Lovestruck Forever
Rachel Schurig
Copyright © 2014 Rachel Schurig
All rights reserved.
Ebook Edition, License Notes
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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For Jill
Without whom Lizzie and Thomas may have never left London
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Epilogue
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to my editor, Shelley Holloway for all of your help. Your dedication makes my books so much better!
http://hollowayhouse.me
Scarlett Rugers, thanks for yet another beautiful cover, and congratulations on your own nuptials!
www.chicklitbookcovers.com
Chapter One
Thomas Harper, international movie star, was currently kneeling in my mother’s living room, a feather boa wrapped around his neck, a glittery plastic tiara on his head, and a squealing five-year-old clinging to his shoulders, laughing her head off.
“Go faster!” my niece, Sofia, shouted, smacking his shoulder.
“Sofia,” I warned. “No hitting, or Thomas will stop playing with you.”
“So I should pray for continued smacking?” Thomas muttered, readjusting Sofia’s arms and moving across the carpet on his knees. “Anything to end this torture.”
“I told you that you were asking for it,” I reminded him, taking another shirt from the basket to fold. “Never give in when Sofia begs for pony rides. She can sense weakness. You’ll never be free again.”
“I’m beginning to think you’re right.”
I placed the folded shirt on top of the pile and smiled at him. “You’re pretty cute in pink, mister. Maybe we should get you a boa for the wedding.”
He crawled over to me on his knees and kissed me, Sofia squealing behind him.
“Eww!”
“There’s nothing eww about your Aunt Lizzie,” Thomas told her. “Your Aunt Lizzie is beautiful.” The tiara was slipping from his forehead, making him look even more adorable. I smirked, pulling out my phone, and snapped a picture of him before he could react.
“What was that for?”
I kept my voice nonchalant as I reached for a pair of socks. “I’m selling it to People magazine. Then I’ll be rich.”
“Oh no you don’t.” He reached back to grab Sofia under her knees, pulling her around to plop her on my lap. “Get her, Sofia.”
My sister Maria found us two minutes later, Thomas struggling to hold me down while Sofia tickled me.
“I hope you’re not getting too wild, mija,” she said. “Thomas and Lizzie won’t want to babysit you again.”
“We’re having fun, Mama!” Sofia cried, as Thomas straightened and hurriedly removed the tiara and boa. I smirked at him, and he gave me a mock glare.
“Don’t change on my account,” Maria said drily. “It was a good look on you.”
I laughed as Thomas shook his head. “This is the thanks I get for keeping her occupied all afternoon.”
“You’re a very good fairy princess, babe.”
“Fairy princess pony,” he corrected, standing and tousling Sofia’s hair. “You finished with that?”
I handed him the laundry basket, and he headed for the stairs to drop it off in my parents’ room.
“Help me with the groceries?” Maria asked, and I jumped off the couch to join her in the kitchen as Sofia scrambled up the stairs after Thomas.
“I think she’s in love,” Maria said, pulling groceries from the bags she’d left on the kitchen table.
“He’s far too polite to refuse her requests,” I explained. “It’s a British thing.”
“Well, whatever it is, she’s crazy about him.” She frowned a little. “But you should tell him not too indulge her so much. I don’t want him thinking he has to be miserable to stay on my good side or something.”
“Don’t worry, Maria,” I told her, purposefully bumping her with my hip as I brought an armful of non-perishables to the pantry. “He knows you well enough now to know that you don’t have a good side.”
“Ha ha,” she muttered.
She finished unloading the groceries, leaving a pile of veggies on the counter to start prepping for dinner.
“Were you able to finish all your errands?” I grabbed a head of lettuce and brought it to the sink to wash.
“Just about.” She set to work chopping celery and chilies. “Thanks again for watching the little monster.”
“It was no problem. It’s the least we can do with all the work you’re putting in on this party.”
She waved her knife dismissively. “We’re your family, Lizzie. Of course we’re going to throw you an engagement party.”
It was funny, even after two months of wearing Thomas’s ring on my finger, I still got a little thrill in my chest at the word engagement. Sometimes I still had a hard time believing it was actually real.
It had been a whirlwind since Thomas had proposed on my bedroom floor. Most of my energy had been taken up with my mother’s recovery and helping my dad around the house while she was out of commission. Thomas, on the other hand, had wrapped his movie in Los Angeles, gotten our house there packed up, and moved into a rental house here in the Detroit suburbs. Things had only recently calmed down enough for us to take a breath and start thinking seriously about an engagement party.
Engagement. Thomas and I were getting married. After all of the distance, all the stress of his movie career, the pressure from my family, the struggle to find a way to make it all balance out, we were finally here. We were going to be a family. Forever.
“I think that lettuce is pretty clean, Lizzie,” Maria said, bringing my attention back to the kitchen. She was smirking at me a little, as if she knew exactly what I had been daydreaming about. To her credit, though, she didn’t tease me about it.
Even having this conversation with Maria was a victory. It had only been a few months ago that she was refusing to talk to me, so angry with my decision to go against the family and move to London, and then L.A., with Thomas. My mother’s illness had made us all realize how stupid that was. It was still tense, sometimes—particularly whenever the subject of Thomas and me living together, unmarried, came up—but, for the most part, we were all getting along better than we had in years.
I shivered a little as I thought of the event that had brought us all closer. My mother had suffered a burst an
eurysm right here in this kitchen. I was in L.A. when it happened, and it was the scariest thing I’d ever experienced, being that far away while someone I loved struggled to survive.
But she had survived, I reminded myself. She had thrived, really. Even now, she was at her rehabilitation session with my dad and her therapists, working hard to regain the skills that had become difficult for her after the aneurysm.
She can walk again, I told myself firmly. A mere month ago, I couldn’t have guessed she’d make so much progress. But she had been adamant that she would be walking at our engagement party, and when my mother got something into her head, there was just no dissuading her.
“Laundry’s taken care of,” Thomas said, joining us in the kitchen. “What can I do for dinner?”
As I handed him some carrots to chop, Maria made a little clicking noise with her tongue, but she didn’t comment. I ignored her—Maria, like my parents and most of my extended family, was very old fashioned when it came to gender roles. I doubted her husband had ever once helped her to prepare dinner. Thomas’s smiling eyes met mine over the cutting board, and I knew he had heard it, too.
“Is Laura coming?” I asked Maria, hoping to get her mind off of the fact that there was a man in the kitchen.
“She said she was. Carlos and the twins, too. Oh, and I think Daddy said Sofie and her parents would be here.”
Thomas rolled his eyes so that only I could see, and I struggled not to laugh. Family dinner in this house really did mean the whole family, often times including aunts, uncles, and cousin. In the time that he’d spent in Detroit, we’d only had a handful of meals with less than five members of my immediate or extended family, and tonight was no exception if we’d be joined by all of my siblings, my aunt and uncle, and my cousin Sofie—not to be confused with my niece Sofia We kind of had a tendency to overuse family names. Both my cousin and my niece were named for my mother, also a Sofia.
“Have you talked to Sof?” Thomas asked me. “How’s it going with the new boyfriend?”
“Boyfriend?” Maria asked, her voice sharp. “What boyfriend?”
I had to hand it to Thomas—he had learned quickly the best way to make nice with my oldest sister. Maria was a gossip hound, never happier than when presented with some juicy morsel about a family member.
“Lizzie said she’s been dating a guy from work,” he said, his voice innocent, as if he didn’t know he was throwing my favorite cousin under the bus just to get on Maria’s good side. I shook my head at him before telling my sister everything I knew about the new guy. Poor Sof. She was going to kill me when she got here.
We were interrupted by the sound of the garage door opening. “That should be Mama and Daddy,” Maria said, looking up at the clock. Her expression immediately turned concerned, and I wondered if mine did as well. Some days, Mama would come home from her therapy feeling optimistic and encouraged. Other days, she would be tired, and try as she might, her fake, plastered on smile just couldn’t hide the pain she was clearly in. I hated those days.
“I’ll go out and see if they need help,” Thomas said, setting down his knife. I smiled at him gratefully. My mother hated using the walker that the therapists had given her for when she was at home, but it could be difficult for my dad to support her on his own, depending on how tired she was.
A moment later, she came in through the side door, her arm in Thomas’s. She was smiling up at him, and I released a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Her smile didn’t seem at all forced, and he barely seemed to be supporting her.
“Hi, Mama.” I pulled out a chair for her, and Thomas helped her to sit as I kissed her cheek. “You look so good!”
“I feel good,” she assured me, patting the side of my face. Her voice was noticeably slower than it used to be, but she didn’t slur her words anymore. I sent up a silent prayer of thanks that she seemed to be having a good day.
“I didn’t know you would all be here,” she said as Maria also kissed her in greeting.
“We wanted to get dinner started,” Maria explained. “Thomas and Lizzie watched Sofia for me while I ran some errands and picked up the groceries.”
“That’s sweet of you.” She smiled at Thomas, and I felt a little thrill of happiness, as I often did when she interacted with him. My mother had been our first ally in the family, supporting our relationship long before the others came around. Now, months after first meeting him, I could tell that she was truly crazy about him. Not that I could blame her—he had that effect on women, regardless of age.
“You missed it, Mama,” I told her. “Thomas let Sofia dress him up in her princess costume.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” my dad said in his gruff voice, coming in with my mom’s things. “That girl has convinced me to do any number of things that compromise my masculinity. She turns those brown eyes on me and I’m a goner.”
Thomas slapped my dad’s shoulder in greeting and raised his eyebrows at me. “I’m very familiar with the power of the pleading look from a Medina woman.”
I made a face at him, going back to my veggies.
“Abuelita!” Sofia yelled, barreling into the room and wrapping her arms around her grandmother. I saw my mom wince slightly as she brought her arms up to hug her only granddaughter.
“Careful,” Maria admonished her daughter, but the smile had returned to Mom’s face.
“She’s fine,” she said. “I’ve been needing one of your hugs, little one.”
“Is there any soccer on tonight, Thomas?” my dad asked. “And I don’t mean any of that Premier League crap, either.”
Thomas sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t know how someone can claim to enjoy football and not see the superiority of the Premier League.”
My father laughed, slapping Thomas on the back. “Let’s go see what we can find.”
Thomas looked to me quickly, but I shooed him along. I didn’t mind him not helping, particularly if it meant he was getting along with my dad.
“What can I do?” my mom asked as the guys headed to the living room.
“You can relax,” Maria said, placing a mug of tea in front of her.
My mother sighed, but didn’t argue, making me wonder how tired she really was. “If you insist.”
As we finished making dinner, the house slowly filled with people. My twin brothers, Matias and Samuel, arrived first, followed by my older brother Carlos and Maria’s husband, José, their son JJ hanging off his shoulders. When Laura, my other sister, and her husband, Frank, arrived, there was a commotion as everyone fussed around her, rubbing her five-months-pregnant belly and offering her cold beverages and chairs to get off her feet.
“This family is insane,” she muttered to me as she sank into a kitchen chair. “I’m pregnant, not an invalid.”
“You know how they are,” I told her. “You’re adding to the great Medina family dynasty. You’ve never been more important than you are right now.”
She laughed at me, but didn’t argue. I may have been joking, but there was plenty of truth to it. There was nothing you could do in this family that would get you more attention than having a baby.
Soon the house was filled with noise and laughter. Maria brought out tortilla chips and her homemade salsa as everyone crowded into the kitchen, helping to set the table and generally getting in the way. By the time my cousin Sofie arrived, Maria had spread the news of her new boyfriend to everyone. As we crowded around the table to eat, conversation danced around plans for the engagement party, questions about Laura’s baby plans, and, of course, grilling Sofie for information about the new boy. She was very closed lip about him, making me think she might actually like him quite a bit. I didn’t blame her—it was tough having the entire clan in your business all the time.
I watched Thomas arguing about soccer with Matias and José and smiled to myself. They might be overbearing and nosey, but I had to admit, I was much happier being back with them all again, than I had been when we were estranged.
&
nbsp; Even if they did drive me crazy most of the time.
***
Of course, it got awkward at the end of the night. My family had no idea how to deal with the fact that I was living with my boyfriend before we were married. My mom and Samuel, the younger of my twin brothers, seemed to be of the opinion that it was no big deal. Just about everyone else, however, was convinced that I was making a huge mistake and shaming my family. We’d made progress, though. A year ago, my father and Maria had stopped speaking to me when I moved to London with Thomas. Now they just refused to acknowledge the fact that we were living together, seeming to prefer to pretend that I simply disappeared at the end of each evening. With the exception of Sofie, none of them had even been to our place, despite the fact it was only a twenty-minute drive away. I tried not to let it bother me, focusing instead on the hope that they’d get over it once we were married.
“Everyone seems pretty stoked about the party,” Thomas said once we were in his car. He held my hand over the gearshift, the way he always did, and I squeezed it in the darkness.
“I think they are. Who would have thought?”
“I told you I could win them over,” he said easily. “Who could object to us once faced with the overwhelming force of my charm?”
I snorted. “Should I bring out the tiara picture again?”
“Cruel woman.”
We drove in silence for a few moments, a welcome change after the noise of my parents’ house. It was hard to adjust to the craziness of so many people after spending so much time alone with Thomas over the last year. Sometimes I found it hard to believe that I had grown up in that chaos, that it was the norm for me until I turned twenty-two and went to London for a study-abroad program.
“Speaking of the party,” Thomas said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “I got some nice news today.”
“Yeah?”
“Sarra can come after all.”
“She can?” I released his hand to clap my own. “Seriously?”
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