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It was so hot out that this man deserved an answer now.
Maggie smiled back to him, her answer at the ready. In fact, she’d been wanting to say yes since the day after Christmas. “Yes, Matthew Levi Theroux. I’ll marry you.”
The crowd around them broke out in applause. Residents of Midtown Village, members of Midtown Moms, church staff, Village leaders, and passers by all clapped and hollered.
Levi grinned as he placed the engagement ring on Maggie’s left finger.
Camera shutters snapped, and Maggie was suddenly aware of photographers and videographers all around them.
Good thing I said yes.
She wondered how much Levi paid for them to be here to record this moment in time. Then she felt underdressed in her cotton attire and sandals. Oh well. At Midtown Chapel, she was used to cameras in the sanctuary, and cameras in the hallways, always filming this or that.
Maggie pulled Levi to his feet.
The photographers continued their work, capturing the moment when Levi drew Maggie into his embrace. They were both sweating in the sweltering heat, but they didn’t care.
Levi had finally popped the question again. What were a few more minutes of sunshine?
Levi lifted Maggie’s chin toward his and gave her a preview of what would come—a future husband’s gentle kiss for his beloved future wife.
Chapter Twenty-One
Four months later, Levi stood in front of the full-length mirror in the men’s choir changing room, and adjusted his bow tie. His best man and cousin, Cyrus, had left the room to check on his pregnant wife, Amy, who was their wedding photographer. She could have sent another photographer in her place, but she insisted on handling it herself.
The wedding ceremony would be in two hours, but Levi came to church at the same time as Maggie so that he could be in the same building with her. In case she needed something.
So far she hadn’t called or checked on him. She had said she’d be busy in the women’s choir changing room—which doubled up as the bridal room—on the other side of the sanctuary, getting her makeup done and so forth.
Her matron of honor, Tally Moss, was with her. She had flown all the way from the Bahamas to stay for several days to catch up with Maggie, to help her prepare for the wedding, and no doubt to see her sister Colette, the wedding planner, and the rest of the Fitzpatrick family.
Levi checked his hair in the mirror. He’d gotten a haircut the day before, but his usual hairdresser wasn’t there, and his replacement didn’t know how to handle curly hair and cut it too short. He wasn’t used to it. “Oh well. It’ll grow back.”
He sat down on an armchair in the empty room next to the clothes rack where two rental tuxedo jackets hung on hangers, closed his eyes, and tried not to think of his bad haircut—only on the most important day in his and Maggie’s life together.
Speaking of Maggie, Levi wondered how she was doing at that moment. He wanted to text her but he didn’t want to get her all nervous.
At least they could all stay put in this building until the ceremony was over. Walking downstairs or taking the elevator down to the fellowship hall for the reception was easier than going outside in the cold and driving fifteen minutes to the Midtown Village community center—which wasn’t available anyway due to the Christmas Village being in full swing until January.
The fellowship hall at Midtown Chapel was also fully booked in December, and only available on the Saturday before Thanksgiving. And they had to reserve it months in advance or they’d lose it.
Levi had been disappointed that they couldn’t have their wedding at church on the sixteenth of December, the one year anniversary of their first kiss on the Village square.
Did he want a wedding at their home church or not? They could always go to another venue outside the church, but as Midtown Chapel members, they didn’t have to pay for the sanctuary or the fellowship hall.
“Therefore, we should be flexible about the date,” Maggie had told him when they discussed the reservation problem.
Practical Maggie.
“To begin with, God is sovereign,” she said, to which Levi agreed wholeheartedly. “The fellowship hall is free to Midtown members, thereby saving us a pretty penny. Moving the wedding forward means that when we honeymoon all week at Lakeside, we could spend Thanksgiving with my parents. My mom roasts the most delicious brined turkey.”
And so that had been how their wedding date ended up being in November and not December.
Levi had left the logistics of their wedding to Maggie, and true to form, the event coordinator delegated the work to experts in the field. She hired wedding planner Colette Fitzpatrick from Lakeside Resort to organize their wedding, destination wedding photographer Amy Theroux to capture the event, and Chef Forsythia and the Village kitchen crew to make finger food for the reception.
Their budget wedding planned, Levi turned his attention to fixing up his townhouse, staging it, and putting it on the market. He moved most of his furniture into Maggie’s house, which she was temporarily renting from her parents until they worked out the details of buying the house.
Since his inheritance money had paid for his townhouse, any sale would be pure profit. That, plus the remainder of his inheritance money could go toward buying the Jacobs’ family home, leaving them with a small loan to get from the bank.
