He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 120

Chapter 120

Maya’s POV

The morning moved at Catherine’s pace.

Which was fast.

I sat at the kitchen table with my coffee and watched it happen.

Alex was on calls for most of the morning…. the company, Marcus, the Ashworth dinner confirmation for that evening. He moved through the house with the contained efficiency of someone managing multiple threads and appeared at intervals to check that I had eaten, that my coffee was still warm, that the pace of everything was not crossing into the territory we had talked about in the garden.

It was approaching that territory.

Not because of Catherine….

Catherine’s enthusiasm was warm and specific and accompanied by the genuine consideration of someone who kept asking what I wanted and adjusting when I answered. She had remembered the peonies. She had noted my preference for simple over elaborate without my needing to say it twice. She had, when Olive suggested something I looked uncertain about, said let’s keep it for the list but not commit with the efficiency of a woman managing both her daughter’s excitement and her future daughter-in-law’s comfort simultaneously.

The territory was Richard.

He had been in the sitting room.

Not participating… present, with the newspaper and the armchair and the specific quality of a man who had positioned himself where he could observe without being asked to contribute. He said things at intervals. Not many. Enough.

When Catherine confirmed the venue: The rooms there are too large for an intimate gathering. It will look sparse. When Olive suggested a colour palette: If the wedding actually proceeds, the colours won’t matter.

When the florist was on the phone and Catherine was describing the ceremony space: She should be sure she wants it before you deposit anything.

Each one landed in the room and was absorbed by Catherine with the practiced resilience of a woman who had been managing this for a long time and by Olive with the specific frustrated glance of a younger person who had not yet learned her mother’s method.

I looked at my hands each time

At the ring…

Kept going.

By eleven the room had the warm, productive disorder of a plan taking shape…. the notebook with confirmed items marked, the vendor list growing, the samples on the table narrowing from many to a credible few.

Catherine was on her phone in the corner confirming the caterer when Richard set the newspaper on the arm of

the chair.

“I’ve asked someone to join us,” he said.

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He stood…..

And the room…. Richard’s calculated placement, Zara’s composed arrival, the wedding that was seven days away and the woman who had been placed inside it like a variable someone wanted to test…. arranged itself into the specific shape of a situation that had been engineered.

I looked at the peonies photograph on the table.

At everything that was true and everything that was being made complicated

Zara settled into the chair beside Catherine’s and opened her portfolio.

“Flowers,” she said pleasantly. “Shall we start there?”

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