“You say this from—”
“Personal experience.”
He laughed. He didn’t feel emotionally drunk any longer. He didn’t feel unbalanced or conflicted either. He had a new kind of clarity. “I stand warned.”
“I thought I did at the time. Took a good ten minutes to put the damn thing back together after it collapsed and I’ve got two black toenails.”
Owen laughed. “Bet that cooled things down.”
Reid inclined his head in a way that told him he and Zarley had found a safer place to get each other off.
“I need to find my girl.” He couldn’t see Cara and they were starting to serve the appetizer.
“Tell her you can’t live without her.”
He scanned the tables, the group at the other edge of the dance floor to where he and Reid stood. “Something like that.”
Reid nudged Owen’s arm and jerked his chin, and there she was, standing with one of her host family moms listening intently to something Brooke was saying. He stopped a waiter, motioned for him to hang ten and gulped an iced water, returning the glass to the tray, and in the second he’d looked away from Cara, she’d gone. Shit. She can’t have gone far.
He spent the next fifteen frustrating minutes looking for her, including making the trek upstairs to her darkened studio workroom before it occurred to him she didn’t want to be found and that drunk feeling from earlier careened into the horror of a hangover. He returned downstairs and there was still no sign of her, but as he was about to take his seat beside her empty one at their table, she found him.
The warmth of her hand on his back. “Can I see you privately for a minute?”
He excused himself from Brooke and Kuch, while Cara yanked on his hand, half of him reluctant to turn and look at her now she was found for fear of what her expression would tell him.
She led him back across the dance floor, the fringe on her dress kicking, the strong muscles in the back of her legs flexing as she dragged him along. When he thought she’d take him upstairs, she jagged sideways and he realized they were backstage. It was dark, it felt a long way from everyone though he could still hear the DJ’s tunes. Ominously, Matt Simon’s “Catch and Release,” with its refrain about telling secrets and remembering how to love. It was a long way from the chicken dance, but that was the frantic rhythm galloping in his heart.
She drew him into what was a small dressing room, lit only by lightbulbs around a mirror over a counter, and dropped his hand, stepping back with a look on her face that fucking terrified him. “Cara,” he needed to stop her saying it. Stop her releasing him because he’d be a desperate man without her and he wasn’t sure of his ability to talk her out of it if she got the words out first.
“No,” She shook her head. “Don’t say anything. I need to . . .” She was visibly stressed and couldn’t stand still, shifting from foot to foot and twisting her hands together. “Oh, this is hard.”
“Then don’t say it.”
She blinked twice. “What do you think I’m going to say?”
“I think you’re going to break up with me. You’re going to tell me we’ve got incompatible long-term plans or some other shit that I don’t want to hear you say.”
She folded her arms across her body, the action hitching her dress higher on her legs. “I wasn’t—”
“You’re going to tell me it’s for my own good, that you’re releasing me, that you love me but it’s not enough and you don’t want me to be disappointed or grow to hate you, and the longer we stay together, the harder it will be to separate.”
“Owen—”
“You’ll say it, and it will be thoughtful and sensible and you will put me on my fucking knees.”
Her hands slapped against her thighs in exasperation. “That’s exactly where I want you.”
He looked away, a bitter taste in his mouth. He’d brought this on himself after all. “We don’t need to do this now. It’s a wedding, for God’s sake.”
“We do need to do it now because Dad is out there.”
His head swung back around so sharply he felt his neck crack. “You want your dad to personally know we’re over.”
“No,” she flung an arm out, finger pointing, “I want you to go out there and ask permission to marry me because he’d like that so much, and then I want you to come back in here and get on your knee and ask me because I’m going to say yes.”
He sagged against the wall. “You what?”
“I’m scared, but I’m not breaking up with you. I don’t know if I want kids, Owen.” She took a step toward him. “I don’t know if I will ever want them for myself. But I don’t have to decide that now.” Her heels made her taller than usual but the brim of her hat hid her face so he had to duck his head to read her because it wasn’t enough to hear her words. “I do know that I would have kids for you, if that’s what you want in a few years’ time, and I’d be the best damn mother I can be because I love you, and I know I can love a child.”
“You’re not breaking up with me.” It bore repeating, like in that conflict resolution technique where you reframed your opposition’s problem so they knew they were understood. “You’re not going to sideline me for my own good.”
She tipped her chin up and frowned. “Not unless you want to break up with me.”
He reached for her, hands to her shoulders. “Jesus, no. Cara.”
She nodded, her hat shading her face again. “Good, because I thought we could get married tonight.”
He didn’t have a technique for understanding that. “Say that again,” he said, scanning her face for any sign of monkey business. All he got was a pretty flush that told him nothing definite but loosened the knot in his chest.
“I’d like to get married tonight.”
“Hold on. Two nights ago I thought . . . and today . . .” He gave up looking for the logic of this and went with the feeling. “You want to get married now.”
“It seems like a good solution.” She dipped her head to stop his scrutiny as her confidence took a slide. “I understand if it’s not what you want.”
“It’s not.” But it was the finest slice of perfection away from what he did want.
She pulled away, taking a step back. “You don’t want to marry me anymore?”
He didn’t chase her; he’d already caught her. He wanted her to welcome that captivity, a sunbather worshipping the sting of heat. “I don’t want you to have to rush into this. I want you to have the kind of wedding you’ve dreamed of.”
Her hands went to her hat. “This is it.” She pulled it off and her hair frizzed out around her face. “You and me. Working it out together. That’s what you said we’d do but I didn’t trust it, and then I watched Dev and Sarina get married and I know they nearly didn’t work it out. But if they can, we can. I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather work things out with than you.”
Cara was the acrobat in the family, but Owen was having trouble knowing the right way up. His head spun. He might well have been upside down from the rush of blood.
“Except that your family isn’t here, and I don’t know if that’s important to you.”
“I don’t need the rest of my family here. Brooke is enough of a witness. But we don’t have a license, we’ll have to do it again for it to be legal.”
Slapping her hat against her leg, she said, “So you’ll do it?”
“Let me get this straight.” He sat on the countertop framed by the light globes because who knew joy could affect you like gravity, make you dizzy with the possibilities. “You want me to go out there and ask your dad for permission to marry you and then come back here and get on my knee and propose to you.”
“That’s what I want.” A slap of the hat for emphasis as if she was in a Western and she was doggone gonna see him wed to her or else run him out of town.
“I don’t have a ring for you. I mean, I have one, but not with me.”
She Frizbeed the hat to him. “You have a ring for me?”
He caught it with one hand and put it on the counter. “I’ve had it since that day I came here to get you back.”
“Owen.” Both hands up to cover her mouth, all the strings on her dress dancing.
“And you want Ro to marry us tonight in front of our friends, your family and Brooke.”
“Yes, please.”
She launched herself at him and he caught her to his chest, standing her between his legs. “You don’t have a wedding dress, Starburst.”
“You don’t like this dress?” She shimmied her shoulders, “Because the way you were looking at my legs during the ceremony made me fidget so badly.”
He skimmed his hands down her body and up under her dress to cup her ass, feeling the silk of her skin and fabric, but not much of it, under his hands. Impossible to imagine he’d ever grow tired of touching her. “I like this dress a lot, but you’re a designer. Don’t you want a big bride dress?”
“I want to go home and sleep in our bed as husband and wife because that’s the only important thing.” She tapped him on the nose. “Didn’t you hear what Ro said. It’s not about the wedding, it’s about the commitment.”
He caught her hand and held it against his chest. “She’d also said it couldn’t be all about kids. You need to know that right before I was convinced you were about to dump me, I had an epiphany,” if a slap to the head could be called an awakening, “worked out I could be happy without having my own kids.”
“You did?”
She leaned into him and he put his hands to her witchy hair and pulled it back from her face. “I’m cooking some new plans. None of them involve you needing to be pregnant. But it seems like you did some thinking too.”
He got a solemn nod, and he brought their faces close. “I flipped a coin,” she said.
“You what?” That put a dead stop to the kiss he’d angled to take. He pulled back to look at her.
“Heads, I’d let you go. Tails, I’d tie you down like an anchor.”
“All I’m worth to you is a coin toss?” She might have been having him on, because while there was no smile to guide him, her eyes were alight with fun.
“It landed on heads. I wanted to barf.”
“You decided we should get married instead?”
She draped her arms over his shoulder. “I decided we were in love and that came first and the rest we could work out, because I trust you’d never ask me to do anything I didn’t want to do.”
Because he wanted that to be absolutely explicit, he said, “You will never have to have a kid if you don’t want to.”
“You’re sure you can live with that?”
It was only at the beginning of the week he’d hesitated about this, now he knew they’d come to the same conclusion. This was the right-side up. There was no winner or loser, there was no fifty-fifty in this, there was only wanting the absolute best for each other. “One thousand percent.”
Now he got the kiss; sweeter for the delay, softer for the agonizing that led to it. A shy, fresh kiss that apologized and promised and prepared for the celebrations.
“You really tossed a coin?” he said, taking his lips to her jaw, to her cheek.
“I was freaking out, okay.” She’d planted her knees either side of his hips on the counter. He had an arm at her back but less to steady her than himself. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“And what time was this?”
“Right after I nearly flooded the room with tears watching you stand by Sarina.”
Epiphanies came in pairs apparently, a double-sided coin. “How did I get so lucky to have you persevere with me?”
“I was a geeky virgin, remember.”
“Never geeky. We were virgin together.” He’d relearned everything he thought he knew about intimacy with her. “But getting married tonight, you’re sure?” He’d have been ecstatic about a formal engagement.
“Remember when I backflipped off the desk and—”
He shuddered. “Never forgetting how much that scared me.”
“I know it seemed sudden but it was exactly what I needed. A Yurchenco Loop to get me started on a new life. I want that loop again now. I want to backflip into life with you.”
He had to hope her father saw it the same way. He commandeered a kiss for luck, for the last time as a single man, and went off to organize his wedding. Must’ve known something when he’d insisted on the new suit. On the way to find Darren Douglas, he got lucky and found Zarley standing with Ro. He made Zarley hoot with delight and Ro look slightly panicked.
“You don’t have a license and I don’t have any words prepared,” Ro said.
“We only need the ones to make it a wedding,” he responded.
Next stop Brooke, who quit thinking he was joking after the third time he repeated himself. “Dad is going to be pissed this isn’t happening at one of his casinos so he can turn it into a business event.” She hugged him, then pumped her fist. “I love it.”
Cara’s father saw him coming across the room and must’ve read determination in his body language, excusing himself from the table to meet Owen on the edge of the dance floor. “Something on your mind?” he asked.
No point taking the long way around. “I’d like to marry your daughter, sir.”
“I know that.” Darren laughed. “I’ve known that for a while now. Not the first time it’s come up.”
“I’d like to marry her tonight.”
Darren rocked back on his heels. “Jesus F. Christ. Is she pregnant?”
“No.”
“So it’s not like for this other couple, a shotgun thing.”
“No.”
“Then where’s the fire?”
Owen put his hand over his chest. “Here.”
Darren Douglas gave him a look like he was mentally imbalanced, but the imbalance was all Cara and what she did to upend Owen’s expectations about happiness. “Did she send you out here?”
“She did.” It was the best instruction he’d ever received.
His father-in-law-to-be rubbed at his jaw. “Keep her safe and happy. Help her be her best.”
“I can do that.”
“I can’t ask for more. But I want to walk her down the—” he waved a hand, taking in the room, “whatever.”
They shook on it and Owen made his way back to Cara, stopping by Sarina’s table. He knelt at her side. “Happy?”
She beamed at him. “Hope it’s not something they put in the food.”
“I have a favor to ask.” She quirked her head. “Will you be my groom’s maid?”
“Will I . . . Oh, Owen. Yes, yes, of course.”
He adjusted a flower in her hair. “Ro will—” He didn’t get the rest of the sentence out because Sarina’s hug said it all.
Last stop on his way to Cara was Reid. Zarley had obviously told him what the deal was. “This is—” Reid started.
“Sudden?”
“Fucking brilliant.” Reid thumped him on the back. “You might need this.” He put a small red leather box in Owen’s hand. The same red leather box that lived in his underwear drawer.
“How did you get this?”
“Educated guess. That’s where I keep the ring I got Zarley.”
“No, I mean, how did you get in my house? Why did you even think to?”
Reid shrugged. “Took a gamble. Security code on your alarm is the date we started Plus. That window from your back garden needs a new latch.”
“You broke a window and ransacked my house because you took a gamble I might want to marry Cara tonight.”
“Got a problem with that?”
He should have a problem with that. It was a lunatic thing to do. “What were you going to do if we didn’t want a wedding?”
“I left the window open and Sammy is no guard dog.”
He had the ring he’d had made for Cara. He had her father’s permission and Cara waiting for him to get on his knee and tell her how much he loved her. So what they were doing this backwards. He didn’t have a pr
oblem in the world.
And in the dressing room when he went to his knee, and Cara promptly sat on it and didn’t let him get a word out for the hot kisses she laid on him, he had zero complaints.
It took Zarley arriving and shoving him outside the dressing room to recognize the issue he did have. He had the girl and the ring and the celebrant but he didn’t have a wedding night planned. Five minutes later he had a laughing Dev on the case with Christopher standing by to sort out the details, and his credit card would pick up the slack. A private jet, a Caribbean island, a spot of shopping to pick up what they needed. One of those times being wealthy and well-connected was super convenient.
When Ro announced there was a second impromptu wedding, the guests erupted into applause. Zarley’s excellent DJ played Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me” as Darren walked Cara to his side. She’d ditched the hat and her hair was bundled up with jewels and feathers. But it was her smile that was the standout feature. He’d helped put that smile on her face and it counted as one of his greatest achievements.
“Ready?” she said, taking his hand.
From the moment he’d kissed her he’d known she was under his skin. She was the action movie of his life. “Yippee ki yay.”
Sarina stood on his right. The best groom’s maid and friend a man could have. Zarley stood on Cara’s. He took Cara’s hand and when Ro prompted him, he turned fully to her and the hearts in her eyes sent his pulse into overdrive.
Marriage wasn’t winners and losers; it wasn’t odds and evens or a well-placed bet. It wasn’t fortune or fashion or fate. It was loving one person above all others and wanting what was best for them, knowing that together you could make that happen, and being committed to see it through.
He told Cara she’d taught him to believe in happiness again, that nothing was worth more to him than her fairness, kindness and humor, than her bravery and determination, and that he’d honor, respect, encourage, love and enjoy her for the rest of his life.
She didn’t cry till after she’d promised to annoy, comfort, excite, support and curl in his arms every night. Until she said I love you and I do, and she was looking at the surprise of the diamond ring on her hand.
Shotgun Wedding (Sidelined #4) Page 11
