Hooter lands on my arm softly and looks me in eye.
He’s saying, where the hell is my treat?
I clear my throat and look behind me at Hemi who is watching the owl with awe. He then realizes I’m waiting for him, so he hurriedly reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of chicken, giving it to me so I can place it on the glove. Hooter immediately gobbles it up.
“I wish I’d known this before I signed up for best man duties,” Hemi grumbles and everyone laughs.
I then reach down for Hooter’s legs where a satin pouch has been tied on with blue ribbons that match Valerie’s bouquet.
I give the pouch to the minister and then coax Hooter to take flight again. He soars back down the aisle and onto Liam’s arm. A few people clap.
“I know that was quite the show,” the minister says with a laugh. “But wait until they say I do.”
He takes the rings out of the pouch, while Hemi takes the glove back from me.
“Valerie,” the minister says to her. “Will you take Padraig to be your husband, love, honor and cherish him now and forevermore. Do you promise to always stay by his side, in sickness and in health, and keep saying yes to new adventures?”
She giggles, surprised at that addition to the vows that I had the minister slip in there earlier today. Her smile is wide and beaming and her beauty takes my breath away.
This is it.
“I do,” she says, radiating so much happiness and love that I think everyone in the garden can feel it.
“Repeat after me,” he says to her, handing her the ring. “With this ring, I thee wed.”
She slips the ring on my finger and we both take a second to admire it. Silver, with Celtic scrolls, it suits me to a tee. “With this ring, I thee wed,” she repeats.
“And you Padraig,” the minister says to me. “Will you take Valerie to be your wife, love, honor and cherish her now and forevermore. Do you promise to always stand by her side, in sickness and in health, and keep saying yes to new adventures?”
I’m grinning like a bloody eejit. “Yes. Yes, I do. I do.”
Valerie practically jumps, she’s so excited and giddy. The feeling is mutual.
With trembling hands I take the ring from the minister as he says, “Repeat after me, with this ring, I thee wed.”
“With this ring, I thee wed,” I say and slip the ring over her finger, snug against her engagement ring. There it is. A symbol of us and our love right beside a symbol of my mother and father’s love.
They don’t fit flush but they are close enough.
“Padraig and Valerie,” the minister announces to us joyously. “May you live happily ever after. By the power vested in me by our saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ and the Republic of Ireland, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss the bride.”
My smile is frozen on my face. I don’t think I’ll ever stop feeling this way.
We did it.
We said yes.
I grab her face in my hands and kiss her fiercely. I kiss her with all I have, to the point where I might be messing up her hairdo but I don’t care.
She smiles against my lips and whispers, “I love you, Padraig.”
“I love ye, Valerie,” I tell her, pulling back and taking my first real look at her as my wife.
This is the life I’d always wanted.
I grab onto her hand, give it a squeeze and then we walk down the aisle, everyone on their feet and throwing white confetti into the air so it falls down around us like snow, much like the first night we met.
VALERIE
“I want to pose with the owl next,” Sandra whines, as we sit on the low stone wall in the front of the B&B, watching as Hooter McGavin perches on Padraig’s arm, white gauntlet and all, with Hemi, Alistair and the Major gathered around him. It’s quite the dashing scene and I’m starting to think Hooter is getting more attention at this wedding than Padraig and I are.
“No,” Angie says, sipping from her glass of champagne and pointing it at Hemi. “You want to pose with that Jason Momoa wannabe.”
“He’s not a wannabe,” Sandra hisses at her, smacking Angie on the arm and causing her champagne to splash out of the glass. “He’s just perfect. And I don’t want to pose with him. I want to climb him like a fucking tree.”
“You’ll get your chance soon enough when the bridal parties get their photos together,” I tell her, taking a sip of my champagne. “And anyway, I thought you were dating that actor.”
“What actor?” she frowns.
“I don’t know. The one from your show.”
“You watch my show?”
I shrug. “When I’m bored.” But I’m smiling.
Sandra is moving up in the world. Her character was written off her other show and now she has a big part in an HBO comedy series as a moody teenager, which is funny since Sandra is in her mid-twenties. She died her hair back to dark brown to get the part and it worked.
“No, we aren’t dating,” she says with an aggravated sigh. “You know, men in the film business are assholes.”
“We just call them arseholes over here,” I say.
“Okay,” the photographer calls out to us. “Let’s get some pictures of the bridal party with the owl.”
“Yes!” Sandra says, jumping to her feet, her blue strapless dress billowing behind her as she goes over to Padraig and the groomsmen.
Angie rolls her eyes and gets up. “This bird better not shit on me.”
“Owl shit is good luck in Ireland,” I tell her.
“You’re joking,” she says to me after a moment.
I shrug and laugh. “I don’t know, it feels like everything is good luck here.”
She pauses and gives me a proud look. “You’ve come a long way, Val. I’m not surprised that things are only going to get better for you. You know you deserve it, don’t you?”
I nod. “I know.”
She then looks over to our parents who are walking down the driveway toward us, my mom holding onto Tabitha’s hand. She was our flower girl at the start of the ceremony.
Angie adds, “No matter what they say, remember to believe that.” Then she goes to grab Tabitha’s hand and join the photoshoot where her daughter is immediately enchanted by the owl.
I smile at my parents as they approach. My mother has been on her best behaviour, though I’m not sure how long that will last, but my father has been keeping her in line and so far she’s stayed away from the champagne, which helps.
“When is it our turn?” my father says, sounding a lot like Sandra did earlier. “You know, it’s so rare that I get dressed up like this anymore. I want the photos to catch me in my prime.”
“Oh, you are far beyond your prime, dear,” my mother says to him.
But my father just laughs. “If that’s true, what does that make you?”
She rolls her eyes and gives me a sweet smile. “It was a beautiful ceremony dear. I couldn’t help but cry. Everyone was saying how beautiful you look.” I pause, waiting for her to contradict them. “And they were right. I’ve never seen you look so beautiful, so happy. And that dress fits you like a dream.”
“Thank you,” I say, getting teary-eyed at the compliment. “I am happy.”
“I know,” she says. Then she frowns. “But then that owl came out and gave me such a fright. You know those things carry diseases right? They eat vermin.”
“The owl has a clean bill of health,” I assure her, just as Padraig walks over and gestures to the photoshoot. Sandra has the gauntlet on and is posing with Hemi and Hooter McGavin.
“They need the parents,” Padraig says. “I’ll go get Nan.”
“I’m right here, for feck’s sake,” Agnes says, appearing before us and dressed like the Queen of England, complete with pink pillbox hat. “I’ve been here the whole time, what’s wrong with ye?”
“You look so marvelous,” my mother says to her sweetly.
Agnes frowns at her. “I know I do.”
Padraig comes to
me and kisses me on the cheek and takes my hand. “Come on.” He leads me across the lawn where we take pictures with everyone until Hooter has decided he’s had enough and lands on Agnes’s hat where he refuses to leave. She has to walk with him on her like that all the way to the mews to put him away.
By the time the sun is setting and dinner has been served and the reception is in full-swing, with everyone is drunk and happy and dancing, the magic of the evening is finally settling in.
I’m married.
I can’t believe it.
“Is this wedding everything you thought it would be?” Padraig murmurs into my ear as we sway to the music, slow dancing.
“Yes,” I tell him. I pull back and smile up at his handsome face. My husband. “It was everything and more. The wedding I dreamed of when I was a kid, complete with the owl.”
“Really?”
I shrug. “I was a big fan of the movie Labyrinth and I’d often pretend I was going to marry the Goblin King, who was part owl.”
“Big Bowie fan, huh.”
“No, just a fan of the bad boy,” I tell him. “Until I realized what I really needed was a good man. Just like you.”
The song then changes to Sinead O’ Connor’s “Nothing Compares To You.” It’s Sandra’s favorite song. Like, growing up, she was obsessed with it and often threatened my mother by saying she wanted to shave her head like Sinead. I automatically look through the crowd for her and spot her talking with Angie, clapping her hands together excitedly.
Then Angie points to Hemi and says something to Sandra. Sandra nods, throws her shoulders back and her tits out and marches across the floor to where Hemi is standing with his teammates. Next thing you know, the two of them are heading onto the dancefloor.
“She sure works fast,” Padraig says with a chuckle, watching the scene along with me.
“She knows what she wants and I don’t think poor Hemi is going to have a say in it,” I laugh.
“Judging from the way he’s holding her, I really don’t think the bugger minds.” He nods at them and I notice Hemi’s grip is very tight around her and very close to her ass.
I smirk. “Well, I’m placing bets on those two. Thank god they aren’t staying here tonight, I’m sure we’d find them screwing all over the place.”
“Speaking of screwing,” Padraig says with a cheeky grin. “I’ve been telling my cock to behave from the moment I saw ye in that dress. Don’t think I can control him anymore.”
He presses his very large, hard erection against me, practically grinding it against my dress.
A flush of heat simultaneously flares up on my cheeks and between my legs.
“You tease,” I tell him, pressing my body back against his.
“Not teasing, darlin’,” he whispers into my ear. “I just want to get my cock inside ye as your husband. I want to fuck my wife for the first time and I want to fuck her good.”
Oh, sweet Jesus, am I ever turned on right now. We haven’t had sex for a few days because of the wedding and the stress of it all but now I can hardly contain myself. His words stroked my desire from embers into flames.
His hands slip down over my ass, giving it a hefty squeeze.
“Padraig,” I chide him but I’m giggling. “My parents probably saw that.”
He looks up over my shoulder. “No, your father is dancing with Angie and your mother is dancing with the Major. And us, well, I think we need to quit dancing and find a quiet place where I can make you scream my name.”
I gulp. Okay. This is totally happening.
“What do ye say?” he asks, pulling back to look at me with so much love and lust and want in his eyes.
“You know I’ll say yes,” I tell him. “I’ll always say yes to you. To new adventures and beyond.”
He kisses me and then grabs my hand.
“Okay then, come on,” he says.
He leads me away from the tents of the dance floor and into the woods behind the field.
“You know we have a bed in the cottage, right?” I whisper as we disappear from the crowd and into the shadows of the trees. The ends of my dress are gathered in my hands but at least I’m wearing white Converse on my feet.
“Which is used as a staging area and has people milling about in it.” He stops and presses me back against the smooth bark of a birch tree. “Besides, this is where we first told each other that we loved each other. Seems only right to consummate that love here. And maybe I’ll tell ye again.”
He brushes a strand of hair of my face, the red catching the gold of the sunset beyond the trees. “I love ye, Valerie. I’ll love ye till the end and beyond.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “I love you, too.”
I wrap my hands behind his neck and he places a searing kiss on my lips. “Ye don’t mind if your dress gets a little roughed up, do ye?” he murmurs.
“You know I’ll take anything you can give me,” I tell him as he starts kissing my neck, sending flutters down my back, while he bunches up my dress around my waist.
“Then I’ll give ye everything I’ve got,” he says. “Always.”
“And forever?”
“Always and forever, mo chuisle mo chroi.”
The pulse of his heart.
THE END
(and they did live happily ever after)
Afterword
Thank you all so much for reading My Life in Shambles!
Reviews of this book and others are much appreciated and make my author world go around!
If you’re wanting to check out any of my other romances, I have too many to list, but here are some of my favourites (and all are available on Kindle Unlimited):
Start here, with my Nordic Royals series (all standalone!)
- THE SWEDISH PRINCE
- THE WILD HEIR
- A NORDIC KING
And if you like age gaps and forbidden romance, try:
- BEFORE I EVER MET YOU ( young single mom falls for her father’s best friend)
- LOVE IN ENGLISH (the ultimate forbidden romance with the sexiest Spanish soccer star ever)
Like best friends to lovers?
- BAD AT LOVE (a quirky friends-to-lovers romance)
- THE PACT (two best friends agree to marry each other by the time they’re thirty)
Hot sexy Canadians? Start with Wild Card…
- THE NORTH RIDGE SERIES (A trilogy about three rugged mountain men from Canada with very dangerous and thrilling jobs and the women who love them)
-> If you want to connect with me, you can always find me on Instagram (where I post travel photos, fashion, teasers, etc, IG IS MY LIFE and the easiest place to find me online)
-> or in my Facebook Group (we’re a fun bunch and would love to have you join)
-> Otherwise, feel free to signup for my mailing list (it comes once a month) and Bookbub alerts!
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
Acknowledgments
This book was a long time coming and an exercise between “what if” and “even if” and I have a lot of people to thank. First of all, I want to thank my lovely readers and bloggers who have waited patiently for this book. I hope Padraig and Valerie (and Nan!) were worth the wait! If they weren’t, I’ll beat you with a wooden spoon! But really, thank you for being so, so supportive, especially my Anti-Heroes for always cheering me on.
I need to thank my beta readers, Sarah Sentz, Heather Pollock, Sarah Symonds, Becky Barney, Renery Gatpayat, Imani Blake, Pavlina Michou and Nina Decker. Thank you for all your help with this, it was invaluable! I especially want to thank the always lovely L.H. Cosway for helping me with all to do with Ireland (in case you didn’t know, she’s Irish and also one of my favorite authors), as well as Marika Nespoli. For my MS research, Dan Campbell you are an inspiration, thank you and Casey for reading!
I have the world’s best bookstagram team too (you know who you are!) and seriously, don’t bookstagrammers and bloggers make an author’s world go round? I sure think so! What you do is so importan
t and special to us!
I’ll also thank the usual suspects: Sandra Cortez, K.A. Tucker and R.K Lilley for your hand-holding, Nina Grinstead, Chanpreet Singh, and everyone at Social Butterfly PR. Nina, you are my rockstar, don’t forget it.
Hang Le, this cover is probably my favorite and I have no idea how we are going to top it (but I am game to try!). Laura Helseth, I’m not-so secretly glad you cried, ye hoor, and I’m sorry about the ellipsis…(ha). Kara Malinczak, you’re the best! Thank you for working your butt off on it!
Of course, I have to thank my parents for giving me the gift of a dysfunctional family from which to draw all my inspiration from (though they’re much better than Val’s, don’t worry)—we may not fit flush, but we fit close enough and I love you.
Finally, Scott … I literally can’t do this job without you and I’ll always tell you I love you more. You and Bruce are the best parts of my life, even if Bruce gets the zoomies when I’m trying to write. Thank you for being the “brilliant” in my life.
About the Author
Karina Halle, a former travel writer and music journalist, is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of The Pact, A Nordic King, and Sins & Needles, as well as fifty other wild and romantic reads. She, her husband, and their adopted pit bull live in a rain forest on an island off British Columbia, where they operate a B&B that’s perfect for writers’ retreats. In the winter, you can often find them in California or on their beloved island of Kauai, soaking up as much sun (and getting as much inspiration) as possible. For more information, visit www.authorkarinahalle.com/books.
Also by karina halle
Contemporary Romances
Love, in English
Love, in Spanish
Where Sea Meets Sky (from Atria Books)
Racing the Sun (from Atria Books)
My Life in Shambles: A Novel Page 29
