Rainier, Heather - Their Divine Doctor, A Holiday Ménage [Divine Creek Ranch 9] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)
Page 18
“Sweetheart?”
“Hmmm,” she murmured as she listened to Duke’s heartbeat and felt Gage’s exhalations against her back.
“Will you marry us?” Duke murmured softly against her temple.
“Huh?”
“Marry us, angel. We love you so much,” Gage whispered.
Still connected intimately to both of them, her body throbbed with sudden awareness and clarity. “Marry you?”
They both breathed a deep sigh and nodded as they held her tightly. Gage reached behind Duke and revealed a velvet box. He opened it, and she gasped as the glow of the northern lights was reflected in the gold setting. The diamond solitaire flashed with green-and-white fire as the lights above suddenly flared bright for a few moments.
Duke chuckled and said, “We won’t let you go until you say yes.”
She touched a finger to the ring and then looked up into Duke’s eyes and Gage’s eyes then said, “Yes. Yes! I’ll marry you. But…”
“But what, angel?” Gage said, not as a worried question, but more of an affirmation that whatever might keep her from marrying them they would somehow overcome.
“We’ve been working our way through the bucket list. Where do you propose we get married?”
Epilogue
Late January…
To the tune of cheerful Caribbean music, Emma stepped down the narrow walkway on the arm of her father. Looking over the side of the large boat, she saw more dolphins trailing along, making their way to the stern. At the steps that gave access to the water, her father took her arm and helped her in then joined her mother on the deck of the boat with the rest of the wedding guests who were able to make the trip to Grand Cayman Island.
Duke, Gage, and Blake Gray waited for her in the water, surrounded by friendly, seemingly excited dolphins.
“I think this is the most unusual locale for any bonding ceremony I’ve officiated at, so far,” Blake said as he treaded water in his safety vest with the others.
A dolphin gently bumped him from behind and squealed. Everyone including Blake laughed at the dolphin’s impatient prompting to get the show on the road.
Duke and Gage reached out for her and drew her between them until the three of them were all before Blake. The crystalline, blue waters off Grand Cayman rippled and shimmered around them.
Blake asked, “Do you have the rings?” Emma removed their rings from the pocket in her safety vest, giggling when a dolphin tickled the bottom of her foot.
She remembered wondering what it had been like for Maya, watching as she bound her heart to her men back in August. Now she knew.
Because they were floating in the Caribbean Sea, the men were not able to kneel, but everything else went according to plan. Everyone chuckled when dolphins squealed in apparent delight as Blake declared them bound to each other.
Blake congratulated them and then left them to spend some time with each other and the dolphins before they returned to the boat where the reception was getting underway. Her immediate family, including her hearing-impaired grandmother, was all able to attend.
Emma and her men chuckled when her grandmother asked, “What kind of a wedding was that? No matron of honor and the bride kisses the best man, too? What is this world coming to?”
Emma squealed when two dolphins nudged her feet so that she actually rose on the water’s surface.
Gage said, “Looks like they want to play, angel.”
Emma replied, “They sure do!” as she rose in the water again. “So what’s next on our list?”
Duke laughed and said, “We still haven’t sung karaoke.”
Gage chuckled and said, “I still can’t believe I agreed to add that to the list. I think you’re going to do that one without me.”
Emma shook her head and replied, “Oh no, mister. We do everything on our bucket list together.”
“Okay, but can it be something besides ‘I Will Survive’ by Gloria Gaynor?”
Desiree giggled from the boat and said, “Oh! I love that song! At first I was afraid, I was petrified. Kept thinking I could never live without you by my side…”
Emma’s mom jumped in the act next, melodramatically singing, “And then I spent so many nights, thinking how you did me wrong, and I grew strong, and I learned how to get along…”
Summer took the next few lines, until finally at the chorus they were all singing along, while Emma, Duke, and Gage looked on from the water, in amazement. Some of them had even started dancing while they sang.
Gage asked, “Is your grandma doing the running man?”
Emma giggled. “I don’t know, but now you know where I got my dancing talent from.”
Next, the musicians got into the spirit of the song, and before they knew it, everyone on the boat was line dancing to “I Will Survive,” even Ace Webster, Kemp Whittier, and Emma’s grandma, who could cut a rug when she set her mind to it.
While they were all distracted, Duke and Gage drew close to Emma in the water, and Gage murmured, “So, angel, was it everything you hoped it would be?”
Emma shook her head as the music played on. “No. It’s much more than I ever expected, Gage.”
Duke pressed his lips to her temple and said, “You’re stuck with us now, sweetheart.”
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be, Duke.” She kissed them both, lingering at their lips as a sweet languor began to steal over her. Suddenly she gasped and giggled.
“Did one of the dolphins goose you? I think one nipped my butt a minute ago,” Duke said with a chuckle.
Emma shook her head. “Nope! Now I know what we have to sing at karaoke together. Sugarland’s ‘Stuck Like Glue.’ Whoa-oa, whoa-oa, stuck like glue, you and me baby we’re stuck like glue…What?” she asked. “Everyone knows that song! Come on,” she urged with a giggle as she wrapped a forearm around each man and kissed them gently one more time.
Duke slid a warm hand around her waist and kissed her throat. “You and me, baby, we’re stuck like glue.”
Gage mirrored Duke’s hold on her other side and whispered softly, “There you go making my heart beat again, heart beat again, heart beat again…”
Emma giggled, and the three of them put their heads together. She whispered, “I’d still be hiding if it wasn’t for you two…and a few friends.” She giggled as she looked toward the boat at the group still gyrating and line dancing.
THE END
WWW.HEATHERRAINIER.COM
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Heather Rainier lives and writes in South Central Texas. Her stories offer up the content of her fantasies, with autobiographical humor, triumph, and tragedy mixed in. With great pride, Heather writes erotic romances exclusively for Siren Publishing, under their Ménage Everlasting and Everlasting Classic imprints.
Heather’s love of romance fiction began as a teenager when her mom gave her copies of Kathleen Woodiwiss’s The Flame and the Flower and Bertrice Small’s Skye O’Malley. To this day she’s pretty sure that was her mom’s version of the “birds and the bees” talk.
Heather writes the type of novel she loves to read: more erotic and edgy than the mainstream, with plenty of sweet romance mixed in and a happily ever after guaranteed. Heather’s favorite type of hero is the gentle, lovable giant, but readers will discover a wide variety of heroes and alphas on the pages of her novels, from nearly perfect to very flawed. Heather hopes that readers relate to her heroines and the challenges and dilemmas they face head-on.
Heather believes that life doesn’t always present love to us in neat little sanitized packages. Sometimes we have to seize the day, live life with no regrets, forget the past, never give up, learn to trust, and dare to live, even in outrageous circumstances. Those themes are woven throughout her Divine Creek Ranch Collection, which debuted in November of 2010.
When not happily typing at her keyboard, Heather is usually busy corralling her kids, volunteering as a reading tutor, or loving on her smokin’ hot husband, who thankfully loves to cook.
&
nbsp; Also by Heather Rainer
Ménage Everlasting: Divine Creek Ranch 4:
Rosemary’s Double Delight
Everlasting Classic: Divine Creek Ranch 5: Spurs and Heels
Ménage Everlasting: Divine Creek Ranch 6: Maya’s Triple Dare
Ménage Everlasting: Divine Creek Ranch 7: Summer’s Indiscretion
Ménage Everlasting: Divine Creek Ranch 8:
Lydia’s Twin Temptation
For all other titles, please visit
www.bookstrand.com/heather-rainier
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
Table of Contents
Start