by Ember Leigh
Make Me Smile
A Bayshore Novella
Ember Leigh
Make Me Smile © 2021 by Ember Leigh
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a piece of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Published by Ember Leigh, 2021
[email protected]
Cover art: Covers by Combs
Editing: Elisabeth R. Nelson
Contents
About Make Me Smile
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
And before you go…
Make Me Lose
Make Me Fall
Make Me Yours
Make Me Choose
Make Me Hot
READ THE BREAKING SERIES
Breaking The Rules
Changing The Game
Breaking The Sinner
Breaking the Habit
Breaking The Fall
About Make Me Smile
This man—and this life we’ve built—will do nothing but make me smile.
This book is dedicated to Sandusky, Huron, and Vermilion (all cities in northern Ohio) which served as the inspiration for the beautiful little fictitious slice of northern Ohio goodness we’ve come to know as Bayshore.
Chapter 1
KINSLEY
“Good god, woman.” Connor lets out an exaggerated groan as he hoists my wheeled luggage out of the trunk of the ride share. He acts like it weighs a million pounds, but I know it doesn’t. It probably weighs fifty-five, if I know my luggage-packing habits.
But the groan doesn’t fool me. He enjoys it. I can see it in the smile tugging at the corner of his lips as he lowers the lid of the trunk.
“I thought you were used to me packing fifty books per trip by now,” I tell him sweetly as the ride share driver peers at us through the rear-view mirror. “This is our, what, sixth trip together to Bayshore? Your biceps should know what to expect.”
“Oh, trust me,” Connor says with a grin as he taps the back of the car. The driver nods and pulls away, leaving us lost in each other’s gaze in front of Door 3 at the San Diego Airport Departures area. “My biceps are ready for this suitcase and everything else that’s waiting for us.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Up to and including all the shower sex,” he says in a low voice, his hot breath brushing my ear lobe. A shiver goes down my spine, and I erupt into giggles as he nips at my earlobe. A car honks behind us—we’ve been canoodling on the road for long enough. Connor sweeps his arm around my waist and guides us onto the sidewalk, tugging our luggage behind us.
“I just would like to make it known,” I go on as we head for the sliding doors of the airport entrance, “that my books are not the only reason my luggage is heavy this time.”
“Sunny-kins, your luggage could weigh three hundred pounds and I’d gladly lift it, and pay the overweight fee,” he says.
“Awww.” A big grin breaks out on my face, one that I’m incapable of controlling. My cheeks are hurting in no time. “See? That’s why I’m marrying you. Because you say sweet shit like that.”
He laughs, keeping his arm around my waist as we stride into the gleaming airport. We’ve taken this trip back home enough times as a couple now to have the route down—the most recent time just last month, for London and Dom’s wedding. But this time, it’s different. Because we’re entering as boyfriend and girlfriend, but we’ll be returning to this airport as Mr. and Mrs. Daly.
And I could not be more excited.
“Hopefully that’s not the only reason you’re marrying me,” he says with a sidelong glance.
“That, and your biceps. And the fact that you allow me to remain the undisputed ping-pong champion of the relationship, despite the clear threat to your masculinity.”
He breaks into laughter as we roll up to the check-in desk. There’s not much of a crowd today, for some reason, so we’re waited on almost instantly. When the airline clerk asks for my name, I’m still thinking about the fact that I’ll be returning to this airport a married woman.
“Kinsley Connor,” I blurt, and then pause. “I mean, Kinsley Daly. I’m—” A sigh escapes me as Connor hides his laughter behind his closed fist. “Let me try this again. Kinsley Cabana. We have the two o’clock flight to Cleveland.”
The clerk lifts a brow, which I take as an invitation to continue supplying information.
“We’re getting married,” I tell her. “In just under a week.”
“Congratulations,” she says, sending me a genuine smile. To Connor, she says, “And you must be the Connor Daly on this reservation. I need your IDs please.”
She prints our boarding passes while Connor and I share conspiratorial smiles. When it comes time for the luggage, his hits the mark, and I’m over by five pounds. Nailed it. He passes over the credit card wordlessly, and I just lace my fingers through his.
Once our luggage has disappeared down the conveyor belt, we’re free to go through security. Connor and I walk hand-in-hand as though the welcome hall of the San Diego airport is as romantic as the Crystal Pier during a spectacular sunset. And hell, it sort of is. When this blond hunk is at my side, he turns everyday into a romantic adventure. Even three years into our relationship, we’ve only gotten a foot into the honeymoon phase.
“So, you really think Jaric and the crew will be able to handle us being gone for a month?” Connor is voicing the near-constant fear that we’ve been discussing for weeks. This is the first time we’ve ever truly stepped away from our brainchild, barring the one- or two-week visits to Bayshore each summer. But this time, we’re not just taking a vacay. We’re getting married, then going off the grid for a two-stop honeymoon in Aruba and the Dominican Republic, and then returning to Bayshore for one last family visit. And though we swore to be mostly unavailable for the duration of our wedding weekend and the honeymoon itself, we both know we’ll be checking work emails daily.
“I think they will do an excellent job of handling any small fires that pop up,” I tell him, which is the same mantra I’ve been using on myself for weeks now. “If there’s anything big, we’re always a phone call away.”
“You’re right.” He squeezes my hand.
“And we need the time off,” I remind him, even though I’m just as worried about things falling apart while we’re gone. “We’ve been working like crazy to grow the business the past few years. Well, it’s grown, and we need to celebrate.”
“And we are going to fucking celebrate.” He kisses my forehead as we approach security. The carry-on luggage checks go quickly, and soon we’re strolling through Terminal 1 on our way to Gate 8.
“Speaking of which…” I dig my phone out from my purse, which is another so-ugly-it’s-cute thrift find I picked up last month: a
pink leather bag with parrots sewn into the side. “Hazel was supposed to send me the itinerary for this week.”
“The itinerary?” Connor asks.
I swat his arm. “The pre-wedding itinerary! I told you about this.”
“We’re having a rehearsal on Friday…” he begins.
“Hazel mentioned that we could have a series of events leading up to the rehearsal for incoming guests and, well, the families in general.” I swipe through screens, heading for our email thread. Hazel is my unofficial wedding planner, a role she volunteered for now that she and Grayson are happily married. Besides, I think she could see the fear in my eyes when we talked about wedding planning details a couple years back. She’s the only one I would trust with managing such an important event. Hazel knows best—in realty and happily-ever-afters.
“Ummm,” Connor begins, which tells me he did not hear me that evening I told him all about Hazel’s plan for pre-wedding activities.
I sigh. “You and your selective hearing.” I pull up the thread, finding a new email waiting for me. “Oh! She’s just written back to confirm…” I scan the details quickly, my steps slowing until I’m stopped completely. Connor looks back at me.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, it’s just…” I re-read her email, making sure I’m seeing correctly. Connor guides me off to the side of the thoroughfare. “We had been planning a series of activities, and I’m not gonna lie, I kinda told her to go warm fuzzy family on the planning.”
“Okay…”
“And, well, she did exactly as she was told. But now that I’m seeing it…” I scan the list of events. Tuesday: cocktail party at our rental house for both families. Wednesday: fishing trip for fathers of the bride and groom. Thursday: final dress fitting. Friday: pedicures with the mothers, followed by rehearsal.
“Maybe this is too much,” I say, shoving my phone into his hand so he could see the email. Hazel ended the email with an earnest question: Are you sure this looks okay?
No. I’m not sure of any of it now. This itinerary, which seemed so good in theory, is now poised to bring our parents together nearly every day in a seven-day period. Our parents, who barely tolerate the offspring of their rivals. Our parents, who were once best friends but have been blistering enemies for three decades.
Connor grimaces while he reads the email. “It looks fun.”
“Then why does it look like you’re getting a colonoscopy as you read it?”
He frowns, handing the phone back to me. “And this was your idea?”
“Yes! I want this to be the best wedding of our lives. Because it’s our wedding. And, I don’t know, I thought maybe we could finally start a new chapter with our families. Part of me thinks our parents have just been secretly hoping for the past three years that we’d end things and go our separate ways. Now we’re getting married. I want this shit to be done with.”
“I do too,” Connor admits, placing his hand on my waist. “I think they’re capable of it.”
“They are. They’ve gone too long festering in this weird mountain of grudges,” I go on, remembering the motivation I had when I asked Hazel to build the itinerary in the first place. “I’m sick of having to enter their caves like some sort of timid spelunker.”
Connor furrows his brow. “They have caves…?”
“I want us all to live in harmony on the mountainside,” I clarify. “They’ve spent thirty years cowering in their dark recesses of outrage and animosity. I’m sick of needing a headlamp to visit them.”
“Ahh, yeah, the caves,” Connor says. “We’re gonna spelunk them into some goddamn family happiness.”
“Right,” I say, encouraged by his reaction. One of many reasons that I love this man: he at least pretends that my metaphors make sense to him. “Is that so bad? These activities are completely normal for any regular set of parents. I don’t want to keep walking on eggshells when it comes to this. I’m the damn bride—aren’t I supposed to call the shots?”
“You call all the shots,” Connor affirms, “with or without headlamps.”
I laugh, burying my face in his chest. “Thank you for that. So is it insane if we go ahead with this itinerary?”
“Not insane,” he tells me, kissing the top of my head. “Dangerous, maybe. But what’s the worst that could happen? This is our wedding, and we deserve to celebrate it as we choose.”
I smile up at him, because he’s right. What is the worst that can happen?
It’s time to formally put this shit behind our collective families in the name of love…beginning Tuesday.
Chapter 2
CONNOR
Later that evening, Kinsley and I roll into Bayshore in our rental car—excuse me, rental van. Yes, the mid-sized sedan we reserved was inexplicably unavailable, leaving the only option at the Cleveland airport a maroon van capable of carrying a family of ten.
It’s fine though. We’re all smiles as we see the familiar sights through the windows of our family van—Hazel’s realty billboard on Route 2 headed west, the maple tree-lined avenues that become more common the closer you get to the lake, and the humid tang in the air that is at once so similar to yet so different from San Diego.
“I cannot wait until we see our rental,” Kinsley gushes suddenly. We booked a lakefront house for the duration of our stay. Partially to cling to whatever shreds of sanity we might need during the wedding week, but also because the thought of sharing a house with either set of parents just seems wrong. One family might feel like they were being preferred, and that’s too many emotions to handle for a week like this. Nor would we want to uproot midway through the stay to switch houses just so we could say we stayed at each family’s house equally—which is something else we actually considered.
No, the clear winner in this is the lakefront getaway. Jacuzzi patio included.
“What’s the address again?” I ask as I turn the maroon behemoth onto Main Street. We wanted to wander Bayshore a bit first, which means I’m not even sure where we’ll be staying.
“Oh, right. Hang on.” Kinsley rummages through her purse to pull out her phone. She tuts when she assesses the screen. “Wait, this is your phone.” She hands it off to me. We recently got a phone upgrade, but the two-for-one deal included the exact same style of phone—which has proved confusing every single day since. “Okay, here’s mine. I think.” She double checks the phone she handed back to me. It doesn’t help that we even chose the same background image—a selfie we took at the office recently. “Yeah. This is mine. Okay, I still had it in airplane mode.”
“Blessed silence.”
She fiddles with the phone for a moment as I keep turning streets, enjoying the downtown scenes: the nineteenth-century architecture now inhabited by coffee shops and vintage stores; the sidewalks lined with potted plants; the quaint signs pointing toward historic sites. A series of dings and notifications buzz at her phone, catching up after airplane mode.
“Oh shit,” she says.
“What is it?” My stomach clenches with anticipation, fearing the worst on the work front. I feel like both of us are just waiting for some big implosion to occur while we’re gone.
“The rental house,” she says slowly, brows furrowing as she reads. “They messaged me…and called me. But I missed them. Apparently the house isn’t ready today.”
I blink a few times, letting this news wash over me. My first thought is: So the business is fine. Good. Immediately followed by: Wait, so what the fuck now?
“Okay…” I begin.
Kinsley crumples a little, turning to me. “I’m going to call her back. She wrote that they could still honor our reservation. It’ll just begin a little later.”
“And what about the money we spent?” I ask.
“I’ll find out.” Kinsley swipes to call, pressing the phone to her ear as she stares out the window. I’ve brought us to the pier downtown, where parking lots look out over the choppy waters of Briggs Bay. It’s early September, so it still feels like s
ummer, but there’s a hue in the air that tells me fall is fast approaching. I watch an elderly couple strolling down the sidewalk as Kinsley chats with the rental owner. This isn’t a disaster—but it is a logistical irritation.
Especially because the first order of business I had planned was getting Kinsley naked and pressed up against the wall of the first shower I saw.
“Mm-hmm,” Kinsley is saying on the phone. “Right. That makes sense.”
Kinsley’s frown grows deeper the longer she’s on the phone. When she hangs up, she heaves a big sigh.
“A sewer line ruptured, and they have to fix it before they can let us in. They estimate it will be done by Thursday.”
“Thursday.”
“Yeah.” She looks as unhappy as I feel. We watch each other for a few moments while the logistics begin to unfold in the air between us. It’s Sunday. We won’t be able to get into the rental until the day before our rehearsal.
“But that’s fine, right?” I’m trying to be optimistic here.
“Yeah. It just means we have to…you know…” Her periwinkle gaze meets mine, followed by a hard swallow. “Figure out where we’ll stay.”
Right. The entire drama we were hoping to avoid.
A tense half hour passes as we discuss options. If this were any other trip during any other week, it wouldn’t matter. But the other fancy rental options in the area are all booked—some, I’m sure, by incoming members of our family. And as Kinsley soon reveals, other plans hinge on the original plan of this rental. As in, the cocktail party that Hazel has planned for our families is slated to occur at the lakefront rental, which is why Kinsley gracelessly bats down my idea to just get a little hotel room and be done with it.
