New Year's Wedding. Muriel Jensen

      He followed them into the great room, where Sarah, Corie and Helen stood in the middle and looked around.

      “Isn’t it magnificent?” Cassie asked. “I mean, imagine what we can do. What if we got a few floor chandeliers to make a walkway for the bride, then, maybe, a hanging one right above where you’ll exchange vows?” She moved forward to stand under the loft railing. “Maybe about here. Then tulle or something gathered like bunting on the railing and down the stairs. And we can trim everything with flowers.”

      Corie clasped her hands beneath her chin. The warrior woman who’d done so much to save her foster mother’s home and the children in it now looked younger and less troubled than he’d ever seen her in the few weeks he’d known her.

      “Oh, Grady,” she said on a whisper. Had he wanted to resist hosting the wedding, the tone of her voice would have changed his mind. When Ben went to stand behind her and put his arms around her, both of them looking around delightedly, he knew it had to be the best wedding ever held in a log home. With noble self-sacrifice, he accepted that he was probably going to hate the process but he’d do his part to make it perfect for them.