Page 138 of Clara Knows Best

Ignoring her protestations, he removed her glasses with care, slipped them into his breast pocket, and kissed her.

And the lady didn’t even bother to pretend that she wasn’t into it. She melted against him, just like he’d known she would.

“Clara,” he said at last.

“Jesse,” she sighed languidly.

He reached back into his breast pocket, but it wasn’t eyeglasses he held in front of her. He’d carried a princess-cut diamond ring on him for months, and he couldn’t wait any longer.

He watched as she noticed it, saw her expression change from dreamy desire to total alertness. Her hand lay on his shoulder;he lifted it gently and slid the rose gold band over her fourth finger.

Then he frowned. “You’re crying.”

“Ignore it,” she instructed calmly. “Proceed as planned.”

He could hardly believe what he was about to say, but he’d rehearsed this little speech a hundred times in front of his mirror and it went off without a hitch.

“Will you marry me?”

As if on cue, the grandfather clock downstairs chimed the half-hour and her eyes cut away from his for a second as she heard it. Then she gave him a misty smile.

“Yes,” she answered firmly, and cleared her throat a little.

He was feeling a little overcome with emotion himself, which is probably why, instead of something romantic or memorable, he said, “Good.” Then he cradled her face in his hands and set about kissing her tears away. “How’d I do on the ring?”

“Good,” she managed to echo, gripping his wrists tightly.

He pulled her against him once more and she squeezed him with all her might. “I love you, Clara.” It was easy to say these days.

“I love you so much,” she gasped, and then she started sobbing. “I’m going to be your wife!”

Jesse rocked her back and forth. “Yep. ’Long as I got a biscuit, you got half.”

He grinned at the sound of her watery laughter.

November

The reception was held in a massive old barn that she and Hart had purchased and renovated into a high-class venue, and after this first event was over they were selling it to a florist who intended to rent it out for weddings and parties.

The full skirt of her satin ballgown swept dramatically over the wooden planks when she and Jesse shared their first dance as man and wife, and she felt like a real princess with her Prince Charming. She’d made the dress herself over a three-month period, with long, elegantly draping bishop sleeves, a tightly cinched waist, and an open back spanned with three strands of pearls—her own take on timeless, vintage glamor.

Feeling like Jesse’s wife was even better than feeling like a princess.

Jesse was devastatingly handsome in his tux, and as soon as the knot had been tied, he’d gone from a nervous wreck to the best mood she’d ever seen him in.

“You’re mine now,” he said as they left the church. “Like it or not.”

“I like it,” she’d answered.

Then he’d somehow gotten “lost” and they’d spent ten minutes kissing in the grocery store parking lot before he figured out where they were supposed to meet the photographer.

Her three bridesmaids, Birdie, Yoli and Eve, looked lovely in floor-length pale purple chiffon.

“Lilac greige,” the groom had suggested, when asked whether he had any opinion on wedding colors.

Aunt Liesl had made the wedding cake, a true labor of love from a chef who claimed to hate working with icing, and it was exquisite.

Clara and her father danced to “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” which she hoped was an obvious tribute to two and a half decades of parental excellence above and beyond the call of duty.

---