Shotgun Wedding (Sidelined #4)

by Ainslie Paton

  She took the water but looked at it as if it was out to get her. “I wasn’t ready for this.”

  He was. He sat on the floor beside her. She was pale and sweating and her hair was a mess, blue pieces stuck to her neck. “Lemon sorbet. We have some. Ana was able to keep it down. Want to try?”

  She screwed up her face and clutched her throat. “Ohhh, not dairy.”

  “Not ice cream, flavored water with sugar. It’s good.”

  “I’m so queasy.” She looked miserable, slumped on the floor, clutching at the porcelain as if it would protect her.

  He thought she was beautiful. “Or we could sit here till you feel better.”

  “You have to go to work. I’m never feeling better. Why did I think being pregnant was a good idea?”

  He contained his laughter, but not his mirth. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”

  “You got me sorbet?”

  He’d get her any combination of weird food she wanted. He’d feed her pregnancy with attention to all the nutrients she and the baby—his baby—their baby, needed. He was feeling all hang the moon, pull down the stars for her and he didn’t think he’d ever stop.

  “I think it’s safe to get you out of here.” She let him help her up, straighten her clothing and smooth her hair, wash her face and neck with a warm wet cloth. He liked that he was allowed these intimate touches he would’ve thought twice about before because they’d crossed a line that’d never needed to exist. Now her untidy hair, her clammy skin and oddly buttoned shirt were things he could attend to; was privileged to.

  “God, Dev.” She grabbed for his hand, eyes wide with that shocked WTF look again. “We’re having a baby.”

  He’d have kissed that shock into tranquility if she didn’t feel barfy, if she hadn’t just upchucked, if they weren’t standing by the unflushed toilet. “You want toothpaste?”

  That was a decision too far for her, but he went ahead and squeezed some on her toothbrush and then flushed and stood back while she brushed, rinsed, gargled.

  She looked at him in the mirror. “You don’t have to supervise me. I’ve got this.” Colgate Fresh Mint Stripe had given her back her equilibrium.

  “I should be here if you’re going to kick the bucket.”

  She spat mouthwash. “Vulture.”

  “Anything for you.”

  Eyes up to him, and the expression in them nearly put him on the tiles again. Love was the person you admired most in the world taking your knees out with a grateful look.

  “We’re really going to be together when it’s all puke and me getting whale-sized.”

  He stepped forward and threaded his hands around her middle, spread them over her flat stomach, met her eyes in the mirror. “There is nothing I want more.”

  “We already missed all the fun times.”

  He kissed her neck. “It’ll be way fun watching you waddle.”

  She tipped her head back to rest on his shoulders. “I love you.” Much better neck access which he made use of, until she said, “Are you going to tell your family or is it your intention to live a dual life?”

  Colgate had sharpened her tongue. Must’ve been the cool mint. “Are you going to agree to a wedding date?”

  She smiled. The first one of the day. That got her turned and more thoroughly kissed: forehead, cheek, lips. “We haven’t missed the fun part. It’s waiting for us.” He’d have lingered but her stomach gurgled, so he led her to the kitchen sat her at the counter and fed her lemon sorbet she kept down.

  “What kind of a wedding would it be?” she said, taking the spoon from him.

  “Fast. I don’t want to wait.” Too much waiting in this relationship.

  “Weddings take organizing.”

  “I want a legal joining, not a four-day extravaganza.”

  “Because you’re embarrassed about—”

  “No, because—”

  “It’s the Indian thing.”

  “Sarina.”

  “I didn’t think about that, that’s like a big deal.”

  “No, I’m not embarrassed about you being pre-whale, and it’s not the Indian thing. I almost lost you and I don’t want to waste a minute more not being with you.”

  “Oh.” She flushed and laughed at herself. “Okay. But if you wanted a big wedding we could wait till the baby is—”

  “No.”

  “But if—”

  “No.”

  “We’ve never talked about—”

  He grinned, this was their first argument as a proper couple. “We’re talking about it now. If I could marry you this weekend, I’d do it.”

  She grinned back. “Okay. Civil or religious? You know I’m not religious, but I—”

  “I don’t care who marries us as long as we do it as if we’re on fire.”

  She licked the back of the spoon and blinked. He felt that; throat, chest, dick. “Are you still feeling sick?”

  “Not so much.”

  “Are you trying to start something?”

  “Who me?”

  “Lick the spoon like that again and I’ll show you where else you can put your tongue.”

  She looked at the spoon. Looked at him. He’d shocked himself with that line. He didn’t even have a pet name for her yet and that was close to dirty talk.

  “We’re late for work.” She didn’t quite pull off innocent. God, did she like dirty talk? He knew her so well, except where it now counted.

  “We’re having a discussion,” he said. Or maybe they were about to have sex.

  She snorted. So no to the sex. “Do you realize I’ve never thought about having a wedding?” She scraped the bowl for the last of the sorbet. He’d have to pick up a bigger tub. “What kind of a woman am I? Are you sure you want to be with a woman who has never imagined her own wedding day?”

  He took the bowl and spoon from her and rinsed them. “You’re going to need a better excuse than that.”

  “What did you imagine for yours?”

  He frowned. Like Sarina he’d never spared his own wedding any gray matter. “I never imagined I’d get to have it with you.”

  “Dev Patel, chief suck-up. I’m not taking your name.”

  He dried the bowl and spoon and put them away. “You didn’t think I was a suck-up when I put that sorbet in front of you. Never occurred to me you would change your name.”

  “Does Gallo Patel work for the baby?”

  Holy mother, he’d get to name his kid. “Patel Gallo?” He didn’t care what order their names came in.

  She closed her eyes and scrunched her face. “Are you wedded to that?”

  “Only to you.”

  There began this long, not the least bit uncomfortable period of time which might’ve been weeks, where they simply looked at each other and a gorgeous flush built on her cheeks.

  “You can’t look at me like that at work, Dev.”

  “How am I looking at you?”

  “Like you’re seeing me naked.”

  That might be NSFW, but it was hard to care. “I need to do that a whole lot more.”

  “Back at you.”

  Did they really need to leave the house today? Plus wouldn’t fall down without them.

  “So you’re not going to ride in on an elephant and I’m not going to wear a sari and henna my hands.”

  “You’d look amazing in a sari.” He’d like to see her in a sari and then take the damn thing off her.

  “But I’d feel strange. I’m going to feel strange anyway. I’m getting married.” She tugged at her shirt. She didn’t look pregnant but there were changes in her body, the way she moved; she was softer overall somehow. “We should make this a giant party, not some administrative thing or a formal affair.”

  “You know we could have a friend deputized for the day to marry us.” He’d been to a wedding where the bride’s stepfather was the deputized for the day celebrant.

  “Oh please, not Reid.” She came around the counter to him.

  “He couldn’t be tr
usted with the script. I’d end up married to a lamp or a wall or something.” They both laughed, imagining Reid as their celebrant. “Owen could do it. Or maybe someone from your family.”

  She walked into his open arms. “Or yours.”

  “We might be better off with a pro. We need a license and a venue. We need a guest list. We need to feed them.”

  Fingers sliding under the hem of his polo, she said, “Are you okay if we don’t make this a huge thing?” and for a moment he forgot they were talking about the wedding. “I need something to wear. Could we elope instead?”

  “If that’s what you want.” The huge thing was this new freedom to touch and look and speak about everything with each other without censoring the most intimate content.

  Her hand stilled. “You’d do that? Your family would hate you for it.”

  He nodded. His family was still fractured from Ana’s shock pregnancy. Telling them this news was going to be . . . interesting. “Yours would get over it, but I’d never live the ribbing down.”

  “We’re doing this then, a wedding. Holy crap, Dev, you’ll be my husband.”

  “Can’t be worse than being nauseous.”

  She dropped her forehead to his chest. “It’s making me feel light-headed. It had better be an afternoon thing.”

  “I told my mom about being in love with you.”

  “When?” mumbled into his shirt.

  “When I thought you’d had the second insemination.” So many new places he could put his hands when they stood like this; he didn’t have to stick to socially acceptable shoulders, he could stretch his hands over her butt. “When it had all gone bad between us.”

  “One day we might laugh about that.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “See, told you we hadn’t missed all the fun parts.”

  She straightened up and hung her arms around his neck. “So a wedding, huh.”

  He backed her up against the counter and kissed his answer into her neck and jaw. Made sure she felt him in her cheekbones and temples, and all along her hairline. He went slowly and she seemed to like it, pressing her body into his, one hand curled over the waistband of his pants and the other playing in his hair, so by the time he made it to her lips she was a little desperate.

  They were late to work.

  Christopher gave them the evil eye.

  Dev had missed a meeting, because he’d ignored his cell because his wife-to-be was hugging the toilet bowl, and because making out with her post-sorbet was too good to quit. Ordinarily, he’d have felt bad about that; unprofessional, discourteous, flat-out poor management. He apologized and rescheduled and forgot about it. He’d probably miss a few more meetings that way because Sarina wasn’t doing morning sickness or sorbet alone.

  He wouldn’t see her all day and that wasn’t unusual but it made him anxious. Made him think about the last two nights in her bed, how tender they’d been that first night, how worn out from the stress of the day she was. She’d only realized she was pregnant. She had to talk him out of resigning and tell him she’d screwed up and let him knock her up at the same time.

  He’d never have put her through the stress of that if he hadn’t been a bonehead, convinced she was pregnant to her donor and two-timing him with the cheese man. What an insane muddle. But in her bed that night, all the madness burned off on their skin. She’d been exhausted, falling asleep over her meal and he’d been reticent to do more than hold her, touch her skin, kiss her breathless. They had time, all the time they needed now to come together. But it didn’t go that way; gentle slipped into urgent, urgent collided with burn the house down by starting a blaze in the bed.

  And last night, when she assured him she felt fine, they skipped affectionate, scorned urgent and went straight to wild monkey sex, and the intensity of it all had made those tears fill his eyes. He’d never cried during sex before and while he didn’t want to make a habit of it, to feel what he’d experienced in that moment of being with her, knowing they’d be together for life; he didn’t regret it.

  He did regret eloping wasn’t an option his family would forgive.

  He should call Ana at least and let her know why he hadn’t been back home, except to pick up clothes. What was he going to do about Ana and her baby? Leave her in his apartment, alone? No, that wouldn’t work. He’d promised to be there for her and even though Connor had stepped up, and Mom and Rani were on the team, Ana was going to need help. He should buy a big house for the Gallo Patels and Ana could have her own Patel Gallo wing. Would that work? Share nannies and household help. There was a lot to think about. Gita was repaired but still garaged and the nondescript hire car he was driving around was cramping his style. He also had to do something about Sarina’s junk heap of a car. Declare it scrap and have it towed was the masterplan.

  And on top of that he had to organize a wedding.

  No wonder he was having trouble concentrating.

  So much so, he jumped when Reid appeared in his lab. “Where were you this morning?”

  He smiled. “Late.”

  Reid gave him his that requires further explanation, you dickhead look.

  “Fuck off.”

  Reid laughed. “Okay then.” He turned a chair around and sat on it backwards. “You’re going to be a dad.” He shook his head as if that didn’t compute. Dev knew the feeling. “Sarina is well? Says she is. But what do I know about pregnant women?”

  Reid had helped Sarina choose her sperm donor, but like Dev he’d balked at becoming one because the idea terrified him. “She has morning sickness, and—”

  “Yeah, I probably don’t want to know.”

  “Good plan. Avoid it while you can.”

  Reid gave an exaggerated shudder. “Word.”

  “I need to plan a wedding.” He googled that and up came the mother of all rabbit holes.

  “I need at least ten more points on the stock price and for the board to sanction the spend on the transformation program.”

  Did he need a wedding planner? “And your point?”

  “What would I know about weddings?”

  “Even you’ve been to one or two.” Dev had been to a dozen at least; including lavish Indian weddings, a Greek wedding that sat eight hundred for dinner, and more intimate church and beach affairs.

  “I’ve flown in a jet. Doesn’t mean I can pilot one.”

  “Smarter than you look.” Surfing wedding sites was scaring him. Weddings were a beast that required mass-scale taming and months of prep. Holy shit, the price of those ugly dresses. And he needed rings, something cool and funky for her and something easy wear for him.

  “How hard can it be? It’s a party. Food and drink, family and friends, a bunch of vows.” Trust Reid to cut the fantasy down to size. “Jesus Christ, you’re not going to do the whole Bollywood thing are you?”

  Dev eye-rolled. “No elephants and no dancing. At least not that kind of dancing.” He didn’t have the patience for a wedding that needed a project plan. “I need a license, a celebrant, a place to put everyone. I don’t want fancy, I want fast.”

  “Shotgun wedding, before she gets big.”

  “Before she changes her mind.” He palmed his face. Is that what he was doing, rushing things? That was ridiculous. It was just a ceremony with the important legal part attached. They could wait. They could plan this properly instead of dropping it on their families like a whole season of a drama you weren’t sure you wanted to watch but knew you’d binge anyway.

  Reid rocked his chair on to the back legs. “Lucky’s.”

  He looked up from his screen. “Zarley’s place. I didn’t think it was open yet.”

  “It’s not. But she wants to have a trial opening before the official one to make sure all the bugs are ironed out.”

  “What are you thinking?” If a venue fell in your lap, wasn’t that some kind of a sign? Not that he believed in signs, but he could make an exception this time.

  “That her trial opening is your wedding.”

  He’
d seen the interior designer’s video plan for Lucky’s. It was thirties glam meets elegant high-tech. And Owen had done a walk through because Cara’s design studio was upstairs in the same building, and raved about it. It could work. It was available and central. It would be private; a space they could control, unlike a restaurant or a park. It would be like a package deal elopement. “I’ll pay whatever fee Zarley needs.”

  Reid tilted the chair further and it creaked. “Wedding present. Saves me shopping.”

  “You use a service, jerk off. It’s Wednesday. Do you think I could be married on Sunday?” No way that could happen, even a decent party needed more than four days’ advance notice. But this was close friends and family, how hard could it be?

  Reid shrugged. “Can’t see why not.” He stood to leave. “I’ll go check with Zarley, but unless you hear otherwise, assume it’s a lock.”

  Married by Sunday. He liked the sound of that. No fuss, over and done with. No more wasted time. He liked the idea of waking Monday morning and holding his wife’s hair while she yacked, before he took her back to bed and hand fed her strawberry sorbet. He’d take the rest of the week off, convince Sarina to as well. They needed a hotel, a honeymoon break, two new cars and one place to live.

  Reid had left the room so Dev shouted, “Hey, I need a best man.”

  Reid came back. “Yeah?”

  “Well, you know, Owen is better looking than me.”

  “Don’t wanna get shown up at your own wedding. I can appreciate that.”

  They grinned at each other for an embarrassingly long time, then Reid said, “Zarley ever agrees to fucking marry me, I’ll return the favor. I don’t want fucking glamour boy showing me up either.”

  And God on an elephant, he was getting married on Sunday.

  FOUR

  Zarley

  He said, “Heya, Flygirl,” and Zarley nearly deleted the whole liquor order she’d been inputting with a misplaced keystroke because Reid was in her Lucky’s office in the middle of the work day looking outrageously sexy for no good reason.

  This had to be bad. “What are you doing here?” Like did he crash his career again bad because it was the middle of the day and he’d been banned from visiting until she was ready to open. But he didn’t look tense, didn’t bring fire-breathing dragons into the room with him, the temperature didn’t change, the sun was still out.