Free Engaged in Embellishments: Tulle and Tulips, Book 5.5 by Nikki Duncan Page A

away.” She sighed the moony sigh of a woman newly in love. Except it wasn’t really that new.
    Lori stopped working with the lights and tilted her head. “And he’d have waited as long as necessary to get you back.”
    “Ugh.” Gisella groaned. “If you Google sappy for a definition I bet a picture of you two would pop up.”
    “Awww. Poor Gisella. She doesn’t have a man.”
    “All the more reason for my friends to give me things to be happy about.” Gisella set out a clay pot that would serve as the cake’s base holder. The cake itself was a growing Groot. Around the pot on the table, the table cloth had been hand painted to depict the scene where Groot wrapped himself around his fellow Guardians to protect them. Where there had been a spark of light in the movie’s scene, there was a yellow stone that sparkled as bright as any newly polished diamond.
    Tabatha tied the tulle into a bow at the end of the lights and carried them to the wedding arch. Leigh’s husband, Burton, had spent weeks collecting driftwood and constructing the arch, interweaving the branches to allow enough room for fairy lights to be twisted through. The lights had been given the lightest coat of yellow metallic spray paint to give them a diamond twinkle effect.
    “Tomorrow’s wedding will give you and many others plenty of happiness,” Lori promised.
    Maybe she was promising herself as much as her friend. Trevor asked her daily to marry him, some days making the request an elaborate show while others it was only a simple question. Each day she’d told herself he was going to stop asking and that he’d walk away. Believing in a coming rejection had been easier than believing in a forever future for herself.
    Most recently, after watching Tabatha deal with the reappearance of her estranged husband, Lori had begun to accept the possibility that she wouldn’t be left out in the cold. That she might be safe taking the next step with Trevor.
    “We’re almost finished here,” Lori said to Tabatha and Gisella. “Why don’t you two go get some sleep?”
    It was almost eleven o’clock. Lori had quickly pegged Gisella as a morning person rather than a night owl; she was always in her office or her back office kitchen by the time Lori got to work. Tabatha was a different story. She would rather stay up all night and sleep late, but she enjoyed spending her nights with her man.
    “Are you leaving?” Gisella asked.
    “I’ll be right behind you.” After handling a few more details.
    “You couldn’t have been a very good spy, because you’re a horrible liar.” Tabatha leaned against the arch.
    “I’m a very good liar,” Lori insisted.
    “You tell yourself that if it makes you feel better.” Tabatha grinned in that way she had that said she knew every secret. “But I know you’re going to be here at least two more hours setting stuff up. I also know, in this case, it will do me no good to remind you that venues, and by extension decorating them, are my domain.”
    The planners never crossed into each other’s domains when it came to client weddings. But when Misty had married Jace, they’d set a precedent on handling the weddings of their fellow planners. The precedent being they all worked together on all the aspects leading up to the big day. Come wedding day, their staff took over while they enjoyed the time with their friends.
    “You can argue with her if you want, Tabatha,” Gisella said through a yawn. “Sleep keeps my hand steady when I put the final touches on a cake.”
    “I’ll walk out with you.” Tabatha winked at Lori. “Though I won’t promise I’m going home to sleep.”
    Sleep had been a rare commodity when Lori worked as a Whitestone agent. Things hadn’t changed after she started Tulle and Tulips. She and Trevor could both go days at a time getting little more than three hours sleep, which came in handy when she was setting up for a wedding. Every few days, though, Trevor would find a way to get