“Mayor Matrim.”
A ding from his laptop announced Matt on the line, and Josh clicked open the video chat function to see Matt’s face. “How’s the brother-of-the-bride gig going?”
“Fine.”
“Color scheme going according to plan and all that stuff?”
Josh tried not to groan. “I don’t know. I think so. Violet’s getting what she wanted, and that’s what matters. She’s the boss, I’m just the bankroll.”
Matt made a face. “Aw. Will you do that for me?”
As Josh’s second-in-command at SymphoCync, Matt probably put in as many hours at the office as Josh. “I’ll take that one-in-a-million shot, sure. I really called you to help me untangle a...complication out here.”
Matt sat back in his chair. “What’s up?”
“Jean lives here. As a matter of fact, she doesn’t just live here, she’s the mayor here. She’s Vi’s wedding planner. She’s remade her hometown into this whole Matrimony Valley thing, and Violet’s her first bride.”
“Jean—wait, Jean your ex? Your ex-fiancée is mayor of Matrimony Valley? Whoa. Good thing this has no chance of getting awkward or anything.”
Josh gave Matt a look. “I knew I could count on you to be helpful.”
Matt shook his head. “Didn’t she live in some place named after her family or whatever?”
“She did. If it had stayed Matrim’s Valley, I might have seen this coming. As it was, it was all I could do to not trip over my own feet as we walked down Aisle Avenue in Matrimony Valley”
Matt kept laughing. “Aisle Avenue. Matrimony Valley. Seriously?” Matt wiped his hands down his face and attempted—rather unsuccessfully—to be serious. “So how’s Violet taking this new wrinkle?”
Josh picked at the tassel fringe of one of the pillows in the mound around him. “She doesn’t know. Jean and I...well, I think we hid our initial shock pretty well, and we’re sort of pretending it’s not there. She made like she didn’t know me, and I did the same.”
Matt gave Josh a dubious look. The man was a master of them. “You know that’s not gonna work, don’t you?”
“Of course I know that. But I don’t want to mess this up for Violet, either. She’ll get all weird about it, and believe me, she’s high-strung enough already with the wedding. I’ve just got to get Jean alone to hash out how we’re going to handle it.”
Josh saw Matt pivot to another corner of his desk and begin typing. “Matt, would you mind finishing with me before you look up Jean Matrim online?”
Matt paused. “Hey, I’m just looking up where you are in case I need to airlift you out of there.” After a second, he said, “Aw, look, there she is standing by the Welcome to Matrimony Valley sign.” Josh heard more tapping and yelled at himself for not paying closer attention to Violet’s plans before now. “She always was pretty,” Matt commented. “Looks like she’s held up better than you have. Little boy’s cute, too, in an aw-shucks kind of way.”
Josh picked up the brochure on the table beside him. The photo on it was just of Jean. “Little boy, huh? Someone told me she was a single mom, but I haven’t seen a photo of her child.”
“There’s a photo of her with her son on one of the website pages. Third tab, lower left corner.”
Josh swiped over from the video chat and pulled up MatrimonyValley.com, clicking through the website’s pages until he landed on the picture of Jean with her hand on the shoulder of a boy.
He was expecting a toddler, but the boy looked older than that. Five or six, if he had to guess. He stared at the boy.
A boy about six years old. Josh stared harder.
A ball of icy lead landed in his stomach and stayed there.
“Matt, I gotta go.”
* * *
Jean swallowed her exasperated sigh later that afternoon as she held the phone away from her ear. Her nerves were strung tight ever since the whopping surprise of Joshua Tyler’s arrival. Josh Tyler, here, in front of her, in front of everybody. Why, Lord? Why him? Now? No matter how many times she prayed with her questions, answers failed to arrive.
Thankfully, picking up Jonah from school gave her an excuse for a quick exit not too long after Violet was handed off to Hailey at the inn. She counted it as pure grace that she was able to exit before Josh came back across the street from Watson’s Diner.
Only being saved from Josh hadn’t saved her from Wanda Watson. The woman must have been looking out her diner window waiting for the office light to turn back on, because the phone rang not three minutes after she got herself and Jonah settled back into her office.
“Wanda, you met him.” Jean continued her attempts to appease the grumpy old woman. “He’s a nice person. Violet is a nice person. Her groom will be just as nice when you meet him. You’ll like the people who will come here to get married.” That felt like an outrageous promise to make—Wanda didn’t like lots of people. How did two sourpusses like Wanda and Wayne Watson ever manage a restaurant full of people all these years?
“I still don’t see what brides and grooms can do for sandwiches and meat loaf,” groused Wanda. “I don’t care what you say, not every business in town will benefit from your little scheme.”
It wasn’t a scheme, and it wasn’t little. “The man just bought a sandwich from you, didn’t he? Everybody’s got to eat,” she assured the woman. “The day before the wedding, the day after the wedding, the day they drive into town. Weddings and wedding guests mean business. For you as much as for Kelly’s flower shop or Yvonne’s bakery.”
“You’re banking an awful lot on this pipe dream, Your Honor.” Wanda’s harrumph practically spilled out of the phone receiver to douse Jean’s resolve.
Your Honor. Wanda never meant it as a term of respect whenever she said it. Jean put her elbow on her desk and rested her head in her hands while Wanda went on about some other complaint—the woman seemed to have a never-ending list of them.
Jonah looked up from his coloring sheet across the desk from her, catching his mother’s action and expression. “O-K?” The small fingers of his right hand formed the letters in sign language. His open hand moved toward his mouth, his thumb touching his chin in the sign for “Mom?” One little dark eyebrow furrowed in worried inquiry.
She smiled at him and made the sign for “fine” and “tired.” Then, with what she hoped was a playful smile, she added the sign for “hungry.”
“Me, too,” Jonah’s signs replied. His smile was as sweet as the grandfather he was named after. “Home soon?”
“I hope,” she signed in return, grateful Wanda couldn’t hear any of the conversation. “Our first bride is here for a visit, Wanda,” she said into the phone. “Let’s all welcome her the best we can.” They’d had some version of this conversation nearly every week since last fall, when the town council approved Jean’s proposal to change the
