The Wedding Planner's Secret – Part 2: A New Rule

It took a week to unpick the wedding. Roses went back to Valencia. The string quartet was paid anyway, out of Carmen's own pocket, because she had booked them and felt responsible. The palace garden needed raking. Two hundred napkins needed folding into swans for a party that would never now happen.

Diego came every afternoon at five. He brought pastries from the bakery on the corner, and a notebook full of questions, and a patience she had not expected from a man who looked like he had never waited for anything in his life.

"You don't have to help," Carmen said, on the third day, as he carried a stack of chairs across the gravel.

"I'm not helping," said Diego. "I'm making sure you don't do it alone. It's not the same."

"That's a very clever distinction."

"I've had practice with my brother."

She set down her clipboard and watched him, the sun behind him, sleeves rolled to the elbow, sweat on his neck. It was an uncomfortably attractive picture.

By the fifth day, they had finished the chairs, the invoices and the cancellation letters. Marco had sent a short, awkward apology from a hotel in Madrid. The bride had sent a photograph of herself laughing with her mother over a bottle of sherry, which Carmen had decided to frame.

On the last evening, they sat on the steps of the palace garden as the light turned gold, sharing a bottle of cheap red and the last of the pastries.

"I'm sorry," said Diego, suddenly. "For the way I came in that first day. I was angry, and I took it out on you."

"You were angry," said Carmen. "You had a right to be. And you didn't blame me in the end."

"Because you were right." He looked at her sideways. "You didn't hide behind the clipboard. I'd have liked that about you even if you'd been a stranger."

"I wasn't a stranger?"

"You were a stranger for about four minutes," said Diego, and smiled. "Then you told me about the napkins, and I knew I was in trouble."

Carmen laughed. The sound seemed to startle the pigeons on the steps.

"My rule," she said slowly, "was never to date clients."

"Your rule has survived a cancelled wedding and a very long week," said Diego. "I'd say it's time for a new one."

"What rule would you suggest?"

He thought about it, serious for a moment. "Ask first," he said. "Always. And if the answer's no, the chairs go back in the store and we say goodnight."

She turned to look at him properly. The evening light caught the gold in his eyes.

"Can I kiss you?" Diego asked quietly.

"Yes," said Carmen. "And if I say stop, we stop, and I'll still give you a discount on the next wedding."

"That's terrible business," he murmured, and leaned in.

The kiss was warm and slow and tasted faintly of red wine and sugar. Carmen's hand found his shirt, and his hand came up to cradle her jaw, and for a moment the whole square fell silent around them, the quartet long gone, the roses long gone, only the two of them left on the steps in the honey-coloured dusk.

"Green?" Diego whispered against her mouth.

"Very green," said Carmen. "Now help me fold the last napkin. It's a swan, and it's terrible."

"Then we'll fold it together," said Diego, and didn't let go of her hand.