Complete Indelible Love Series

by Cee, DW

  “As always, you think about yesterday, today and tomorrow, before making any decisions. You are wise beyond your years.” I decided to obliterate the smug look with kindness. Max might be the smart one in this relationship, but I was definitely the devious one. “Tell me about the proposal. I’m not upset that it wasn’t planned. How can I be, when it was the best proposal ever? No one in my family can touch your declaration of love. Ha! I laugh at my brother’s measly attempt with the petit fours in Paris.” I didn’t think I was lying when I declared Max’s proposal to be the one to top all proposals.

  “Well, Gem, my love, my future…my original plan was to propose to you here in Tuscany, but in a more private setting. When Jake told me about the concert, I did a little research and found a picturesque bed and breakfast. I imagined us lounging there for a few nights and when I found the perfect moment, I’d declare my love and ask you to be my wife.”

  “But...”

  “But when the emcee had us all in the hot seat and everything was out in the open, I thought there was no better time to declare my love than in front of your family and fifteen thousand of our closest friends.” Max always had a way of making me smile. Right now, he could tell me our house blew up and this smile would continue to be plastered on my face.

  “When Laney ran away after our confession and Donovan ran after her, I felt terrible. It was as if our dirty secrets were out. I was ashamed all over again. I felt guilty toward you for being a bad girlfriend. I was expecting us to have to hash it all out after the concert. Never did I expect your ultimate declaration of love. It was shocking and unexpected.”

  “I’m glad I could surprise you, Gem. You, me, our relationship as a whole has been a surprise. When I showed up at the sushi bar with Peter that one fateful night, I didn’t expect to find my future. By the time the sun came up the next morning and I dreaded seeing you leave for New York, I knew I’d found the woman I wanted to spend the next eternity with.”

  “That night we met was scary for me.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve never told you about all my failed relationships, have I?”

  “Nope. You only exploited my two failed relationships.” My soon-to-be husband had that devilish grin again, and he wrapped his arms around me knowing a punch or two was coming.

  “Why don’t you keep walking and I’ll regale you with the tales of Jane Sydney Reid.”

  Max did just that as I started my story.

  “I was a bit of a wild child, believe it or not.”

  “No…!” Max answered in a smartass-way.

  “I grew up a tad bit angry because Jake was always the favored child, and Nick was always the baby. Nick had no expectations placed on him, while Jake knew his future was set with all that my grandparents would bestow upon him. I was lost in the shuffle.”

  “Come on, Gem. I know your parents would never do that to you.”

  “It wasn’t so much my parents. It was more me. I was angry that so little attention was on me.”

  “What about Roland? He loves you and has openly declared you his favorite. Look at how he’s gifting you a part of the firm. He obviously believes in you.”

  “Gimpy is wonderful, and I am beyond happy that he and Gram finally married. Even when Grandpa Jerry was alive, we could all see Gimpy’s eyes light up whenever Gram walked into the room. I miss Grandpa Jerry, but I’m happy for my current grandparents.”

  “Your Gram is a blessed woman.”

  “She sure is.”

  “So continue with your story. What have you done in the past that made meeting your future husband, frightening?”

  I gave my fiancé a kiss or two before I continued. I suppose I’d feel differently on our wedding day and possibly the day when our children are born, but for now, last night was the best day of my life—clichéd, but true.

  “The great thing about Robert and Sandy Reid—they never hovered. Their three children did well in school, we usually didn’t cause trouble in society, and so they gave us a wide berth. My senior year in high school, I fell in ‘love’ with this rich guy with more attitude than tats on his body. He was the absolute coolest boy in our ultra-conservative K-12 school. His dad was a senator in some mid-western state and he lived with his negligent mom in our town.”

  My future husband was damn secure. It didn’t bother him that I spoke so highly of another man. He actually had a cute smile on his face, looking forward to the rest of my story.

  “What’s the smile for?” He asked me when I couldn’t help but laugh at him.

  I shook my head and didn’t bother answering. The saga continued. “This lean-muscled, tatted-up, beautiful boy took a liking to me and made me want to be as naughty as he was. To make a long story short, I gave him my virginity on prom night, he dumped me the next morning, and I was angry for a very long time.”

  “I hope you used protection,” my fiancé chuckled.

  I ignored his comment and said, “So that was mistake number one. This asshole obviously saw what an innocent I was and wanted to exploit me.”

  “Uh-huh…” Max was no fool. He knew I wouldn’t be exploited.

  “So after Asshole, I hooked up with Choir Boy. If Asshole was the ultimate cool guy, Choir Boy was the ultimate good guy. He dressed in preppy, went-out-with-the-eighties fashion, and he belonged to this huge church. He had like eight siblings and talked about getting married and having kids all the time.”

  “You went for the polar opposite.”

  “You are so wise, my love.”

  “That, I am. Don’t you forget it.” He kissed my nose and let me continue.

  “We started dating the summer before my sophomore year—which incidentally could have all been avoided had Donovan Taylor taken my cue and asked me out.”

  Max rolled his eyes. “I wondered when that asshole’s name was going to pop up.”

  I giggled hysterically. “Please tell me you don’t still dislike him.”

  “Dislike is not a strong enough word for what I felt.”

  “Max…” I whined. “He’ll be family soon—close family and friend. He’ll be my partner in crime at AAP and he’s my cousin’s boyfriend.”

  “Who says he’ll be family?”

  Shit. Was Max kidding me? “You do know that Donovan and Laney are sharing a bedroom? I think my cousin was a virgin until Donovan showed up in London.”

  “Did you or I marry the person we lost our virginities to?”

  This was not good. “So Donovan is still on your shit list?” I needed to fix this issue fast. Jake and Emily could help ease the situation between the two men.

  Max pulled me into his body in the middle of a Tuscan dirt road. “I’m only messing with you. Donovan and I are fine with one another. Yes, I was angry. Yes, I wanted to kick his ass. But, I know that we all make mistakes and he is paying royally for his. I’m letting Laney kick his ass for me.”

  “Are you sure there are no ugly feelings in your heart against Donovan? I really do think he’ll be family one day. We may all live on the cul-de-sac, and I need to know if you have even an ounce of dislike for him.” I was truly an idiot for creating gray hair-inducing scenarios in my life. What the hell were Donovan and I thinking?

  “I am fine with Donovan. I actually think I might even like him.” Max grinned. “If this is your way of getting out of telling me about the choir boy you dated, you’re out of luck. Continue.” The last word was a stern command.

  “Oh yeah, let me finish up on the good guy. After Asshole broke my heart, I decided to date Choir Boy. He took me to his church, his Bible studies, and his friends became my friends. Soon, I was surrounded by goody two-shoes who all married by their sophomore years in college. It almost seemed a sin to be unmarried at age twenty.”

  “Oh Lord!” Had Choir Boy heard Max’s comment, he would’ve scolded him for using the Lord’s name in vain.

  “So, after dating him for six months, we were on our way to Colorado
to visit his family and we made a pit stop in Vegas. We got rooms for the night and…”

  “Wait!” Max wanted to know, “Mr. Choir Boy was going to sleep with you before the wedding night?”

  “No silly! We got two rooms.” Max howled.

  “Did you let him know about your virginity—or lack thereof?” I loved the way my man was teasing me. His sense of humor was the best.

  “No, again, silly! There was no way I was condemning myself. It’s not like he was going to do a hymen check on the wedding night.” What an absurd thought.

  “How do you know?”

  I looked at my future husband as though he were crazy, but I wasn’t sure that what he was saying was incorrect.

  “Anyhow, when we stopped in Vegas for the night, his brother and girlfriend met us there. On a whim, they decided to get married. His brother was only eighteen, but decided he didn’t want to wait.”

  “Uh-oh,” Max lamented. “So what happened?”

  “So, Choir Boy decided if his little brother was doing it, he could do it too.”

  At this point, we were at the bakery, had picked up our cappuccinos and breakfast, and sat to enjoy our first meal together as an affianced couple.

  “This feels perfect.” Max mused before taking a huge bite of his pastry. I reached over and gave him a quick kiss on his cheek. I understood perfectly what he meant. No one lived a fairytale life, but the two of us knew we could make it damn near close to fairytale-like. I loved this man for the generous heart he had, and the abundant love he gave.

  We sat and stared at the sunrise while sipping our coffee and holding hands. If there was a more beautiful setting than this one, I’d have to see it to believe it. To paraphrase my fiancé, this was perfect!

  “Back to my story?” I asked, not knowing if Max was still interested.

  “The entire story, without interruption, please.”

  “Choir Boy assumed I’d marry him and started arranging the details of our upcoming nuptials. Internally, I started freaking out. I ran back to my room and called Jake. My brother, in so many words, told me to get the hell out of there and to hop on the next flight home. It scared the living daylights out of him that I wouldn’t answer him. Like an idiot, I wavered.”

  “So did Jonathan Robert Reid, aka Jake, come save the day?”

  “Kind of. He kept calling me on my cell telling me to get the hell out of Vegas. I was about to, until I got to the chapel to tell Choir Boy that I was leaving for home.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was so sweet. He had borrowed a dress for me and filled the chapel full of flowers. He was in his Sunday best, and he even bought a tiny diamond ring. The words wouldn’t leave my mouth. In the recess of my mind, I knew I needed to get myself out of there, but my heart was touched by his sincerity.”

  “I guess you and Laney do have a few things in common…” Max made light of my romantic side.

  “I almost went through with it until the phone rang one last time.”

  “Jake Reid?”

  “Estelle Cowper Reid.”

  “Shit.”

  “Shit was right.” I remembered the scolding as though it was yesterday. “She read me the riot act, telling me that she was going to expel me from the Reid family and place me in an English convent if I didn’t walk out of the chapel right now.”

  “I love it!” Max was cracking up. “That grandmother of yours is the best.”

  “Gram was the wake-up call I needed. I felt terrible, but I walked out of Vegas, hopped on the next flight back to LA, and Jake picked me up at the airport.”

  “Did your family do another intervention when you got home?”

  “Nope. My family let me know they were there for me if I needed them, but no one said a word about my foolishness. They knew this experience woke me up to the errors of my ways.”

  “So that was it? You walked away from Choir Boy and waited patiently until I arrived?”

  I snorted, “Yeah. I tried really hard to wait for you to get over Emily so I would be the only woman in your heart.”

  “Your sister-in-law was, and still is, one special woman.” I paused. Max’s reverence for Emily still bugged. “But you, are the only woman for me.” He found great humor in my irritation.

  “Will you tell me about you and Emily?”

  “Your story first,” he insisted.

  “OK. So I went from Asshole, to Choir Boy, to Klepto.”

  Max stopped our walk back to the villa and howled. It took him a while to pull himself together. I was damn annoyed!

  “You sure do know how to pick ‘em. With those three, Donovan Taylor must have looked like a god to you.”

  “Now why are you picking on Laney’s boyfriend, again?”

  “Because I can.” My fiancé could be such a smartass at times. “Continue.”

  “So, Klepto and I met in law school. He chased after me and wore me down over the course of my first year. Once again, had Donovan Taylor asked me out, even once, I would’ve dropped Klepto for Mr. Debonair in a heartbeat.”

  Max groaned again. “I hope Laney gives him hell for all his wrongdoings.” Scary, but my soon-to-be hubby wasn’t kidding this time.

  “Anywhoooo,” I brought Max back to the story, “Klepto kind of moved in with me, and I started noticing a $20 missing here or a $10 missing there. The amount was so little; I thought I was misplacing money. But I knew something was seriously wrong when I withdrew $1000 to lend to my roommate and that went missing. No alarm would have rung had Klepto stuck around; but when the money went missing, so did he.”

  “So did Estelle Reid come to the rescue again?”

  “Nope. This time, it was Jake and Nick.”

  “Damn, Woman. You sure do need a lot of rescuing.” I laughed in agreement.

  “I called Jake to tell him what I suspected and next thing I knew, he and Nick were at our Soho apartment, ready to kick Klepto’s ass. Stupid Klepto showed up minutes after my brothers arrived, and tried to play it off as if he had no clue any money went missing. Jake and Nick threatened to haul his ass to jail, though they had no proof. Klepto fessed up to his gambling problems, and all was taken care of by the Reid men. Klepto promised never to seek me out again, and my brothers promised not to report him.”

  “What a winner!” Max announced with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

  “I didn’t date again until you arrived. I kept my head in the books, studied hard to make my family proud, and waited for Gimpy to hand me a job on a silver platter.”

  “Finally. A wise choice.”

  “Now you get why a relationship with you scared the hell out of me? You were my sister-in-law’s ex, and I liked you so much from the onset.”

  “You could have fooled me, Ms. Reid. Initially, you barely talked to me. I fought for every answer that night.”

  “It’s because I was so mesmerized and intimidated by you.”

  “Bullshit! Until I forced your attention on me, you talked more to Peter than to me that night.”

  “I’m telling you, I was intimidated. The moment I walked into the sushi bar and saw you, I knew you spelled trouble for me. It was instant attraction.”

  “So that’s why you ignored me the first hour or so?” He doubted every one of my words.

  “I didn’t ignore you.” I had to defend myself from these false accusations. “I answered every question, and I asked you a few questions myself.”

  “To be honest, I was a little worried myself when you walked in the restaurant with Emily and Nick. In came the hottest woman I’d laid eyes on, and you had a personality to match the looks. I didn’t think you’d look at me twice after the introductions were made. My roommate Peter was more up your alley than I was. I decided after I asked you all the basic questions, if you stayed disinterested, I’d quit.”

  “You couldn’t tell how nervous I was talking to you?”

  “Nope.” Either my fiancé was the world’s best lia
r or he seriously had no clue what a wreck I was every time we talked. “Let’s continue this conversation after breakfast. I’m sure everyone is up by now.”

  “Let’s go in and share the love with everyone, Mr. Davis.”

  “Let’s, Mrs. Davis,” Max grinned as he spoke my soon-to-be name.

  We walked into the kitchen and found Donovan fixing a cup of coffee.

  “Hey. You here alone?” I called out to a very happy man. His smile was infectious.

  “I don’t think loneliness is possible among the Reids.” Donovan stepped closer to give me a brotherly hug and his usual kiss to my head. “Congratulations, again, Jane.” He let me go as quickly as he embraced me, and put out his hand to my fiancé as an apologetic gesture. “Once again, I need to apologize for my stupidity. I wish you and Jane only the best.”

  “Thanks. Everything moving in the right direction? It looked like our little Laney was kicking your ass last night and making you grovel like no man’s business.” Max was loving this moment. He firmly believed Laney would give Donovan hell. “I told you I didn’t need to do anything. I knew Laney would do it for me.”

  “Ha, ha, ha...! You’re getting your wish and then some. It’s damn difficult courting one of these Reid women.”

  “Amen to that!” Max and Donovan finally found a common belief.

  “Shut up or I’m going to tell Laney you were complaining about her being difficult.”

  “All you women are difficult!” Donovan insisted.

  “I heard that.” Emily said, walking in with Laney. The look on Donovan’s face when he saw his “Princess” walk in with JR was priceless. No man was immune to love if the great Donovan Taylor was on his knees begging my cousin to love him back. Those two looked simply perfect together. I should have opened my eyes and heart to this reality sooner. I was always selfish in my ways. That needed to change soon.

  “They’re adorable together, huh?” I whispered in Max’s ears. We all watched Donovan and Laney in the corner of the kitchen giggling and whispering sweet nothings to one another. I loved that we were all paired up and on our way toward a happily ever after. As usual, my brother was leaps and bounds ahead, but soon, we’d all be there with him. Our kids would play with one another on the cul-de-sac and between the Reids, Taylors, and Davises, we’d have one hell of a family get-together.