by Kira Ward
“So it’s true. You’re really a Waterston?”
I stepped in front of her and held out my hand. “Hi. I’m Major Rutherford Waterston.”
Her eyebrows rose, but she didn’t take my hand.
“Why are you telling me now?”
“Because it kind of explains this,” I said, gesturing toward the rather large helicopter that was sitting just on the other side of the tarmac.
Her eyes widened as she took it in, surprise etched in every line of her face. And then she seemed to wobble a little bit. I grabbed her arm and she moved close to me, taking strength from my nearness.
“That…what…where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
I slid my arm around her waist and led the way to the helicopter. As soon as we boarded, the pilot started the engines and all speech ceased to be possible. Sloane clung to my hand as we took off, her eyes glued to the window beside her head. When the Golden Gate Bridge came into view, she pressed her hand to her mouth.
I pulled her close so that my lips were against her ear. When I first suggested the ride, the pilot has said we should wear helmets and speak through a mic system provided through the helicopter’s radio. But I wanted it to be private. So I spoke directly into her ear and hoped she heard everything I had to say.
“I love you, Sloane,” I said, deciding that starting with the basics was the best way to go. “I think I fell in love with you when you accused me of keying your car. I just didn’t realize how deep my feelings went until you disappeared from my life, and I couldn’t function. I need you. I need you with me, I need you in my life even if it’s to accuse me of things I didn’t do.”
She laughed, tears running down her cheeks again.
“I love you,” I said again. “And whatever happened—”
“A girl called your phone. Called you Major Waterston and sounded like she knew so much more about you than I did.”
I groaned, feeling like an idiot for not having put it together sooner. “She’s just an old high school—”
Sloane pressed her fingers to my lips. “It doesn’t matter,” she said softly.
I took a small jeweler’s box out of my pocket and sat it on her knee. “I had it all planned out. The helicopter trip, a candle light dinner, a nice hotel suite…”
She looked away, her eyes moving to the bridge down below us.
“I said I wanted to see the Golden Gate Bridge.”
“And I wanted to make it happen for you. I just wanted it to happen a few days sooner, but you ran away.”
She shook her head. “You’re too good to me.”
My heart sank a little. I was afraid that was her way of shooting me down. She picked up the box and ran her fingers over the outside of it, but she didn’t open it. She didn’t seem even the tiniest bit curious what the ring inside looked like.
“I have a secret, too.”
I almost didn’t hear her over the noise of the helicopter. I wished I hadn’t.
“Are you seeing someone else?”
She looked up, clearly startled at the suggestion. “Of course not. I’m just pregnant.”
Damn!
Why hadn’t I seen it? It was so obvious, me and my stupidity, forgetting the condom almost every time we were together. And she was so tired. She stopped drinking, she fell asleep at eight o’clock in the evening…I should have known.
But then, maybe I had, deep down. It just didn’t matter. I knew she was what I wanted. A pregnancy was just the icing on the cake.
“Then I guess we should pick a date soon… if you’ll have me.”
She stared at me a long moment. Then she threw her arms around me, laughing and crying all at the same time. We nearly lost the ring, but there weren’t many places for it to go after it rolled off her lap. In a matter of seconds, it was snug on her finger and she was in my arms. She wasn’t going anywhere.
We got married in a small, civil ceremony a month later, two weeks after her parents. Her father wasn’t thrilled to learn he was going to be a grandfather, but her mother was and so was mine. Not only to be a grandmother, but to welcome Sloane to the family and to have me back into the fold.
Now that I had a wife and a child to take care of, taking over the family company just seemed like the natural thing to do. When I sat behind my father’s desk, I no longer felt the disdain that I felt about being near my father’s things, being near my father’s space. I felt the pride and desire to provide a stable future for my family, which is what I imagined my father felt when he was still alive.
After a lot of convincing, I talked Sloane into inviting Kyle to the wedding. Sure enough, he came around and even shook my hand at the ceremony. I could see the sadness in his eyes—he was clearly still in love with Sloane—but he had realized his mistakes and was able to salvage what was left of their friendship.
Jack also came around. I’m sure he was disappointed that he’d lost his wingman, but when he saw Sloane in a white dress and found out that we were pregnant, he was 100% supportive of the marriage.
I was finally able to put it all behind me. The pain of the war, the loss of my friend, the loss of my father. Even Anna became a distant memory. I never knew what my life was missing until I had a family of my own and a love that seemed to transcended reality.
And when she came, our beautiful daughter… Well, let’s just say there were now two beautiful redheads who had me wrapped around their little fingers.
The End
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Going to her best friend's wedding was bittersweet. Rachel was happy to see her closest companion taking the next step in life, but deep down she was envious of the love that Sam and Franco shared. She had always thought that they'd get married at the same time, but no one could ever hold her interest long enough...
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Not only was he a billionaire who had women falling head-over-heels for him daily, Sam would never approve of her closest friend dating a member of the family. She had no choice but to keep her feelings a secret or risk ruining their friendship.
But there was something in his emerald eyes, the way they pierced into her during the wedding ceremony, the way they lingered a little too long. Was he trying to tell her something? Would it be wrong to have just one... little... taste?
Chapter 1
“Shit!” Rachel muttered under her breath.
She tripped over the bottom edge of her dress bag when she looked down at her smartphone, trying to figure out where she was supposed to meet her ride. Samantha had told her—more than once—that there would be a car waiting for her when she arrived in Tuscany.
“I’m sorry, babe,” she had said, “but we’ve got to meet with the wedding planner first-thing Friday morning. I won’t be able to get away, but Josh can send the driver that he’s using to pick up Franco’s family…”
Well, if it was good enough for the groom’s family, how could Rachel argue?
Besides, she didn’t care how she got there. She just wanted to see her friend again.
It had been six years since they’d been in the same room together. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, and Skype, they had managed to keep in touch—even planned a huge chunk of the wedding that way—but it wasn’t the same.
Rachel missed her best friend. She missed her smile, the feel of her hugs, the little things that words can never express. And she was thrilled to death that she was getting married.
She turned a corner, thinking she might ask someone for directions, but it seemed that everyone spoke Italian. Everyone. Even the people coming off the same flight as Rachel.
She hefted her purse higher up on her shoulder, hooked the dress bag over her other, and continued her walk toward baggage claim. She hadn’t checked anything; she had managed to pack most of her stuff in her carryon, but she vaguely remembered Sam saying the car would meet her outside one of the doors near the baggage carousels.
Funny how a couple of small town, Texas girls found themselves in Italy. Rachel could remember lying across her bed, Sam beside her, giggling as they dreamed of their future lives. They would get married at the same time and have their children at the same time so they would always have each other to play with. In their childhood fantasies they assumed they would always be together, would always do everything together.
Reality was never as perfect as dreams.
Rachel took an internship at a small newspaper in Oregon after graduation before starting school at Northwestern in the fall. She promised Sam that she would be back, but by the time she was able to fulfill that promise Sam was already gone. Always an amazing artist, she was on her way to Paris to practice her craft by the time Rachel could join her in the Big Apple.
It had been that way ever since. Each time one of them was in New York, Chicago, or Paris, the other had just left for one reason or another. Their busy schedules just never seemed to synch up.
That was what made this wedding so special.
And it wasn’t just the two of them. There was a whole group: Sam and Rachel, Frankie and Elena, Georgia and Jessie. Best friends since kindergarten. They would all be here.
And then there was Josh.
Just the thought of him made Rachel misstep.
Josh was Sam’s older brother. It was cliché, Rachel knew that. Half the girls in their small high school had a crush on him—heck, half the girls in the junior high, too. Rachel remembered Sam complaining about it, about how the other girls befriended her just so they could get close to him.
The thing was…Rachel had been in love with him since she was fourteen.
She tried to pretend that it wasn’t true. She hid her feelings, even though each time she saw him her heart would beat a little bit faster and her brain worked a little slower. Rachel occasionally—well, maybe more often than occasionally—went over to Sam’s house just so that she could be near Josh, so they could have long conversations about everything from music to popular movies to gossip about the teachers at their school. He was handsome, dark hair and amazing green eyes, charming and athletic and… amazingly successful now.
Josh was worth billions. At least, that’s how Sam explained it, and Rachel had no reason to doubt her.
Rachel did know, thanks to social media, that he ran a massive corpor
ation that had its fingers in a dozen different pies. He bought and sold struggling businesses. He bought all kinds of real estate. He built businesses, usually technology-based, but he owned a chain of restaurants and the rights to a software program that was used extensively on the internet. He did so many things, even Sam couldn’t keep it all straight. It was like his touch was golden; everything he did was highly successful.
Rachel had always known he would do well, but she hadn’t expected that it would happen quite this fast. He was only twenty-eight, after all. It made her feel less than successful in her own career. Her only accomplishment was publishing a couple of books. Who cared about that in the long run?
Well, beside her million or so readers.
Rachel stopped as she approached the half dozen baggage claim carousels and checked her smartphone again. Door 5. Of course, door 5 was a dozen yards further down the concourse.
How could an airport be so crowded this early in the morning?
It was then she realized it was closer to lunch time. She’d forgotten about the six hour time difference, but when she stepped out the door and the sun burned light into her retina, she suddenly remembered.
She paused for a moment, her muscles tense and her breathing a little rough from her long walk, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the sudden light. When they did, she realized a man had come to stand in front of her.
