As soon as he could budge Daniel away from the woman who was talking his ear off, Shane pulled him over to a quiet area against the railing overlooking the Strip and asked him the question that had been bubbling up inside him and could no longer be contained.
Shane caught Audrey observing them as they talked.
When Shane took a break from another round of schmoozing, he found Audrey who had also paused for a glass of water. “I need to speak with you in private,” Shane whispered in her ear.
The game face she’d worn through the entire brunch disappeared.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she eked out in a constricted voice.
As she started to walk away, Shane reached out and took hold of her arm. He’d made a mistake two weeks ago. He wasn’t going to make another.
Her body winced at his touch and she froze. Then turned to face him.
“Let’s go out to the desert to watch the sunset after everything wraps up today,” he said. “Like we did that day we went to see Josefina.”
That sunset when they’d sat on the hood of his car and kissed and kissed together until darkness blanketed the mountains.
“I won’t, Shane. You said your piece two weeks ago. I can’t. You can’t.”
“I was wrong.” His hand slid up her arm.
“You weren’t wrong. You know yourself. Just like I know myself.”
“Come to the desert with me.”
“Shane, let me go. People are going to start to talk,” she surveyed the crowd. “After all the photos and the gossip.”
“We’re business partners, people are going to see us together. Come out with me later.”
“No,” she insisted. But as his mouth cracked into a tiny smile, so did hers. His spirit rose up and across every inch his body, cloaking him in a tingling aura of anticipation. That little hint of a smile told him everything he needed to know for the moment. “Audrey!” A voice from the other side of the rooftop called her. She looked over.
“I have to go.”
“Say you’ll take a drive with me, Sugar.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Say it.”
“No.”
“Say it.” His smile grew wider. Despite how much he wanted to, he knew he couldn’t kiss her now in front of all of these people. But that was sure as heck what he was going to do later. For starters.
“Okay!”
“Okay.” He beamed. “I’ll come for you at your bungalow.”
“You’re nuts, you know?”
“But that’s what you love about me, isn’t it?”
“I don’t lo—” She didn’t finish what she was saying but scrunched her face in an adorable way and hurried away.
His heart beat triple fast as he watched her go.
When the day was finally done, Shane couldn’t believe what he was about to make happen. But he prickled with excitement as he pulled out his phone. “¿Como estas, amiga?” he greeted his old friend.
After the call, the spring in his step hurried him to Audrey’s bungalow.
“Oops, not quite ready,” Audrey said by way of a hello as she opened the door.
Shane leaned in on the door and it opened farther. He presented the bag he had prepared earlier. “I made you a zucchini lemon basil loaf. Notice how I put vegetables into cake? Can I come in?”
“Of course,” she answered over her shoulder but then remembered something. “Oh, I mean, um, can you just wait outside? I’ll just be one second.”
“Huh?” he asked, having already entered and closed the door behind him. And then he saw the last thing he’d ever expect to see in her bungalow.
Him.
The cardboard cutout of him that Reg had ordered a month ago stood facing Audrey’s bed. He’d hated the darn thing but Reg had insisted on putting it up in front of the restaurant. He hadn’t seen it since, but with everything that had been going on, he hadn’t remembered to ask Reg about its whereabouts.
What on earth was it doing in Audrey’s room? Partially, he saw, it was being used for practical purposes. While he stood brooding and serious in his chef’s coat, bandanna across his forehead and holding his knife like he meant business, now he also wore Audrey’s floppy sunhat on top of his cardboard head. Several necklaces were roped around his neck. A purse with a long strap was balanced on one shoulder. Another two purses hung from the other one. And a few scarfs were tied around his waist.
Audrey’s mouth dropped open in shock when she headed toward him and saw him inspecting the cutout.
“And you said I was nuts?”
“I can explain.”
“Uh-huh, Sugar.” He grinned. “You can tell me all about it in the car.”
* * *
As Shane ushered Audrey into the Jeep, she knew her cheeks were pink from the embarrassment of his discovering the cardboard cutout.
“It was the first day I was here and I meant to bring it to my room just to get it out of the view of the public because I hated it so much,” Audrey yammered nervously as Shane cut through side streets until he got them out on the open road. “And then Reg left and I kind of forgot it was there.”
Shane glanced sideways at her with hitched eyebrows.
“I mean, before I knew it, it became part of the decor,” she continued.
“I like that I’ve gotten to see you naked every night since you’ve been here.” He smiled but straightened his focus to the road.
She wasn’t about to tell him that it wasn’t just her nude body but her naked soul that the cutout had been seeing every night. That the cardboard had become her best friend. She relied on it for feedback and for counsel; in fact, it had become her closest confidante. It never judged her, always had a sense of humor and was fiercely on her side. That cutout was good people.
Ten minutes ago, she was trying to get the cutout to talk her out of going on this ride with Shane. After all that had transpired, going out to the spot where they had shared life-altering kisses hardly seemed like a good idea.
Yet she couldn’t resist. There wasn’t anything she’d rather be doing after a hectic day of overseeing an important event and being on with everyone she encountered than driving out of the city to the tranquility of the mountains. With Shane.
Doing anything. With Shane.
“What were you and my dad talking about at the party?” she asked him.
He hesitated, started to say something but then pulled it back. “Just a question I needed to ask him.”
“About what?”
He didn’t answer.
She loved how once they left the boundaries of the city center, Nevada became vast and unknowable. It was land that held the promise of the West, of exploration and of opportunity. Something in her knew it was important to take this drive with Shane, although she couldn’t put her finger on why. Maybe it was for closure. To get them to the next phase they needed to reach in order to work together.
Silence fell upon them for a few minutes. Shane didn’t turn up the music as he usually did.
At the most unexpected moment, without taking his eyes off the road, he stated simply, “I love you.”
A flush rose across her neck. Her throat parched. A dry murmur pushed through. “I love you, too.”
Her eyes welled with tears. Her heart sputtered rather than beat. Welcome to love.
With one hand adequate to maneuver the steering wheel, Shane rested his other on Audrey’s thigh. He squeezed it gently and then left his palm there.
For the moment, they were unable to look at each other, and both watched intently as that familiar purple began to descend over the orange and yellow shades of the setting sun.
Everything that had happened between them paraded across Audrey’s mind like a slideshow.
“You couldn’t have known Melina was going to get into a
n accident,” she said after thinking about it for a long time.
“I’d upset her.”
“She was a grown woman. Who should have known better than to drive in unsafe weather conditions.”
“I had to identify her dead body. I’d never seen that much blood. I vomited.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Again the hush of the wide-open desert became the only sound between them.
“She failed you,” he finally said. “You deserved to have a caring mother.”
Audrey took in several measured breaths.
“I should have been the stronger one at the end. It would have been good for me. Given me closure.”
“You’ll be an amazing mother someday.”
“I know.”
While they both kept their eyes forward, she stretched her arm to him and ran her fingers through the jet curls at the back of his neck.
Shane pulled off the road toward the vantage point where they had watched nature’s display the first time. When they got there, two other cars were parked. Which seemed odd. That in such a full expanse of desert, two cars would also be at that very spot. Their spot.
He parked, hopped out, opened the door on her side and helped her out of the car.
A door opened on one of the other parked cars. Reg stepped out from behind the wheel. And from the passenger door Daniel emerged. Connor, Tara and Brittany exited from the backseat.
“What’s going on?” Audrey asked, stunned.
Out of the second car, Shane’s friend Josefina swung her small frame out. Audrey gave Shane a confused look.
“I asked your father at the brunch today. He said yes.”
They looked to Daniel, who was beaming. As were Connor and Tara.
Shane took something from his pocket and then went down on one knee. He held up a simple gold wedding band that glistened under the setting sun. “Audrey Girard, will you marry me?”
“Right here? Right now?”
Her first response was shock but, in a way, hadn’t she known all along that by getting in the car with him she was signing on for something?
“Yeah, right now. Will you roll the dice with me, Audrey? Can we ask Lady Luck to give our hearts a fighting chance?”
She couldn’t form words. But she could nod her head.
Yes.
Josefina approached. Audrey remembered that she was a wedding officiant.
It was happening.
Not a moment too soon. Shane was to be hers. To walk with. To laugh with. To fail with. To have and to hold.
Josefina gestured to bring everyone close. “Mijos, we gather today to celebrate the merger of Audrey and Shane.” They all giggled a little bit. “A joint venture. A collaboration. The word collaborate means to work with one with another, to coproduce, to join together...”
After the ring was on Audrey’s finger and they had shared their first kiss as man and wife, Daniel joked, “Are we working this for a publicity angle?”
Reg pulled out his phone. “Let’s take a selfie.”
Together, with the open sky and benevolent mountains behind them, they documented the moment.
“That’ll give them something to talk about,” Daniel said.
“Audrey, my wife... I like the sound of that,” Shane mused. “Where would you like to go for our honeymoon?”
“I know,” she answered big-eyed, pretending to have a brilliant idea. “How about Vegas?”
EPILOGUE
“WELCOME TO MY dining room.” Audrey’s husband said hello to guests enjoying his Midnight Cakes and Coffee service at Shane’s Table Las Vegas. Since the restaurant opened a year ago, a dinner reservation had become nearly impossible to obtain as they were fully booked months in advance.
Audrey had the idea to keep the restaurant open until the wee hours on the weekends for an experience that would let patrons who couldn’t get in for dinner indulge in Shane’s recipes from his second cookbook, Dulces Para Mi Dulce, Sweets for My Sweet. He’d created the collection with Audrey in mind, of course. The hip young crowd that was also filling up rooms at Hotel Girard Las Vegas flocked to the late-night decadence of exotic desserts.
Audrey smiled to herself as she couldn’t resist a bite of the piping hot cinnamon-flecked fried churro a waiter brought her to sample. She dipped it into the small cup of accompanying thick hot chocolate while she watched her breathtaking husband charm the entire room. Guests’ faces lit up when Shane Murphy, who had reclaimed his rightful place as one the world’s finest chefs, stopped at their table to chat.
With the kinks worked out at all of the hotels and restaurants, the Girard and Murphy families had their businesses firmly on course. Reg was back in New York at the moment, moving into a Midtown apartment with his girlfriend Brittany. And Audrey’s dad was overseeing a landscaping project at Hotel Girard Key West.
Reg and Daniel were both expected back in Vegas at the end of the month, which is when Audrey and Shane intended to share what they had thus far kept secret.
“The atole is good?” Shane took a break from his hosting duties to make sure his wife liked the rich warm chocolate she was sipping.
“Delicioso,” Audrey approved.
“How’s our little gamble?” he asked and flattened his palm against Audrey’s belly.
“I think we hit the jackpot.”
“You know, if her eyes are like yours we’re going to have to call her Honey.” Shane gave his wife a kiss. “Because you’ll always be my Sugar. And life is pretty sweet.”
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story,
check out Andrea Bolter’s debut read,
HER NEW YORK BILLIONAIRE
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Baby Surprise for the Spanish Billionaire
by Jessica Gilmore
CHAPTER ONE
ANNA GRAY CLASPED her coffee cup in both hands, stepped gingerly out onto the creaking veranda and stared around in dismay. The island resort had looked charmingly ramshackle in the purple of twilight when she’d first arrived last night, but daylight revealed a very different picture. The low, white bungalows dotted around, each in its own private grove, should have made a beautiful scene, but even the mellow sun of an early May morning couldn’t paint La Isla Marina in flattering colours.
From her vantage point Anna could see all around right to the very tip of the island. The administrative buildings, including her moth
er’s living quarters, were here at the palatial villa that marked the island’s centre point, the swimming pools, tennis courts and relaxation areas all interspersed amongst the bungalows. If she stood on her tiptoes, Anna could just see the deep blue of the sea and the friendly waving of the palms that marked the beach boundaries. It was all so very nearly idyllic.
Very nearly... Until she looked a little closer and saw the reality behind the charm; the paint peeling off the whitewashed bungalows, the green shutters battered and hanging at odd angles. La Isla Marina was known for its lush greenery and profusion of flowers, but right now it resembled a jungle, not an upmarket resort. What had happened? True, everything had been a little faded when she was last here for her abuelo’s funeral three years ago, but the hotel had still been recognisable as the idyllic magical place where she had run free every childhood summer.
The old familiar guilt prickled through her. She knew how disorganised her mother was, she should have foreseen this, not needed a tearful phone call begging her to come and help out.
The guilt intensified. It wasn’t the unusual panic in her mother’s voice that had persuaded her, it was Anna’s own need for an escape, for time to think. If she hadn’t been nearing crisis point would she have stayed in Oxford and allowed her mother to struggle on alone? She knew the answer to that. Every time they spoke her mother asked when she’d have time to come and visit, and Anna always found an excuse to put her off. Visiting La Isla Marina knowing neither grandparent would be there to greet her had been too hard to contemplate—and it wasn’t as if she and Sancia were close. Nor, she knew, did Sancia have any intention of making an effort to come and visit Anna.
No, she’d responded to her mother’s pleas for her own selfish reasons, thinking a few weeks of relaxing in the sun, away from the pressures of Oxford, were just what she needed. Her heart sank as she looked around at the wild and untamed bushes. Relaxing was the last thing she was going to be able to do.
‘Good morning, querida, how did you sleep?’
Anna turned at the sound of her mother’s voice. ‘Great, thanks. I was tired after my journey.’ She eyed her mother critically, noting the extra grey threading through Sancia Garcia’s thick dark mane, the lines around her mother’s eyes, lines which hadn’t been there three years before. ‘How are you?’
Her Las Vegas Wedding Page 16
