by Lisa Hughey
Bliss blinked away her tears and hoped Di hadn’t noticed them. But as she blinked she noticed the simple gold band on Di’s ring finger.
Bliss grabbed her hand and raised a questioning eyebrow. Di flushed a bright red. “We were going to tell everyone later, tomorrow, after your wedding.” Her palm brushed over her abdomen briefly.
Was Di pregnant? Before Bliss could ask, Ava came up on Bliss’s other side.
“What’s the matter chica?” Ava Sanchez smiled wistfully. “You’re going to look like a fairy tale,” she said softly.
“Girl time,” Jess said in a singsong voice. Until she saw Bliss’s face, then her smile fell. “What’s wrong?”
As if they sensed her teetering on the edge of a breakdown, Jillian and the women from Jack’s family, her new family, circled around her like wagons around the campfire.
“It’s Jack.” Her voice wobbled. Dammit. No way she was ruining her makeup with tears. “You know I’m right.”
“It’s probably just a bit of nerves.” Di didn’t pretend away Bliss’s fears. “Have you talked to him?”
“Jack loves you!”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.”
A chorus of other platitudes rang out while everyone else tried to put on a happy, unconcerned façade but she knew deep down that they sensed something wrong too.
They were all trying so hard to be upbeat and positive.
“I don’t think so.” She shook her head miserably. And the room went quiet, crickets quiet. No one moved, no one spoke.
“You all felt it.” And when no one argued, she knew she was right. That’s when she decided, fuck it. Bliss had come too far, emotionally and mentally, to go into another marriage with concerns.
No one said a word. Yes, Jill and Rissa were her friends. But she was mostly surrounded by Jack’s family who would be loyal to Jack. She understood that he inspired that depth of devotion. Hell, she was devoted to him too. But if it came down to a separation, she knew Jack’s family would rally around him. And once again, Bliss would be mostly alone.
It was times like these that she really wished she still had a family. After years of being separated from her dad and sister by the Marshals’ witness protection program, her mom had committed suicide when Bliss was eighteen. She missed her sister. Which in some ways was really silly because she hadn’t seen her sister for over half her life. They were teenagers when the family had split up to protect everyone.
Bliss took a shuddering breath and squared her shoulders. She wasn’t going to make another mistake. Her first marriage had been strained from the beginning because in the back of her mind she had compared her husband to Jack. She refused to get married to a man who didn’t want her.
She swallowed away the lump in her throat and carefully put down the silly “bouquet” of bows from her bridal shower fashioned and attached to a simple paper plate for the rehearsal.
“I need to talk to Jack,” Bliss said just as Shelley, Jack’s stepmother, walked in the bride’s room and said, “Jack needs to talk to you.”
Jack strode into the fussy feminine bridal ready room.
He stopped cold when he saw her. She literally took his breath away. Her auburn waves were twisted and piled up on top of her head, revealing the exotic lines of her face. Her high flat cheekbones and tilted green eyes emphasized her Asian heritage. The dress she’d chosen for the rehearsal, a simple black sheath, hugged her body, accenting her angles and curves. She looked fantastic. Like every fantasy he’d ever had. But when he looked in her eyes, the defeat killed him.
Her face was stoic, and if he didn’t know her so well, he’d think she was fine. But after reuniting with her, he’d gotten to where he could read her moods, read her emotions.
“Everyone out,” he said without looking away from her.
Bliss didn’t move, didn’t even twitch. She stood at ease, her hands hanging at her hips waiting. And his heart broke.
Once the door closed quietly, Jack grabbed her around the waist, wrapped her in his arms. “How do you still not know?” his voice was husky.
“What?”
“Fuck, Bliss. You own me.” Jack clutched her against him, her passivity more terrifying than her temper. “I’m lost without you.”
Tentatively her fingers clutched at the lapels of his sport coat, and her heart thudded so hard he could feel the beats against his pecs. She’d burrowed her face in his neck. The shuddery sound of her breath slayed him.
“Then what’s going on, Jack?”
“I did something.” He hesitated. Fuck, he was never hesitant.
She pushed back so that she could look in her eyes and he wanted to drown in her. “Who is she?”
“What the fuck, Bliss?” he growled. “I would never cheat on you.”
She relaxed subtly, which was when he realized how much he’d fucked up by keeping this from her. By trying to do something right, he’d done her the worst possible wrong. “I love you. So much.” He needed her to understand that. Love was where this had come from.
She smiled tremulously but she didn’t reply with an “I love you too.”
“I know how much you’re missing your family.” He was desperate to get her to tell him she loved him back. She wouldn’t stop loving him because of this, would she? Hell, his track record with love wasn’t what you’d call stellar.
She turned her head away. “Yeah, well, I’m marrying the man of my dreams. Can’t have everything.”
He got hung up on her statement. Jack gripped her chin in his thick, suddenly clumsy fingers and turned her to face him. “The man of your dreams, huh?”
Warmth and pleasure spread through him like melted butter. Maybe he didn’t need that I love you after all. “Hopefully you’ll still think so in a few minutes.”
She stiffened.
He held up a finger, his heart beating faster than when he’d been under enemy fire. Then he’d known what to expect. Now he was winging it and his bright idea a few months ago could turn out to be a total goatfuck.
“Give me one second.” He texted on his phone, then strode over to the closed door.
He took a deep breath and prayed he’d done the right thing.
Jack opened the door and stood to the side.
Bliss wondered what was going on. She knew he’d been telling the truth. He loved her. But words were easy. It was actions that mattered. And lately his actions had been furtive and all over the map.
She was a survivor.
She’d survived heartache and loss and isolation. She’d survive this too.
A grizzled older man, broad in the shoulder, a lot of stress lines on his face, stood in the shadowed doorway. Bliss noted the ginger hair liberally threaded with gray. Her mind blanked and her heart stopped beating.
Literally stopped beating.
Everything swooshed down to this one moment. Almost as if she were standing still and the world around her was moving at warp speed, blurry and out of focus, and the only thing she could see clearly was the man in the doorway.
Her throat was so clogged with hope, fear, surprise, she couldn’t speak. She blinked, then her eyes flooded with tears and she forced out a word she hadn’t spoken in nearly twenty years.
“Daddy?”
All the blood rushed from her head. Jack had found her father.
There was someone else behind him and she stepped into the room while Jack shut the door behind them and leaned against the white paneled door.
Bliss thought her legs were going to give out.
“Sissy?”
Her sister rushed toward Bliss and threw her arms open wide. “Oh my God. It’s you, it’s you.” Sissy rocked back and forth, her embrace so tight Bliss could barely breathe.
“You’re so grown up,” Bliss said. Which was silly. She knew that. But in her memories her sister had stopped growing as a young teen.
Her father made his way slowly toward them.
He lifted a trembling hand, an old hand, wrinkled knobby knuckles, then
he curled his arms around them both. “My girls.” And for the first time in years, her father gave her a hug. “My girls.”
Bliss was having a hard time processing. Her brain had shut down. “How, where….”
“You got a special guy there, Joyce.”
Joyce? For a second she didn’t know who he was talking to. Then she realized…. “My name is Bliss now.”
“Ah, Jack told us.” Sissy smiled. “It will take some getting used to.”
Her father squeezed them tight. “Bliss. It suits you.”
Her sister still hadn’t let go. “I missed you so much,” she whispered into Bliss’s neck.
“I missed you too.”
Bliss and her sister broke the hug but kept their arms around each other. Her family.
“I was sorry to hear about your mother, sweetheart.” Her father sighed and shoved his hands into his pockets.
Bliss’s mouth trembled. “She…had a hard time without you.” She brushed off the years of heartache. There was no place for that here. Even though she wanted to break down and sob. All the sorrow and anguish and happiness balled in her throat.
She had given up hope of ever finding her father and sister again. “I can’t believe you’re here.” Bliss lifted a hand to her sister’s hair and smoothed her palm over her straight black hair.
She still couldn’t process everything. Her father gripped her right hand in his and held on as if she’d disappear for another twenty years if he let go.
“I have so many questions.” Bliss laughed through her tears. Guess her makeup was toast after all. But for a much better reason.
“Fire away,” her dad said.
“Where do you live?”
“Los Angeles.” Daddy asked, “What about you?”
“I was in DC but I’m relocating to Monterey.” They were going to be so close.
“So we’ll be on the same coast!” her sister said excitedly.
“What do you do?”
Dad smiled. “Bar owner.”
Sissy added, “I help out. What about you?”
Bliss paused. Her family’s situation had shaped every major decision she’d made in her adult life. But her father and sister seemed so normal. Did she really want to get into her career and life choices now?
“I help people.” Was the simple answer.
The organ music started again, seemingly louder than before. The organist had moved from nervous to impatient.
Bliss’s gaze shifted to Jack, her heart so full she might burst. He leaned against the door, hyper masculine, his legs crossed, one shoulder elegantly propped against the massive paneled door, his chin tilted down, the curve of his jaw sharp in the shadows, one hand in his pocket. His overwhelming alpha aura was surrounded by a cloud of uncertainty even as he met her gaze head-on.
“This was what was wrong?” Bliss asked him. This was responsible for the furtive phone calls, late-night meetings, the shifty reasons for cutting out early over many occasions over the past month or so?
He lifted one shoulder and let it drop, his gaze never leaving hers. “I was trying to keep a secret.” His lips quirked. “I’m considered pretty good at secrets.”
“Next time can you not keep it a secret from me?”
“I wanted to give you a wedding present that money couldn’t buy.”
Her soon-to-be husband was rolling in money. Which had nothing to do with why she was marrying him. But he could have bought her a small island with a phone call. Instead, he’d given her the one thing she wanted more in the world except for marrying him.
She loved him with all her heart.
“How did you manage to find them?” Bliss had looked for years and even in her line of work, she hadn’t been able to find her father and sister. The Marshal system for witness protection had destroyed the records and buried their whereabouts.
“I wondered the same,” her dad said slowly. “I looked for years.”
Bliss’s heart stopped again. “You…looked for me?”
“Of course I did, sweetheart.” He wrapped one beefy arm around her neck. “I never stopped looking for you.”
Tears brimmed in her eyes. All those years she’d been alone, believing that her father and sister hadn’t wanted her. And the past few weeks believing Jack was getting ready to leave her.
“It wasn’t easy,” Jack finally answered. “I had a bunch of different contacts combing through years of reports, hoping that I could somehow find a link.”
He did this for her. Her throat tightened and speech was impossible.
When she didn’t say anything, Jack said, “It finally paid off.”
The organ music was getting louder.
Jack cocked his head. “You want me to go tell the staff to chill out for a few minutes?”
Bliss realized all their friends, the employees at the chapel and even her husband-to-be were waiting for her.
She shook her head slowly and pivoted to face her father. “How do you feel about walking me down the aisle?”
Her father’s eyes brimmed with happiness and the slight sheen of tears. “You’re making me the happiest father in the world.”
Jack held out his hand for Bliss’s sister. “Come on, I’ll take you into the chapel.”
Her father crooked his arm, and with a thankful exhale, Bliss threaded her hand through his arm and clung tightly to his elbow.
They walked to the doorway of the chapel in a slow measured pace. When the door opened, every eye turned toward her on her father’s arm as Bliss waited for the traditional march.
“You ready?” her daddy asked.
Bliss smiled tremulously and nodded. “I have everything I’ve ever wanted.”
The Reception
Jack hugged his wife, a thrill swept over him, his wife, in his arms as they swayed to the husky crooning from Chad Kroeger singing “How You Remind Me.” It might be a little unconventional but it fit them.
Bliss was a vision in a long column of silky material that clung to her curves, accenting her stunning body. But as beautiful she was on the outside, Jack was grateful for her forgiving and generous nature.
She had more than forgiven him for the way he’d handled his gift. He rested his cheek against her hair and breathed in, her jasmine perfume filled his senses. She was his, and he was hers.
She understood him, loved him, in spite of his quirks. As evidenced by her wedding gift to him. A giant bucket was set up in the corner for their wedding gifts. Bliss had requested donations to the various charities who were going to help reintegrate the trafficked women rather than presents.
How had he ever gotten so lucky?
Jack tightened his arms around his wife and surveyed the room.
Jess and Colin were huddled together in the corner talking intimately. Colin had settled in to living in the States. They were still living with Shelley, but he had a feeling that was going to change soon, especially if Ric ended up moving part-time to Monterey.
“I don’t see Shel and Ric.” Jesus, he hoped he didn’t find them in the coat closet. Again.
Bliss laughed softly. “Pretty sure I saw them heading for the bride room.”
Jack shook his head. Jess and Colin were definitely going to be moving out. Fast.
His gaze skimmed over to the bridal party table. Riley was bent over Di as if shielding her from the world around them. His big scarred palm rested over her belly as he whispered something in her ear. A soft, uncharacteristically sweet smile softened her face and her blue eyes sparkled.
It was the most content he’d ever seen his brother.
And finally his gaze moved to the other table of family across the room. John and Rissa were watching the first dance, not touching but the bond between them was palpable. And Jack was thankful that John had had enough fire to hunt down the manwhore. If he hadn’t, they would have never met. “Some days I think I should thank my father.”
Bliss smoothed her hand over his shoulder, her attempt at comfort. “You definitely have a un
ique family.”
“I’m giving John a share of the company.” He didn’t think she’d care, but now that they were married, and damn did he love that, he supposed he should clue Bliss in on financial decisions.
“I figured you would.” There was nothing but approval in her gaze.
Life now surpassed his vision when he’d made the decision to form Global Humanitarian Relief and Stone Consulting and bring his siblings all together. It had been a dream, the business founded in great principles, but the family piece had been more fantasy than practicality. They’d definitely had their ups and downs, but now the result of those seeds was growing and getting bigger and better than he’d ever even imagined.
He swung Bliss around, considered the clutch of employees from Adams-Larsen at the other table. Marsh Adams was conspicuously absent again. Bliss’s father and sister were sitting with Jill Larsen, Kita Kim and Viktor Kuznets.
Con and Ava sat at the round table next to the dais. Con was playing with Ava’s fingers as they chatted with Maria, who had come out of her shell in the past few weeks. Having a hand in catching the people responsible for kidnapping her and her friends all those years ago agreed with her.
“What do you think about Maria going to work for Adams-Larsen?”
Bliss tilted her head back. “Such a sweet talker.”
Jack blushed. Actually blushed. But he couldn’t help it. “I’d just like to see her settled…and happy.”
A smile curved Bliss’s face. “You want to take care of her.”
Jack blustered. “I’m just trying to make sure she’s got a future.”
“It’s a trait I really admire.” She bussed his lips. “It’s…sweet.”
“Sweet?” There was a hint of outrage in his tone. “I am not sweet.”
“Don’t worry, big guy.” Bliss pressed another kiss to his mouth. “It will be our secret.”
Whatever. He was not sweet.
“So?” he asked belligerently.
“I think it’s a great idea.”
Jack nodded. One down. But really, they could talk business another day.
