Flower Girl Bride by Dana Corbit

wedding.”
    â€œYou mean it wasn’t on your list. Dress, basket of flowers, sunscreen.”
    â€œI’ll put it on my list next time.”
    â€œNext time?” His baritone laughter drifted on the breeze. “I sure hope these two lovebirds don’t try this thing again in another twenty-five years. I’ll be the first gray-haired ring bearer ever.”
    â€œAnd I’ll look like a mess as a fifty-four-year-old flower girl.”
    I wasn’t certain, but I thought I heard him say, “I doubt that.”
    But when he looked back at me again, he lifted an eyebrow. “Fifty-four? Don’t you mean fifty-five?”
    I shook my head. “You might be thirty, but one of us is still twenty-nine. I doubt you’ll remember this, but I was only four when I was my aunt’s flower girl.”
    A slow smile spread across Luke’s lips. “So I take it there are months until your milestone thirtieth birthday?”
    â€œIt’s a month from today—the third of July.”
    â€œYou were an early firecracker baby?”
    â€œSomething like that.”
    As soon as we rounded the house, the crisp breeze off the lake enveloped me, snaking over my sunburned shoulders and between my shoulder blades. I shivered. The filmy material of my dress just wouldn’t do now that the last sunlight had disappeared.
    â€œHere.” Luke draped his jacket around my shoulders.
    â€œThanks.” Pulling the jacket more tightly around me, I shrugged off the tingling at my shoulders where his fingers had brushed. I just hadn’t warmed up yet.
    We paused when we reached the landing at the top of the drive. Up ahead of us, Sam had crossed over the deck and was tripping down the weather-roughened wood stairs that led to the beach.
    Luke gestured with a nod of his head toward his son. “I’d better catch him. He probably won’t toss your shoe into the lake, but you never know what a boy will do when the adrenaline gets going.”
    â€œYou don’t think he’ll throw himself into the lake, do you?”
    His only answer was a nervous shrug before we both hurried across the deck and down the same stairs the boy had taken.
    â€œSam, stop!”
    Luke might as well have yelled into a spinning fan—the wind and the crash of waves easily muffled his command. Without bothering to take off his shoes, Sam plowed out onto the beach, past the site where the wedding had taken place. He seemed to be running straight toward the dark expanse of water.
    Luke shot out across the beach, calling out to his son again. This time Sam stopped and turned around. His shoulders hunched, he stomped back to us.
    Still holding my shoe, Sam frowned up at me. “You were supposed to chase me.”
    â€œAnd you’re not supposed to get in the water by yourself,” Luke answered before I could say anything.
    â€œI wasn’t in the water.” Sam drew his eyebrows together, looking at his father as if he thought Luke was missing a few volumes of his encyclopedia set.
    Luke grunted, and I managed to squelch a laugh. The kid did have a point. His shoes were sandy but not wet.
    â€œTrue,” Luke said finally. “You’re not supposed to run off with people’s things, either.”
    Sam looked down at the shoe in his hand and then up at me. “Uh…sorry.”
    He slipped the strap of the shoe back over my fingers alongside its mate.
    â€œNo damage done.” Reaching down with my free hand, I brushed back his windblown hair. “Sorry, I was too tired to play chase right now.”
    The incident immediately forgotten, Sam turned back to Luke. “On the bus, Mrs. Hudson said we’re going to eat some more wedding cake.”
    â€œLook, Sam, I’m sure she didn’t mean us.” He took his son’s hand and led him to the deck steps. “She was probably talking about—”
    â€œNo, Daddy. She did. She really did. She meant us.