Since He Really Feels (He Feels) (13 page)

“So when do you want to do this?” she asked, moving onto safer subjects.

“October 3.”

“October 3?”

“I checked my calendar when you and Jamie were checking on Hadley. It’s a Saturday, and it gives you just over seven months to plan.”

“October 3. I love it.”

“As much as August?”

“More.”

“Me, too.”

I glanced over at her, and she was grinning. She looked like a beautiful bride
-to-be, glowing and gorgeous and all mine.

CHAPTER 11

JULIANNE BECKER

Nick really was nothing short of a Prince Charming. How the hell did I get so lucky? I knew for sure that I didn’t deserve him. He was willing to put aside his personal feelings to make me happy, and to me, that was the true sign of the forever kind of love.

That’s one of the things that showed me how stupid I’d been acting.

While he was willing to do anything to make me happy on our wedding day – including allowing someone I’d had sex with to stand up as part of our wedding party – I was being indecisive, or worse, I was making decisions that directly struck a nerve with him.

Work was basically awful all week. Aside from Nick, Cash was the only one who I even remotely liked or felt like I could connect to
. Working with people like them made for a miserable environment. I had no one to bounce ideas off of; I felt intimidated during our team meetings, and my creativity was severely being stifled. I missed Lucy and Holly and the rest of my team at McMillan, and I wanted to go back there. I wanted Nick to be my boss at our little company again. Things were great back then, even when we had to hide what was developing between us, but I guess if the trade-off for going public with our relationship meant that we had to quit McMillan, it was worth it.

Friday slowly crept up on us, and Nick and I had already decided that we were going to spend the night at home, organizing wedding stuff. It had been his idea, actually. He wanted to help me get organized, so I invited my mom and my sister over and we spent the night setting up a plan and figuring out where to even start planning a wedding. My mother was ecstatic that we were waiting longer, and my sister thanked me about a million times for giving her more time to lose her baby weight.

While we flipped through magazines looking at dresses, my mom told me she had a surprise for Nick and me the next night. She said that we needed to dress up and meet at my parents’ house at 5:30. I hadn’t a clue what she had in store for us, but I was excited. I thought maybe she and my dad wanted to take Nick and me out to dinner to formally congratulate us and welcome Nick to the family. I knew they were ecstatic that Nick and I were getting married; they loved him dearly after the way he’d taken care of me after my accident, and they could see how much he loved their little girl.

So, as instructed, I pulled on a fancy white, sparkly dress, and Nick dressed in a suit. I was in our shared master bathroom, putting the finishing touches on my
makeup when he strolled in. I dropped my mascara wand on the counter when I saw him. I saw him every day dressed for work, but something about seeing him dressed up for an evening out with my family and knowing that he did this for me was just plain sexy. He chose my favorite suit – a charcoal gray one with a white shirt underneath. He skipped the tie, opting to leave the top button of his shirt undone, and the little patch of neck that stuck out where he normally tied his tie was enough to send a tingle of lust through my body. I wanted him, and I wanted him now… but, unfortunately, we were running late as it was, so we had to get going. 

“You look hot,” I said, picking up my mascara wand and wiping off the counter where I dropped it.

“You’re looking pretty damn fine yourself,” he said as he came up behind me and positioned himself so the length of his body warmed the back of mine. That tingle of lust turned into a full-blown quiver, and then his lips found my neck and I was done for.

I shivered at his touch, goose bumps making their way down both of my legs. I wanted him to take me right there on the bathroom counter. I leaned back into his touch, a quiet moan escaping my lips, and I felt his grin against my neck.

“We need to get going,” he whispered.

“Dammit,” I murmured, and he chuckled.

“To be continued?” His eyes met mine in the mirror and he smirked.

I turned around and faced him, and his hands found my cheeks. His rough thumbs traced down my face, and his eyes burned into mine. All I saw there was heated lust.

I leaned up and pressed my lips to his. “Definitely,” I whispered.

I felt a bit off balance from our lust-induced scene in the bathroom, and as we pulled into my parents’ driveway, I realized I still hadn’t cooled down. I was hot for my man, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to get through dinner without ripping off his clothes.

As he pulled in the driveway and cut the ignition, I admitted, “I am still so fucking hot for you.”

He turned slowly to look at me. “Feeling’s mutual, baby.” He grinned, and damn if that didn’t make my panties even a little wetter.

“What if…” he trailed off, but he definitely had my interest. “What if we played a little game tonight?”

“Like what?”

“Like when I say some predetermined key word, that means we’re meeting in some predetermined place for a few minutes of private time.”

“What do you mean by ‘private time’?”

“I mean I’m going to find a way to get inside of that hot body of yours.”

I felt my face heat up. He didn’t pull out the dirty talk too often, but when he
did, his words always hit their intended mark.

“What’s this predetermined word?” I
asked, my voice breathless as I thought about this little game of his.

“Well, it would have to be something appropriate to say in front of your family…”

“How about ‘McMillan’?”

“That might come up in casual conversation, and then you won’t get my secret message.”

“True.”

“What about ‘margarita’?”

“Okay. I’m drinking wine tonight, so ‘margarita’ works for me.”

“Wait for me to say it. I’ll
try to scout out a location before I say our key word.”

I was suddenly really excited for the possibilities of the evening ahead.

We got out of the car, and Nick guided me up the sidewalk to my parents’ front door. His hand found the small of my back, and I leaned into it. I loved the feeling of his hands on me anywhere, but somehow especially there. His big hand was warm and made me feel absolutely cherished.

I rang the doorbell, and my parents’ Jack Russell Terrier, Max, started barking. My mom appeared at the door a moment later, and, holding Max back so he didn’t jump on me in my white dress, she greeted us. She was dressed up, too, and my dad walked up behind her a moment later, dressed in a suit and tie.

“You two look nice,” I said, hugging my mom while Nick shook my dad’s hand.

We switched, and my mom greeted Nick with a kiss on the cheek while I hugged my dad.

“You two look nice, too,” my mom said, smiling at me. It was no secret that she nursed a little crush on my fiancé, but, then, who didn’t? He was as charming as he was gorgeous.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked.

My mom’s eyes gleamed mischievously. “You’ll see. Glass of wine?”

Nick and I both nodded, and I looked over at my handsome fiancé, wanting so badly for him to say “Margarita” so we could head up to my childhood bedroom and he could alleviate the throbbing ache between my legs.

After our glass of wine, the four of us piled into my dad’s Ford Explorer, and we were off. Ten minutes later, we were pulling into the driveway of the Millers’ house.

A ripple of some unknown emotion traveled through my spine. Pulling into the driveway of Travis’s parents’ house felt strange with Nick seated next to me. My entire history with Travis flashed through my mind, my memories centering most specifically on the times we’d been intimate and landing on an image of his lips. I felt immediately guilty at the thought and banished it from my mind.

“What are we doing here?” I asked.

“I told Kathy we’d stop by so she can see your engagement ring and meet Nick,” my mom explained. “Then we’ll head out to dinner.”

It seemed strange to me, but whatever. Parents did strange things sometimes.

“She told us to meet them in the backyard,” my mom said, so we walked around the side of the house and through the gate to the backyard. They’d put in some adorable tiki torches, and the fire lit up the walkway down the side of their enormous house to the backyard. I was always in awe of their house, but tonight their yard looked extra special. Italian lights created a soft glow in the early dusk, almost like they had decorated it for a party.

And then I heard the large group of people gathered there yell, “Surprise!”

It took a moment for me to comprehend what was going on, and then I recognized almost every person gathered before me.

I saw Jamie and Brandon and their two kids first. Then I saw Lucy and Jake, Holly and Andrew, Greg and Maria, Malcolm and Brenda. Aunts, uncles, and cousins. Josh and Tessa, Eric and his date. Travis’s parents and his sister, Liz, and her husband, Wes, and their kids were there. I saw the people from my new work, including Cash and Bree, who stood next to each other. Cash was smiling, and Bree had an evil gleam in her eye that left me feeling a little tense. There had to be fifty or more people gathered in the Millers’ backyard, all there for Nick and me.

And, finally, in the very back of the gathering, I saw Travis and Lindsay, the girl I’d seen him with in his San Diego apartment.

My heart skipped a beat when my eyes met his. He looked especially handsome, a term I’d never really associated with him. He had always been easy on the eyes, but in the past, he’d always looked like my friend Travis. Tonight, though, something was different. He looked happier than I’d ever seen him, and maybe that’s what I found so attractive. Or maybe it was because I knew that I could no longer have him, at least not in the way that he’d always wanted me. Everyone knows that you always want what you can’t have, right? Not that I wanted Travis, really, but maybe somewhere deep down inside, I had always known how he really felt about me, and maybe it always comforted me to know how much he loved me.

Now it just felt like he’d replaced that love for me with love for someone else.

And as I saw his eyes break from mine to look at her, I knew that whatever feelings he’d harbored for me were over and done. The love in his eyes for her was palpable even from where I stood, and while the knowledge that he was over me hit me with a deep ache, I knew that the man whose hand was laced through mine would make it all better. It wasn’t even a contest between them; only Nick would forever hold my heart, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t miss my friendship with Travis like crazy.

I turned, stunned, and looked at Nick. “Did you know about this?” I whispered through the smile plastered on my face.

The yells of “Surprise” died down and everyone in front of us started clapping. I heard someone start clinking a glass, the universal signal for the bride and groom to kiss at a wedding reception. Nick’s hazel eyes glittered in the light of the torches that were everywhere, and he smiled his devastatingly beautiful smile at me. He nodded, and then he leaned in and kissed me.

Even in the midst of our family and friends, the people most important in the world to us, every coherent thought left my mind when his lips found mine. It was a sweet kiss, a kiss appropriate in front of parents, yet it was a kiss that stoked the already blazing inferno in my veins. 

Nick cut off our kiss before it got overly heated, but it didn’t matter. I leaned in and whispered, “Margarita,” into his ear, and he just looked at me and grinned while our audience went wild with cheering at our hot kiss.

He leaned down close to me, and I felt his breath tickle my ear.
“Surprise, baby. Happy engagement party. Wait for the key word. Soon.”

And then we were attacked with hugs from loved ones and bids of congratulations and questions about wedding details. “When’s the big day?” “Where are you going to register?” “Have you thought about reception locations?” “Are you getting married in a church?”
“Band or DJ?” “Where’s the honeymoon?” “Which designers do you like?” “Cake flavors?” “What about flowers? Don’t get lilies. They stink by the end of the day.” It was endless. Details I hadn’t even thought about were suddenly thrust to the forefront of my mind, and I was a bit overwhelmed. I’d been expecting a quiet night with my fiancé and my parents, not a full-blown party in our honor.

My mom hugged me. “I hope
it’s okay that it’s here at the Millers’ house. I know after what happened that it might be weird for you, but they have such a beautiful backyard, and Kathy offered, and how could I say no? We were going to do it at our house, but there’s so much more room here, and it’s like a second home anyway—”

She was rambling, so I cut her off with a hug and a smile. “Mom,
it’s fine. It’s perfect. Thank you.”