by Noelle Adams
Molly was happier. She was so much happier than she’d been six months ago, a year ago, three years ago. She hadn’t thought it would be evident to a stranger, though.
Janice’s eyes shifted then, and they focused on something behind Molly’s shoulder, something that seemed to be getting closer.
Molly turned to see Luke approaching.
He appeared as smooth, handsome, and powerful as he always did. Looking at his relaxed face and the expression in his eyes, Molly’s chest ached with tenderness, with satisfaction, with something like possession.
“He looks happier too,” Janice murmured, very softly, almost to herself, just before Luke reached them.
Molly stretched her hand out to him, and he took it as he came to stand beside her. His hand remained in hers, in a private gesture mostly hidden by Molly’s skirt, and he reached his other hand out to introduce himself to Janice.
“She knew your mother,” Molly said.
His eyes flickered over to Molly before they returned to Janice. “Did you?”
“I did.” Janice had an almost maternal expression on her face. “She was a dear friend.”
Luke didn’t respond. He looked a little stiff—not hurt or angry but like he was kind of uncomfortable and didn’t know what to say.
He’d loved his mother. He missed her still.
They talked for a few minutes about innocuous topics like how Janice had met his mother, where in the south of France she spent her time, and where Molly had gotten the lovely necklace. Then, in a lull in conversation, Janice said without segue, “I hope you don’t mind my saying, Luke, but you’ve made an excellent choice in a bride.”
Molly felt a little embarrassed, but was touched when Luke looked over at her and replied, almost matter-of-factly, “I think so too.”
Molly laughed. “Well, I did pretty well myself.”
“Of course you did,” Janice agreed, with a little laugh herself. But her eyes were serious as she turned back to Luke. “Your mama was always proud of you, dear. She would be still.”
She leaned over to kiss Luke’s cheek. Then she kissed Molly’s cheek. Then she walked away.
* * *
Molly was kind of tired when they got home from the party, but she was pleased with the evening. Luke had been quiet on the way home, but not in a bad way.
She dropped her wrap and purse on the floor of the entry hall and said, “I love my new shoes, but my feet hurt. I think I’m going to take a bath.”
Luke chuckled and grabbed her before she walked away, pulling her into a kiss. “Don’t be too long.”
She grinned at him over her shoulder as she walked down the hall to their room. It was a very good sign that he was already feeling affectionate. They’d had a busy week and hadn’t had sex since Monday.
She greatly enjoyed her bath, looking forward to what would come afterwards. She put on her robe and brushed her hair after she’d gotten out of the tub.
When she returned to the bedroom, she walked over the dresser where she’d placed her jewelry to get her wedding and engagement rings.
They weren’t there.
She frowned down at the black pearl earrings and necklace that were lying alone on the polished surface of the dresser. With a shrug, she went back into the bathroom, assuming she’d left them by the sink instead.
They weren’t there either.
Her heart began to pound in nervousness. She knew she’d had them at the cocktail party. She knew it. And surely she’d just taken them off with the rest of her jewelry before she got into the bath. She searched the entire bathroom, leaning over to check the nooks and corners of the floor, although she couldn’t imagine they would have ended up there.
Then she returned to the bedroom, growing more and more upset as she couldn’t find her rings. She checked the dresser again. Then the floor around it. Then she checked every other surface of the bedroom. Then she checked her jewelry cabinet, although she never would have put them there.
Then she pulled the dresser out from the wall and tried to peer behind it. When she couldn't see, she pulled it out even more and got on the floor to try to crawl back enough to check the floor, in case the rings had somehow slid back there.
They weren't there. They weren’t anywhere.
She had no idea how it had happened. It had been months since she was in the habit of forgetting her rings. She wouldn’t have lost them. She couldn’t have lost them.
They were precious. And not because they were so expensive.
She was almost in tears as she crawled around the bottom on the dresser, desperately searching for a glint of diamond or platinum.
“What are you doing?” a surprised voice came from behind her.
She jerked in surprise, hitting her head hard on the dresser.
Her eyes blurred as she looked up at Luke, who’d taken off his shoes, tie, and jacket and was looking absolutely scrumptious in his trousers, wrinkled dress shirt, and bare feet.
She opened her mouth to speak, but she couldn’t think of anything to say.
“What’s wrong, Molly?” Luke asked, a confused urgency in his tone when he processed her distressed expression.
A few of the tears burning in Molly’s eyes streamed down her face. “I can’t find my rings!” she admitted in almost a wail.
“Molly,” Luke began, his voice sounding strange now.
“I know!” she interrupted, “It's terrible. I don’t know what happened. I wouldn’t have lost them. I just wouldn't!” She knew she was too upset—irrationally upset—but she couldn’t seem to control her reaction. “I’d just taken them off to take a bath and—”
Her emotional explanation was broken when Luke got down on his knees with her, taking his face in his hands. “Molly,” he said, “Molly, stop.”
“But my rings—”
“You didn’t lose your rings,” he said, wiping away a couple of tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. “I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t think you’d get so upset. I shouldn’t have taken them.”
Molly stared at him, registering his face torn between guilt and anxiety, with something almost like excitement underlying it. “You have them?”
He nodded diffidently.
“But why?”
Luke’s expression reflected discomfort, and he glanced away from her for a moment, evidently trying to find the words.
“Luke?” she prompted, her earlier distress entirely vanished now and a fluttering exhilaration replacing it. They were both on their knees, facing each other on the floor, but Molly wasn’t remotely conscious of the undignified position.
It felt like something important was about to happen.
Luke cleared his throat. “I had a whole plan worked out,” he admitted. He slanted her a rueful look. “This wasn’t it.”
A flicker of amusement distracted her briefly, her sense of irony tickled by his. Rising tenderness and giddiness drowned it out, however. “A plan for what?”
“I love you, Molly,” Luke murmured, his eyes softening as they rested on her upturned face.
“I know. I love you too.”
Luke leaned down and pressed a soft kiss on her mouth.
“Luke, the rings?” she prompted, afraid that, now his plan had been interrupted, he’d feel too awkward to go through with it. He still wasn’t a man who expressed his feelings easily, even to her.
Swallowing so hard she could see it in his throat, Luke met her eyes again and began, “When I asked you to marry me before, it was a business negotiation.”
“I know. Kind of crazy, I guess, but it worked very efficiently for three years.”
“It would have been more efficient if I hadn’t been desperately in love with you for at least a year before you decided to return my feelings.”
She smiled at his dry tone. “That was your fault, for not saying anything.”
“I didn't want to scare you away.” He glanced away from her, stared at a spot on the floor. “Besides, you didn’t love me back. Yet.”
She reached out to turn his face so he was looking at her again. “I do now.”
Luke smiled. “You'd better.”
They just gazed at each other for a minute, until tenderness flooded her chest.
Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “Can I please have my rings back now?”
Luke slid his hand into his pocket. Then he reached out with his other one and picked up her left hand. “I know my rings didn’t mean that much to you before.” Before she could object to this assessment, he continued, “Because it was just a business arrangement. We’d never made an actual commitment. So I wanted to do that. Now.”
Molly stared up at him, her breath coming out in little pants and her hand starting to tremble with excitement and emotion.
Momentarily, Luke looked almost self-conscious—as if such an earnest gesture embarrassed him a little—but he pressed on. “Molly,” he murmured, “Will you marry me for real, for the rest of our lives?”
A couple more silly tears streamed down Molly’s cheeks. “Yes,” she said, her voice cracking. “Yes, of course, I will.”
Luke took the rings he’d been holding and slid them onto the ring finger of her left hand. Then he lifted her hand and kissed the rings gently. “Good. Me too.”
Molly threw her arms around his neck and hugged him as hard as she could. Then she pulled back just enough to kiss him. They kissed urgently, still kneeling awkwardly on the floor.
When Luke finally broke the kiss, his eyes were blazing with love, joy, and something like awe. But his voice was characteristically dry when he said, “Sorry this wasn’t very romantic. In my plans, it was supposed to have gone much more smoothly. And we wouldn’t have been on the floor.”
Molly couldn't help but giggle. “Don’t be silly. All of our big moments are on the floor, so this was perfect.”
Luke was smiling when he stood up and then reached down to pull her to her feet as well. He kissed her again, his mouth hungry and tender both. As they kissed, he heaved her up, and she wrapped her legs around his middle as he carried her over to their bed.
When he laid her on the mattress, she pulled him down on top of her. They kissed for a really long time, as if neither could get enough. Finally Luke’s body tightened above her, and he adjusted enough to untie her robe and gently pull it open, baring her naked body to his hot gaze.
Molly was flushed and warm. She’d been too emotional earlier to be particularly aroused, but that was changing quickly as she responded to feel of Luke’s body against hers and the tender, possessive expression on his face.
She started working on the buttons of his shirt but hadn’t completed them when he lowered his lips to one of her breasts. She arched up into his mouth, gasping in pleasure as he suckled. She moved her hands from his shirt to his head, and she held it in place as he twirled her nipple with his tongue and moved his hand to her other breast to fondle it as well.
After a minute or two, she was writhing beneath him and trying to grind her arousal against his hip.
Luke moved his mouth down her body, punctuating his ministrations with thick murmurs of, “So beautiful,” or “So sweet,” or “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Molly gasped, her heart flooded with emotion to match the flood of sensations overwhelming her body. She parted her thighs as Luke’s head lowered to her groin. Then she lifted her head and saw he just stared for a moment, taking a deep breath as though he were smelling her.
His eyes flashed with hot entitlement as they moved up to her face.
She clenched in excitement but managed to tease, “Well, are you going to do something or just stay there gloating about having gotten to third base.”
Luke burst out in surprised laughter, and the vibrations from his lingering amusement caused Molly to whimper in pleasure as he lowered his face to nuzzle her intimately.
He brought her to orgasm with his mouth and fingers. Then she tugged at his shoulders until he repositioned himself above her, and she managed to push his shirt off his shoulders so she could stroke the bare skin of his back. He kissed her deeply.
Together, they worked on his pants until he was as naked as she was. She stroked him for a minute, loving the way his breath hitched and his body tightened in response. But he was obviously nearing the end of his control, so she didn’t tease him too much. She just helped him align himself, and then wrapped her legs around him as he sank inside.
He was too far gone to move slow, but his urgency was exactly what Molly wanted. She dug her fingernails into his shoulders as she matched his hungry rhythm, pumping her hips up to meet his thrusts.
Molly couldn't look away from his tense, passionate face, and she couldn’t keep quiet, gasping out how much she loved him too between her whimpers of pleasure. It wasn’t long before the world seemed to blur over in an urgent haze. Her whole body started to shake, and she dug her heels into the small of his back, trying to keep her legs in position around him.
He froze for a moment as climax twisted on his face, and she could see everything she needed to know in his eyes—about his love, his need for her, his commitment, his unshakable presence in her life.
Molly came with him. There were tears running down her face as she gasped through the lingering pleasure. And she pulled him down into a tight hug when his elbows buckled and his body collapsed onto hers.
“I love you,” he murmured hoarsely, burying his face in the hollow of her neck. “Molly, baby, I love you.”
“I love you too,” she whispered, stroking his head, his shoulders, his back. Whatever of him she could touch.
They lay tangled together for a long time, until Luke’s hot weight became too heavy and the gush of fluid between her legs became uncomfortable. Then Molly got up to go the bathroom and clean up a little before she returned to the bed.
Luke pulled her into his arms again, and she nestled against him. He wasn’t always a cuddly man, but he liked to hold her after sex, as if to assure himself she wasn’t going to slip away.
Molly couldn’t imagine how she’d gone so long having sex with him without being held afterwards.
After a little while, she took his left hand and raised it to her mouth, kissing his wedding band. “Maybe I’ll start to keep my rings on all the time like you do,” she said, almost playfully.
Luke chuckled softly. “Well, they won’t turn green if you get them wet, if that’s what you were afraid of.”
She pressed a kiss on the side of his jaw. “That’s good to know.”
They were silent for a few more minutes before Molly said, “Being married for real is much better than being married for convenience.”
“I agree.”
“Since we’re married for real now,” she said, “Maybe we should have a honeymoon.”
“Where did you want to go?”
“I don’t know. But you wouldn’t be allowed to have your phone or computer. It would have to be a real vacation.”
It wasn’t a sure thing. He would always be a workaholic. It would always be hard for him to let go, even for a week or two.
But she was peering into his face so she could assess his reaction, and she saw what looked like a yes in his eyes.
His voice was dry when he replied, “Hmm. For that, we’ll have to reopen negotiations.”
About the Author
Noelle handwrote her first romance novel in a spiral-bound notebook when she was twelve, and she hasn’t stopped writing since. She has lived in eight different states and currently resides in Virginia, where she teaches English, reads any book she can get her hands on, and offers tribute to a very spoiled cocker spaniel.
She loves travel, art, history, and ice cream. After spending far too many years of her life in graduate school, she has decided to reorient her priorities and focus on writing contemporary romances. For more information, please check out her website: noelle-adams.com
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