Love at the Little Wedding Shop by the Sea - Jane Linfoot Page 0,83
fall on my face. The drops build to a trickle, then a gush, and suddenly it’s as if there’s been a cloudburst and I’m standing with the downpour hammering down on my head – except, that can’t be right, because I’m still inside.
I’m scraping a river of water out of my eyes and staring around wildly. Then, beyond the minimal florist and the tropical plants, I catch sight of Jess’s mannequins and I let out a moan. I’m about to set off towards them when I hear Nic’s voice in my ear.
‘The smoke has triggered the sprinklers, Mills.’ So that explains the water torrents and why he’s looking like that famous photo of a soaking wet Matt Bomer coming out of the sea. And it’s really not the time to be thinking how hot he looks.
With thousands of pounds worth of displays about to be ruined I can’t help my shriek. ‘Well don’t just stand there, we need to find someone to turn the damn things off!’
He grabs my wrist. ‘I’ll do that, you get the stuff out!’
As I hurl myself towards the dresses I’m howling inside and thinking what Phoebe would do if this were her crisis. She always loves a microphone, so I cup my hands around my mouth and yell. ‘Okay, any items that may spoil, please, everyone help us carry them out into the courtyard.’
I pick up a mannequin, and shove it into a guy’s arms, do the same with another, then grab hold of the rail of dresses. By the time I’ve wheeled it to the open door, people are already picking up entire tables and walking them outside.
Five minutes later, as the sprinklers drip their last drips, all that’s left in the Corking Room are a few sopping palms. The courtyard, on the other hand, looks like a rummage sale, and I’m dashing from pile to pile handing out industrial-strength kitchen roll and bin bags from the winery’s cleaning store along with huge apologies and promises of compensation to anyone who needs it. It’s a couple of hours later by the time all the customers have drifted away and the last business people are carrying their boxes back to their vans. I’m sharing the last of my leftover cupcake with Merwyn, when I realise that not only is Nic is still here, he’s standing watching me.
His shoulder is propped against the wall, and he’s got a bottle of Roaring Waves alcohol-free beer in his hand. ‘Good thing I came when I did, Milla Vanilla, I knew my onboard fire-fighting techniques would come in handy eventually, I just never imagined it would be at a wedding fair.’
‘Great job back there, Nic, and thanks for staying around to help.’ I have to add, ‘You really didn’t have to.’
He’s narrowing his eyes, running his fingers through his hair which is extra tousled now it’s dried. ‘You surely didn’t think I’d run out on you?’
I’m counting my lucky stars that for now he’s so caught up with the adrenalin he obviously hasn’t had time to add this to the Milla Disaster List yet. And it hasn’t escaped me that, yet again, in a crisis, he didn’t mess about and he couldn’t have been any more helpful. I know on a personal level I’d much rather he hadn’t been here at all because I’d so much rather he saw things going right for me rather than wrong. But at the same time, if he hadn’t been here, I’d have really missed his cool head, fast action, and capacity for quietly sorting things out while reassuring me it wasn’t my fault and that I had this under control.
Looking at the bigger picture, if this was going to happen anywhere, it was better that it happened at this small pop up fair rather than at one of the much bigger flagship events that are coming up next. And I’m just hoping this is the last time an event I’m at ends up in ruins. Since the first night I set foot in St Aidan, every single thing I’ve been involved in has ended with me falling flat on my face either literally or metaphorically.
He takes a swig of beer. ‘On the upside, at least we ruled out bows on the chairs for Pixie.’
And it might have been a bit extreme, but at least it saved me from explaining about my ring. Not that I’m going to remind him of that now.