It Takes Two

by Jenny Holiday

  “I was thinking six months. I can spend that time any number of ways. I can wait for you while you’re on your trip—if you want me to.”

  “What are the other options?”

  Okay, here he went. The Hail Mary pass. The most terrifying thing he could imagine: just up and leaving his life. “I can go with you. If you want me to.”

  “You would do that? What about your mom and Jane? What about what you just said about being with them?”

  “Well, I’m not going to lie. The prospect of just…fucking off for half a year is kind of terrifying. But I think that’s exactly why I should do it. I want to be with you more than I want to…feel in control.”

  “Noah—” She was trying to talk, but her voice had cracked.

  He swallowed the lump forming in his own throat. “This two weeks on, two weeks off thing sounds about perfect to me. I’m gonna have to give my family some time to get used to me, right?” He gestured behind his head. “And I’ll haul this goddamn fake New York backdrop anywhere you like—to Timbuktu—if it makes a difference. If it lets you…” He cleared his throat. “If it lets you be with me.”

  “Noah—”

  “But there’s also a third option,” he said, because he had to get it all out. Lay his case fully before the jury. “I can let you go. I can just let you go. It will kill me, but I’ll do it if that’s what you want. You’ll go back to being Jane’s best friend.”

  She shook her head. Seemed unable to speak.

  He strode over and took her hands. “Maybe the past didn’t calcify us, like you said. Maybe we’re more supple than we thought. Maybe we can bend without breaking. Become something else. Or not something else, but, you know, bend into the shape of something that’s…easier.” He let go of her hands. He was fucking this up. “Shit. That was a terrible speech.”

  “That was the best speech I ever heard.”

  He looked up. “Really?”

  Could he have succeeded? He held his breath, afraid of getting his hopes up.

  She looked around the room. “I don’t think all this stuff will fit in a carry-on. I’m pretty militant about packing light, you know.”

  “Really?” he said again, but this time his voice cracked.

  “Really.”

  “I love you.” It got easier each time he said it. “I’ve never said that to anyone but Jane and my mom.”

  She stumbled a bit, and he had to steady her. “I love you, too.” Her eyebrows rose like she had surprised herself. “And I’m not that far behind you. I’ve got an aunt in there, and of course there were my parents but that’s about it.”

  “Is this the part where we kiss?”

  She laughed. “This is the part where we kiss.”

  And they did.

  They kissed until they heard a symphony of throat clearing and overly loud door opening.

  When they parted, Jane launched herself at them. “Eeee! You guys! This is the best wedding present ever!”

  Elise and Gia had come in with Jane, and after hugs were exchanged and tears brushed away, Jane put her hands on her hips, looked at him for a long moment, then shifted her attention to Wendy and said, “You need to get dressed. I’m getting married in fifteen minutes.”

  Right. Wendy looked around and spotted her bag. “I’ll go change in the bathroom.”

  “I’ll help you.” Noah wagged his eyebrows at Wendy. Because all this emoting was fine. It had been necessary. But he was, ultimately, a man of action.

  “Oh no, you won’t,” Jane said. “I’d like to get married sometime this century if you don’t mind.”

  They all laughed, and as Wendy left, she said over her shoulder to Jane, “You want us to take these backdrops down? Noah can do it while I change.”

  “Nah,” Jane said. “It’s okay. This is a low-key wedding.”

  * * *

  “Why are there so many goddamned children here?” Noah asked, leading Wendy through a line-up of families waiting to get on a ride.

  “Because this is an amusement park?” Wendy laughed, relishing the feeling of his hand grasping hers. Relishing even more the idea that the feeling wasn’t fleeting—it was going to be like this now. She was now a person who held hands.

  She didn’t hate it.

  “You and your goddamned logic,” he huffed.

  “I try.”

  The wedding had just ended. It had been perfect. Low-key even. At least in the sense that when the officiant asked if anyone present objected to the union, nothing happened except she and Noah looked at each other and tried not to laugh.

  “Keep up, old lady,” he said as he picked up the pace.

  “Hey! That’s my line!”

  In truth, she was so glad that their newfound…status, their emotional breakthroughs, or whatever you wanted to call it, weren’t going to change the essential rhythm of their relationship. She was handing Noah her heart, and to do that, she’d had to give up the fears she’d been using as emotional crutches for years. She’d had to remake herself once again. Become yet another new person.

  But there was one thing she was glad wasn’t changing: the mock-fighting that she and Noah did. The competing and bantering. There was nothing she loved more. And the idea that she would get to do that forever? It made her shiver with happiness. She was pretty sure she’d never shivered with happiness before.

  “Are you cold?” He shrugged out of the suit top he’d worn with the kilt for the ceremony and slung it over her shoulders.

  “Yes.” She snuggled into the overly large garment. “I’m very, very cold. I’m so terribly in need of warming.” She didn’t make it through the whole sentence without laughing, but it didn’t matter, because he growled and pulled her behind a concession stand.

  “I love this dress.” He lowered his mouth to her neck and let his hands slide down her body, over the slick taffeta.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m just a bonny Scottish lass. A bonny Asian Scottish lass.”

  “What you are,” he said, just before he lowered his mouth to hers, “is mine.”

  They kissed for a long time. It had never been this way for her, her body jumping to attention like this, going from zero to sixty so incredibly quickly. It was like she was his. And he was hers.

  “Get a room!”

  The voice was loud enough to intrude. And the fact that it was a repeat of what someone had said to them that night in New York cracked her up. She pushed him away as she laughed. He grunted his displeasure. But it was just as well. She’d basically been about to stick her hands up his kilt.

  “We can’t just do it right here,” she said.

  “We can’t?”

  “No.” She smoothed her dress. “Besides the fact that they’d probably arrest us—”

  “Hey, I know the best defense lawyer in Toronto.”

  “I have my period, remember?” she said. “Things are…” She gestured at her nether regions. “Happening down there.”

  “Hey, I’m a modern man. A little blood doesn’t scare me.” He grabbed her hand again, and they started walking. They walked in silence for a few moments before he said, “It would have been okay, you know.”

  “What?” She wasn’t sure why she was asking that. She had heard him fine.

  He shrugged. “We’re doing everything out of order; that’s all I’m saying.” Something sparked in his eyes. “So a baby would have been okay. We would have made it work.”

  She squeezed his hand, unable to speak.

  He wasn’t kidding about the out of order stuff. She’d gone from being jilted by Noah to having sex with him to being…his girlfriend? And now, instead of dating, they were going to travel the world together. It boggled the mind.

  “Let’s go on that.” He pointed to a carousel, an antique one featuring beautifully painted horses bobbing up and down.

  Glad for the change of subject—she’d had enough life upheaval today without needing to add in conversations about procreation—she agreed, and soon they were seated side by si
de on a pair of fine mounts.

  It was impossible not to grin while riding a merry-go-round. They were both doing it, just looking at each other with stupid smiles on their faces until—

  “Wendy! Noah!”

  That was Jane’s voice. Wendy looked around, trying to locate her friend.

  Noah pointed. There she was, jogging along with the carousel in her wedding gown, the entire wedding party loping alongside her.

  “You guys took off too fast after the wedding!” Jane yelled. “You missed the vote!”

  “What vote?” Noah called, laughing as Jane panted to keep pace with them.

  “Who gave the best party!” Cameron shouted, jogging alongside Jane.

  Oh yeah. She’d totally forgotten about that, given all the drama that had come after Vegas.

  “The winner is….” Gia trailed off as Elise made a drum roll noise. “Wendy!”

  “Hey!” Noah protested.

  “Don’t even bother,” Jane said. “Majority rules.”

  “Dude,” the usually silent Jay said. “They had a stripper. They totally won.”

  Wendy pumped a fist in the air as her horse bobbed up and down. She turned to Noah. “Enjoy Josh Groban.”

  “Anyway!” Jane waved her bouquet over her head and shouted, “I’m really here because I forgot to give you this!”

  “What?”

  “I think she wants you to catch her bouquet,” Noah said, and sure enough, Jane was lifting her bouquet over her head.

  “She wasn’t doing a bouquet toss!” Wendy said. It was part of the wedding’s low-key-ness. What had happened to low-key?

  “It certainly looks like she is,” Noah said.

  “I don’t want that!” Wendy shouted. She turned to Noah. “No offense.”

  He grinned. “None taken.”

  Jane either hadn’t heard her or was choosing to ignore her. She retracted her arm like a pitcher doing an elaborate wind-up.

  “Don’t throw it!” Wendy shouted.

  Jane threw it.

  And because Jane was a comic book nerd and not an athlete, it was aiming right for the little boy on the horse in front of her.

  Dammit. Wendy had to lunge for the bouquet to protect the kid.

  “Ha ha!” Jane called as Wendy’s fingers closed around the damn thing. Then she spun on her heel and ran away.

  Wendy thunked her head against the pole she was holding on to.

  “Here.” Noah reached for the flowers. “I’ll get rid of those for you.”

  Ugh. She didn’t want the damn bouquet. It was too much pressure. But she didn’t want to offend Noah, so she said weakly, “It’s okay.”

  “Give it here. We’ll save it for later. Maybe until after we’ve had our first date. Oh, actually, hang on. I’ll trade you.”

  “What?”

  He dug in his pocket. “I forgot. I got you this. It was my backup plan.”

  “Backup plan?”

  He used one hand to tug the bouquet out of her grasp and extended the other one to reveal…a Pez dispenser.

  This one had the heart-eyes emoji face.

  “In case the New York backdrops and a heartfelt speech didn’t work. I thought, well, there’s always Pez. I preloaded this one and everything.”

  “Yes,” she said, because it was almost painfully right. A perfectly calibrated gesture. She plucked it off his hand, clicked the head back, and ejected a tart, sweet candy onto her tongue. “There’s always Pez.”

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Andie J. Christopher for making sure Wendy and Noah weren’t violating attorney-client privilege when they did their legal bantering and to Alyson Geary for helping me figure out what their half marathon times should be.

  Sandra Owens and Emma Barry read a very early draft of this book and helped enormously in the project of making it into something better.

  But the queen of that process was Lexi Smail. I always appreciate a good, hard edit, but boy did this book need one. (They don’t all come out perfectly sparkly on the first try, but let’s just say this one needed some major glitter cannon action.)

  Thanks also to everyone at Forever Romance for making this book, from the story inside to its exquisite cover, shine.

  And finally to my agent and friend, Courtney Miller-Callihan, who makes everything happen.

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  About the Author

  Jenny Holiday is a USA Today bestselling author who started writing at age nine when her awesome fourth-grade teacher gave her a notebook and told her to start writing some stories. That first batch featured mass murderers on the loose, alien invasions, and hauntings. (Looking back, she’s amazed no one sent her to a shrink.) She’s been writing ever since. After a detour to get a PhD in geography, she worked as a professional writer, producing everything from speeches to magazine articles. Later, her tastes having evolved from alien invasions to happily-ever-afters, she tried her hand at romance. She lives in London, Ontario, with her family.

  Learn more at:

  Jennyholiday.com

  Twitter @jennyholi

  Facebook.com/jennyholidaybooks

  Newsletter: jennyholiday.com/newsletter/

  Also by Jenny Holiday

  The Bridesmaids Behaving Badly series

  One and Only

  Praise for the Bridesmaids

  Behaving Badly series

  One and Only

  “The book’s addictive combination of memorable characters, polished writing seasoned with deliciously acerbic wit, and some off-the-charts hot love scenes aptly demonstrates that when it comes to creating unputdownable contemporary romances, Holiday is in it to win it.”

  ―Booklist (starred review)

  “Get ready to laugh, swoon and fall in love.... A sweet and spicy read that kicks off a new series in style!”

  ―RT Book Reviews

  “Delightfully sexy and sweet, Holiday knows how to deliver the perfect combination of sexual tension and happily-ever-after.”

  ―Lauren Layne, New York Times bestselling author

  “One and Only is fantastic! A great start to a new series. Compelling characters, tons of heat, loads of heart. I highly recommend!”

  ―M. O’Keefe, USA Today bestselling author