Chelsea clapped her hands. "Yay. I'm so happy. And she would be lucky to get you."
"It's not a done deal. She still has to like what I design, but if she does, it could be very lucrative."
"Wow," Chloe said. "That is a huge change. I'm going to miss you, Keira."
"I'm going to miss all of you." She blinked back a tear. "And I cannot start crying yet."
"None of us can," Gianna said with a sniff. "I'm really happy for you, Keira, even if my face is saying something different."
"I'll be back to visit. My mom is here."
"And you're sure about this move?" Chloe asked. "You haven't known Dante very long to move across the country for him."
"I'm not doing it for him; I'm doing it for me. I've met someone I'm crazy about, and I don't want to let geography get in the way. Dante said his contract is up at the end of this year. He'll try to move close to wherever I need to be."
"That's amazing," Lizzie said. "Can he do that?"
"He says he can. We'll see how things go." She paused. "You've all been telling me for a while now that I'm spreading myself too thin, and you were all right. I couldn't seem to pick a lane, make a decision, but meeting Dante and having my home burn to the ground really kicked me out of my rut."
Hannah gave her a dry smile as she shook her head. "Not the way any of us wanted it to go."
"It's how it went. I'm really happy, which seems bizarre considering how much I just lost. But I'm in love, and I'm going after my dream again. It turns out that's all I need. Being in Miami, with no other distractions, will also help me give the design business the focus it needs."
"I think Dante will be a big distraction," Hannah said with a laugh. "But, yeah, maybe in between all the hot sex, you can design some kick-ass dresses."
She laughed. "I will find the time."
"We should do a girl's trip to Miami," Lizzie said. "Just because we're all getting married, having babies, and making big changes doesn't mean we have to lose each other."
"I'm in," Hannah said. "And I'm happy for you, Keira. Remember when the four of us used to play our imaginary games in your backyard?"
"Yes. You were the nurse or the doctor."
"I was the mom or the cook," Chloe said.
"I was the artist," Gianna put in. "And you were always making clothes and playing fashion show, Keira. We're all doing what we were meant to do."
"Really?" Lizzie asked, surprise in her gaze. "You all knew what you were going to do when you were kids?"
"We did," she said. "It just took me longer to get back to that dream."
"Because you took care of your mom," Gianna said. "And look at your mother now. She has a boyfriend. She's healthy. You got her back to that point."
"She got herself back, too." She blinked back more tears. "I'm going to miss you all so much. I would love to have you visit any time. Dante showed me photos of his apartment, and it's spectacular. He also has a boat. I had no idea he had so much money."
Lizzie laughed. "He's a professional baseball player. What did you think?"
"I guess I just didn't think about it."
"Probably why he likes you so much," Chelsea said dryly. "You saw the real him. Trust me, as a celebrity, that isn't always easy to find."
"I know. I'm lucky. But I don't care about his money or celebrity. Dante gets me. He pushes me in the ways I need to be pushed, and he believes in me. And we laugh a lot. Now I'm going to stop talking." She opened her arms. "Group hug."
She opened her arms up and they ran into each other's arms. She loved these women with all her heart, but she loved Dante even more.
When they broke apart, she said, "I'm going to find my plus one."
Hannah laughed. "I'm taking credit for getting you two together. That first date was only because of me."
"All right, I'll give you the credit," she said with a grin. "I'll be back in a few minutes."
"I'm going to check on Leo," Chloe said. "It will just take a second."
"Don't worry. I'm not going down the aisle without both of you," Hannah said.
"I'm really happy for you," Chloe said, as they walked down the back hall of the church.
She gave Chloe a sharp look, hearing sadness in her voice. Then she stopped walking. "We'll still see each other. I'll be back."
"I know. Don't mind me. Weddings are just hard…" Chloe cleared her throat. "I always think about Kevin, how I thought we'd be together forever, but now we're divorced, and I'm raising a kid by myself. I never saw that in my future. Not that I don't love being a mom, because I do."
"You just didn't want to be a single parent."
"I did not."
"I'm sorry." She hesitated. "Are you going to be sitting with Adam at the reception?"
Chloe shook her head and gave her a pointed look. "No. And you all need to stop trying to put us together. We're just friends."
"It seems like it has been more than that."
"No. It hasn't. Adam is a great guy. He has been very supportive, but we're not in love. There will be someone else for him."
"And someone else for you."
"Maybe. We'll see. I'm not in a hurry. I have my hands full with one very demanding male, so I'm going to focus on Leo. I better find him now. He's sitting with Gianna's mom, but I want to make sure he's not too much for her." Chloe paused. "I'm glad you found Dante, Keira. I have a good feeling about you two."
"So do I. I never thought I'd find the right guy by sitting down at the wrong table, but I did."
Chloe laughed. "I might have to try that sometime. Come on. We don't have much time."
Dante got to the church parking lot about fifteen minutes before Hannah was due to walk down the aisle. As he got out of the car, he grabbed his suit coat from the backseat and shrugged it on. There was a crowd of people still streaming into the church, but it was one beautiful brunette slowly hobbling her way down the steps who caught his eye. She'd gone without her walking boot so as not to ruin Hannah's photos, another unselfish gesture that was pure Keira.
He hurried across the lot. When he reached her, he threw his arms around her, because even though he'd seen her two hours earlier, it felt much longer than that.
She gave him a bright smile as she lingered in his embrace. "You look very handsome."
"And you look spectacular. I like your dress." His gaze moved down the clingy dress, appreciating the way it clung to her body. "I can't wait to take it off you."
She gave him a playful punch on the arm. "That will be hours from now. Anyway, wait until you see Hannah's wedding gown. It's the show-stopper."
"I'm looking forward to that."
"I'm so glad you were able to stay for the wedding. This will be our last chance to hang out together with all my friends for a long time."
"We'll keep in touch with them, Keira, I promise." He knew it would be difficult for her to give up so much of her life, and he intended to make it as easy as he could.
"I know we will. I'm actually more worried about missing you at the moment. It's going to be hard not to see you for two weeks."
"It will feel like forever," he agreed. Keira would head to Los Angeles on Monday and then return to Whisper Lake to organize her life and get her managers up to speed. After that, she would fly down to Miami. He couldn't wait for them to be together in Miami, but he was also excited to see her take her first steps toward a full-time design career. "The time will go fast, and you'll be busy in LA with Jessica Stillman."
"I am eager to hear what Jessica wants. It will be fun to work with someone new. Hopefully, she'll like my design drafts and will want to sign a contract."
"I'm sure she'll love you. How could she not?"
"You're prejudiced."
"I might be," he admitted. "But I know how talented you are. Jessica would be lucky to have someone as dedicated as you are to creating the perfect dress."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence. By the way, my mom and Mark are saving you a seat. They're in a great mood, because Mark ju
st officially bought the house around the corner."
"That's exciting." He'd heard there was an offer but not that it had been accepted.
"It is. They're both thrilled. My mom gets to stay in the neighborhood, and she'll be close enough to walk over and watch the rebuild. Until that house is out of escrow, they'll live in the cabin that my friend owns."
"Our cabin?"
"Well, not technically ours," she said with a laugh. "Although, we did make some memories there."
"Some smoking hot memories. When is the cabin going up for sale?"
"About a month. There are still a few things to be done, but my mom can oversee those as well. She's actually excited to have more work to do. I'm excited to have less."
"The perfect trade-off. Maybe I should buy the cabin."
Surprise filled her beautiful brown eyes. "Why would you want to do that?"
"Because I love it. Because it always felt like ours, and we'll need a place to stay when we come back to visit, which will be often."
"There's still my house. I'm not sure what we'll do with that once it's rebuilt."
"True. We can think about it."
"I like that you want to buy a place here, though."
He pulled her closer to him. "I want you to be happy, Keira. I know you're making sacrifices for me."
"I'm really not, Dante. We need to be together, and I'm more flexible than you."
"For now," he agreed. "But the future can be anything we make it."
"As long as the future is us together, I'm good."
At her words, he thought he might just be the luckiest guy in the world. "Me, too."
"It's funny that we met because Hannah insisted that I needed a plus one for the wedding. That's the only reason I went on that date. I sat down at the wrong table, but I met the right guy. And now you're here—my plus one. How different would our lives be if we never met?"
"I don't even want to think about it. I love you, Keira."
"I love you, too. Now, I better go get Hannah married."
"I'll be waiting for you when you're done. I'll always be waiting." She gazed into his eyes with so much love, his heart ached. The loneliness he'd grown up in and lived with for most of his life was gone now. Keira was filling all the empty spaces. "My mom would have loved you," he murmured. "I wish you could have met each other."
"Me, too. I want to keep hearing about her. I want to keep hearing about everything."
"That's good. Because when you're around, I can't seem to shut up."
She gave him a loving kiss filled with the promise of happily ever after. Then she took his hand, and they walked up the steps and into the church.
One day, there would be another wedding, and Keira would be in a white gown, and he'd be standing in the front waiting for her. He'd never thought he would make a good husband or a family man but meeting her had changed that. Now, it was all he really wanted. And he didn't intend to strike out.
# # #
What to read next…
I hope you enjoyed Keira and Dante’s story! Please click here if you’d like to leave a review for If We Never Met!
The next Whisper Lake novel, Tangled Up In You, will be released March 15, 2022.
Preorder: Tangled Up In You
Are you up to date on the Whisper Lake Novels?
Whisper Lake Series
Always With Me (#1)
My Wildest Dream (#2)
Can't Fight The Moonlight (#3)
Just One Kiss (#4)
If We Never Met (#5)
Tangled Up In You (#6)
* * *
Want more contemporary romance? If you haven’t read the Callaways yet, check out the first book On A Night Like This
Excerpt - ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS
As a teenager, seeing her father’s car in the driveway when she came home from school had always made Sara Davidson uneasy. She would steel herself for the evening to come, never quite sure why she felt afraid. Stephen Davidson had never physically abused her, but he had been demanding, and his words cut like a knife. It wasn’t always what he said that was the worst part; it was the rejection in his gaze, and the cold quiet that usually followed his disappointment in her.
It would be different now, Sara told herself as she got out of her rental car. She was twenty-nine years old, a successful lawyer, and she hadn't lived at home in ten years. So why did she feel trepidation?
Because her relationship with her father had never been quite right.
They were biologically connected, but emotionally they were as distant as two people could be. Her mother, Valerie, had been the buffer between them, but her mom had died when Sara was nineteen years old. For the past decade it had been just her and her dad. Actually, it had mostly been just her.
While her father had paid for her education and living expenses, he hadn’t come to her graduations—not from college or from law school. The last time she’d seen him in person had been five years ago when they’d both attended the funeral of her grandmother, her father's mother.
She walked up the path, pausing at the bottom of the stairs, her hand tightening around the bottle of wine she’d brought for her dad’s sixty-fifth birthday on Sunday. She’d tried her best to get him something a wine connoisseur would appreciate – a bottle of 1989 Chateau Mouton Rothschild Bordeaux. The wine had cost as much as her monthly car payment; she hoped it would be worth it. Her father was her only living relative, and she still, probably foolishly, wanted to believe they could find a way to connect with each other.
Her nerves tightened, and she had to fight back the urge to flee. She'd flown all the way across the country to see him; she couldn’t back down. Trying to calm her racing heart, she looked around, reminding herself that this had once been home.
Her father’s two-story house with the white paint and dark brown trim was located in the middle of the block in a San Francisco neighborhood known as St. Francis Wood. Not far from the ocean, the houses in this part of the city were detached and had yards, unlike much of the city where the homes shared common walls.
Her family had moved into this house when she was nine years old, and one of her favorite places to be was sitting in the swing on the front porch. She’d spent many hours reading or watching the kids who lived next door. The Callaways were a big, Irish-Catholic blended family. Jack Callaway, a widower with four boys, had married Lynda Kane, a divorcee with two girls. Together, they’d had fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, rounding out the family at eight kids.
As an only child, Sara had been fascinated by the Callaways and a little envious. Jack Callaway was a gregarious Irishman who told great stories and had never met a stranger. Jack was a San Francisco firefighter, following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps. The Callaways had been born to serve and protect, and all of the kids had been encouraged to follow the family tradition. At least two of the boys had become firefighters, and last she'd heard her friend Emma had done the same, but she hadn't spoken to Emma in a long time.
A wave of nostalgia hit her as her gaze drifted down the block. She'd let her childhood friends go—not that there had been that many, but she could still hear the sounds of the past, kids laughing and playing. The Callaway boys had run the neighborhood, taking over the street on summer nights to play baseball, football, or any other game they'd invent. She'd occasionally been part of those games, but not often.
She might have grown up next door to the Callaways, but she'd lived in an entirely different world—a world of quiet structure and discipline, a world where expectations for grades and achievement were high, and having fun didn't factor into any equation.
Sighing, she pushed the past back where it belonged and walked up the stairs. Time to stop procrastinating.
She rang the bell, and a moment later the front door swung open. She drew in a quick breath as she met her father's dark gaze. At six foot four, Stephen Davidson was a foot taller than she was, and had always scared the hell out of her. He had dark brown hair, b
rown eyes, and wiry frame. Today, he wore black slacks and a white button-down shirt that had always been his uniform during the week. He seemed thinner than she remembered, although he’d always been fit. His sense of discipline extended to every part of his life.
"Surprise!" she said, forcing a smile on her face.
"What are you doing here, Sara?"
"It's your birthday on Sunday."
"You should have called."
"You would have told me not to come."
"Yes, I would have done that," he agreed. "It's not a good time."
It hadn't been a good time in over a decade. "Can I come in?" she asked.
He hesitated for a long moment, then gave a resigned nod.
She crossed the threshold, feeling as if she'd just gotten over the first hurdle. There would be more coming, but at least she'd made it through the door. Pausing in the entry, she glanced toward the living room on her right. It was a formal room, with white couches, glass tables, and expensive artwork. They'd never spent any time in that room as a family, and it didn't appear that that had changed. Turning her head to the left, she could see the long mahogany table in the dining room and the same dried flower arrangement that had always been the centerpiece.
The fact that the house hadn't changed in ten years was probably a sign that her father hadn't changed either.
"You shouldn't have come without calling, Sara,” her father repeated, drawing her attention back to him.
"Well, I'm here, and I brought you a present." She handed him the wine.
He reluctantly took the bottle, barely glancing at the label. "Thank you."
"It's very rare," she said, wishing for a bigger reaction.
"I'm sure it is." He set the bottle down on a side table.
She squared her shoulders, irritated by his lack of enthusiasm. But she knew it would take more than a bottle of wine to crack the iceberg between them. "I'd like to stay for the weekend."
If We Never Met Page 28
