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn.”

Tiffany just glares at my reflection. “So? I’m just going to quit working for you in five months so I can stay home with Raoul Junior.”

“It’s a boy?” Marisol asks excitedly.

“Who knows?” Tiffany glares at her reflection. “Whatever.”

“Seriously,” Shari says, dropping another Milk Dud into her mouth. “This is better than American Gladiator.”

“You can afford a nanny, Tiffany,” I say to her, giving her sash a tug that is perhaps a little harder than necessary. “You aren’t going to have to quit. And I picked out a health care plan that gives all you ladies a full four months’ paid maternity leave, remember? Now, I designed this gown for you personally, with a gorgeous empire waist and a sweetheart neckline and a chapel train—which, by the way, is entirely inappropriate for the quickie wedding you and Raoul are about to have in the office of the city clerk… even if we are partying afterward at Tavern on the Green—so that your bump is completely disguised. No one can see it. How dare you call it a fat dress?”

Tiffany eyes Shari’s box of Milk Duds. “Are you going to give me one of those?” she asks. “Or what?”

“No, she’s not,” I snap. “You are not getting chocolate on this dress I’ve slaved over for weeks.”

“We’ve slaved over,” Marisol corrects me. “I stayed up until two last night doing that crystal beading on the train.”

“Right,” I say. “That we’ve slaved over.”

“Whatever,” Tiffany says again, rolling her gorgeously made-up eyes. “Like there’s not going to be a knockoff available off the rack at Geck’s next week for two hundred bucks.”

“There’s not!” I cry. “I told you! It’s a Lizzie Nichols Designs original! There’ll never be anything like it at Geck’s. I mean… there’ll be something similar. But it will retail for three ninety-nine.”

Tiffany tosses her head until her newly coiled ringlets bounce. “I knew it,” she says with another eye roll.

“The cars are here,” Monique says in a bored voice.

“All right, let’s go,” I say quickly. “Or we’re going to be late.”

And we all troop out into the crisp winter air, past the new hot-pink awning with the words “Lizzie Nichols Designs™” emblazoned on it in white curlicue writing, and splitting up into the two waiting black Town Cars that Raoul ordered for us, me carefully folding Tiffany’s train in after her, then climbing into the car behind hers with Shari.

“Thanks for coming,” I say to her gratefully.

“Are you kidding me?” Shari says, pouring more Milk Duds into her mouth. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world. So what happened? The guy finally got his green card?”

“And just in time. Five more months, and he’d be a dad before he was a legal.”

“That has to be the quickest divorce in the history of mankind.”

“Well, the former Mrs. Raoul got a pretty hefty settlement for being so accommodating with INS,” I explain. “You know, not mentioning the part about how they hadn’t lived together as man and wife in years.”

“That’s so romantic,” Shari says with a sigh, snuggling down into the leather seats.

When we reach One Centre Street, I jump from the car and hurry to make sure Tiffany emerges from her own without damaging the gown we’ve all worked so hard on. She manages to do so, though she isn’t exactly gracious about it. Thanks to a united effort, we get her up to the hallway where the men—and Pat, who’s rushed over on her lunch break—are waiting.

All of my anxiety turns out to have been worth it, though, when I see the look on Raoul’s face as he gazes upon his bride for the first time in her wedding finery. Tears fill his eyes, and I’m so touched when he takes Tiffany’s hand and whispers, “Baby, you look beautiful,” that I have to look away.

“I know,” Tiffany whispers smugly back. I guess she doesn’t think she looks so fat after all.

An arm slides around my waist, and a second later, a man in a charcoal gray suit is kissing my neck.

“Hey,” Chaz says. “You did good.”

“Thanks.” I giggle. Yes, really. I giggle. That is what Chaz does to me. “Do you like the ribbon work around the neckline? I thought that was a nice touch. I’m going to do that to the new line of flower girl dresses we’re introducing for next year’s resort line.”

“It’ll sell like hotcakes,” he says.

He’s wearing the yellow tie I love, in honor of the occasion. My knees are melting. The sight of Chaz in a suit and particularly that yellow tie still has the power to turn me into butter on a hot stove. I wonder if that will ever change.

I have a feeling it won’t.

A bored clerk has just called Tiffany’s and Raoul’s names, and we’re getting ready to crowd into a tiny chapel with them when there’s a commotion in the hallway as a familiar voice shrieks, “Wait! Wait for me!”

“Oh God,” Shari groans. “Who invited her?”

I bite my lower lip. “Um… I might have mentioned that Tiffany was getting married downtown today… right about now.”

“Oh my God, Lizzie,” Tiffany snaps. “Aren’t you ever going to learn to keep your mouth shut?”

Before I have a chance to answer, however, Ava bursts in, wearing a demure business suit (complete with pillbox hat) and clutching the arm of her husband, Joshua Rubenstein, aka DJ Tippycat, followed, as always, by Little Joey.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” Ava says, with all the regality her recently acquired position as president in charge of marketing of Geck Industries has given her. “We got stuck in traffic on the way from the helicopter landing pad.”

Tiffany glares at her, but Raoul says amiably, “So glad you could make it.”

Then the clerk calls their name again, and we all file forward for the mercifully brief—but meaningful—ceremony.

It isn’t until Latrell has uncorked the champagne, and congratulations have been exchanged all around, and we’ve been told to file out again to make room for the next couple, and Raoul’s instructed us to get back into the Town Cars he’s provided to take us back uptown to Tavern on the Green that Chaz snags me by the elbow and pulls me into a corner by a water fountain and a bulletin board listing clerk’s office personnel. There he shows me something he has hidden in an inside pocket of his suit.

“Do you know what this is?” he asks, a suspiciously bright twinkle in his sapphire eyes.

I look at the plain white envelope.

“It’s the deed to my building?” I ask eagerly. “You paid it off with your secret inheritance, and I don’t owe any money on it anymore?”

Chaz looks disappointed. “No. Is that what you want me to do? I thought you wanted to do it all by yourself, stand on your own two feet, and all of that stuff you said last summer?”

“Um, yeah,” I say, trying to hide my disappointment. “I do. Totally. So what is it?”

Chaz opens the envelope and pulls out the folded paper inside. It’s a pamphlet with Office of the City Clerk of the City of New York written on the top. Under it, it says, What You Need to Know to Apply for a Marriage License.

“Yeah,” Chaz says when I turn my stunned gaze toward him. “I took one. And before you throw up, you can say no. I won’t be mad or offended or anything. I don’t care if we ever get married. It’s not important to me at all. I love you and only you, and I always will. No piece of paper is going to change that. I just know it used to be important to you, and if it still is, well… we can do it. And this might be a way we can do it that won’t cause you to break out in hives, or me to york. We could just fill out the application now, come back tomorrow—there’s a twenty-four-hour waiting period—and do it. We don’t have to tell anyone. I just figured, you know, since we’re here anyway, we could go in there real fast—I wrote my name down on the list when I got here, the application office is downstairs. It’s okay, we’ve got time, we’re like number ninety on the list or something—while everyone else is getting into the Town Cars, and then join them up at Tavern on the Green. And no one will be the wiser. We’ll be exactly the same. Only we’ll be getting married. Tomorrow. Or whenever. They’re good for sixty days. The licenses, I mean.”

I am still staring at the pamphlet he’s holding.

“You’re asking me to marry you?” is all I can manage to choke out.

“If you want to,” Chaz says. “You don’t have to. And I’m not talking about one of those big monstrosity things your clients have, with a chocolate fondue fountain and the chicken dance. I don’t want that. I will never want that, do you understand? My sister had that, and it was—” He shudders. It is clear he is beginning to lose it. I lay a steadying hand on his arm as he goes on, “Your parents will probably want to have that for you, and I am telling you right now… I will run. I will run as far and as fast as I can away from that. I will come back to you at night, when it’s safe. But I’ll hide during the day, where they can’t find me. Even if I have to take to the swamps. I know there aren’t any swamps in Michigan, but… ”

I give him a gentle shake.

“Chaz,” I say. “It’s all right. I don’t want that either, okay? I like your idea. Doing it this way, just you and me here tomorrow. No one else. Because that’s what getting married is really about, right? Just us. No one else.”

“No one else,” Chaz says. “Because we’re the only ones who matter. I mean, I guess we can tell people… someday.”

“Someday,” I agree. “When we feel like it. We can just mention it. Like, by the way… we got married. Although they’ll probably be mad we didn’t invite them.”

“I don’t care,” Chaz says. “Do you care?”

“I don’t care,” I say. “We don’t even have to tell them if we don’t want to.”

“I should probably mention to Luke that we’re going out first,” Chaz says. “To sort of cushion the blow. I can tell him we’re married in a few years. Although he’s juggling approximately four steady girlfriends in Paris right now. I don’t know why he still thinks my seeing you is such a bad idea.”

“Aw,” I say. I still can’t seem to summon up any animosity toward Luke. I’m still holding on to his engagement ring to give to my own daughter, if I ever have one. Or to my niece Maggie, from whom I’m expecting great things. “That’s so cute.”

“Cute, my ass,” Chaz says. “Let me see your arm.”

Obediently I roll up the sleeve to the vintage Lilli Ann pink wool suit that I’m wearing. We both stare at the inside of my elbow.

“No hives,” Chaz says.

“That’s a good sign. Do you feel like throwing up?”

Chaz shakes his head. “No.”

I’m feeling optimistic about this, and about the number we are on the list. Ninety. That was Gran’s age when she died. They both seem like gifts from above. Like maybe… maybe someone is watching out for us… someone who wants to make sure we aren’t on the highway to hell after all.

Or that maybe we are, actually. Because maybe that’s a good place to be.