Page 65 of The CEO’s Assistant

"It's twenty minutes."

"It is never twenty minutes." Wren took the phone from her, turned it face down on the tablecloth, and pushed it back across. "Ask Lauren on Monday. Go and dance with Astoria. She's showing off her moves, and nobody's watching her."

"You're supposed to be nicer to me today."

"I'm being extremely nice to you today."

Remy left. Somebody's chair went over in a gust. Then a second one, further along. Cordelia set her glass on the rail and went down the steps and started carrying them in off the wet gravel, two at a time, stacking them under the eaves next to her trowel.

She had four of them up when Wren came down the steps. Wren had a glass and had not moved a table or cleared a plate or carried one single thing all evening. She had stood on that deck for two hours and let other people run her own wedding. It had taken her four years to be able to do that. Wren put a hand flat on the back of Cordelia's neck, under her hair.

"Let me just get these two," Cordelia said.

Wren didn't answer and didn't take her hand away.

Cordelia stood there with a folding chair in each hand. Above them, the music continued on, and her daughter's voice was threaded somewhere in it. Lillian said something loudly enough that Cordelia’s father laughed and started coughing. The wind came up the garden and shifted the bean stakes. Cordelia set both chairs down on the gravel and left them where they fell.

"There," Wren said.

"Don't be smug about it."

"I'm going to be a little smug."

They climbed up the steps together. Astoria had switched the music to something older and was dancing with Remy on the gravel, badly, and Veronica had taken command of the cake and was cutting it into pieces far too large for it to go around for everyone. Cordelia stopped at the porch rail. Wren stopped beside her, and behind them, the party carried on without either of them in it.

The tide was pulling back under the headland, showing more of the rocks. When Wren put her hand on the rail, the gold from her wedding ring caught what was left of the light, and Cordelia looked at it for a moment and then out at the water.

"I'm here," she said.

Wren didn't turn her head. "Yeah, love, I know."

Behind them, somebody turned the music up and laughed. They stayed there, together, neither one of them going inside.