Marry Me By Midnight

Chapter 2: Rehearsal

The rehearsal itself was scheduled for four o’clock the following afternoon, which gave Ivy exactly nineteen hours to convince herself that last night had been a fluke — a strange, adrenaline-soaked collision of surprise and old chemistry that she could file away and never think about again.

It took approximately four minutes into the rehearsal for that plan to fall apart.

“Best man walks the maid of honor down first,” she said, clipboard in hand, addressing the small cluster of groomsmen and bridesmaids gathered at the back of the chapel. “Then groomsmen and bridesmaids pair off in order. We’ll do a full run-through twice, then once more with the processional music, so bear with me.”

Grant fell into step beside her without being asked, offering his arm the way he had the night before, easy and automatic, like his body had already decided this was simply how things worked between them now. “You do this a lot? The bossing everyone around thing?”

“Two hundred and thirty-one weddings,” Ivy said. “I’m very good at bossing people around.”

“I believe it.” His voice dropped, pitched just for her as they started down the aisle at half-speed, testing the pace. “You didn’t sleep last night.”

“I slept fine.”

“You’ve got a crease between your eyebrows that wasn’t there yesterday afternoon. I noticed it in Vegas too, right before you told the concierge our reservation was under the wrong name and somehow got us a better room anyway.”

Ivy’s step faltered, just slightly, and she hated that he’d noticed both things — the crease and the memory attached to it. “That’s an oddly specific thing to remember about someone you spent one night with.”

“I remember a lot about that night.” He said it lightly, but there was something underneath it, something that made her chest tighten in a way she didn’t have room for this week. “Turns out running into you at my brother’s rehearsal dinner made most of it very hard to forget.”

“Grant.” She kept her eyes forward, on the altar, on the officiant patiently waiting for them to arrive at their marks. “We agreed. Professional.”

“We’re being professional. I’m walking you down an aisle at the correct professional pace, saying professional things about your eyebrows.” A pause, and then, quieter: “For what it’s worth, I wasn’t trying to make this harder. I didn’t know Sophie’s sister was the wedding planner. I definitely didn’t know the wedding planner was you.”

“I know.” She did know — she’d seen his face in that first unguarded second, the same shock that had gone through her. Neither of them had planned this. That didn’t make it easier to stand this close to him, smelling the same cologne she remembered from a hotel bar, without her pulse doing something inconvenient. “It doesn’t change anything. We still have five more days of this.”

“Six, actually. You forgot the day-after brunch.”

“God.” She let her professional smile slip for exactly one second, into something more honest — tired, a little rueful. “Six days.”

They reached the altar. The officiant cleared his throat gently, and Grant released her arm, stepping into his mark beside his brother with the easy, practiced grace of someone who did this kind of thing — weddings, formal events, standing up in front of rooms full of people — without breaking a sweat. Ivy retreated to the back to watch the run-through, clipboard against her chest like a shield.

Sophie caught up with her twenty minutes later, breathless and glowing, as the wedding party scattered to find their cars for dinner. “You and Grant seemed cozy up there.”

“We were rehearsing a wedding processional, Soph. It’s not exactly a meet-cute.”

“Mm.” Sophie’s eyes were sharp despite the champagne haze of the last two days. “You’ve got a look.”

“I don’t have a look.”

“You have a look. I’ve seen it exactly twice before, both times right before you told me you’d made a terrible decision and asked me not to say I told you so.” Sophie linked their arms, steering them both toward the parking lot, mercifully lowering her voice as a group of guests passed. “Is there something you want to tell me about my future brother-in-law?”

Ivy considered, briefly, telling her the truth — that six months ago, in a city built for bad decisions, she’d spent one unplanned night with a stranger who never gave her his last name, and that stranger was currently standing forty feet away in a tux fitting for her sister’s wedding. She considered it for exactly as long as it took to imagine Sophie’s face, two days before her wedding, absorbing that particular piece of information.

“Nothing to tell,” Ivy said instead. “He’s your fiancé’s brother. I’m your wedding planner. That’s the whole story.”

Sophie didn’t look convinced, but she let it go, distracted by an urgent question about the flower arrangements that needed an actual answer. Ivy watched her sister’s retreating back and let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

Across the parking lot, Grant caught her eye over the roof of a rental car, one eyebrow lifted in silent question — you okay? — and Ivy realized, with a sinking, unwelcome certainty, that pretending this was nothing was going to be a great deal harder than she’d promised herself last night.

Six days. She could survive six days.

She was significantly less sure she could survive them without something giving way.