by Zoey Derrick
“Come on,” Tristan says, and he leads me around the wall where the commotion was coming from a minute ago. We round the corner, and sitting there at a long table are Tyson, Jolene, Travis, Naomi, Mick and Beau.
My hand comes to my mouth, and I look at Tristan, then back to the table. “My God.”
Tristan comes closer to me and whispers in my ear, “New tradition. Every year, regardless of where we all are, we come to Tarah for Christmas. We are our own family and we need to be with family for the holidays.” He kisses me and then drags me over to the table.
The night is amazing; we have a great time together, talking and catching up. None of us have seen each other much, with the exception of Ty and Jo. We’re all bantering and talking, everyone is drinking — except me — and having a good time, when the sound of silver on glass breaks us all up, and everyone looks to Tristan.
“Thank you, all of you, for being here and for helping Cami and me start a new tradition. I know you all have families outside of our little circle, but it means more to me than anything to have you all here.” I take his hand and squeeze it gently as he looks around at everyone. “Now, for one of the real reasons why we’re here.” I see him wink to everyone, and he moves around his chair to stand off to my right and gets down on one knee and the waterworks start. From his pocket he produces a black box. “Cameron Celeste Enders, you’ve made me the happiest man on earth and I want to spend the rest of my life making you as happy as I am. Will you do the honor of becoming my wife?”
He opens the box, and inside is a beautiful heart cut diamond surrounded by no fewer than two dozen smaller diamonds that extend down to create the band. The tears in my eyes make it harder to see it, but I realize that he’s waiting for an answer. “Yes. Absolutely yes.” He comes up and he kisses me, and the rest of the world is gone; no one else is here but he and I.
Everyone at the table claps and there are girlish squeals of delight at Tristan’s proposal. Tristan holds me close to him and he whispers in my ear, “Marry me on Wednesday.”
“What?” I blurt, and he laughs.
“The island is empty, all of our friends are here. Marry me on Wednesday, at sunset on the beach.”
“Tristan, I— What do you mean the island is empty?”
He laughs. “I reserved the entire hotel, the only people in it are us and a small amount of staff to service us.”
“Oh my God, Tristan. I have nothing to wear.”
He smiles again then looks at Beau. “I think Beau can help you with that?”
“Ohmygod, you’re all in on this?”
The entire table erupts in applause and laughter. I look back at Tristan: His eyes are pleading with me, begging me to say yes. I would’ve said yes anyway, but it is fun to make him squirm. “Yes, Tristan, a thousand times yes.”
His lips are on me in a nanosecond and he is kissing me with gusto, and I giggle, kissing him back, and again everyone erupts into clapping and hollering.
The rest of the night, I can’t keep my eyes off of Tristan; I keep thinking about what he’s done and is doing. He planned this whole thing and I should’ve known better, but I never expected this.
Christmas morning. Tristan is awake and looking at me when I finally open my eyes. “Hi, beautiful.” I beat him to it.
“Hi beautiful yourself.” He laughs, kisses my forehead. “Merry Christmas.”
“Mmm, I like the sound of that. Merry Christmas, Tristan.”
“Come on, get up. You have a lot to do today, starting with...” He produces a long black velvet box with a bow on it, and I smile.
“How long have you been awake?” I ask as I sit up.
He smiles. “Not long.” Something tells me he’s lying, but I don’t care. I take the box from him, hold it between my fingers and lift the lid.
What’s inside takes my breath away. It’s a platinum band, a bracelet that has tiny links that are hooked on either side of an infinity symbol. One of the curves has the word forever spelled out. “Tristan, it’s beautiful,” I say as I try and remove it from the box. He takes it from me and unhooks it from its resting place. I hold out my left wrist and he clasps it. The platinum up against my sun-kissed skin is beautiful, and it sparkles in the light of the bedroom. I place my left hand on his cheek, catching the sparkle before I kiss him.
“There’s more,” he says. “Come on.” He crawls out of bed and I slow him just a second.
“I need a minute,” I say, and I go into the bathroom.
I feel really guilty that I wasn’t able to get all of his presents here. He will have to wait until we get home and it breaks my heart. I try not to let it show when I come back out of the bathroom, but he catches that something is wrong. “What’s the matter?” he asks as he wraps his arm over my shoulder and leads me toward the door.
I pause. “Tristan, I—” I don’t quite know how to say this to him. “All of your presents are at home in Phoenix. I didn’t know—”
“Shh. It’s okay. This is a Christmas about you. Not me.”
“That’s hardly fair,” I say, and he leads me to the door anyway. He opens it up, and sitting in the living room of our penthouse suite is a Christmas tree, completely decorated, and around the bottom is a massive pile of presents. But I also notice that there are several presents wrapped in the paper I used back home. “How?”
“Beau. She found them in the condo and brought them with.”
“Oh, for hell. You guys are too much to take sometimes.” He laughs as I roll my eyes. “Now at least I feel a little less guilty.”
“Good. Come on, sit down in your favorite chair.” He leads me to it and I sit down. The chair isn’t as comfortable as it once was, and I think I have this growing bump as an explanation for it. I can no longer pull my knees to my chin. Tristan laughed when I realized I couldn’t do it anymore, but dang it, that’s my most comfortable position. He reassured me that I’d be able to do it again...one day.
I watch as he rummages through the packages, but I can see that he’s extremely excited about making this day about me and I take great comfort in that. He walks toward me with a small box, similar to the one with my bracelet in it but a little bigger. He hands it to me. “Go ahead, open it,” he says, and he sits on the edge of the coffee table.
I smile and tear into the wrapping paper. There is a plain white box and I pull the lid off. Sitting inside is a desk plaque.
Cameron ‘Cami’ Michaels
CEO
“What would you have done if I’d said no?” I laugh. He smirks his all-knowing grin. I shake my head at him. “You are too much sometimes. And I love you like crazy for it.” He kisses my forehead as he stands up and goes back to the tree. “Open one of mine to you,” I say, and he shakes his head.
“You get to go first,” he says as he brings me another package. This one is bigger and I can’t quite tell what it is. “You’re really hard to shop for, especially since I know you buy the things you want. So this is a little something for me, too.”
I smirk at him — the only thing that could possibly be for him too is lingerie — but like any kid on Christmas I tear into the package and open the lid of the box. Inside are twelve barbells tucked into a card. I cock my head at the package and he explains. “A couple of weeks ago, you said that putting ribbon in your back tugged more than you were comfortable with. So I thought maybe if you had barbells to replace the hoops, you wouldn’t feel so obligated to lace them. And I wouldn’t be worried about snagging them so much.”
I smile up at him. “That’s a great idea. Thank you for thinking about it.” I never thought about replacing the hoops, and I’m not sure I want to, but this might not be a bad idea. At least right now.
“Lift the card,” he says, and I do.
Underneath is a bellybutton ring, but this one is different; it’s... “Stretchy?” I ask him.
He nods. “I read online that if you’re pregnant with a bellybutton ring, one of two things will happen, either it will close or there is a
risk of it tearing. I didn’t want to see either happen, so I found this. It is designed to stretch and give as your belly expands.” I smile at his thoughtfulness, and I’m glad he’s thought about it because I certainly haven’t. “There’s one more.”
“My nipples?”
He grins. “These, though, are for me.” I blush slightly and lift the card with the bellybutton ring, and underneath are two circles that are inlayed with diamonds and with barbells running through the centers. I smile. “You can wear them whenever you want, but I’d like it if you wore them tomorrow.”
I blush a little and nod. “They’re beautiful, of course I will.”
Of all the things in the world he could get me for Christmas, he’s bought me a massive amount of jewelry — but all with my own comfort in mind, and I can’t help but let my heart be filled with warmth at his thoughtfulness.
FORTY-FOUR
Over the course of the morning, I open up another fourteen presents from him. Everything from a beautiful Gucci dress to Jimmy Choos to a new swimming suit. And of course, as I figured, lingerie was included, but I’ll keep that to myself.
The last present he brings over is one similar to the birthday present I gave him and I scoff at him; we already have two houses, for crying out loud, but I dutifully open the present. Sure enough, it is a locked tube, and I look at him. “Open it,” he says, and he is bouncing up and down. I look inside and there are three sets of blueprints. I get down on the floor and spread them out on the coffee table. The first set has a picture of our house in California. I look up at him. “The house wasn’t originally designed to accommodate a nursery on the main floor next to our suite. So, I had them redesign the plans a little bit. We’re still maintaining the same structure, just changing the layout a little.”
I flip to the first page. It is the ground level, and where our master suite was supposed to be there are now three rooms: one labeled Cami’s Office; another labeled Tristan’s Office; and finally the last room, which is tucked into the back corner of the house. It says Nanny Quarters. “Tristan, I—”
“Listen. I know that we haven’t talked about it yet. But I thought that the house needed a redesign, just in case. I think — and obviously it is up for discussion later — that we need to consider that option. If I am going to continue to act and produce and things of that nature, I won’t always be able to be home. You will be in L.A. or in Phoenix alone, and you will need to work too. The condo is already equipped with a servant’s quarters, so I didn’t do much with that.”
“Okay, I’m open to a nanny discussion. Another day.” I smile at him then I turn the page. Upstairs has been redesigned, taking two of the original bedrooms away and creating a master suite while maintaining the other two rooms, one of which is right across the hall from our room. “That’s a brilliant idea, Tristan. I love it.” He leans over and kisses me.
“You can flip to the next set. The rest in that one are just some general design changes that they sent along with my changes.” I flip to the next set. It says Tarah across it. “These are temporary designs, and they come from Beau.”
I flip the page, taking one quick look, then I look at him. “The bar?” He nods. “Blu Phoenix?”
“That was Beau’s idea. She thought it would be fun to have our own little piece of paradise in Phoenix.”
“I like it,” I say as I flip the page. The first page is the bar’s layout, which isn’t a whole lot to get excited about, at least not yet. The bar itself has a wide open space and floor plan. It was once a country bar, after all. He stops me from turning the page, and he does it himself.
“This goes backwards. See — the blank layout, like the previous page.” He flips back one of the pages in front of it. It is transparent, and I can see it; it almost becomes three-dimensional. First comes the main bar. Off to the right of the door, behind the bar, is a kitchen and office space. The bar spans the entire length of the east wall of the building, and the kitchen and offices behind it do the same. He flips the next page, and a stage appears along the back wall, along with an extension to the building onto the back patio. A dressing/waiting room, then there is a doorway that leads to the stage. Then, finally, the last page comes down, and appearing to the left of the door is another small bar, tucked back out of sight of the doorway, with a couple of bar-height tables in front and then lining the wall back toward the stage. To the right of the door, there are a few more tables that lead to a larger group of tables that surround a massive dance floor in front of the stage. “The stage is big enough that we could host a good sized band, but the bar maintains that intimate viewing experience.”
“It’s amazing, she’s done a wonderful job.” He turns back the transparent pages and the blank one. Behind it is the layout of the back of the property. “The old arena?”
“Yup, she wants to turn it into an outside concert area, allowing for two more bars, a few tables, more patrons and a bigger stage.”
“So, turning it into a small concert venue. Oh my God, that’s genius. I never even considered that.”
He smiles at me, and it’s warm and inviting. “She’s done a wonderful job and she’s excited to get started. I am sure sometime over the rest of our stay here, she will badger you about it.” He laughs.
“Just how long are we staying?”
“As long as you want. Or January tenth. Which would give you enough time to get back to Phoenix and get ready to start up at Bold.”
“Sounds great.” I stand up and kiss him.
“Oh, you’re not done yet.” He gives me a wicked grin.
“Dang it, Tristan, what else is there?” I laugh, and he pulls up the bar’s blueprints to reveal another set of blueprints. “Ah hell, Tristan. We have two houses.”
He laughs harder. “We do, but we needed something else. But this isn’t your Christmas gift, this is a wedding gift. For both of us.”
I look down and read the lettering across the top. Michaels Vacation Home. I turn the page and it’s an island. “You bought an island.”
He snorts. “No. I bought a plot on the island. About a three-hour boat ride from here. We love to come here so much, but we spend so much money. When I weighed that against buying and building, this came out ahead in the long run.”
I can’t help the tears that escape my eyes, and I turn the page. Laid out are three domed buildings, all connected together by what appear to be suspended walkways. The houses are on stilts, and I immediately see why. They are over the water, like the place we stayed at in Bora Bora. But beyond that, on land, is another, larger house — but it is not huge, by any means. I flip the page and it is the layout design of the huts. They are small, but still two-bedroom with a sitting room. Then I come to the house. It is a quaint little oceanfront house, typical of this part of the South Pacific, and it is beautiful.
Three bedrooms, kitchen, dining room — the works. I flip the page again, and there is a massive patio and pool, and it is simply stunning. “Tristan, I don’t know what to say.”
“Thank you?”
“Thank you, thank you.” I smile and kiss him more than a few times. Then I remember his own presents. “You have presents, too.” I say, and he scowls.
FORTY-FIVE
******
Tristan
******
“They can wait,” I tell her. My presents, no matter what they are, are unimportant. Today is for Cami and no one else. But I can see she won’t let it go, so I dutifully go back to the tree, grab my presents and bring them back to the sitting area we’re in. I worried and worried over all the blueprints; the other stuff was minor, but the house — especially the house — was freaking me out for two reasons: one, how she would react to the amount of money; and two, because she’d done the same for me for my birthday a few months ago.
I sit down and ask her, “Which one?”
She shrugs. “Pick one.” So I do, and she blushes bright red.
“Hmm, wonder what’s in here?” I tease her, and tear into the pape
r.
“More for me than for you.” She smiles and I open the box.
“Hmm, to use on me or for me to use on you?” I ask her.
She shrugs again. “Either, or.” I like that idea. Inside the box are a pair of leather cuffs and a blindfold. We’ve played around with restraints before, but not recently, and I rather like the idea of restraining her, especially with the blindfold. The idea stirs my cock awake. “I can see your wheels turning,” she says, and laughs.
“Oh, of course.” I put the lid back on and pick another one. I made her wait patiently for each gift, but I know this is a little different for her and it’s not about me, so I move on quickly. I tear open the paper, and it is a sleek black box. I already have a watch. I open the lid, and lying on some black tissue paper is a key. A car key. I smirk. “What is this to?” I ask her.
“The R-eight.”
“No way,” I say, very excited. “Why?” I ask her, and she doesn’t say anything; she doesn’t need to. She just brings her hand to rest on her bump. “It’s still your car,” I say.
“Lift the paper,” she says, and I do; underneath the paper is the title to the car, transferred from her name to mine. “No, it’s yours. It is practically brand new, I couldn’t part with it because it is my favorite car, so I thought that you might like to have it.”
I smile and shake my head. “I love the crap out of you,” I say, and she busts out laughing.
“Go on, you have more to open,” she says as she watches me. I grab another package; this one is smaller, more gift card size than an actual present. I open it.
Inside is a gift card. “Skeleton Key?”
“It’s to X, my tattoo goddess. You once talked about getting a tribal done on your shoulder. I can’t take you to get it now, since we’re here, but I thought maybe you’d like to get it done another time.”
