by Liz Isaacson
“Thank you, Momma.” Whitney smiled at her, tears pricking her eyes. She could never tell her mother that the wedding wasn’t real. The fact was, it felt very real to her. She hadn’t told him she loved him, and she wasn’t sure how to say the words.
She’d only said them to one other man before, and he’d left for farrier school the following day.
Jeremiah had never given her any reason to doubt him and hearing him say he loved her had been absolutely wonderful. Talking to him about her infant photography had been so much better than keeping secrets from him.
The fact was, Whitney could see her whole life in front of her, with Jeremiah Walker at her side.
She looked around the homestead, realizing in that moment that she was going to live there. She’d not moved in any of her things yet, and Jeremiah hadn’t asked her about them.
“Ready?” he asked, coming to her side.
“You’re in charge of the meal.” She grinned at him, glad when he leaned down and kissed her quickly. That felt real, as did his hand in hers. Why, then, did she still feel like his bogus bride? Like they’d somehow tricked everyone in the room into coming to celebrate with them when they shouldn’t have?
“All right,” Jeremiah said loudly, whistling through his teeth in a shrill, piercing way. Everyone quieted, and he put his arm around Whitney’s waist, tucking her right into his side. “Dinner is ready. Let’s eat.”
“I’ll say the family prayer,” Rhett said. All the men took off their cowboy hats, and Whitney took a moment to take in all of them hatless while Rhett started the prayer. Then she closed her eyes and thought of where she and Jeremiah would be in just a few short hours.
Across the country.
Alone.
In a huge penthouse suite overlooking Central Park. Jeremiah had shown her the apartment he’d rented for two weeks, and she’d simply stared at the pictures. She couldn’t even imagine what the space would be like in real life.
“Amen,” Rhett said, and the room erupted with the word.
Surprisingly, Jeremiah did go through all the food he’d laid out on the huge island in the kitchen homestead. It was pretty self-explanatory. Chicken drumettes. Hot rolls. Vegetables in a cup with ranch on the bottom. Fruit salad with vanilla lime custard. Tiny little bundt cakes for everyone.
He led her through the line of food first, and they sat at the huge table that stretched in front of the windows. It wouldn’t hold them all, but seven couples could fit. Someone had set up more tables, and they’d definitely have enough room for everyone.
Whitney smiled and ate, chatted with Jeremiah’s brothers, her parents, her siblings. Everyone seemed so happy, and before she knew it, Jeremiah was leaning over to her. “We have to leave for the airport in twenty minutes. Do you want to go change?”
She turned toward him, her eyes widening. “Twenty minutes?”
“Your bags are in the bedroom,” he said, those dark, deep eyes devouring her. For all she knew, he’d chartered a flight to New York City. He might even own a plane she didn’t know about. Jeremiah was full of surprises, as Whitney had learned over the last several weeks.
“Yes.” She stood up. “I better go change.”
“Yes, go, baby,” her mother said, standing too. “We’ll make sure everything is cleaned up here before we go.”
Whitney smiled and went through the kitchen and down the hall. Halfway toward Jeremiah’s bedroom, she realized she wasn’t alone. Her husband walked right behind her, reaching past her to the doorknob to open the door for her.
She said nothing as he waited for her to step into the room in front of him, and a thrill ran down her arms when the door clicked closed behind both of them.
“Let me help you,” he murmured, reaching for the zipper on the back of her dress. The moment between them was intimate and sweet and exciting all at the same time, and with the release of the zipper, Whitney felt like she could breathe again.
She turned into him, and he took her easily into his arms and kissed her.
“Jeremiah,” she breathed, pulling away enough to get his name out.
“Mm?” He touched his mouth to her neck, sweeping a kiss up to her ear.
“I love you.” The words might have trembled as they left her mouth, but that could’ve been from the sensual way he was kissing her.
He pulled away, his eyes locking onto hers. He searched, and searched, and searched for something on her face. She didn’t know what.
She saw love in his face. Disbelief. Hope. Fear.
“Say something,” she finally said, giving a half-giggle, half-scoff along with the words.
“I’m just…processing.”
“What’s there to process?” she asked. “I’m in love with you, and we’re married. I’m actually hoping we can stay that way. None of this bogus bride stuff.”
He fell back a step as if he didn’t like what she was saying. He took off his cowboy hat and tossed it onto his bed. She noticed that he hadn’t bought in another bed, the way he’d said he would.
“Are you serious?”
“Do you think I would say such things if I wasn’t?” Whitney stepped back into his arms. “Why can’t you just kiss me again?” She wanted to do a whole lot more than just kiss him, but they now needed to leave for the airport in fifteen minutes.
“I can.” He kissed her again, moving slower this time, as if her touch would tell him the truth. He pulled away quickly. “I love you, too.”
“I know that.” She pressed into him as her dress started to slip off her shoulders. Anxiety blipped through her, as she’d never been with a man before, and both of their families were only a short walk away.
She kissed him, pleased when he responded eagerly, kissing her more roughly than before. He laid her down on the bed, and she gasped. “Jeremiah,” she said, her voice mostly air.
He didn’t respond; he just kissed her again. He pulled away a moment later, his breathing ragged. “We need to change and go.” He backed up and shrugged out of his tuxedo jacket.
He kept his back to her, and she slipped out of her dress and into a pair of jeans and a flowered blouse while he pulled a polo over his head and stepped into a pair of jeans too.
She might have snuck a peek at him, finding those bare, wide shoulders beyond sexy.
He tossed his clothes on the bed, pulled on a pair of cowboy boots, and reached for their suitcases, which stood ready next to the dresser.
Whitney said, “I’ll be out in a minute,” and went into the huge master bathroom while he left the bedroom. She looked at herself in the mirror, and she looked like she was afraid of her own shadow.
“What have you done?”
She hadn’t given much thought to what would happen after the I-do. They’d talked about separate beds so long ago, and then not again, and Whitney hadn’t been prepared to fall in love with Jeremiah Walker.
But now that she had, she had to face the idea of sleeping with him.
With trembling fingers, she pulled her lipstick from her purse and slicked on another layer of the perfectly red color. Feeling more like herself, she tucked the tube back into the right pocket and left the bathroom.
“Help me,” she prayed, not sure how to articulate much more than that.
A couple of hours later, Jeremiah gestured for her to go up the steps to the jet first. “I can’t believe you,” she said. “Is this your plane?”
“No,” he said. “I just paid to use it for our flights.”
“Who’s is it?”
“A friend of Liam’s,” Jeremiah said. “Some big producer out of Hollywood. He works on the same team as Liam. I guess he’s his boss or something.”
“Wow.” Whitney stepped onto the plane to the smile of an attendant and the pilot.
“Welcome,” the woman said. “I’m Stacy, and I’ll be taking care of you today.”
“George King,” the man said. “I’ll be flying you to JFK. My co-pilot is running through the final checks now.”
Whitney peeked into the cockpit to find another dark-haired man there. Then she turned to the rest of the plane, and it wasn’t anything like she’d seen before. No rows and rows of seats, as many as could fit. No, the space spread out before them, with chairs lining the window and facing inward. A slim table sat in front of the chairs, with an aisle between them. A few seats faced the front in the back, where a closed door stood between those.
The attendant took the bags from Jeremiah, which were much bigger than carry-ons, and opened a cupboard by the entrance. The bags rolled right inside, and she said, “Take a seat anywhere. I’ll be right there to take your drink order. We have snacks as well, and I’ll bring the basket.”
Whitney didn’t know where to sit. It felt very odd to be on an airplane and not be cramming herself between two strangers. Jeremiah put his hand on the small of her back and guided her further onto the plane, where they took a seat on the left side.
“Coffee for me, please,” he said when Stacy arrived with a basket of granola bars, small bags of potato crisps, packages of cookies, bananas, apples, and beef jerky. “Cream and sugar.” He looked at Whitney, who took a couple of bags of crisps though she’d just eaten plenty to last her the rest of the day.
“Ginger ale,” she said.
Stacy smiled and walked back to the front of the plane. George locked the door into place and stepped into the tiny cockpit. Stacy returned with their drinks and started going through the safety procedures.
“We’re second in line,” George said over the intercom system. “We should be wheels-up in ten minutes. Buckle in, everyone.”
Whitney took a sip of her ginger ale and buckled her seat belt. Her cup of soda sat down into the table, and Stacy left it there as she headed back up front and turned the corner. She must’ve had a seat there, because she didn’t come back.
Jeremiah put his arm around Whitney’s shoulders, and she leaned into him as he pressed his lips to her forehead. “It’s not a bad flight,” he said. “A couple of hours.”
“We’ll be in the air for two hours and fourteen minutes today, folks,” the pilot said as if Jeremiah had summoned him to report the flight time. “And the weather in New York City right now is looking clear and warm, with a high temperature of eighty-three-degrees.”
“That’s downright cool,” Whitney joked, and Jeremiah chuckled.
They said nothing as the plane took off, but Whitney could sense some of Jeremiah’s own anxiety. They hadn’t finished climbing before he unlatched his seatbelt and said, “Come with me.”
“Where?” Whitney couldn’t fathom what he could possibly show her at the moment.
He just grinned down at her and extended his hand toward her. She slid to the gap in the table and stood up, placing her hand in his.
“Stacy, we’ll be in the back,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” Her voice came from around the corner.
He led Whitney down the aisle, opened the door, and took her inside a room. Not just any room.
A bedroom.
“Oh, my goodness.” Whitney pressed her free palm to her heartbeat. “This is insane.”
“I guess the guy who owns this jet flies from LA to London quite often, and he likes to go overnight.” Jeremiah released her hand and turned back to her, something new in his eyes.
She could still see the love he had for her. But he possessed a new edge now. A hungrier edge.
“We’ve got a couple of hours to kill,” he said. “And we’re alone.”
Her pulse zipped around her body, and everything inside her turned hot. “You want to…?”
“Can we?” He didn’t touch her, and Whitney appreciated that.
She looked at the huge bed that took up almost the entire room. Shelves stuck out of the walls near the headboard, with small lamps there. All the shades in this part of the plane were pulled down, and Whitney wondered how sound-proof the room was.
“It’s okay,” Jeremiah said. “I know we haven’t talked about this at all.”
Whitney looked back at him, and everything nervous inside her calmed. She took one step toward him and kissed him, cradling his face in both of her hands. “I want to.”
“You do?”
Oh, she definitely did. Instead of answering, she kissed Jeremiah again, excited and yes, a little scared, of being intimate with him. But she loved him, and he loved her, and they were married.
So this time, when Jeremiah laid her on the bed and kissed her, she didn’t whisper his name. She wanted to make love with her husband, and she did exactly that.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jeremiah loved the shape of Whitney’s mouth against his. He’d never been with a woman, but he seemed to know what to do, and he and Whitney stayed in the bedroom on the plane until the pilot said, “We’re making our initial descent into New York City, and we should have you on the ground in, oh, about twenty-five minutes.”
“We should get up,” he murmured to Whitney, who lay in his arms. He played with the ends of her hair, the sweet scent of her perfume making his head swim all over again.
“Mm,” she said. “Do we have to?”
He chuckled. “I think so, sweetheart.” He rolled away from her and sat up. “It’ll be dark when we land. We’ll go straight to the apartment unless you want to go see Times Square or something. I hear it’s beautiful at night.”
“We’ll have plenty of nights to do that,” she said, also moving behind him.
Jeremiah dressed quickly, turning just as Whitney finished too. Their eyes met, and a measure of shyness moved through him. He couldn’t help smiling at his wife—his wife!—before he put his cowboy hat back on his head.
“Are you going to wear that all over the city?” she asked, nodding to the hat.
“You don’t think I should?”
“I think you’ll stick out like a sore thumb.” She wrapped her arms around him, and Jeremiah gazed down at her.
“When did you know you were in love with me?” he asked.
The flirty smile on her face faltered slightly. “Uh, let’s see. I’m not a hundred-percent sure.”
“I fell in love with you when I saw you taking those infant pictures for the first time. You know, the little girl with the apples?”
Whitney gazed up at him, tipping up on her toes to touch her lips to his. “I know. You told me.”
“So it was after that for you?” Jeremiah wasn’t sure why he needed to know.
“Yeah.”
“How long after?”
“Not long.”
“And you didn’t say anything?”
“Time to buckle up, folks,” the pilot said. “Stacy, secure the cabin.”
Whitney didn’t answer as he reached for the doorknob and opened the door. They sat in the back row of seats and put on their seatbelts, no sign of their drinks from earlier, the snack basket, or Stacy.
Jeremiah leaned his head back and closed his eyes, happier than he’d ever been in his life. He was married to a woman who loved him. Finally, he thought. Thank you, God. Thank you so much.
And for the first time in over four years, Jeremiah felt completely healed. He felt whole. He absolutely was not broken.
“Look at that,” Whitney said, her voice full of awe. “I need to photograph that building.”
“We can come back tomorrow with your camera.” Jeremiah had never seen skyscrapers like the ones in New York. He’d never seen a park as expansive and beautiful as Central Park, which he had a birds-eye view of from an entire wall of windows in the apartment he’d rented.
He’d thought he’d hate the hustle and bustle of the city, but it held a vibrancy that he really thrived on. He loved the bright lights at night. The constant motion of people. The noise in the subway and on the streets and in the small restaurants.
He and Whitney had gone to a couple of Broadway shows. They’d gone up to the top of the Empire State Building. They’d ridden a ferry out to the Statue of Liberty and toured Ellis Island.
He’d eaten fo
ods he’d never known existed, and now they were on a walking architecture tour, and Whitney had a glow about her that made Jeremiah fall in love with her all over again every time he looked at her.
He loved spending time with her. They’d talked about anything and everything in the past couple of weeks, and a large part of him didn’t want to return to Three Rivers. Then they’d have to go back to their real lives, with schedules and responsibilities.
He liked kissing her when he woke up. Making love to her whenever they wanted to sneak back to the apartment, be that in the middle of the day, at night after a full day of sightseeing, or sharing their love before they even got out of bed for the day.
He’d told her he wanted to be a father with a desperation he didn’t know how to contain, and she’d said she wanted children too. Some of their conversations probably should’ve been had before their nuptials, but Jeremiah hadn’t dared bring them up when his goal for the wedding had started out with him showing Wyatt and the rest of his brothers that he wasn’t broken.
Everything had changed since that moment in the master bedroom at the homestead, when Whitney had confessed her love for him. The holes in Jeremiah’s heart had been plugged, and he’d had no idea the joy other people had been feeling all this time.
“We’re heading over to 42nd Street now,” their guide said, and Jeremiah turned toward her voice. He wanted to bring Whitney back to this place, using that plane, every year on their anniversary, and he’d mention it to her tonight over dinner.
Someone said, “Yeehaw,” as they passed, and Jeremiah touched the brim of his hat. He didn’t care what anyone thought about him, and he loved being a cowboy. He had felt completely out of his element the first couple of days he and Whitney had been in the city, but no one had demanded to see his passport to be in New York—even if it did feel like he’d entered a completely new country.
They went inside the Daily News Building, and Whitney gasped at the huge world globe there. Jeremiah was impressed himself, and he wanted to visit a different US city every other month. He had plenty of money. Why couldn’t he?
