It’s all going to make this triple wedding easier.”
“Paige has been so much help in planning all of this,” Tori said. “She has so many great ideas.”
“You’ve been helping plan the weddings?” Dee asked Paige. “Really?”
Paige had to give her mom a pass on her obvious surprise. It really was out of character. Or so it would seem from the things Paige said about her own feelings about marriage. But she really was enjoying all of this. Bringing traditions together, making each ceremony reflect the specific couple, even in the midst of combining the three weddings, making it a true celebration of not just the vows between the two people getting married, but bringing the families all together and honoring everyone involved in their lives.
Yes, the Landry weddings had given Paige a new appreciation for what weddings were and could be. Or rather, they’d given her a chance to really reflect on it more objectively. Those things—the special touches, the traditions, the families coming together—had all been there in the weddings she’d been involved with in Appleby too. She’d just been more intimately involved there because they’d been friends and family, and she knew everyone was looking at her and wondering how she felt and what she was thinking.
Here there had been no pressure, so she’d been able to truly appreciate it all more.
“Yep,” Paige told her mom. “I’ve been helping with the weddings here.”
“She’s been more than helping,” Juliet said, joining Tori behind Paige. “Hi, Mrs. Asher. I’m Juliet. And Paige has truly been the one doing most of the work. She’s made the guys do some of it. Like building an archway and addressing envelopes.” She laughed. “But she’s really taken so much off our plates.”
Dee looked surprised but pleased. “Well, that’s wonderful. Paige is very creative.”
Now it was Paige’s turn to be surprised. “I am?”
Dee laughed. “You are. You always have been. Don’t you remember making those cat houses for the stray cats and decorating them?”
“How did she decorate them?” Tori asked, looking delighted.
“Well, she’d have some that looked like regular two-story houses, some that were log cabins, some that were tents. There was an igloo. There was one she painted to look like one of those old Volkswagen RVs.” Dee laughed. “She said all the cats had different personalities and would choose different places to live.”
Tori looked at Paige with wide eyes. Paige could feel her cheeks burning.
“You made cat shelters that all looked like different types of houses?”
Paige shrugged. “That was when I lived at home, and they wouldn’t let me take them all in.”
“And that’s what led you to open a cat adoption center.”
She nodded.
“And yoga with cats?” Dee went on. “Not just everyone would think of that. Hot chocolate massage cream for sore muscles? You can’t get that just anywhere.”
“Hot chocolate massage cream?” Cora had just come through the swinging door from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her towel.
Paige lifted a shoulder. “It’s just regular body butter, but I added a chocolate and marshmallow scent. I did a peppermint one too. For the holidays. But I told people to use it for massage.” She paused. “I’m using it as a gateway cream.”
Cora chuckled. “Gateway cream?”
“If they like it, they’ll come back, and I can maybe talk them into something with more healing properties.”
Cora nodded. “Good thinking.”
Paige looked down at her screen again. “Mom, this is Cora.” She turned her phone, and Cora waved.
Ellie was next to her. “Hello, Dee.”
“And that’s Ellie.”
“Nice to meet you both,” Dee greeted.
“And this is Maddie, the other bride. And Kennedy, the soon-to-be sister and cousin-in-law to these girls, and, of course, Mitch.” She panned the group, and everyone waved.
She faced Dee again.
“Mitch? The one who’s not Tori’s fiancé.”
Paige grimaced. “Yeah. Tori’s fiancé is Josh.” When Mitch had been in Iowa just after Christmas, they’d told Dee he was Tori’s fiancé so that she wouldn’t get any crazy ideas about Paige being serious about him. But in their last phone call, Paige had come clean about all of that. “Mitch is… my boyfriend.”
Dee’s eyebrows shot up, and Paige felt Mitch’s hand squeeze her thigh tightly.
Yeah, he’d like that. She knew that. And she knew what it meant to tell her mom that. But it was true, wasn’t it? If Mitch wasn’t her boyfriend, what was he? He was more than a roommate. He was more than a hook-up. He was more than a friend.
She was very afraid that she was falling in love with him, in fact. If