by Teri Wilson
It’s only make-believe, no more real than Hunter’s tinfoil shield.
“You and Uncle Finn just got married, right?” Wren smoothed down the front of her pink tulle gown. Hunter had chosen the DIY route for his own costume, but he’d obviously steered clear of Pinterest for his daughter’s. She looked like a mini Disney princess, all the way down to the petite velvet slippers on her feet.
“We did.” Avery nodded, pushing the cheap tulle veil on her head away from her eyes.
Wren’s little brow furrowed. “Why didn’t you have a fancy wedding with a big white dress?”
“Oh. Well.” Avery’s heart was in her throat all of a sudden, and her simple bride costume made her feel more like a fraud than ever before. “Not everyone has a fancy wedding. What matters most is finding someone you care about, someone you know you’ll love.” She swallowed. Hard. “Forever and ever.”
“Like happily-ever-after?” Wren said.
Avery nodded, not quite trusting herself to speak.
“Life is perfect when you’re a princess or a bride.” The little girl spun in a circle with her hands clasped in front of her as if she were holding a bridal bouquet.
Perfect?
Not quite. Avery was a bride, and her life was far from perfect. Sometimes she wished she’d never thought to make her marriage to Finn a business arrangement. Would it really be so terrible to try to make things work? They were having a baby together, after all.
“I can’t wait until I’m a bride one day,” Wren said, running her tiny fingers over Avery’s short costume wedding dress.
And then she skipped away, a vision in tulle, and Avery couldn’t help but feel like she’d just had a conversation with her younger self.
Had she really ever been as innocent and starry-eyed as Wren?
Yes, she had. And despite everything, a part of her—the wishful, hopeful part that seemed to rise from the ashes every time she looked at Finn—still was.
But she wasn’t a child anymore. It had been years since she’d trusted in fairy-tale endings, and Finn had never tried to pretend he was her Prince Charming. He’d always been up front and honest about what they’d had. Not a lifetime, but a night. Just one...until the baby had come along. It was a shame little girls were set up with such high expectations.
Real life was so seldom as perfect as Wren believed.
* * *
Avery was gone.
One minute, she’d been chatting with Wren, and the next time Finn glanced in her direction, she wasn’t here.
He frowned into his beer as his brothers continued their running commentary of Maximilian’s efforts to charm Melba Strickland onto the dance floor. It wasn’t going well for Max. According to town lore, she’d never danced with a man other than Old Gene, and by all appearances, it was going to stay that way.
“Denied.” Wilder let out a laugh. “Again.”
Finn glanced toward the games area of the gym, where Wren, Lily, Genevieve and Sarah were participating in a race in which they wrapped each other in spools of white gauze to look like mummies. Still no Avery.
“You’re missing it.” Hunter gave Finn a nudge with his elbow. “I swear Melba is on the verge of conking Dad in the head with one of her caramel apples.”
“What?” Finn said absently as he continued scanning the surroundings in search of his wife.
“Hey.” Hunter nudged him harder. “What’s with you?”
“I can’t find Avery.”
Hunter shrugged. “She was here a few minutes ago. She probably went to the bar for a beer.”
Wrong on both counts. Avery wasn’t drinking because of her pregnancy, and it had been longer than a mere few minutes since he’d seen her last.
“I’m going to go look for her.” Finn shoved his beer at Hunter.
He took it and shrugged. “Suit yourself, but if you’re just looking for an excuse to run off and take your wife to bed, you could have just said so.”
Finn grunted a noncommittal response and went to weave his way through the crowd, but he couldn’t find Avery anywhere. Panic coiled into a tight knot in the pit of his stomach.
What if something was wrong, either with her or the baby?
She would have said something to him if she wasn’t feeling well, wouldn’t she?
He didn’t want to worry his family or the Stricklands, so instead of asking Melba or one of his female relatives to take a look in the ladies’ room, he knocked on the door himself. Still no luck. She wasn’t anywhere in the gymnasium.
Adrenaline shot through him, causing a terrible tingle in his chest. He needed to find her. Now.
Finn fled the party without saying goodbye. If he told the other Crawfords why he was so desperate to find Avery, he’d end up outing her pregnancy when he’d promised her they would wait to tell everyone. But if she wasn’t in the parking lot or right outside the building, he was going to have to get help from someone. She hadn’t just vanished into thin air.
He pushed through the double doors of the gym, squinting into the darkness. The moon hung low in the sky overhead, so big and round it looked swollen. A harvest moon spilling amber light over the horizon.
And in the distance he saw her—Avery, so beautiful in the moonlight—sitting on a playground swing, looking even more like a bride than she had on their wedding day.
Stone-cold relief washed over him. He was too happy to see her to let himself be irritated at her for disappearing like that. He rushed toward her, swallowing the pavement with big strides, but then someone cut into his path. A woman.
“This must be my lucky night,” she said, gazing up at him from beneath the brim of a witch’s hat.
Finn had no clue as to the woman’s identity, other than the generic naughty-witch vibe she was giving off in her skimpy costume. Didn’t she know this was an old-fashioned family-friendly party?
“Sorry, I’m on my way...” He gestured vaguely toward the swing set, where Avery lifted her head and met his gaze.
“You’re Finn Crawford,” the witch said. “At long last. I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for days.”
“What?” He dragged his attention away from Avery to look at the woman again. “I’m sorry. I don’t think we’ve met.”
“We haven’t, but Viv Dalton assured me you’d be interested in making my acquaintance. I’m Natalie.” The witch batted her purple eyelashes at him and laid a hand on his chest.
He gently but firmly removed it. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”
This must be the woman who’d been blowing up his cell a few days ago, the same woman who’d called the Ambling A and spoken to Maximilian.
“I’m not dating anymore,” he said. “I actually just got married.”
“So that’s not just a costume?” The witch blinked in the direction of his tuxedo T-shirt and his adhesive “groom” name tag. Her face fell. “Oh. Too bad.”
“Again, sorry. But I really need to go.” He looked past her toward the playground, but the swing set was empty now. One empty, lonely swing moved back and forth.
Damn it.
She was gone again.
“Avery?” He called out, jogging toward the playground. She couldn’t have gone far. “Avery! Where are you?”
He found her clear around the corner, stomping down North Buckskin Road, her costume bridal veil whipping furiously around her head.
“Avery, thank God,” he said, breathing hard as he struggled to catch up. “You had me worried sick.”
She rolled her eyes and kept on walking, and it wasn’t until she passed beneath a streetlamp that he noticed the dark rings of mascara under her eyes. His gut churned.
She’d been crying.
“Where are you going? What’s wrong?”
“Back to the boarding house.” She sniffed and kept marching toward Cedar Street, whe
re the old purple Victorian loomed at the intersection.
The panicked knot in the pit of Finn’s stomach tightened until he was almost gasping for air. “What? Why?”
“I miss Pumpkin, and I don’t want to be anywhere near you right now.” She stopped abruptly and glared at him. “I’d much prefer the company of a baby goat to you at the moment.”
“Because of the witch?” He glanced over his shoulder toward the high school and then fixed his gaze with Avery’s again. She was angry—clearly—but somewhere beneath the glittering fury in her big doe eyes, he saw something else. Hurt.
“Avery.” He shook his head and jammed his hands on his hips to stop himself from reaching for her...from plunging his hands in her hair and kissing her full on the lips in flagrant violation of their marital agreement. “Princess, she’s no one. Just some woman Viv Dalton wanted to set me up with a while back. But that was after I found out you were here, so obviously I told her no.”
Avery glanced up at him for a second, then resumed staring at a spot somewhere to his left. Clearly, she had no interest in even looking at him.
“If you’d stuck around back there, you would have heard me tell Viv’s witch that I’d just gotten married and that I couldn’t stop for a chat because I’d come outside looking for you.”
Avery narrowed her gaze at him and squared her shoulders. “I wasn’t jealous, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Liar.
Finn didn’t dare laugh, but he was temped. “Is that so, wifey?”
“Okay, maybe I was just a little.” She held her pointer finger and thumb a sliver apart. “An infinitesimal amount.”
“Got it.” He nodded, and the adrenaline flooding his body shifted into something else far more familiar, far more dangerous under the circumstances. Desire. “You’re hightailing it back to the boarding house because you were jealous to see me talking to another woman.”
He took a step closer, needing her softness. Her heat. “Even though you have no interest whatsoever in sleeping with me.”
Her lips parted, and the tip of her cherry-red tongue darted out to wet them. Finn instantly went hard.
She lifted her chin, determined to stand her ground even though they both knew she’d just showed her hand. She wanted him just as badly as he wanted her. “I already told you why I was going back. I miss Pumpkin.”
“So this wild-goose chase you’ve got me on is about a goat?” He wasn’t buying it, not even for a second.
“Yes.” She huffed out a sigh. “Mostly. Plus I was talking to Wren and she asked me why we didn’t have a big wedding. She told me she couldn’t wait to be a bride one day, just like me. And I just... I can’t...”
Tears shimmered in her eyes, sparkling like diamonds in the moonlight. “What are we doing, Finn?”
He’d made Avery a promise when she’d agreed to marry him. She’d asked so little of him, and he’d been determined to keep his word, no matter how agonizing that promise turned out to be.
Did she have any idea how many times he’d nearly slipped up and reached for her? A thousand times a day, whether to simply hold her hand, spread his palms over her belly to feel the life growing inside her—the life they’d made together—or to touch her in all the ways he dreamed about every night when he slept alone on his sad leather sofa.
His gaze bored into her as though that’s all it would take for her to understand. As if he only needed to look at her hard enough for her to know how badly he ached for her. Then...now...always.
She was his. She’d been his all along. Didn’t she know that?
Screw it.
He couldn’t do it anymore, and from what she was telling him, neither could she. It was time to forget their silly rules and be honest with each other for a change.
“This,” he said, lifting his hand to cup her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “This is what we’re doing.”
Then he touched his lips to hers with a gentleness in stark opposition to the riot taking place inside him. He wouldn’t force himself on her—not now, not ever—and he needed some sort of confirmation that this was okay. That this was what she wanted, even though she’d been doing her level best to pretend otherwise.
That confirmation came in the form of a breathy, kittenish sigh and Avery’s hands sliding around his neck, her nails digging feverishly into his back. Then she kissed him so hard he saw stars.
There’s my girl, he thought. There’s my princess.
And then there were no more thoughts, no more rules and no more walls as he scooped his wife into his arms and carried her to his truck in plain view of anyone who cared to look. Finn didn’t give a damn about appearances. It was time to take his wife to bed.
Chapter Thirteen
We shouldn’t be doing this.
Those words kept spinning through Avery’s consciousness as she and Finn fumbled their way up the stairs of the log mansion at the Ambling A, kissing and shedding articles of clothing along the way.
Thank goodness the rest of the family was still eating caramel apples and dancing to the “Monster Mash” back in the high school gymnasium. Because as desperately as she ached for her husband right now, she wasn’t sure if she could have stopped for anyone or anything. Not even if Frankenstein’s actual monster had been blocking their path to the bedroom.
We shouldn’t be doing this.
Finn pressed her against the wall just outside his bedroom, and his lips moved away from her mouth, dragging slowly, deliciously down the side of her neck. She sagged against the cool pine, hands fisting in his hair as he kissed his way from one breast to the other.
They definitely shouldn’t be doing that.
Stopping wasn’t an option, though. It no longer mattered what they should or shouldn’t be doing. Desire was moving through her with the force of a freight train, bearing down hard. She needed this. She’d needed this so badly for so long. It felt like forever since the last time Finn had touched her like this, the last time he’d laid her down on the smooth sheets of his bed in Oklahoma and thrust inside her for the very first time.
The only time.
How was that even possible? She was made for this...made for him. They fit together like two halves of the same whole, and after they’d parted on that strange, sad morning in Oklahoma City, she’d never quite felt whole again. All these months it was as if she’d been walking around with a huge piece of herself missing, just out of reach.
And then...
Then she’d realized she was pregnant, and she’d somehow convinced herself that was the reason she’d been feeling so out of sorts. She wasn’t in love with Finn Crawford. She couldn’t be. They barely knew one another. The only thing she’d known for absolute certain was that he was a Crawford and that her father would probably drop dead on the spot if he ever found out they’d been intimate.
These were the things she’d told herself as she’d put away her pencil skirts, packed her yoga mat and headed to Rust Creek Falls. Love had nothing to do with her messy state of emotional disarray. It all boiled down to science. She was walking around with a piece of Finn Crawford inside her, his DNA had gone and gotten itself all mixed up with hers, and now her body was confused. It was as simple as that. Three out of four biologists would totally agree with her.
Lies.
Lies, lies and more lies.
Had she really been so foolish as to believe that she could come to the Ambling A and not end up right here, with Finn slowly walking her backward until her knees hit the edge of the bed and they tumbled together, already losing track of where her body ended and his began? Had she honestly thought she could marry him and keep up the whole virgin-bride routine in an effort to spare her heart?
It seemed ludicrous now. Why should she forgo this? Finn was her husband, and she was his wife. There was nothing whatsoever wrong with the way he gently parted her thighs
and kissed his way down her body, his tongue warm and wicked against the cool of her skin. On the contrary, it was exquisite. She was lost in the moment in a way that she’d never managed to achieve, no matter how many hot yoga classes she’d attended or how often she’d used the meditation app on her phone.
No one existed outside her and Finn. There was no embarrassment, no worry as her hips moved up and down, undulating in perfect rhythm with the stroke of his fingers, searching...seeking the release that only he could give her. She was free and open in a way that she’d never been able to be with anyone else. Because they were special. She could run all she wanted, but she’d always come back to this—to his hands sliding into her hair as his gaze burned into hers, branding her, soul-deep. To the flawless heat of his body perfectly poised over hers and the way he shuddered when he finally slid inside her. To the way she shattered around him instantly, crying out his name.
Finn.
It had always been him, and it always would be. Giving herself to him again changed nothing, because he’d captured her heart a long time ago.
Yet at the same time, it changed everything. Because somewhere beneath the honeyed heat of her desire, she remembered he’d never said it. The one thing she wanted to hear more than anything else in the world. I love you.
Her heart ached to hear it, but she managed to push her hunger for it down. Deep down to the place where it had been since the moment Finn slipped the ring on her finger and she realized she wanted it to be real. For them to be real.
And she actually thought it would stay there. She believed she could spend her nights in Finn’s bed, touching him, loving him, pretending he felt it even though he never said the words. Because sometimes pretending was better than nothing. Sometimes pretending was as good as it got.
But after it was over—after he’d stroked her to climax again and again, after he’d groaned her name and shuddered his release and they lay beside each other with legs and hearts intertwined—he did something that finally broke the pretense beyond repair.
