by Stacy Travis
If he didn’t remember that he didn’t want those things, I needed to tell him. “Chris, you can’t do that. You live in New York. You have a career, and you can’t just not work for six months.”
“I can.”
“It’s too big a sacrifice. I can’t let you do it.” I grabbed his hands and tried to shake some sense into him.
“It’s funny, that whole thing about sacrificing. When I decided not to do the movie, it didn’t feel like I was giving up anything. It felt like a net gain. I’d get to have balance in my life, and I’d get to have you. That makes me the big winner in that scenario.”
“No. It’s crazy. You’d be doing it for me. You can’t do this for me. You’ll hate it, and you’ll end up hating me.”
“Nikki, you gave me something I care about more than work. You gave me the chance to have balance in my life. And you gave me love.”
My brain charged off in ten directions at once—elation, fear, confusion, and elation again. “That’s a big change for you. Are you sure? You might try it for a few weeks and freak out, even though you never freak out about anything—that’s my department—but still. This is a big deal, Chris. Have you thought this through?”
He nodded and brought a finger to my lips to stop my protestations. “I’ve thought it through. I reevaluated my life choices, and what I want is to have a life with you. I’m doing this for us. And selfishly, I’m doing it for me. I’m only happy when I’m with you, so I need to be with you all the time. It’s just the way it has to be.”
I didn’t know what to say. “Chris…”
He held up a hand to stop me. Then he leaned over to deliver the king of kisses. It was a warm, commanding, hot kiss with a sweep of tongue and a dizzying bite of my lower lip. He soothed that with his tongue and left me wanting more.
“And,” he said, bending down for what I assumed was a bottle of water for himself. “I want one more thing.”
“I don’t care what it is. If I can give it to you, I will.”
He reached his hand for mine. “I want you.”
“You have me.”
“I want forever.”
“I want that too. Like, really forever.”
He laughed. “Only you have more than one version of forever. I’m going with the one that means I want you for life. Until the end of days. I want to be married to you. If… you approve,” he said, holding out a dark-blue velvet box that he’d procured as if from nowhere.
I would have thought I was all cried out after the movie, but my eyes went for bonus points with a new round of stinging tears that rolled down my cheeks. “Yes, please. I want to be with you forever. And I want to kiss you right now. A lot.”
He bent toward me and swept his lips gently across mine. It was sweet, searching, loving. “Nikki.”
“Yes?” I wanted less talk and more kissing.
“Do you want to see the ring?”
Oh my God. The ring. It hadn’t even seemed necessary to see it, because I knew I wanted him. I would have been ecstatic with a twisted, knotted cherry stem around my finger for life. “Yes, please. I’d like to see the ring,” I said calmly.
He opened the box, and I nearly went blind at the sight of the sparkling solitaire diamond in an antique setting with two small sapphires on either side. “The setting is my mom’s. She wanted you to have it. I added the diamond.”
And it was some diamond. But I focused on the other part. “You spent time with your mom?”
He nodded. “Last week. I spent the day with both of them. It was strange… but also nice.”
“Think you’ll do it again?”
He shook his head but then smiled and nodded. “I think so. She’d really like to meet you.”
“I would love to come with you. Because I love you. But if you don’t kiss me now, I’m gonna lose my mind.”
He pulled me hard against him and crushed my mouth with his, but only for a moment. Then he seemed to reconsider. “One more thing, because I don’t think I remembered to say it: I love you.”
Then he kissed me again in the dimly lit theater, with the sounds of sixty crashing police cars echoing in a beautiful serenade from the room next door.
Epilogue
Santa Monica - Two months later
Chris
“You owe me ten dollars,” Nikki said, racing down the wooden staircase in Ugg boots and a long T-shirt. I didn’t ask what had happened to her pants, because I preferred her the way she was.
She pointed out through the tall windows, where I could see drops of water on the leaves. It was raining. Not so unusual for February, but it was the first time it had rained since we’d been there..
The house really did feel like a treehouse. There was a metal awning over the kitchen window, and when the rain hit it, the sound was amplified. Looking out through the windows, it felt like we were in a warm, safe oasis in the forest, even though I knew that if we walked along the street and down a hill, we’d be at the beach. It was the perfect place to live, hidden away enough that we felt normal.
Nikki made me feel incredibly lucky every day that I’d been with her—sixty-four since the night of the premiere. Yes, I liked to keep track of those kinds of things. Eventually, that number would get pretty big. I’d use a calculator if necessary.
“I’m pretty sure the bet wasn’t ten dollars.”
When we’d moved into the house, it only made sense to put a small wager on the likelihood of Nikki getting her rain days in the treehouse. It had been a bit of a drought year, so I felt like I had an unfair advantage, but I took the bet anyway.
“It wasn’t ten dollars?” she asked innocently. “I thought if you won the bet, you got to boss me around in the bedroom, but if I won, you’d give me lunch money for the crappy pizza near work.”
I walked to where she stood, looking out the windows at the glistening leaves. “Is that my shirt?” I asked, standing behind her.
“Um, maybe. It was in the laundry pile, and it looked comfy.”
She was adorable. And also incredibly sexy. I ran my hand under the hem of the shirt and put my palm on her warm stomach. When I leaned in and whispered against her neck, I felt her clench and shiver at the touch. “I’m prepared to give you whatever you want. You won the bet, fair and square. But if all you want’s ten dollars…”
She turned around to face me. Her eyes sparkled, and I caught the faint smell of plumeria from her shampoo. She put her hands against my chest and lifted her head to kiss me. “I want you to boss me around in the bedroom and I want the ten dollars.” She grinned like she’d won the lottery, which was sweet. And wrong, because I’d been winning every day since I’d met her.
“You can have anything you want. Always.”
“Well, I guess I made a sucker’s bet, then. Because I already have everything I want.”
I kissed her again, because I could never get enough, and after a few minutes with her plastered against the plate glass window, I was pretty sure we’d never make it to the bedroom.
We were pretty damn happy. We both had careers and we’d figured out a pretty good life balance.
But I still felt like I was getting the better end of the deal. Because I got her.
THE END
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About the Author
Stacy Travis writes contemporary romance novels with strong female characters and the men who love them for their badassery. When not writing, she is probably dashing about in running shoes and complaining that all roads seem to go uphill. Or she’s on the couch with a margarita. Or fangirling at a soccer game. Stacy lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two sons and a poorly-trained rescue dog who hoards socks.
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2.Sneak Peak of French Kiss, a standalone friends to lovers romance
Acknowledgments
In the immortal words of Hillary Clinton, “It takes a village.” I may work ridiculous hours—many of them during the traditional sleeping hours—to get these books out, but I couldn’t even find my morning coffee without the village.
First, Jay, Jesse and Oliver: I’ve missed some dinners, I’ve crawled into bed when the sun was coming up and I’ve thrown a few hotdogs at you rather than cooking something decent. Thank you for forgiving all of it and supporting me always. Love you three giant men.
To my beta readers, editors, proofers, givers of feedback, and supporters—Amy V., Christine, Kate, Kim, and Melanie. Amy L. and Jen T., I wish I had 50 cheerleaders of your caliber.
Alyssa, your design genius amazes me and I’m grateful for your skill and patience.
Thank you Jenn and the Social Butterfly team for expert advice, brilliant execution, and other superpowers.
Bloggers, bookstagrammers—thank you for embracing my books and exposing my writing to readers. Glad to have you in my village.
Readers: I could not do this without you. I’m grateful for every word you read, every kind review, every thoughtful click and like and comment. Love you all.
And to my fellow authors: as always, I am honored to type among you.
In Trouble with Him
Sneak Peek! Releasing in October
Chapter 1
The Wedding
Annie
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror to my right as I sat on a giant, round pouf of a chair. What I saw was a twenty-nine-year-old woman with a pile of peach silk and organza gathered from the floor and draped over one shoulder so as not to tempt fate and whatever unidentifiable germs lurked on the restroom floor. I also saw a tiara. Yup, a freaking tiara.
Nikki was to blame for that. She’d gifted them to her bridesmaids with the misguided belief that, “who doesn’t look good in a tiara?” I thought it made me look like a Disney princess who’d lost her way after escaping from the wicked queen. So I took it off. The ceremony was over, photos had been taken, and I was free to pull my tumble of dark wavy hair into a knot that would keep it out of my face.
The dress, with its layer of organza over the silk and its spaghetti straps and square neckline, that was all my doing. I’d seen the dress and loved it on the hanger, convincing myself that it would look equally good on me. For the record, I don’t have the body of a hanger, but the dress, as it turns out, looks even better with hips and other curves filling it out.
“Wear whatever you want,” Nikki had said when she asked me to be her maid of honor. At the time, we were sitting on the rooftop of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, which was my favorite place to stay when I came to LA for work. They had a cocktail with a flower floating on top that I dreamed about sometimes when I was home, drinking cheap wine in the eternal fog bank that was San Francisco.
“Seriously? That’s very un-bridey. Isn’t your moral obligation as bridezilla to force me into some hideous polyester monstrosity that will all but ensure I won’t get laid after the wedding?”
“Annie, do you want me to pick your dress?”
“No, I absolutely do not.”
“So you’re just arguing for the sake of arguing.” I hated that she was so rational. I was generally the most rational person in the room and her levelheadedness threw me off. We needed some bit of crazy, and if she was determined to breathe slowly and evenly, I felt forced to amp up the hysteria just a little bit.
“I’m just making sure you understand that according to the bridesmaid manual, I’m obligated to wear whatever horrible bushel of taffeta you send my way and smile in all the pictures with an expression that makes me look ecstatic for you, but not pretty enough to outshine you. I know this. I understand my role.”
“Where are you getting your information?” she asked, her rational brain again not understanding that there were rules about these things. Friend-torturing rules. It was the final act a maid of honor could perform to show undying devotion to her best friend.
“I’ve been in a lot of weddings,” I said. I had supplied my local thrift shop with a trove of future costumes as a result.
“Who are these women who make you wear awful dresses? Do I know them?” she asked. Nikki tossed her blonde-streaked mane of wavy brown hair over her shoulder and sipped her drink.
“They’re mostly high school friends. And when I say friends, I mean that we were friends in high school and our friendship now rests mostly on the memory of homecoming dances and pajama parties.”
“I have enough to do finding my own dress. Wear whatever you want. If you like it and feel good in it, I’ll be happy,” Nikki had said. Then she snickered at me and I knew there was a fifty-fifty chance she’d bring up the fact that I was a cheerleader in high school. Nikki held her tongue, but it didn’t matter. I knew she was picturing me skipping through the bleachers wearing fuchsia lipstick and holding pompoms.
Yes, the woman who now cringed at the patriarchal idea of young women cheering for male athletes was once a cheerleader. I grew up in a small Central California town and never questioned the idea that being a cheerleader was an important goal. I didn’t question anything back then. I rolled with whatever the people around me were doing.
I wasn’t particularly graceful but the cheerleading coach thought I was cute and would look good a short twirly skirt, standing at the top of a human pyramid. I did this for three years and went on to wear my first tiara as homecoming queen. My studies were an afterthought, but school was easy, so I got As without taking time away from my social life and some wild nights spent with homemade hooch and whatever could be done within the confines of an empty barn.
Somehow, I’d survived all that with enough leftover brains to get into Berkeley, where I embraced everything that allowed me to think for myself—philosophy, feminism, Keynesian economics, intellectualism, political determinism. I pushed right through to law school with my eye on doing important work and left my small town upbringing firmly in the past.
This was how it came to be that at the tender age of eighteen, when Nikki and I met in the dorms at Berkeley, blessed by the universe which somehow knew how much we’d need each other to be the yin to each other’s yang, we never questioned that we were going to be friends for life.
This was also how I’d come to be sitting in the well-appointed restroom at the Bel Air Hotel. The design rivaled the nicest rooms I’d ever seen, rooms whose primary use was not primping or pooping. There were metal flowers blooming from the walls and tall arched mirrors behind a series of pedestal sinks arrayed against the oval shape of the wall.
The pouf on which I sat was pulled up to a small white table equipped with perfect orchids, magnifying mirrors, tissues, and other goodies that lent themselves to self-maintenance. What I really needed wasn’t in this bathroom. It was at the bar.
But before I could go there I needed to collect my thoughts—not thoughts about my lack of romantic prospects or my lack of desire for the complications of romantic prospects, or even other stray emotional strings that generally come loose after watching a beautiful wedding. That wasn’t where my mind was.
I was trying to get my brain around moving my life to Los Angeles after ten years in the Bay Area. I knew I’d been using Nikki’s wedding as a distraction for the past month since I’d moved, and I’d allowed the bustle of physically moving and starting a job at a new law firm to occupy the rest of my brain space. And yet, it was starting to hit me that I’d co
mpletely uprooted my life and was possibly in a state of shock about the whole thing. I wasn’t even practicing in the same area of law. Now that the wedding was over, I’d need to face whatever my new life in LA had in store. I feared that instead of a mom and pop store, I’d face a monolithic, multilevel department store filled with crap.
But I loved the dress.
I’d known it from the moment I saw it on the sale rack at a cool boutique near my office in the Embarcadero. I loved that it draped and flowed. It was comfortable but it had a glamour factor.
“I love it,” Nikki said when she saw me slip into it earlier in the bridal suite.
“I’m so glad. I love it too.”
“It wasn’t what I imagined when you described it.”
“What can I say? I’m not a visual person. How would you describe this dress?”
“I’d say it had layers of silk and it shimmers when you walk and it’s a deep blush color.”
“Isn’t that what I said?”
“Annie, you said it was like a salmon colored nightgown,” she said, grimacing like that wouldn’t have been acceptable. I was actually impressed that I’d come up with such descriptive terms.
“Whatever. Deep blush? Is that even a color?”
Nikki shrugged, not in the mood to let anything bother her. In all the weddings I’d been to, I’d never seen such a happy bride, and I’d never seen her so happy as she was at the idea of marrying Chris. Those two were meant for each other, which sounds like a cliche, but in their case it was true.
