Star Dust (A Paladin Adventure)

The great raid

The next day, I took some time to procure some samples of wedding invitations from a really good stationer in the city and we selected one that had a spare, elegant typeface (not script). Steve seemed really pleased that I had taken the initiative, which made me feel really bad about my reluctance. Spurred on by my desire to show more enthusiasm for our special day, I took Maria with me to the stationers and arranged for confidentiality in the production of the invitations. When we got back, I also had fifteen samples of different shades and tones of blue, seven wedding magazines, a pretty pair of shoes to wear with the dress (a medium-blue velvet, a fairly low heel height of two inches) and recommendations for florists. Maria would pick them up and bring the flowers with her to the wedding. That afternoon I lined up an appointment with catering to discuss the menu, started a secret Pinterest board for wedding ideas and lined up Natasha as my maid of honor. Not only was Natasha a good friend,  but I completely trusted her ability to smooth things out if there was a wrinkle. Not that there would be. The planning for this thing would be as tight as Steve's butt and Steve would have his perfect day if I personally had to maim somebody to ensure it happening.

Steve looked a little surprised as I staggered in with the shopping and wedding-related stuff, and quite bemused as I arranged the samples of blue for his consideration. He was baffled by the choices, but ultimately we chose a blue that turned out to almost exactly match his eyes. Fancy that. I put the appointment with catering on his calendar and reminded him that I needed to get the size for his wedding band. He smiled, and playing with my ring, asked if I would mind if he got me a regular wedding band since it would be difficult to find one that would look good attached to my engagement ring. I agreed immediately and indicated that I liked the thought of a plain metal band. Then I produced a checklist, which I had divided into things he needed to do, things that I needed to do, and things we needed to do, and asked for his opinions on the flowers and decor. He started to look a little alarmed when I asked him to look through the magazines and decide on the suit he wanted to wear and he said he had a strategy session with Tony before I could ask his thoughts on wedding cake flavors.

I emailed May to give her a heads up that  I was getting married and to ask if Peter could come out with the others (Maria, Eliza) for the wedding. Then I had to buckle down and do some actual work. Eliza hand-carried in a file for me. "Mr Stark asked me to bring this to you," she said, and glancing at it I saw that it was specifications for a scaled-up arc reactor engine for a high performance car along with the final lab report on the motorcycle engine.  It wasn't what I expected.

"What's going on in there? Where is Tony, anyway?" I asked her.

"Oh, he and Captain Rogers are in his office. Mr Stark just ordered up a snack and the captain was looking for a ball game on the tv," she said helpfully. My mouth dropped open.

Strategy my ass.

Also, where does Tony get the snacks? Did Eliza know?

Eliza brought in the mail, which included an invitation to speak at a dinner for successful New York women. Eliza explained that it was a group of influential women who both networked at these meetings as well as mentored up-and-coming women in a variety of fields. She strongly urged me to accept the invitation, which I did, and we arranged my schedule so that I would be working in the city at the time so I didn't have to make a special trip. I asked her to find out what they wanted me to speak about before conveying my acceptance as I didn't want to show up prepared to talk about non-proprietary science stuff and be expected to talk about wrangling interns instead. Or vice versa.

When five o'clock rolled around, it was a little hard to change gears and focus on the op for that evening. Especially since I didn't know what that entailed. Nobody was up in the residence, so I took a little nap. I woke up when Steve sat on the bed. I assumed it was Steve, anyway, I didn't open my eyes, and curled around him.