AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sounds like a real winner.” Tiffany hadn’t heard much about him, didn’t really care. All she knew was that Philip’s brother was quite a bit younger than he and had no interest in the family business. Whenever she’d asked about him, Philip had just shaken his head and sighed. “James is just James. I can’t explain him. Wouldn’t want to try.” Truth to tell, Tiffany wasn’t all that interested in the guy.
She lit the final candle beneath a silver chafing dish and nearly burned her fingers on the match.
“Are you and Philip gonna have a spread like this?” Mary Beth asked, clearly awed.
“No.” Tiffany shook her head. “He was married before, so we agreed that we’d just have a private ceremony.”
“Bummer. You should at least have a gown and bridesmaids and—oh, look, here’s the limo.”
Sure enough, a white stretch limousine rounded a bend in the winery’s private drive to park near the manor. The bride, a willowy blonde in a beaded gown, emerged still holding hands with her groom, a short, balding, wealthy dentist who had been married four times previously.
“Being married before didn’t stop Dr. Ingles from having a big to-do.”
That much was true, but the good dentist’s fifth wife, the pampered daughter of a local television celebrity, had wanted a lavish wedding since this was her first and, as she’d been quoted as saying, her groom’s “last.” Tiffany didn’t care about the ceremony; the less pomp and circumstance, the better, as far as she was concerned. She couldn’t imagine a huge church wedding without the support of a father to give her away. Besides, as the bride she insisted upon paying for the event herself, and her budget was limited. “Where’s the punch bowl for the kids?” she asked, turning the subject away from her own situation.
“All set up. Over there. André handled it” Mary Beth motioned toward yet another table, then turned her attention to her job, and Tiffany was relieved that she didn’t have to make any more small talk. She smiled to herself as she spied Philip, tall, dark-haired and in command. She’d met him three months earlier at another event where she’d worked. He’d stayed late and offered to drive her home. She’d declined, refused to give him her number, but he’d persisted, and within two weeks they were dating. Sure, he was older than she—fifteen years older—but it didn’t matter, she kept telling herself.
Before meeting Philip, she had planned to start college in the fall, intending to take business courses at Portland State University while working two part-time jobs.
But then Philip had asked her to marry him, and she’d said yes. He was everything she wanted in a husband. Stable. Smart. Educated. Successful.
The age factor didn’t bother her. His ex-wife and he were cordial if not friendly, and his kids—a boy and a girl—were twelve and ten and weren’t a worry. She, as an only child with a single mother, wanted to embrace a large family. She would love Philip’s children as if they were her own, as well as have her own children someday.
But things weren’t perfect. Philip’s parents, devout Catholics, had never approved of his divorce and didn’t want him to remarry. And her own mother, who had struggled in raising Tiffany alone, had warned her to wait
“You’re only eighteen,” Rose Nesbitt had said, shaking her head as she’d dusted the piano bench where countless youngsters had sat as Rose had spent hours trying to teach them what had come so naturally to her. “Give yourself some time, Tiffany.”
“Philip doesn’t want to wait. He’s thirty-three, Mom.”
“And too old for you.”
“We love each other.”
“He thought he loved someone else once.”
“I know, but—”
“But it didn’t last.” Her mother had tossed her dusting rag into a plastic bucket that held cleaning supplies. “Just give it time.” She had sighed and rubbed the kinks from the back of her neck. “Real love isn’t impatient.”
“Why wait?”
“Why rush in?”
“Because Philip wants to,” she’d argued.
“This shouldn’t be all his decision, honey. You’re talking about marriage. Two people. Give and take. I know I’m not one to talk because I’ve never walked down the aisle, but I just think you should slow down a little. Date boys your own age.”
That was the trouble. They were boys. Tiffany had never felt comfortable with them. They were too young, too immature, too stupid. Philip was none of those things, and as she watched him now, walking briskly between the rows of beribboned chairs, his hair starting to gray at the temples, his smile fixed and professional, she felt an inward satisfaction that this man loved her.
Unlike the father who had abandoned her and her mother before she’d been born.
“Hi,” she said as Philip stopped at the table on his way to the bar where Santini wines were being served.
“Hi.”
“Everything set?”
“Looks like.” She smiled up at him, and Philip winked at her.
