After a flurry of squeals and hugs, Toby said, “Alix and I knew since Daffy Day that this was going to happen. The way that man looked at you was irresistible.”
“I wish someone had told me,” Lexie said.
“You wouldn’t have listened. So tell me everything.”
But at that moment one of the guests asked if it was time to give out the costume awards. She was one of the well-known writers Victoria had invited and she had on a divine dress of red silk trimmed in dark piping.
“Go!” Lexie said. “Take care of everything. We’ll talk tomorrow. Where’d your prince go?”
“I don’t know. I think Millie went after him. She said she wants to meet him.” The crowd of guests were coming between the two young women, and Roger caught Lexie’s arm and was leading her away.
“Tomorrow,” Lexie called.
Nodding, Toby gave her attention to the prizes to be given out. Victoria, Millie, and Alix were supposed to help her, but Victoria had been dancing with her groom and they seemed oblivious to everyone else. As for Millie and Alix, they had disappeared. With a quick toss up of her hands in exasperation, Toby went to the awards table and began to decide who got what prize.
By the time Graydon returned to the tent, a lot of authors were carrying Lucite plaques and smiling. Toby didn’t think she’d be able to leave, but Millie and Alix appeared and they practically pushed Toby out into the night. “You are no longer needed here,” Millie said. “Not for the rest of the night. Go away.”
“It’s our turn now,” Alix said. “And I’m going to drag Lexie away from Roger and make her help. I do hope her gorgeous fiancé puts up a fight and we wrestle.”
“You better not let Jared hear you say that,” Toby said, smiling and backing away. “But if you need any help with Roger, I won’t be far away.” She very much wanted to escape the noise and the lights and go to Graydon.
“Go!” Millie said and shut the door behind her.
Graydon was waiting for her just at the edge of the forest. She took his arm and walked with him. There on the ground was a setting out of a fairy tale: candles in candelabra set on a snowy white cloth, champagne, bread, pâté, cheeses, a silver dish full of chocolate-covered strawberries.
“How did you do all this?”
“I’m a prince and I have a genie in a bottle,” he said solemnly.
There was a light in his eyes that she’d only seen on the night when they’d been married. But then he’d been Garrett and she had been Tabitha and they’d had their whole lives before them. “What has happened?” she asked again.
“Come and sit and eat,” he said, “and we’ll talk.”
She sat down on the cloth across from him and while they ate he asked about what she’d been doing while he was away. He asked many questions about her new friend Millie, and Toby gushed. “I couldn’t have done this without her. She really is the kindest, most helpful person I’ve ever met. She did my hair, helped me dress; she let me cry on her shoulder.”
“I assume those tears were about me?”
“Of course,” Toby said as she spread pâté on a cracker and put it into his mouth. “What else makes a woman cry besides a man?”
“Not what I wanted to hear. So how did you find this paragon of all virtues?”
“You sound jealous.”
“I am envious of anyone who spends time with you.”
“Graydon,” Toby said, her voice serious, “nothing has changed. We can’t—” He put a bit of cheese into her mouth.
After they finished eating, Toby leaned against a tree, and Graydon stretched out and put his head on her lap.
“What would you do if I were a normal man?” he asked. “Would you marry me?”
Toby didn’t want to think about that. The champagne was going to her head and all she wanted was now, here and in this place. She stroked his forehead, her hand in his hair. “What would you do to earn a living?” she asked, teasing.
“I could be a chef. Or maybe a male stripper. I’ll star in the next Magic Mike movie.”
Toby wasn’t fooled by his lightheartedness. “You cannot abdicate and become a stripper.”
“This is a fantasy,” he said. “If I were a regular sort of guy, like my cousins, and I grew up in Maine, graduated from Princeton—”