Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
She’d never been much of a dancer, anyway.
“I just love the way it feels and how it moves, too,” Gracen said as she stepped up on the raised, circular platform a few paces away from the dressing room doors. There, she had a three-sixty view of her gown provided by the surrounding room mirrors. “This is it, right?”
Delaney smiled.
Gracen was asking her?
The gown had a Romanesque-slash-bohemian feel, and Delaney could already picture the way Gracen’s long, soft golden waves would fall down her back under the sheerness of the long veil she’d also chosen. The gown suited her friend, picturesque and tall like Gracen loved to own. Delaney would have gravitated to the same style for Gracen had she been asked, but it seemed like her best friend had certain things figured out.
To be fair, Delaney thought she knew what her wedding dress would look like someday, too. Marriage was barely even a blip on her freaking radar at the moment.
“You tell me,” Delaney said. “That’s why I promised no moving all Saturday morning just so we could come into town first thing and see it.”
Gracen playfully narrowed her eyes over her shoulder at Delaney. “Be nice—you’re the first person to see it on me besides me, okay? I felt so bad, too, because Margot came home to visit her father last week, and she begged, Delaney. Begged. Come on.”
Well …
“I’m playing you,” Delaney returned. “You don’t need me to say it, Gracen. The dress is it.”
Her best friend sighed happily, turning back to see her front facing reflection in the mirrors of the dressing room walls. “It is, yeah.”
Then, she spun back around to Delaney. “Also, I like this.”
Gracen’s hands helped to display her favorite feature of the dress when she hugged the small roundness protruding from her lower belly. Finally starting to show in her pregnancy, she took every chance she could to admire the new swell. The empire waist of the gown certainly made the bump appear more prominent, but it also would make a hell of a picture.
Delaney had needed to blink—not used to seeing her slender friend looking so motherly—the day before when she first rolled into Gracen’s driveway. Hadn’t it just been a little over a month ago when Gracen still didn’t even look pregnant?
Shit moved too fast.
Sometimes.
“And the extra good thing,” Gracen added, allowing herself another check of the angles while she held her swell, “is that nobody can tell when I let it go.”
She did exactly that.
The little bump disappeared.
Given the design of the dress, the extra eight weeks of growing that Gracen had left to do before her wedding wouldn’t matter much except the prominence of her bump when she hugged it. Gracen would get to choose when she, or her bump, were the center of attention on her wedding day. As it should be.
Their laughter rang out into the store again. Sure enough, the second round of happy noise sent the only sales woman—and the owner herself, Miss Cathy—back to their corner to check on their progress. She slipped along the wall, coming up beside Delaney without making a sound until she asked, “So, are we finally taking it home today, Gracen?”
“I think so,” Gracen returned with a firm nod, “It’s close enough to the wedding now. I’m sure I could get Malachi to mind his business about the bag in the back of the closet until May.”
“Could keep it in the closet in my apartment over the garage,” Delaney suggested. “We both know he’s not going in there now.”
The office space the two used in the small one-bedroom apartment over their garage was cheap, available, and close to the place Delaney would be working considering Gracen’s home-built salon had been connected to the house. It wasn’t the first time Gracen had offered the apartment up for Delaney to take, but she finally said yes.
After someone else found a roommate.
Bexley’s college friend took over Delaney’s half of the rent in Fredericton starting the first of April. Delaney did the biggest part of her move—the majority of her things, and a few pieces of furniture—using a small U-Haul she connected up to the Jeep.
Anything else, she could bring in the back seat. Besides that, nothing she left behind had been so important than she couldn’t find space for it, anyway.
Sometimes, things worked out.
Miss Cathy sighed wistfully. “I wish someone in my circle was having a May wedding this year. Spring weddings are the best.”
“We’re doing it on the twenty-ninth, too,” Gracen added.
“Oh,” the shopkeeper squealed with clasped hands. “That’s so nice! It’ll be warm enough to do it outside. And you are, right?”
“We’re using the barn since it’s the last year it’ll be uninsulated, so …”
Miss Cathy’s eyes widened. “Are you doing tulips for flowers, too?”
Gracen shared a knowing look with Delaney. “That’s the plan. Do you check your email regularly?”