“Me, too,” she said, gazing at me with a dreamy look in her eyes.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked her.
Her cheeks blushed ever so slightly, and she ducked her head down. “The future.”
“Speaking of the future,” I said. “I booked our Paris trip.”
“You did?”
“We’re stopping in Italy first,” I said. “Evie and Jude suddenly decided to move up their wedding.”
Her lips curled into a half smile and her eyebrow raised. “Shotgun wedding?”
I shrugged. “He didn’t quite say, but I suspect that’s the case. That, or he wanted to nail her down before she realized she was making a horrible mistake marrying a Garner-Willoughby boy.”
“That could never be a mistake,” Sophie said coyly, slipping her finger into the corner of her mouth.
“Is that so?” I asked, leaning toward her. I could only steal a kiss as she recovered, but my mind ran rampant with all the dirty things I wanted to do to her. I tasted her candied lips and breathed in her fragrance absorbing her into every part of me. I stood up from the sofa and lifted Sophie in my arms carrying her to her bed. I crawled in next to her and pulled the covers over the top of us as she nuzzled into my arm.
“I missed this,” she said, dragging her fingertips across my arm and leaving a trail of goosebumps. “Laying with you.”
“My favorite place in the whole world,” I concurred. In all of my days, I’d never met a girl more beautiful than Sophie Salinger, inside and out. And in all those nights spent walking the neighborhood and peering into her apartment as she painted, never once did I think that girl would someday be mine.
27
SOPHIE
Four months later…
We stood in a tiny sixteenth-century church in some village in Italy I couldn’t begin to try to pronounce. Mere feet away stood Evie and Jude, hand in hand, and gazing into each other’s eyes with goofy smiles on their faces. Evie’s short shift dress with an empire waist indicated she wasn’t trying to hide the fact that she was easily six months pregnant.
I smiled admiring her gumption. She seemed like a girl who lived life in her own sweet little way.
Flanked by a leggy blonde who held her bouquet of calla lilies, Evie seemed like a girl who’d finally found her happy ending. Jude stood stoic and rigid, but his face said it all. He was in sheer heaven finally making Evie his own. I saw them whispering back and forth a bit, but I never did figure out what they were saying.
The entire ceremony was in Italian, and apparently, Evie and Jude had taken lessons in the months leading up to their big day. I nodded and smiled as I pretended to have a clue as to what the man was saying. The second they kissed, we all erupted in cheers and laughter and followed them outside the church grounds for photos. There weren’t more than ten of us total. I’d never been to such an intimate ceremony before, but it was one of the most beautiful ceremonies I’d ever witnessed.
“Want to go for a little walk?” Jamison asked me after an elegant dinner in a restaurant overlooking the Tuscan coast. I glanced over at Evie, who had tired written all over her face, and Jude who was very much drunk in love and itching to get her all to himself.
“Yeah, let’s go,” I said, scooting out from the table. We said our goodbyes to the group and headed down to the beach.
With the pale half-moon above and the velvety sand beneath our feet, we had all the makings of a romantic walk along the shore.
“This is a far cry from our city walks,” Jamison said as we slid our shoes off.
“It’s a nice change,” I agreed. “Though I must say, I’m thoroughly looking forward to walking the streets of Paree.”
“I know you are,” Jamison laughed. “Trust me. I know. I can’t wait to show you the city.”
“I want to see everything,” I mused, inhaling the warm sea breeze and tasting a hint of salt on my tongue.
“I plan on showing you everything,” Jamison said, as I felt his eyes resting on my face.
My hand flew up to his arm. “I don’t want this trip to be all about me, though. I want us to do some of the things you want to do, too.”
He smiled, kicking his feet in the sand. “Thank you.”
Jamison stopped me, pulling me into him and pressing his mouth against mine. Our lips danced, and our tongues played, his fingers running through the underside of my hair and gently resting on the base of my neck.
Running my fingers down his arm and tasting him awoke a wild stirring in me, and the only cure was him. “Let’s go back to our villa.”
We’d barely closed the door to our suite before Jamison’s hardness pressed into my hips, and his hands hastily unzipped me out of my dress. I fumbled with his zipper until I could free his cock from the constraints of his dress pants. I palmed it and felt it throb in my hand, growing bigger with each passing second. He hoisted me up, and I wrapped my legs around his hips as he carried me to the bed, his mouth kissing every exposed inch of me in the process.
Laying me gently on the bed, his hand cradling the back of my skull, his lips found mine in the dark. The heat of his body left mine as he sat up and tugged my panties down to my ankles before flinging them far across the room.
Jamison positioned himself between my thighs and wasted no time pressing himself into me as if it was the only place he ever truly felt safe. And loved.
“I love you so much, Sophie,” he whispered between hungry kisses. It never mattered how long it’d been since we last made love, Jamison always hungered for me as if he were starving.
“I love you more,” I said, rolling my eyes into the back of my head as he pistoned in and out of me making me hurt so good.
More than you could ever possibly know.
When we finished, I curled up in his arms like I always did and placed my hand on his chest as I watched it rise and fall in the dark.
“What time is it?” he asked.
I peeked over his shoulder toward the clock on the bedside table. “Just past midnight. Why?”
Jamison pulled his arm from beneath me and climbed out of bed. “Because there are certain things you shouldn’t do on other people’s wedding days.”
“Where are you going?”
His hand fished in the pocket of his dress pants pulling out a tiny box.
“What’s this?”
“Sophie,” he said, lowering himself down on one knee, “I knew since before I met you that there was something special about you. And that night we met, I knew I’d never found a more perfect soul. You saved my life, Sophie. I was dead inside, and you revived me.”
My heart raced. We’d never discussed marriage, and we barely talked about the future beyond superficial things like vacations and trips we wanted to take.
“Marry me, Sophie,” he said. It wasn’t a question. His forehead wrinkled as his ice- blue eyes glowed in the darkness of our suite. “I love you so much. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to wake up with you every morning and fall asleep next to you every night. Marry me.”
My lips danced as a million different ways to say ‘yes’ whirled around my mind, scattering my thoughts. None of them seemed to express my excitement half as much as I wanted them to, so I simply nodded over and over and over as I vaulted into his arms.
He hugged me tight as I breathed him in pulling away moments later so he could slip the sparkling gem onto my finger. In the darkness of the room, that thing caught every last ounce of light we had and lit like fire.
“I’ve wasted so many years,” he said. “Life is short.”
“And precious.”
“I don’t want to waste another year,” he said. “You’ve shown me that life can be beautiful. This has been, hands down, the best year of my life. I want a lifetime of years just like this.”
He leaned in kissing me hard.
“I never saw this coming, you know,” I whispered. “I’m still a little in shock. Excited, but shocked.”
“Someone once told me I’d do ju
st about anything to put a smile on her face,” he said. “She was right.”
Epilogue
SOPHIE
One year later…
“Morning, Alessandria,” I said to Beacon Art Gallery’s new executive assistant as I hurried into work. In the previous year, business had been good, and Mia and I were unable to keep up with the demands and our production schedules. That was when we placed an ad online, and not long after that, Alessandria Ortiz came waltzing into our life. She was a breath of fresh air and a lifesaver all wrapped into one feisty little package.
“Hey, boss lady,” she quipped, standing up to hand me a steaming cup of coffee from my favorite place. Alessandria was worth her weight in gold, and she never failed to take care of us. “It’s decaf. Don’t worry.”
I threw her an appreciative wink as I massaged an ache in my lower back. Walking to work had been a breeze in my first trimester, but as my belly began to grow, it was becoming more challenging to be on my feet all day.
“Today’s the day, right?” Mia said, breezing up from the back of the gallery. “You find out what you’re having.”
“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my swollen belly. Jamison said I was all belly, but I felt pregnant from head to toe. Several subtle kicks tickled my insides and brought a smile to my face.
“Any guesses, Mrs. Garner?” Alessandria asked.
“I dreamed it was a boy last night,” I said, sipping my decaf latte. “Jamison thinks girl.”
“It’s going to be a boy,” Mia said. “Trust me. I know these things. I’m never wrong. Ask my sisters and cousins.”
“Any names picked out?” Alessandria asked.
“Not really,” I said, scrunching my nose. “It’s hard naming babies.”
Mia shook her head and rolled her eyes in my direction. She’d been naming her future babies since she was a kid, and she’d been throwing suggestions at me left and right since the moment I told her we were expecting.
“Okay, well, I’m going to be back in the studio if you need me,” I said. “I need to get a little bit of work done before I leave for my appointment.”
Hours later, I met Jamison outside the hospital as we rushed to our appointment. In true doctor fashion, he was running late.
“Sorry,” he said, grabbing me by the hand and leading me inside. “Tried to get away as soon as I could.”
“I understand,” I said, brushing it off as I drank him in. In the summertime, Jamison shaved his face clean and kept his hair cut high and tight. His light blue eyes played off the mid-day sun perfectly, and his face was kissed with a hint of a suntan from walking to work.
He’d been offered his job back at Mercy Grace and accepted it only after confirming Dr. Whitehorn had retired, and Daphne had quit her job to run off with a doctor who had yet to find out he’d just married the devil incarnate. Though, according to Jamison, Daphne’s husband wasn’t much of a saint either. He said they were both pompous assholes who deserved each other. The second she married him, he bought out some practice in a little rinky-dink town south of Tupelo, Mississippi and they high-tailed it out of the city. I laughed when I thought of how sorely she was going to stick out and how those sweet southerners were going to eat her alive for walking around their town like she was God’s gift.
Lying on the ultrasound table, I lifted my shirt exposing the soft flesh of my bump and anticipating the sensation of warm, gooey gel to come.
“Are we finding out the sex today?” the sonographer asked.
“Yes,” we answered in unison, turning to each other and beaming.
She pressed the transducer into my lower abdomen moving it back and forth and gliding across my skin with the help of the gel. We watched intently with breaths suspended.
“Looks like we’ve got a little baby girl in there,” she said with a smile. She looked over at us. “She’s going to be a looker, I can tell you that right now.”
My eyes fixed on the screen as the technician took some screenshots and typed cute little captions across them. She printed off a few and handed them to Jamison.
“You were right,” I said, looking over at Jamison as he admired the photos.
“I’m always right,” he teased, grinning ear to ear like a proud father.
“Looks like little Jules is going to have to share her princess throne,” I joked, referring to Evie and Jude’s daughter who had been born the previous fall. Jules was adorable, one of the sweetest, happiest babies I’d ever met. With thick, dark hair and golden eyes, she was going to break a lot of hearts someday. “Mia thought for sure we were having a boy.”
Jamison softly took my hand as the technician finished our scan and entered final measurements into our file. Lifting it to his lips, he said, “Can’t wait to meet our little doll.”
We left the clinic, stopping outside before we both had to go our separate ways. Jamison palmed my belly looking down and smiling.
“She’s going to be beautiful,” he said fondly. “Just like her mother.”
“I’ve been thinking,” I said. “I wanted to run something past you.”
“What’s that?”
“Would it be okay if we named her after my sisters? Maybe Elinor Rossilyn? We could call her Ella?”
His face softened, and his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Of course. It’s perfect.”
The End
If you enjoyed book three of the Garner-Willoughby series and haven’t read the first two — click here to read the duet now!
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About the Author
Blaire Broderick is a modern-day Carrie Bradshaw (if Carrie Bradshaw had three small children, two dogs, a sitcom-dad of a husband, and lived in the suburbs far, far away from the romantic city streets of Manhattan). A daydream believer, Blaire is never without an idea in her heart or a song in her head. When she’s not busy tending to her littles, she can be found working on her next book. And when she’s not working, you just might find her curling up with a good book (or a really trashy reality show).
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Acknowledgments
I’d like to especially thank the people who made this book possible.
To my inner circle of highly talented people. You guys are the best! And a shout out to my writer’s group – my favorite virtual place to hang out and procrastinate.
Thank you to my editor, Nicki Kuzn, with Booktique Editing! Your eagle eyes and honesty are one in a million!
Shout out to Louisa Maggio with LM Book Creations! Your work is brilliant, beautiful, and definitely worth the wait!
Thanks to one of my besties, Brandi, for answering all my medical questions and for coming up with the perfect diagnosis to inflict upon my tragic hero!
Thank you to my beautiful mother, who watches my little ones so I can write three days a week. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Seriously. I love you!
Finally, thank you to my wonderful husband for keeping me in check, being patient with me, letting me ramble on and bounce ideas off you, and for believing in me when I told you about my dream. I appreciate everything you do, and nothing goes unnoticed. Love you, love you, love you.
The Promise of Everything - Garner-Willoughby Brothers Book Three Page 16
