“Wow. Really?”
“Feeling faint when you go over a bridge is a piece of cake compared to that.”
“It can be a lot worse than that. I used to have days when I couldn’t drive to work.”
“And then what did you do?”
“I had to take the bus.”
“Big tragedy,” he said.
“I can’t believe you’re mocking my anxiety disorder.” She let him squirm for a second before smiling. “I love it when you do that.” She traced his jawline with her thumb.
“It seems better than freaking out with you.”
She nodded. “Whenever other people take my fears seriously, it’s like they’re agreeing with me. Like I
should
be at full panic level.”
“Speaking of panic, I’m starting to worry about getting you naked.” He hooked his ankle behind hers and pulled her down with him to her overstuffed couch.
Before her pajamas came off, Nicki straddled him and pinned his shoulders to the cushions. “What were you going to do tomorrow when you got to Maui?”
His eyes were unfocused with passion. “What?”
“What were you going to say to me? Did you have a plan?”
“Of course I had a plan. I couldn’t risk my life’s happiness without having a plan,” he said, caressing the small of her back.
His touch made her shiver with pleasure, but she continued. “Before you knew how I felt, what were you going to say?”
“You sure do talk a lot.”
“I know how you men are. This might be the last time we ever have a decent conversation about our relationship,” she said.
He turned his face away, groaning.
“Come on,” she said. “Pretend you don’t know I adore you and want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I’ve just opened the door.”
“Are you naked?”
“Nope. Lots of clothes.”
“Good,” he said. “Then I’d be able to concentrate, remember my notes from the plane.”
“You have notes?”
“Not yet, since I wasn’t on the plane, was I?”
She grinned, wriggling on top of him. “Okay. I’m standing there in my clothes. You remember your notes. What do you say?”
“Are you wearing that sexy green dress? Because then I might forget my notes.”
She was feeling forgetful herself. His body felt so good beneath her…
“It was short,” he said. “I was going to improvise the rest of it.”
“Let’s hear it. Don’t be nervous. You already know how it’s going to turn out.”
He reached up and touched her face. “I need you.”
“I can feel how much you need me,” she said, rotating her hips. “Focus. What do you say?”
“That’s it. That’s what I say.” He gazed up into her eyes. “I need you.”
She sobered, struck by his serious tone. “I need you, too, Ansel.”
“That’s how you’re different from the other women in my life. They needed me, never the other way around.” He lifted himself up until his arms were around her waist and his face was close to hers. “I can’t imagine life without you. That’s what I was going to say. You don’t have to love me. I just want to be with you. I need to have you in my life even if you aren’t nearly as crazy about me as I am about you.”
Her mouth was dry. “But I am. I love you like I’ve never loved anyone.”
He paused. “Thank God,” he said finally with a sigh, rolling over with her in his arms. “But really, as long as you’ll let me stick around, I’m happy. Because I need you that bad.”
She kissed him, gently at first, then desperately. Neither spoke for a long time. They were suddenly in a hurry to make up for the long, lost weeks, even though they knew they had a lifetime to do it.
Epilogue
T
HEY
WERE
MARRIED
SIX
MONTHS
later in a beachside ceremony. It was the height of whale watching season, and the flash of giant tails rising out of the water interrupted the vows more than once.
Nicki, barefoot, wore a custom-made white silk sundress that danced around her long legs like butterfly wings. Ansel wore a tuxedo jacket with board shorts.
Brand and Diane were their honor attendants. Because of their devotion to their shared career in the real estate field, they had flown in for only the day, although they were in high spirits and laughed at all of Nicki’s jokes. Their gift to the couple was an oceanfront office building with monthly rents twice that of the neighboring structure. Its maintenance costs were reduced by the solar panels on the roof.
Jordan was in charge of the guests’ picnic bento boxes after the ceremony. As a dig to Melinda Jury, he’d packed her a box that contained one tuna salad sandwich with extra mayonnaise, an apple, a small package of cheese-flavored fish crackers, and a chilled carton of chocolate milk imprinted with a dancing cow princess. She laughed and ate every bite.
The father of the groom, wearing a three-piece suit and waterproof hiking sandals, offered a long, meandering toast about how he hoped his new daughter-in-law knew what a terrific, generous human being she’d married, and if she ever doubted it, to come by for dinner and he’d set her straight. Only Nicki’s mother, who was touchy about that sort of thing, thought it was in poor taste.
At least twice at the reception, Rachel told everyone that she was responsible for the happy couple being together. Brand and Diane claimed the same thing. Betty knew they were all wrong, but she was too busy proposing to Jaynette—and then enjoying her response—to argue.
When the celebration was winding down, and the guests sat in the sand, watching whales have a party of their own, everyone agreed it was worth the cost of the trip halfway around the world.
It was at that moment, while they held hands on the outskirts of the celebration, that Nicki and Ansel shared a long meaningful look. They were supposed to leave a little later, after another round of drinks.
Ansel glanced at the parking lot. “Shall we?”
Nicki grinned. “Thought you’d never ask.”
And so they made a run for it, muffling their laughter as they galloped across the hot sand to the old gas-electric hybrid, garishly decorated with paint and streamers, that waited for them.
“
Now
will you tell me where we’re going?” she asked as she buckled her seat belt. He’d refused to tell her where they’d be spending the night, although she had a pretty good idea.
“It costs two thousand a night,” he replied, “and has excellent privacy curtains.”
As he peeled out into the road, she laughed, wondering when she’d ever been so happy. So completely, blindingly happy.
She was thirty-one, so—she counted back through the years—one, two, three…
Never. Yeah, never was about right.
Author Note
Thank you for reading!
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Happy reading,
GG
About the Author
GRETCHEN GALWAY writes romantic comedies because love is too painful to survive without laughing. Raised in the American Midwest, she now lives in California with her husband and two kids.
Also by Gretchen Galway
(Miles and Lucy’s Story)
**
The Supermodel's Best Friend
* * Miles and Lucy’s story * *
©2011 Gretchen Galway
Happily-ever-after isn’t only for the rich and beautiful…
When her long-term fiancé dumps her, 34-year-old Lucy Hathcoat is determined to replace him as efficiently as possible. Her best friend the supermodel is getting married to a billionaire—what better place than their week-long wedding in a luxury eco-resort to find a new man? Lucy isn’t picky; she just wants a decent guy who’s eager to start a family. Someone as logical, responsible, and practical as she is.
Definitely not the six-foot-five, fun-loving Miles Girard. Being totally hot and charming is not important. She doesn’t need a man who makes her laugh. A man who makes her jump in his lap and kiss him. A man who is pathologically wary of marriage and thinks she needs him more than she needs a husband.
Then again, Lucy’s starting to feel like maybe, just maybe, she can’t live without him…
* * *
Excerpt of
THE SUPERMODEL'S BEST FRIEND
* * *
CHAPTER 1
THIS WAS NOT IN THE plan
, Lucy thought, staring at the handsome face on her phone. Her fiancé was supposed to be standing by her side, pen in hand, not using video smartphone technology to dump her from another state.
I don’t love you enough to let you ruin the plan.
“You must’ve known I had some doubts,” Dan said, his voice as small as he was.
Lucy looked around the empty living room of the spacious three-bedroom California bungalow with original plank hardwoods and walnut built-ins. “You said you’d kill to have this house,” she said, wondering if the real estate agent, laying out the pages for their revised offer on the granite breakfast counter in the kitchen, could hear them.
“It’s a great house,” he said, sighing. “A perfect house. But now I see that it would just tie us down, drag out the inevitable.”
She blinked, not sure what she was hearing. “We’ve been planning this for almost five years.”
He hesitated. “I met someone.”
“When? This morning?”
Licking his lips, he said, “Why don’t we talk later, after you’ve had a chance to calm down.”
She frowned. “I’m hardly hysterical, Dan.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“You’d like me to be hysterical?”
“Forget it. Of course not. It makes everything easier.”
She nodded, belatedly piecing together some clues he’d dropped over the past few months. “Your six-month assignment in Seattle wasn’t the opportunity of a lifetime, then.”
“Well…”
“Ah. A personal opportunity, you meant.”
“I wanted to be sure. For both—for all of us.”
“Very considerate of you,” she said.
“Damn it, you don’t have to be sarcastic.”
“You’re hardly in a position to tell me what to do. I’m the wounded party here, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I think we’ll both need some healing.”
Lucy dropped the phone to her side and noticed that Robin, the real estate agent, had come up behind her. Her face was pale.
This was really going to screw over the older lady, the two of them walking away from the deal now. Robin needed a sale badly. Typical of Dan to think the world revolved around him.
Lucy lifted the phone. “We’ll have to call the mortgage broker.”
He jutted out his chin. “I already have.”
“You told Inez the mortgage broker before you told me?”
“She kept after me to sign the latest thing. It didn’t feel right to string her along anymore—” He stopped and cleared his throat. “Look, you’re getting digitized. I think the connection is breaking up…”
“It didn’t feel right to string
her
along?”
He sighed. “So much of our lives together is what you wanted. Not me. I felt… superfluous a lot of the time.” He tilted the screen of his laptop so she was staring out the window of his suite at the Extended Stay America. It wasn’t supposed to be sunny in Seattle. It looked sunny. She wondered if the new girlfriend was there, listening off-camera. Dan came back into view with a coffee cup at his lips.
In Berkeley, outside the house she wasn’t going to have, the sky was as gray as lint. “Our relationship was always shaped by what you wanted. We talked about marriage years ago. I hoped to have my first child before I turned thirty. But you wanted to save up for the house first, so we did, even though that was third on my list.”
“You and your lists. That’s one thing I’ve learned from Brittany—how to trust my heart.”
“Ah, so she’s one of those.” She took a deep breath and peered into the phone for a glimpse of her. “What else did the little ho say?”
Dan’s mouth dropped open in shock.
“You wanted hysterical. This is my version.”
He looked away, then back at the screen, his lips popping up and down like a broken garage door. “Brittany is not—” He shook his head and stared off to the side, made an apologetic face, then jerked his head.
So she had been there. “Thanks for making this such a private moment.”
“I can’t believe Brittany had to hear
you
call
her
a—a—I can’t even say it.”
“What? She’s been sleeping with my boyfriend. For months, apparently.”
“Brittany has nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Does she know about me?”
“Of course. She knows everything.”
Lucy snorted. Her college advisor would’ve broken out in a rash to hear her insult a woman for exercising her sexual liberties, but to hell with it. She was under a lot of stress. “Ho.”
Dan’s eyes went wide as he leaned into his laptop camera. “She is completely innocent. Brittany’s not in such a hurry to take her clothes off. Unlike
you
.”