They were so wrapped up in their own happy that it took a solid minute before they realized everyone was shit-faced.
“We’re gonna need to tell everyone the news all over again tomorrow. This is getting dangerous,” Silas complained after he pried Emmett’s and Mama B’s faces off of Maggie when they tried to take a “kissy face selfie” that lasted two minutes too long. Blaire had gone in for a hug and ended up putting the happy couple in headlocks. Morris was asleep at one of the tables. The grinning Michael announced that he was “sho happeeeeee” for the seventh time, and the sober Nirina gleefully recorded the chaos on her phone.
Silas managed to find Elton at the bar. “It’s time,” he said to the man who was juggling four cocktails.
“I’d guess it’s about nine?” Elton said, tilting his hand to look at a watch that wasn’t there and dumping two of the cocktails on his pants. “Ah, man!”
“Focus. It’s time for the fountain,” Silas said, taking the rest of the drinks from him and handing them to Cody’s girlfriend’s parents as they tangoed by to a song that was much slower than the one the band was actually playing.
He got Elton in place—and put him in a chair in case the man’s balance deserted him—and headed over to the band. The band leader gave him the nod and cut off the song as Silas took the stage.
“Excuse me for interrupting the festivities, everyone,” he said into the microphone. “But I just asked a very special lady to marry me, and since she had the good sense to say yes, I have a little surprise for her.”
There was yelling, catcalling, and even a playful “boo” from Wallace’s neighbor Gladys, who kept winking at him.
He found Maggie in the crowd. A wide-awake Keaton on her hip and Dayana’s arm around her waist. She was beaming at him, those brown eyes full of a happiness he’d never seen there before. One he wanted for the rest of his life.
He loved her. Fiercely and forever.
“Hit it, Elton,” he said.
Almost on cue, the first plume of water shot up and out of the fountain, followed by a second and a third.
The crowd cheered wildly. But he kept his gaze on Maggie. She clapped a hand to her mouth and watched as the Campbell Fountain came back to life. He met her in the center of the terrace, plucked her nephew from her arms, and gave the boy a loud kiss on the head before turning him over to his mother.
“It’s amazing,” Maggie told him over the din of the crowd.
Then he picked her up in his arms and marched toward the fountain.
“What are you doing?”
“Tradition, darlin’，” he said, stepping over the stone lip of the fountain into the water.
“You are the most ridiculous romantic,” she said, cupping his face in her hands as a few hundred gallons of water misted around them.
“’S not a party till someone’s in the fountain,” Dean yelled, dragging Michael into the water with him.
“Dean is going to be so pissed he ruined his shoes,” Maggie observed from Silas’s arms.
“Is that Wallace?” Silas asked incredulously. “Who’s he dancing with?” he asked, nodding toward the edge of the patio where Wallace, in his high-waisted pants, was slow dancing with a woman in a pink dress. The man was all but unrecognizable because of the thing his mouth was doing under his bristly mustache.
Wallace Pfeffercorn was smiling.
“That’s Flo, Wallace’s high school sweetheart,” Maggie said airily.
“You sure know how to throw one hell of a party, Nichols.”
She grinned at him and tightened her arms around his neck. “Imagine what the wedding will be like.”
He gave her a spin and then set her down in the water. “By the way, this is a conversation for a later date because I fully plan to spend the rest of the night necking with you, but the bridle on this horse has the date of the coach robbery etched into it,” he said, taking her hand and running it over the stone of the statue.
“You’re kidding!”
“I am not. Each horse has a different date. This one’s the robbery. Those two are the Campbells’ wedding day and the date this house was completed. Not sure what the third one marks. It’s between the robbery and the wedding day.”
Maggie grinned. “I think I have an idea,” she confessed. “But I’d rather neck with you for the rest of the night. We’ve got a whole lifetime to talk.”
“I am the luckiest man who has ever danced in this fountain,” he said.