by Susan Ward
“Maybe tomorrow. Chrissie and I have other plans today.”
His mesmerizing, intense black eyes bore into me.
“Really.” I acted as though I was curious and nothing more. “Maybe Khloe and I would like to tag along.”
“I doubt that, Damon,” Alan said, his voice incredulous.
My phone dinged.
I pushed aside my half-finished plate, reached for my cell, and read it.
“Anything wrong?” Khloe asked.
“There’s always something wrong.”
I regretted that the second I said it and was relieved Khloe didn’t seem to read anything into the remark. There was still that little impish glint in her eyes she’d had when I entered the kitchen.
I pushed back from the table and took my plate to the sink. “I shouldn’t be long. Or rather, I hope I’m not long.”
“Wait. What does that mean? Are you taking off for the day?” Her brows lifted with heavy meaning. “Today?”
“Don’t know yet, love. It’s impossible to tell how serious the problem is with how Freeburg describes it. Not until I see it. I might be back in half an hour. I may not be back until night.”
“But…” She clamped her mouth shut and stared at me.
I frowned. “But what, Khloe?”
“Never mind.” She shook her head and sank her teeth into her lower lip.
It was hard not to smile. She was right. We were a perfect blend of yin and yang. I knew what her but had meant and she didn’t truly believe I’d forgotten.
I went to the table and eased down in front of her. “Give us a kiss, love, before I take off.”
She was just enough peeved that when she leaned in to me it was kind of grudgingly. As her mouth moved against mine, I slipped my hand into my pocket.
Pulling back from her, I set the box on the table. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
“Oh, you…” She playfully shoved at me. “You had me thinking you’d forgotten.”
I ran my palm across her cheek. “Never.”
“Then you’re forgiven.” She turned the box in her fingers, but it wasn’t a mystery what was in it.
“Are you going to open that, dear?” her mother asked.
“I want to take my time,” Khloe said excitedly. “Relish it. It’s my first Valentine’s Day gift from Damon.”
My head tipped forward into her, hiding my face so her parents couldn’t see my eyes welling up. “You’re quite barmy, KK.”
“We both are. Who cares?” She touched her lips against my wool cap. “I would have been very upset with you today, Damon, if you hadn’t gotten me something special.”
Once I’d contained the impulse to cry, I sat back. I remained crouched between her legs, and the purple and silver box was on her lap between us.
She removed the lid, and a glowing smile rose to her face. “What is it, Damon?”
Every time she asked that, my heart belonged a bit more to her. I was sure her parents thought that the things we did were ridiculous. It didn’t matter to us. We were happy and in love. Or maybe everything we did made perfect sense to them. Yes, how we were was something I was sure Chrissie and Alan understood.
I eased up, gently put my hands on her cheeks and said, “Close your eyes, Khloe. Now look in the box and tell me what you see.”
Her lids flared wide, and her eyes fixed on me. “A wedding. Lovely. Private. Us with only my family. Simple and somehow without anyone else finding out about it. Our private bit of happiness that we don’t share with anyone. Isn’t that a wonderful dream, Damon?”
“Very, love.” As choked up as I was, it took effort to add, “Someday.”
She nodded, placed her hand on my chin, and lifted my face to hers for a kiss. She paused for a moment with her brow against mine. “You better not keep Mr. Freeburg waiting. The faster you get out of here, the earlier you get back.”
I smiled. “I was just teasing earlier. I shouldn’t be long.”
I reached across the table for my coffee, and as I rose, I noticed Alan staring at me intently. I stole a last glance at Khloe’s smile as she gazed at the box.
At the door, I paused for a moment to watch her carefully fold the purple paper and tuck it in the box. She looked good today. In high spirits. Almost as though she were hopeful something good was going to happen.
Then my heart missed a beat as the gift exchange replayed in my head. Somehow I’d missed it. After she described her fantasy wedding, Khloe hadn’t said, “Someday.” I had. That had never happened before.
“I’ll be back soon, Khloe,” I repeated, hoping to hell I sounded calm. I jutted my head toward the door. “Alan, there is something I’d like to talk privately with you about. An issue I need help with. Can you walk with me for a bit?”
Khloe’s brow crinkled, confused, but I smiled and waited for Alan to put on his cold-weather gear. Once outside, I turned to him and said, “I’m marrying your daughter today, and I’d like your help. You know people, and you know how to get things done without a public ruckus. You can pull strings if they must be pulled. And I hope to heaven you also know how we can arrange a beautiful ceremony in under half a day without it leaking to the press.”
He stared at me, silent, intense and unreadable.
“Will you help me?”
We started to walk down the pavement toward my truck. “I can with most of it,” Alan said finally after a nice dose of nerve-stretching for me. “The arrangement part, getting the rest of the family here, and having it be lovely is a bit outside my skill set.”
“It would be dangerous to us to trust anyone outside our private circle.”
“What you need is someone with exceptional organizational skills that won’t sell the story to the tabloids,” he advised.
“Any thoughts on that?”
“Call Krystal.”
Khloe
THE WORN WOOD FLOOR beneath my feet creaked. The interior of the barn was nothing like I expected. It looked more like a chapel, the kind someone would find on a centuries-old English estate.
There were pews and an altar beneath the open-beamed ceiling. The walls were lined with portraits of people I didn’t know. Some of the paintings I could tell were very old and no doubt priceless; others were more recent additions to the collection. They didn’t belong in a barn. They’d been brought here.
My father stood at the far end of the building, dressed in a suit instead of the casual outfit he’d worn to breakfast—jeans with a t-shirt that displayed the logo for his band, Blackpoll. In front of him was a dais with an open book on it.
The barn was small, but stained-glass windows on each wall filled it with shimmering, colorful rays of brightness. The eight long benches, two per row with a walkway left between, were decorated with lavender-and-white roses and twinkling strands of clear lights.
There wasn’t a vacant spot to sit anywhere. My family took up every inch of space in the pews. They were all in Wyoming, though I hadn’t known it until I stepped into the barn. A guy I hadn’t met before stood at the end of the rose-petal-strewn aisle. Two towering bodyguards flanked me where I halted just inside the door.
Outside, the wind howled through the mountains and valleys, causing the slats of the barn to groan in answer.
From somewhere music came, clearly prerecorded. A beautiful ballad and my mother’s voice. The piano, how it was played, told me my father had recorded the tracks with her.
Near me, my brother Eric smiled.
Beside him stood my sister Krystal.
But all I could see was Damon waiting at the end of the short walk between the pews. How he looked took my breath away. Chestnut hair lightly mussed. Tigerlike amber eyes shimmering and burning. The expression on his handsome face serious. A smile fought with the dignified line of his sexy mouth. He was dashingly dressed in an official royal suit, dark in color, with ribbons and a wide gold sash across his chest.
He was looking at me, chin
slightly lifted, proud, as his stare pleaded with me to join him. I could feel the heat of his glance moving over me. My knees were quivering, and my heart beat fast and erratically. My breath was shallow and slow.
I kept my gaze trained on Damon.
I remembered how he’d looked leaving the house five hours earlier. Heavy down jacket, wool cap and gloves, black work boots. Dressed to tackle another day on the ranch.
But now he looked every inch a prince of England.
The memory of my grandpa Jack flashed in my head. This was the kind of magic he’d been known for: making the impossible happen for people in love. I looked at Damon. Grandpa had made this bit of impossible happen for me.
“You ready, Khloe?”
My brother was holding out his arm to me. He was smiling and ready to walk me across the barn, probably to Damon. My glance shifted, and Krystal nodded, her large blue eyes glowing.
I swept the pews with my gaze.
My entire family was in on what was about to happen.
How had Damon pulled this off?
Was I ready? What girl could ever be ready for something like this?
With my thumb, I moved the ring on my finger back and forth. The giant diamond was still a surprise to find on my hand. When Damon proposed, I’d had to accept only in a someday sort of way. I wore the ring as a promise it would happen.
My breaths grew quick.
My head was swimming.
Everything went out of focus.
It felt like I was floating on a fluffy cloud, weightless.
Eric looped my arm around his.
He guided me down the aisle.
We stopped.
“KK.”
I took a breath and looked up into Damon’s gorgeous face. His amber eyes held mine. He squeezed my hands gently.
Damon.
Me.
With my dad waiting as if to marry us.
No way this would be legal.
Sweet. Romantic.
Over the top, like Damon was at times.
Symbolic…but none of my siblings would know that or why I really wanted them on the ranch today.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Damon said, and I realized then what this ceremony was. For him. For me. And for my family watching and waiting.
I hid my threatening tears behind a smile. “You know, you could have given me a card or candy or cooked a romantic dinner or something. You didn’t have to do all this.”
“Yes, I did.” He ran a finger down my cheek, and I could feel white-hot electricity shoot through my veins. “I love you. And you love me. I won’t take no for an answer.”
Damon
I WAS SURE KHLOE’S SIBLINGS thought it nervy, arrogant, or maybe a boneheaded move to throw together a wedding on the fly and spring it on the bride without telling her. But I didn’t care. Her wish was my bidding. It’d worked out brilliantly. If anyone suspected why we’d brought them here, it didn’t show in their expressions. And Khloe was so happy getting to see her siblings before.
Still, even with my heart jumping from the sight of her as she stood in the back of the barn, I was nervous I might have read the box comment wrong until the second Khloe looked at me. Her eyes were all I needed to see to know I hadn’t misread her not saying “someday” after seeing a wedding in the infinite-possibilities box.
Our small reception with her family began in the great room after sunset. It was a long day for Khloe, and somehow she stayed on her feet. It was no doubt being surrounded by laughter and her siblings that kept her going well into the night. But as we danced, I could feel her losing steam.
I brought my lips to her ear. “Time for bed, love. They won’t think anything of us cutting out. It is our wedding night. And you’ll get to visit with them in the morning before everyone leaves.”
Without looking up, she nodded against my chest. “Our wedding night. Say that again, Damon.”
“Our wedding night, my princess,” I murmured ardently in her ear, and she laughed.
Her sparkling blue eyes peeked up at me. “Oh, jeez, Louise. I hadn’t even thought of that. Not once today.”
“Which part? That I’m a prince or you’re now my wife?”
She gave me the ha-ha look and I wondered if she’d come away with the wrong idea from the barn. “Tell me the truth, love. Did you only want a wedding because you wanted to see your brothers and sisters today?”
She blushed. “No…well, partly.”
I quirked a brow at her, nervous. “All right. What’s the part I don’t know?”
“The bigger part.” Her face tilted and her expression was one I didn’t doubt I’d remember a lifetime. “I am madly, passionately in love with you. I’ve imagined our wedding so often, what it would be like, and I realized I wanted to live that dream with you no matter what happens. The most important dream to me is being your wife.”
I clutched her fiercely to my chest and had to swallow to answer. “Me, too, KK. You made me the happiest man on earth this morning when you didn’t say ‘someday.’”
“Really?” She crinkled her nose. “By your lack of reaction at the time, I’d worried I’d shocked you.”
I laughed. “Never, love. Joy from head to toe.”
I went to Mrs. Freeburg and asked her to figure out where to put everyone for the night, then retrieved Khloe and we inconspicuously slipped from the gathering.
As I carried Khloe in my arms to our room, a measure of her playfulness revived. She wanted every drop of happy and what a wedding night should be even if we knew it wasn’t in the cards.
I wanted it as well, in the worst way.
I kicked the door closed behind us. I peppered my lips across her face as I went toward the bed. Before I lowered her to the mattress, I gave her one deep, thorough, full-mouth kiss. Her fingers dug into my arms, and when I pulled back, she let out a breathy gasp.
“Very sure how tonight’s going to turn out for you, aren’t you?” she murmured.
I stood beside the bed, gazing down at her. “Yes. I heard your pleasure purr a second ago after I kissed you. Besides, you’re my wife, and this is our wedding night.”
Pushing with her arms, she sat up, her face toward mine. “I’m not really your wife, and this isn’t really a wedding night. It wasn’t a real wedding. Technically, I’m not your wife.”
I wasn’t sure if this was flirty talk or she believed that.
“It was a real wedding. We exchanged vows and made promises to each other in front of the people we love. Technically, that’s what a wedding is.”
She made a pert lift of her chin. “I should have said legally. Legally, we’re not married.”
“Correction. Legally we are.” I took off my jacket and tossed it aside “We were married by a licensed minister: your dad. True, licensed today off the internet, but the state of Wyoming recognizes it. And those papers we signed after the ceremony with the notary—wedding license and marriage certificate. There’s no waiting time in Wyoming, no blood test requirement, and it doesn’t matter if we spoke the vows first then did the paperwork. Love, we are legally married.”
Her head tilted. “Legally married, but not officially married.”
“It’s official. All filing the certificate means is it becomes public record, and the quiet of our life gets ruined. But don’t think we’re not filing those papers eventually. Because we are.”
“Really?” She sounded stunned.
Oh, bloody hell. “Yes, really. That wasn’t a sham. Khloe, we’re married.”
I waited anxiously for her response.
“Did you think it wasn’t real?” I asked impatiently.
Her brows puckered as she studied me.
“I did, then I didn’t.” She made a quirky expression that resembled her mother’s.
My stomach dropped. “You did?”
“Well, I did during the ceremony, but not after when I saw the legal junk and the stuff we had to put our
signatures on. That couldn’t be for show. And that’s when I knew I’d really done it. I’d married Damon.”
I wasn’t sure how to take that. “Were you happy-happy? Or happy stunned? Or unhappy?”
“Happy-happy? I need to keep you away from my mother.”
“No. I acquired that habit from you. Now answer my question.”
She laughed and gave me a smile that shot straight to my heart. “Happy-happy. It was what I wanted but I thought impossible. I shouldn’t have doubted for a second you could make the impossible happen for me.”
I had to fight for air, how much I loved her painful in me. I turned away, focusing on removing my clothes, to prevent her from seeing my face.
“Damon?”
I sniffed back a tear and smiled at her. “Yes, love?”
Her eyes were enormous and a shock of color on her pale, thin face. “It’s just…no matter what happens in two days, I want you to know I’ve already had my miracle. You’re my miracle. If I’m only allowed one, I’m glad it was you.”
My breath quickened. Emotion ran wild within me. “No, Khloe. You’re my miracle.”
It was the truth.
“I love you, and I’m so glad we got married today,” she replied, and when her words fully hit me, fear rocketed through me, almost sending me to my knees. Then she shook her head and lay back on the pillows. “But don’t think you can go back to being high-handed in our relationship now that you’re my husband.”
“Can’t guarantee it, love. I’m a husband who loves his wife very, very much.” I stretched out on the bed beside Khloe and took her in my arms. “Happy Valentine’s Day, princess.”
“Happy wedding night, Your Highness,” Khloe whispered and fell fast asleep.
I stayed awake through the rest of our wedding night, holding my wife on my chest, and praying to God that he wouldn’t take her from me.
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-Five
Khloe
The Present
CODY’S VOICE BOOMS through the door. “What the fuck is the matter with you, kid? I sprinted up ten flights—something you should be doing every hour—patrolling the stairwell, and find this scum with his camera lurking at the locked security door for the floor, hoping to slip in with one of the staff. Then I find your worthless ass sleeping in a chair.”
