Meant To Be Family (Meant To Be Series Book 3)

by Amelia Foster

  Anger licked through her veins. He’d disappeared more than an hour ago while she was trying to get things at least mostly organized. She’d been slightly irritated that he hadn’t stuck around to help but assumed he was lost in his studio, setting up his supplies.

  She loved his art, but she hated his inability to focus at times.

  “Connor, I—” She blinked three times, holding her eyes shut for several seconds on the last one, but the image in front of her didn’t change.

  He grinned and crossed the room, circling his arms around her waist. “I thought about trying to at least get the bed made so you wouldn’t have to, but…you hate the way I make the bed.”

  Kelsey’s cheeks flamed, and she buried her face in his shirt. “I don’t hate it. It just isn’t the way I do it.”

  Connor pressed his lips to the crown of her head. “I love your obsessive tendencies, trust me, but the last thing I want is you pissed off at me because you can’t bounce a quarter off the sheets.” He waved his hand over to the inflatable mattress he set up in one of the guest rooms. The temporary bed was surrounded on three sides by dozens of candles. “Hopefully you won’t be as particular if we are just in a sleeping bag on this thing.”

  She laughed and leaned back within his embrace. “You are pretty damn creative there, Picasso, but you realize we could’ve just camped out on the couch.”

  “Hell no,” he scoffed. “As much as I loved keeping you close, the thought of the entire night with my ankles dangling over the arm does not sound appealing.”

  Kelsey hummed and stepped away from him. She tugged her top over her head and slid her shorts off before laying down on the inflatable mattress. “I’m not really sure this is conducive to celebrating the first night in our new home, though.”

  His eyes widened seconds before he peeled his own shirt off and joined her. “You just said I’m creative, right? I’m pretty damn sure I can make this work for us.” He spent a blissfully impossible length of time proving the truth in his words before falling into an undoubtedly exhausted sleep.

  Gingerly, she rolled away and turned to plant her feet on the floor before lifting off the low bed. She silently crossed to the adjoining bathroom, clicking the door closed behind her softly. Her teeth sank into her hand as she doubled over from the cramp low in her abdomen, assaulting her body like a dull blade. She gripped the edge of the sink and dropped to her knees on the floor.

  In the morning, she’d make the appointment she kept avoiding. Every month the pain was increasing, and now, as the tears streaked down her face, she knew it was to a point she couldn’t live with denial and hope that it would pass.

  She took deep breaths in through her nose and out through her mouth as she waited for the agonizing waves to subside…something that seemed to take longer this time than ever before.

  After a countless eternity, she finally was able to stand. She splashed cold water on her face and regarded her pale reflection in the mirror.

  Maybe I should tell him.

  She shook her head before adding another spray of the icy liquid. No. There was no sense in worrying Connor over something that could well be nothing. She’d make an appointment and talk to the doctor first.

  Once the sharp stabs dissolved into a dull ache that was manageable enough to walk, she padded back to the inflatable bed and climbed in beside him.

  He threw an arm across her abdomen, and she winced in the darkness. “You okay?” His voice was sleep roughened and sexy as hell.

  She gripped his forearm firmly. “No worries, Picasso. Go back to sleep.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-Five

  Connor

  Present Day

  He stared at Kelsey, propped against the arm on the other side of the couch. The reality of her back in their home, back in his arms, just plain back was far better than the hundreds of times he’d laid in bed and imagined it.

  He was acting like a damn lovesick puppy. But he really didn’t even care.

  She looked up from the book she was reading and tilted her head, a smile teasing the corners of her mouth. “What?”

  “What what?” he taunted with a wink. “The most beautiful creature on the earth is sitting right in front of me. That is definitely cause for staring. Not the mention the fact that she is going to be my wife at some point in the very near future.”

  Kelsey’s teeth sank into her lower lip. “About that…”

  Connor waited for nerves to take hold of his gut, but nothing happened. As much as he hated the time they spent apart and even though he was still a little hurt by the fact that she felt, even for a moment, that there was something she couldn’t tell him, he had to admit the separation and subsequent reconciliation somehow helped. Their relationship was deeper, more open, more honest, and their connection even more pure than it had been before.

  All of that was made better by the fact that her damn ring was back where it belonged. On her hand. “About what, Kels?”

  “How…attached are you to the idea of a wedding?”

  He narrowed his gaze at her. “What do you mean? You’re the one who pored over the magazines and spent hours scrolling through websites and,” he shuddered, “dragging me to that damn wedding expo bullshit.”

  Kelsey reached behind her and pulled out the pillow from behind her back and threw it at him. “It was not bullshit.” At his raucous bark of laughter, she dissolved into giggles. “Okay, maybe the eighties theme wedding display was slightly over the top, but it wasn’t a complete waste.”

  Connor rolled his eyes. “Point being, you’re asking me how important a big, elaborate wedding is to me, but you’re the one who was damn near giddy over all the wedding plans. Big and little.” He shrugged. “At the end of the day, I just need to know you’re my wife. How we get there? That’s honestly irrelevant to me.”

  She fidgeted with her fingers in her lap, her gaze fixated on them before she finally lifted her eyes to meet his. “After…” she waved her hands in a sweeping gesture, “I left, and your accident, and…everything.” She drew her brows together and turned down her lips. “Nothing else seems to be as important.”

  “What are you saying, Kels?”

  Without a word, she grabbed her phone off the coffee table, swiped the screen a few times, and then handed the device to him. “I’m saying we call your parents and my parents and pick the Asheville Area Gardens package. Monday sounds like a fabulous day for an anniversary, don’t you think?”

  A tidal wave of swirling and conflicting emotions washed over Connor as he stared at the site she’d pulled up. He ran his fingers through his hair and scratched the back of his neck. “You want to elope? Seriously?”

  In what seemed like a single move, she took her phone back, set it on the table, and straddled his lap. “I want you. I want to be married to you.” Her lower lip quivered, and she linked her hands behind his neck. “If I can find one positive in the hell that has been the past seven months, it’s that I got perspective. Much, much, much-needed perspective.”

  He gripped her waist tightly, his throat clogging with the swell of emotion her words created. He cleared it three times before he trusted his voice to speak. “Got some insight you care to share there, gorgeous?”

  Kelsey quirked her lips in a soft smile. “We are a family. Just as we are. Even if we never have kids, we are a complete family.” She dipped her chin and looked up at him through lowered lashes. “And I was limiting us by believing that unless I gave birth, we couldn’t have children.”

  His own grin spreading across his face, Connor moved to flip her on her back on the couch, her legs tightening around his waist. “Now, Kels, we are finally on the same page.”

  She groaned as he dropped his lips to her neck. “Are you seriously going to tell me that eloping and adoption are like a turn on for you?”

  He braced himself on his arms on either side of her and stared down at her for several long moments. “I’m telling you that you back in my life, back in my arms,
and back in our damned house where you belong is the biggest turn on ever.” He sucked the pulse point at the base of her throat softly before sliding his mouth to her ear. “Everything else is just gravy, gorgeous.”

  “I think you’re trying to make up for lost time.” Her words ended in a gasp as he rocked his hips forward gingerly. “Damn, Connor, we are supposed to be talking…”

  He pulled his head back and offered her a grin. “What’s wrong, Kels? Suddenly you can’t multi-task?” He walked his fingers up her abdomen under her shirt and cupped one satin-covered globe. “In case I haven’t mentioned it, or there is any question at all,” he ground against her again to emphasize his statement, “I think eloping is a damn fine idea. And I think we should start practicing for the honeymoon now.”

  Kelsey slid her hands under his shirt and tugged it over his head, tossing it across the room. “Haven’t the past six years of our relationship been enough?”

  He mirrored her movement and sucked in a breath at the sight of her clad only in a bra from the waist up. An image that would never fail to render him speechless, even fifty years from now. “Never enough, gorgeous. Never.”

  Soon all conscious thought fled his body, and the only thing he could think, see, or feel was Kelsey. All plans temporarily put on hold, he spent several hours exploring the body he knew so well and affirming with every action that the depth of his devotion was sincere and could withstand all the bumps they’d endured along the way.

  ***

  Kelsey

  Present Day

  “How in the world are you so calm? I was an absolute disaster on my wedding day.”

  Kelsey smiled as her mother fussed with her hair more. She grabbed the older woman’s hands from the auburn hair Lydia had styled three different ways and was bent on beginning a fourth, completely unnecessary, attempt on. “That’s easy. It’s Connor. And my hair is fine.”

  Her mother’s identical hazel eyes captured hers in the mirror attached to the vanity where she sat finishing her makeup. “Not a single doubt?”

  She opened her mouth to answer before abruptly closing it. For months, worry had plagued her. Fears that selfless and devoted Connor would stand by her side out of some sort of misguided sense of loyalty rather than love when he learned of her diagnosis had been the propelling force behind her exit. She’d allowed concern to break them apart.

  Twisting the band on her finger, she smiled down at the piece of jewelry she’d been so lost without. No matter how hard she searched her heart and mind now, not a single twinge remained.

  As much as seeing the scars on his legs still tore at her, as much as her heart ached every time he limped, and as much as she continued to focus on getting Connor back to a full recovery, she couldn’t help but be grateful. The accident had been a horrific one that left the boy she fell in love with changed physically and mentally.

  But it also changed her.

  Her perspective had done a jarring one-eighty. Nearly as soon as the ring had been back on her fingers, she had known within herself that waiting for an elaborate event wasn’t what she needed or wanted any longer. All that mattered now was to have the commitment they already had between them legally recognized.

  Lydia swiped at an invisible speck on the long-sleeved lace ivory dress Kelsey wore. “You still should have given your mother just a little longer to find an appropriate outfit to wear.”

  Kelsey reached down and slid on the spindly heels that matched the color of the dress to perfection. “True, but you managed to look stunning as always, and…you aren’t the bride.” She stood and turned back and forth in front of the mirror before facing her mother. “How do I look?”

  A single tear trailed down her mother’s cheek. “Radiant. Even if you pulled this entire thing together in twenty-four hours, you still managed to look perfect.”

  Emotion overwhelmed her, and she pulled her mother in for a brief, tight hug before snatching the peacoat off the bed, nearly identical in tone to the dress, and sliding it on. Just as she’d fixed the last button in place, a tap at the door preceded her father’s entrance by moments.

  He sucked in a deep breath. “You look beautiful, sweetie.”

  She crossed the room, lifted slightly onto her toes, and planted a soft kiss to his cheek. “Ready to give me away?”

  “Never,” he scoffed.

  Kelsey slid her hand into the crook of his arm. “Sorry, Daddy, we’re already scheduled.” She rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “And probably should pick up our marriage license before then.”

  Her mother collected her own purse and coat. “I’m thrilled to know you two planned this so well.” Humored sarcasm dripped from every word. “We will meet you there as soon as you take care of that little detail.”

  With mere moments to spare, she and Connor raced in and out of the courthouse, license in hand, and met both sets of parents as well as the justice of the peace in the center of the Asheville garden.

  His mother held his face in silence, tears tracking down her face, and his father clapped him on the back. Connor shot Kelsey a wink before dropping a kiss onto his mother’s cheek.

  “Out of the four of you, Wyatt is the last one I expected to have a big wedding with all the bells and whistles,” Michael Carlisle grumbled with a grin that mirrored his son’s.

  Connor gave his mother a firm squeeze before releasing her and pulling Kelsey to his side. “You’ve got to be kidding me with that one. Wyatt loves being the center of attention. I’m just surprised he didn’t want it bigger.”

  “Shut up.” Tracy Carlisle smacked Connor’s arm lightly. “We barely talked him out of the fireworks. If he thinks he has a reputation to live up to, their first anniversary will wind up being broadcast on every major television network.”

  The laughter faded into reverence as the gray-haired magistrate cleared his throat and brought the small service into order, rubbing his hands in the chilly March air. Connor recited the vows the older man prompted and slid her wedding band in place beside the engagement ring. Kelsey repeated the same action and affirmation with a smile that didn’t dim even as several tears trailed down her face.

  Before the justice of the peace could speak the words, Connor leaned down and kissed her softly, sealing the generic promises. His pulled his lips back to hover just above hers. “I love you, Kelsey Donovan-Carlisle.”

  Contentment overwhelmed every other emotion as she claimed his mouth again.

  Chapter

  Twenty-Six

  Connor

  Nine Months Earlier

  Thundering from down the hall brought Connor out of the creative-induced stupor he found himself in while putting the finishing touches on his latest painting. He frowned and set the palette aside before venturing out of his studio to locate the source of the loud noises.

  He found it in the laundry room. A giant ball of fury all wrapped up in his five-foot-two-inch fiancée was taking it out on the basket of dirty clothes she was roughly shoving in the front loading washer. “Hey Kels…you okay?”

  She lifted her reddened face for a moment and glared at him before returning to the task with even more vigor.

  Connor put a hand on her arm to still her movements. “Hey, Kels, talk to me. What’s wrong?”

  Kelsey raised her arm to shake him free. “What the hell do you think is wrong, Connor?”

  A brief mental tally ran through his mind. He tried to pinpoint what it could possibly be, and other than the unknown of what happened at work, not a single thing occurred to him. They’d just come off an amazing weekend with a picnic in the park and a concert under the stars. Tension he could never completely identify that seemed to ebb and flow between them had been at an all-time low.

  Until now when she practically vibrated with anger.

  He held his hands up, palms facing her. His own irritation simmered below the surface. Normally he was impossible to engage and he nearly always kept his cool, but her attitude was testing his limits. “No, I really don’t know,
but I am certain you’ll be more than happy to share with me whatever the hell it is I’ve done now.”

  “It’s nothing that you’ve done, Connor. It’s all the things you don’t do.” She slammed the door to the washer closed and roughly turned the dial. “All the things I’ve asked, damn near begged you to help with. You remember everything that you promise you’ll change, but never actually do?”

  He rubbed his temple and closed his eyes. “Are you seriously going to pick a fight over dirty socks? Again?”

  Silence answered his slightly rhetorical question, and when he lifted his lids, his gaze landed squarely on a completely unamused Kelsey with arms folded and bare toes tapping against the hardwood floor.

  “If you really, honestly think that this is over nothing more than dirty socks, then you are the most oblivious human on the face of this planet.”

  That demolished the last filter he had. “Well then, maybe you could clue me in instead of playing this game where you hold shit in until you explode all over me and we play it on repeat, because it is getting really annoying. Kinda like your roller coaster emotions.”

  Her eyes widened, and he had the briefest moment of guilt at the hurt that flashed across her face.

  A moment that flared and fanned into an infinite maw when she covered her mouth with her hand, pushed past him, and ran out of the room. The slam of their bedroom door reverberated through the house and pulled a deep groan from him.

  Instead of trailing after her, Connor wandered into the living room and collapsed onto the couch.

  He wasn’t stupid. He knew that every couple had their ups and downs. His parents were an example of two people absolutely meant to be together. But that had come with trials and a very nearly unhappy ending for them.

  It was the reason his parents had preached the importance of second chances and fighting for the person you love. They’d lived that path.