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She flopped limply on Spencer’s chest, taking deep breaths. Her hair was wild all around them, sticking to his chest, his shoulders, and even his face but he didn’t care.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
“Perfect,” she whispered.
The woman he loved was wrapped in his arms, and safely bookended between the three men who loved her. He couldn’t think of anywhere he’d rather be.
Epilogue
Three weeks later…
Standing near the portable dance floor set up in the empty lot adjacent to the Divine Memorial Rose Garden, Maizy blinked tears away as Woody Porter looked down at her. “Maizy-girl, you’ve done me proud. Promise to keep these three men of yours in line?”
She couldn’t resist hugging him and the tears finally leaked out and she sniffled. “I promise, Woody. Thank you again for standing up for me—for us—at the meeting.” Lights twinkled from the strands strung through the arching tree branches above them as the sun completed its arc and slipped behind the distant tree-covered hills.
Woody smiled but his bushy white eyebrows drew into a line and he replied, “I know it may sometimes seem like Divine has been set against those of you who are involved in ménages but don’t lose heart. Groups like yours have been in this area a long, long time. It’s only recently that they’ve become a little easier to spot. You might even be surprised to find that there are some you still don’t know about.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really, but I won’t be telling any secrets that aren’t mine to reveal. And you don’t worry about Tabitha Lester, you hear? I do believe she finally revealed publicly what a crackpot she is with that stunt she pulled right before we got started this afternoon.”
Maizy chuckled, still a little shocked at the way Tabitha had shown up, picket sign in hand. “Who protests a wedding? I mean, I know you give an opportunity during the ceremony for anyone who wants to speak up if they don’t believe the marriage should continue, but…showing up with a picket sign?”
Woody nodded. “Not a picture you’d want in your wedding album, huh? I think she is wearing out her welcome in the community. She was relieved of her job, or so I’m told.”
Maizy tried for a shocked expression but wound up giggling. “Woody, are you gossiping?”
“Don’t tell my wife,” he said with a chuckle. “She swears up and down that men are worse gossips than women. I’d rather talk of nicer things anyway. You look just like your mother did on her wedding day,” he said as he took her hands and held them out wide. “I know Amelia must be so proud of you.”
Woody had been friends with Maizy’s family since before her parents were married and had been at their wedding too, in which her mother had worn the dress that she now wore on her wedding day.
“Thank you for marrying us, Woody,” Maizy whispered. “It makes the occasion even more precious to me.”
Woody nodded and smiled at her and blotted her tears with his handkerchief. “None of these tears, now.”
Earlier that afternoon, amidst the oldest of the antique roses near the Divine Creek just off of downtown, Woody had performed the wedding ceremony that united Maizy and Cody. There had been a little drama, thanks to Tabitha Lester, but it hadn’t been anything Divine’s stalwart sheriff, Hank Stinson, couldn’t easily handle.
Shortly after, Ethan Grant had performed the private ceremony in the tent set up nearby for the wedding reception that bound the four of them as husbands and wife. From that moment forward, she would always equate the scent of Souvenir de la Malmaison roses with the joy she felt on her wedding day. Almost all of her family had been in attendance, even her father, who was slowly coming around to the fact that in the short space of an afternoon he’d gained three new sons-in-law.
Roberta had been noticeably absent which was a good thing, since her involvement with Tabitha Lester was only just coming to light. She might not have been the one threatening Maizy but she’d done some of the legwork and she’d admitted to Maizy that she had shared a picture of the four of them at the wedding with Tabitha, more as an expression of outrage than as fuel to fan Tabitha’s fire. Under the guise of a family emergency, Tabitha was currently out of town but Maizy had hopes that she’d be dealt with fairly, and soon.
