Primrose Lane

by Debbie Mason

  Finally, the shower got under way. George and Mia sat beside the chair of honor, placing the bows from the gifts on a paper plate. Still stuck in the wall, Colleen picked up on their conversation. It sounded like Mia was telling George about her.

  Ten minutes later, when Colleen took a careful peek out of the wall, she prayed that was so. Because Ivy, who was ostensibly standing close by to refill drinks and clear away the garbage, cocked her head when George said, “Finn and Livy don’t think I know my daddy’s parents are trying to take me away, but I do.”

  Mia patted her hand. “It’s okay. We won’t let them. You’re going to be a Gallagher just like me.”

  George nodded. “Livy and Finn won’t let them take me. I heard them talking when I was playing hide-and-seek with my friend. Livy was going to give Finn a million dollars to marry her, but he said he doesn’t want the money because he cares about me and Livy.”

  “My mommy and daddy said we don’t have to worry about the manor anymore. I bet that’s because Finn’s going to tell Olivia to give the million dollars to Greystone instead of him.”

  “We’re rich, we’re rich,” the two of them said, laughing and throwing the wrapping paper in the air.

  Ivy’s face darkened, and she slunk over to the refreshment table. Colleen couldn’t see what she was doing. For Olivia’s sake, she had to take the risk. She walked out of the wall. George froze, and her eyes rounded. Colleen pressed a finger to her lips. The little girl nodded and tugged on Mia’s hand.

  They got up. George towed Mia along behind her as she followed Colleen, who pointed to Ivy. She mouthed bad juju and made devil ears behind her own head.

  Sensing she had an audience, Ivy palmed the vial she had in her hand. “Would you girls like something to drink?” she asked, smiling sweetly at Mia and George.

  Colleen shook her head and pointed at her palm and then Ivy’s.

  “No, the ghost says you’re bad.” George lifted her chin. “What’s in your hand? What are you doing?”

  The woman’s face changed. “You need help, kid. You’re seeing things. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get lost. Now. The two of you. Scat.”

  Colleen walked behind Ivy and placed her hands around her neck and mouthed Tell her to go.

  “She has her hands around your neck. She’s going to kill you if you don’t leave Greystone. She’s going to murder you dead.”

  Ivy blanched and touched her neck. Glancing from side to side, she slowly backed away and then turned and ran.

  Colleen smiled at George and gave her a thumbs-up. They made a good team. With the little girl’s help, she should be able to keep Olivia safe until she got Jasper to read the book.

  The last thing Finn expected to be doing the night before he said I do was making wedding keepsakes. It looked like his brothers felt the same. The three of them were giving him the stink eye.

  “What? I didn’t ask you to come. Your wives volunteered you,” he said to Liam and Griff, and then looked at Aidan. “And Dad volunteered you because you’re being a moody pain in the ass.”

  His brother’s black hair was long and shaggy, and he’d yet to shave his beard from his last undercover assignment. He looked as dangerous as the biker he’d been impersonating. There’d been changes in his brother’s behavior that made Finn wonder if Aidan was more like the man he’d been pretending to be than the one he remembered.

  Finn took a swallow of his beer and thought better of complaining. It was a nice night. The air was warm and fragrant, the sounds of crickets and the blinks of fireflies flitting about the yard reminding him of long-ago summer nights. The four of them were together, and that hadn’t happened in a while.

  They were sitting around the kick-ass fire table Liv had picked out while they drank beer and made up the blue glass bottle keepsakes. It wasn’t like it was a difficult job; all they had to do was add sand, a shell, and a message from him and Liv, tie some fancy ribbon called raffia, and add a thank you charm. But there were a lot of bottles and their hands were big and the work tedious, so he supposed he could understand his brothers’ death glares.

  “That’s like the pot–kettle thing, you know?” Liam said in response, Finn assumed, to him calling Aidan a moody pain in the ass.

  Griff raised an eyebrow at Liam and gave his head a slight shake before saying, “Don’t mind him. He’s been spouting this kind of crap since Mia moved back to Harmony Harbor.”

  “No, it’s not a Mia saying. It’s a GG saying. And you’re missing the point. Finn’s calling out Aidan for being moody, and he’s just as bad.” Liam pointed the blue bottle at him. “Are you getting cold feet?”

  “No, I’m not getting cold feet.” Not that he planned to share with his brothers, but he wasn’t moody; he was frustrated.

  Frustrated because he’d been sleeping in the same bed as the woman he was going to marry tomorrow and that’s the only thing he’d been doing, sleeping. Come to think of it, he’d hardly done that either.

  It was frustrating and annoying and, at least once in the night and once in the morning, extremely uncomfortable, bordering on painful, and potentially embarrassing. And apparently, Liv wasn’t having the same problem. She was sweet and relaxed and didn’t think twice about parading around in her sexy lingerie, which she got a shit ton of at her shower.

  “Really? You sound off to me,” Griff said.

  “Yeah, totally off. Actually, you know what he sounds like to me—”

  Oh no, his brother, the recently former DEA agent, read people even better than Griff, which was saying something. Finn had no intention of getting into this with them now. He needed a diversion. “Does it look like Ella Rose is coming to the wedding? Dad said Harper’s giving you the runaround.”

  “Yeah, well, her days of giving me the runaround are almost over. I just want to get myself settled here with a job and a house, and then I’m going to go after shared custody. If that’s what Ella Rosa wants.”

  “What do you mean? She thinks the sun and moon rise around you. She’s a total daddy’s girl,” Liam said, and he’d know better than both Finn and Griff did.

  “This last assignment was tough on her, on both of us. Harley says Ella Rose doesn’t want to talk to me. She’s mad at me.” He took a swig of beer and looked away.

  “You know what you need? You need to get laid,” Griff stated succinctly.

  And Finn, who had just sucked back a mouthful of beer, spewed it across the fire. His brothers shifted in their chairs to look at him. “Oh, come on, you have got to be shitting me. You haven’t—”

  “Shut up,” Finn said to Griff.

  “This is a joke, right? You and Olivia…You had to…You haven’t?”

  Finn gave Liam a keep-talking-and-die look. It didn’t stop him.

  “Okay.” Liam nodded. “Your choice of song for tomorrow is starting to make sense now.”

  “What song is he singing?” Griff asked.

  “‘Marry You’ by Bruno Mars.” Liam sang the chorus.

  “That is not the song you sing to a woman you…Holy shit, you’re not in love with her, are you?” His big brother crossed his arms. “Unless you want me to object at your wedding tomorrow, you better tell us what’s going on. And don’t even think about lying.” Griff gestured to himself and Aidan. “We’re the equivalent of human lie detectors.”

  Olivia had just come home from a last-minute fitting of her wedding dress. Finn’s brothers were gone, and she was helping him pack away the wedding keepsakes. She glanced at him as she picked up a bottle. He’d been acting strange, almost remote the past two days.

  She looked down at the black trench coat and high heels she was wearing. The man hadn’t even noticed she was dressed like a high-class hooker. She’d thought the trench coat would be a dead giveaway. She’d actually hoped he’d take the hint, and she wouldn’t have to follow through with her plan.

  He was a doctor, for goodness’ sake. Did he not know women get as sexually frustrated as men? What if she misre
ad him and that wasn’t the reason he was short with her and George this morning? She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. It was now or never. She couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Thanks for all your hard work. You guys did an awesome job. I told you DIY projects were fun.” Fig Newton, could she sound any more Pollyanna? She should just whip off her trench coat and have done with it.

  She cast him a sidelong glance, her hand moving to the belt. He caught her glance and…returned to packing his box of bottles. That wasn’t very encouraging. He was acting as moody as his brother Aidan.

  His brother whom Olivia had immediately thought of when she walked into Books and Beans yesterday. Julia had been reading and acting out Beauty and the Beast at children’s story hour. Aidan would have been perfect in the role of Beast. Although that would mean Julia would be his Belle, and that was not a match Olivia wanted to contemplate. Julia was too sweet for a man like Aidan. And she didn’t see Aidan coming out of beast mode anytime soon, if ever.

  “So, did your brothers give you a hard time?” she asked, imagining that Aidan probably did. It would explain why Finn was cranky.

  “Why? Did they say something to you? If they did, just ignore them. Especially Aidan, he’s not himself.”

  “Neither are you. You’ve been acting weird since we came back from the rehearsal. What’s wrong?” Her heart rolled over in her chest as she realized the most likely cause for his mood. “Are you getting cold feet?”

  He fit one side of the cardboard lid under the other and placed the packed box beside the back door. “No, I’m not getting cold feet.” He came to stand beside her. He didn’t look her in the eyes. He seemed intrigued with the tendril of hair that had escaped from the knot at her nape. The tips of his fingers brushed her cheek as he reached for it, gently twisting it around his finger. Then he lifted his eyes to hers. “I’m not reneging on my promise either, but I think we should renegotiate the terms of our agreement.”

  With just his fingers in her hair, the heat from his body, the smell of his cologne, he had her practically vibrating with desire, and he wanted to talk money? “The only terms we had were that I’d pay you a million dollars, but you…you want more?”

  He nodded, his mouth tipping up at the corner.

  She was glad he found it amusing, because she didn’t. A million dollars was a lot of money. “I’m not sure how I feel about that, Finn. I suppose I could give you an extra hundred thousand, but only if I gave it to a charity in your name.”

  “It’s not money I want more of. I want more of you, Liv. I can’t go another night without kissing you, touching you, making love to you. So if you’re not—”

  She glanced around the yard. “How private is it back here? Do you think Dr. Bishop can see us through the back windows?”

  “Liv, I’m a patient guy. Some might even go so far as to say laid-back, and I don’t often lose my temper, especially with a woman, a woman I’m going to marry tomorrow. But, Sweet Cheeks, I’ve gotta tell you that you’re ticking me off. I’m putting myself out there, telling you I want you, and you want to know if Doc—”

  “You are not the only one who is frustrated and ticked off, Finn Gallagher,” she said, shrugging out of her trench coat and letting it drop to her feet.

  He stared at her, his gaze moving slowly and appreciatively over her body. Her skin warmed and tingled everywhere his eyes touched. He smoothed his hand over her shoulder and down her arm; his fingers briefly touched and caressed her before moving to her waist and drawing her closer.

  “You’ve been teasing me with your barely-there nighties, so I knew you had a beautiful body, Liv. But seeing you like this, you take my breath away.” He kissed her eyelids, her nose, her cheeks, then slid his mouth to her ear. “Do you know what it was like to lie beside you without touching you?” As if to make up for lost time, his hands moved over her body. They were big and warm. His touches and caresses making her shiver with anticipation and moan with desire. “I won’t be able to get enough of you tonight, tomorrow, or the night after that and the night after that.”

  She took his face in her hands and kissed him like she’d been dying to. She was on fire. She wanted him, all of him. His body, his heart.

  “We’ve wasted so much time. We’ve been lying in bed, both of us wanting the other, too afraid to say anything, too afraid to take the risk. I’m not afraid anymore, Finn. I’m not. I love you. Tomorrow when I walk across the beach to you, I’ll be walking to the man I love. The man I want to spend the rest of my life with.”

  “God you’re beautiful, Liv, so soft, so sweet.” He brought his hands to her face and then slanted his lips over hers, kissing her passionately, deeply.

  There was no denying he wanted her. He just didn’t love her. And somehow, she had to find a way to be okay with the man she loved wanting to be friends with her. A friend with amazing benefits that would probably make her love him more.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  There’s a reason people say Be careful what you wish for. Finn had gotten his wish last night. Making love with the woman he was about to marry was, without a doubt, one of the best nights of his life. Except for that one moment on the patio when Liv professed her love for him. It wasn’t even a moment. It was more like a couple of seconds. Because really, how long does it take to say I love you?

  He looked down at his bare feet in the sand. He was standing under a pergola decorated with gauzy lengths of red, white, and blue fabric fastened to the poles with starfish. The sky at twilight reflected the color scheme. He wasn’t an expert on weddings. As a guest, best man, and groomsman, he’d never paid attention to the themes or decor. All he’d cared about was the food, music (something he refused to think about right now), and his date if he had one. But even he could tell that Liv had worked magic to accomplish what she had in a matter of days.

  On the wide swath of golf-course-green grass that overlooked the small private beach at Kismet Cove, red, white, and blue paper lanterns hung from wires that were attached to twenty-foot white poles to create a tentlike structure. A black chalkboard in the shape of a surfboard listed the seating arrangements, and oversized pillows at the base of each pole acted as seating for their guests. They’d be eating barbeque while watching the fireworks display.

  Just like Liv had promised, the evening would be casual and relaxed. Right down to the untucked white linen shirts and rolled-at-the-cuff chinos that he and his brothers wore. Like him, they were also shoeless and sockless. Unlike him, their feet were no doubt warm. His were frozen.

  Last night, his brothers had asked him if he had cold feet. He hadn’t then. The reason they were today was because he’d gotten his wish. He’d made love to Liv. A woman who was in love with him. Every day that they were together and he didn’t say the words in return would be like shooting an arrow into her heart. He didn’t want to hurt her; she’d been hurt enough.

  But he couldn’t open himself up to that kind of pain again. He’d made a vow to never put himself in that position. And he hadn’t. Until last night. Lying with Liv in his arms, kissing her like he dreamed of, touching her like he’d been dying to, he’d felt it. Over the past month, she’d been slowly chipping away at the barrier that covered his heart. Last night, he’d heard and felt the crack as she made her way inside.

  “Finn.” Liam nudged him.

  He looked up to see Liv on his dad’s arm, George holding his hand as they made their way to the beach. Liv wore her hair the way Finn liked it—in a sleek knot. It suited her and the wedding dress that softly hugged her willowy frame—the narrow straps sitting low on her shoulders. Simple, classy, exquisite. Other than diamond studs in her ears and the pink string bracelet George had made for her on her wrist, she didn’t wear any jewelry.

  He cleared the emotion from his throat, but his voice still came out gruff when he asked Liam, “Do you have the ring?”

  “This isn’t my first rodeo, you know.” Liam patted his pockets. “Wait a minute, I don’t have the rin
g. Miller does.”

  “Right, I forgot.” Finn looked up to see his grandmother in a pale blue pantsuit with Miller on a leash coming along the path to the beach. Liv had decided the dog should be part of the ceremony. She credited Miller with bringing them together. A sign that for Liv their friendship had turned into something more. As he’d discovered, he’d missed a few of those signs.

  His father, Liv, and George had reached the beach. His dad wore chinos and a white linen shirt like Finn and his brothers. George looked adorable in a white sundress. Liv must have given in because George had on her red light-up sneakers. It had probably been a concession to the little girl when she couldn’t wear her Sox baseball cap. Instead, she had curly blue ribbons in her dark hair and a big smile on her face. Liv had a small smile on hers. He thought it was more for her bridesmaids than for him. Because when she raised her gaze to meet his, he saw something other than happiness. She seemed nervous, unsure, and maybe just a little bit hurt.

  Liam nudged him again. “Snap out of it, bro. You’re supposed to be singing with us.”

  Singing? He glanced to his left. Aidan was playing the harmonica while giving him a what-the-hell look. Griff sang “Moon River” with the same look on his face. Finn joined his voice to Griff’s and Liam’s.

  For Liv’s sake, he was glad his brothers talked him out of singing “Marry You.” But “Moon River,” while a nice song, wouldn’t be what Liv had hoped for. It wasn’t a song that held any meaning for him or her. He hadn’t picked it; his grandmother had. He knew that Liv would want something romantic, something from his heart. But that was the one thing he couldn’t give her.

  Exactly a month from the day he married Liv, Finn realized he’d made a mistake. He was sitting in the warm, soft sand at the beach watching the sun’s rays dance across the waves and the golden-haired woman and dark-haired little girl on their surfboards a hundred yards away.