by Nicole Snow
That one word, fiancée, makes her light up so brilliantly it’s like she’ll combust.
There’s this happy squeal spilling out of her as we collide. Our lips meet and meld with a warmth that could rival the burning sun.
Once, I lost myself in flame.
Then in flame, I was reborn.
Now, it’s flame where I find her, my Firefly, this sweet ember that ignited the spark inside me and taught me how to live again.
I kiss her with all the incandescent passion rolling through me, the love that cannot be quenched, blazing eternal as the stars. I’ve claimed her, and she’s claimed me, and nothing can ever tear us apart.
Not now, or ever.
Our lips part only when there’s no air left to share between us, and she opens her eyes, looking down at me with all the sweetness and warmth that drew me to her the first day she tumbled into my arms.
“I know what else we can throw over the edge,” she says, a playful smile parting her lips. “Feel like cementing an old town legend?”
It takes me a second to realize what she means – and when I do, I groan.
That old story about the lover’s leap, and how many hopeful romantics throw their flowers over the cliff, praying if they do, it’ll mean their love will last forever.
It’s a silly story. An urban legend.
But it’s also a story of hope.
And I finally understand what it means to hope, to wish, to want for something with everything in you.
I hope for, wish for, want forever with Ember.
So I take her hand, our fingers full of peonies, petals, and delicate stems.
The ring doesn’t even matter right now. Maybe it can stay there for a little while, buried among the flowers, covered over slowly in the blowing petals of a thousand lovers’ dreams.
We’ve got all that matters right now. Us.
My heart jackhammers something fierce as we toss our flowers into the wind and make a promise.
Forever.
25
Dog-Gone Right (Ember)
Music has always made me think of my Dad.
When I was a little girl, it was a joyous memory. A memory filled with light and love and laughter the way only a child’s memories can be, innocent and untainted and a little naïve, but beautiful.
Growing older, it tempered into a fonder warmth, a strong family bond.
And then it shattered the night he died.
Until even as I remembered the happy times, even as I thought of the joy music brought into our lives, all I could think of every time I sang, every time I heard his favorite songs, was agony. The pain of loss.
This is the first time in a long while I’ve been able to sing, and once again think of nothing but joy.
I think if Dad could be here for my wedding, it would make him happy.
I like to think that he’s looking down at me even now as I stand at the altar set up in the grass mixed in among the flowers below Heart’s Edge cliff. We’re in the valley and it’s never been more beautiful.
I look up at my husband-to-be, standing opposite me, so handsome in his tuxedo with the flowers waving in pink and blue dots around his ankles, tangling in the train of my clinging sheer lace and silk dress.
This is almost where the ring landed, the day he proposed to me.
This very spot.
So once we found it after a frantic search, we decided to take it as a message and make our vows official right here.
Except I’m not saying my vows.
I’m singing them.
Maybe it’s silly. Maybe it’s cheesy. I don’t care.
I feel like loving Gray gave me my voice back, and I want to give it back to him on the day we make our bond permanent and lasting.
So as the priest gives us our moment to say our vows, that’s when he hands me the mic hidden in his robe, an arrangement we made in secret beforehand.
It wouldn’t be my wedding day without one thing. I promptly drop it, fumbling when I try to catch it in both hands, and it goes tumbling down to the strip of white satin laid across the grass as our aisle.
The crowd in the rows of flower-decked white folding chairs laugh fondly – our friends, my family, Gray’s family, his mother in the front row, his father conspicuously absent.
Honestly, I’m glad, after the things he told me about how the man raised him. About how one day his mother just divorced him and ran.
About how he learned from his father the kind of man he doesn’t want to be and made that his model for how he’ll treat me.
I have no doubts there. Even after months together, he treats me like I’m the most precious thing in his world.
And when I met his mother, she welcomed me like I was her own daughter.
Right before I dropped the gift basket I’d brought, scattering flowers and fruit all over her front walk.
It’s a me thing.
It’s not going to change.
Lucky me, Gray doesn’t want it to.
His smile is full of so much warmth as he bends to retrieve the microphone and presses it into my hands, watching me curiously, the glitter in his eyes silently asking what I’m up to.
“I believe this is yours?” he teases gently. Another soft laugh ripples through the crowd.
My mother even manages to laugh between crying, checking out the single men in the crowd, snapping pictures of Gray’s best men lined up in their tuxes for her Instagram, and elbowing Felicity to ask when it’s her turn.
That’s a her thing.
And I wouldn’t ask her to change, either.
I know she wishes Dad could be here to see this. I’m about to show her, in my own way, he is.
Right on cue, I lift the microphone to my lips and sing.
It’s the same old song again, the one I loved almost as much as Dad.
“It’s Only a Paper Moon.”
The first song Gray ever heard me sing, the first song I ever sang for him, and I think that moment made this song more than just my father’s, but my own.
Just like how Natalie Cole made the song hers, singing her father’s music.
There’s something in it only I can bring, some deep emotion that threatens to make me tear up whenever I sing for Gray and ask him, one more time, to believe in me.
To make our moons as real as the moon up in the night and our skies all endless blue. To make our seas boundless and true.
And our dreams? That part isn’t really in the song.
But I hope after hearing this, he’ll believe in them enough to make them real, to make them right, to make them ours forever.
Yep, that’s my vow for our special day.
It’s all the joy inside me given form, all the heart I can pour into every note.
After today, life gradually goes back to normal.
We’ll have our honeymoon, sailing along the Danube through Germany, Austria, Romania, touring the quiet, sleepy villages there and finding out if the flowers grow the same in the meadows far away.
When we come home, I’ll finish moving my things into his place, and then we’ll go back to the practice as partners.
Every day it’ll be the same awesomeness.
Waking up together. Working together. Taking care of the furry, feathered, scaly population of Heart’s Edge, whenever I’m not volunteering as choreographer and director at the new community theater going up next year.
To some, it might be an ordinary life, an unremarkable one.
But I just know, with everything in my heart, it’s anything but normal or bland or unfulfilling.
Every day with Gray will be extraordinary.
Zero doubt.
By the time the last note trails off, his hunter-green eyes are so bright, his smile so alive. I flush, ducking my head shyly, letting the microphone drop as I whisper, “That’s it. That’s my vow to you.”
He smiles again and nods, all the wonder and acceptance in his gaze. “Then this is mine to you.”
Then he buries his fing
ers in my hair, tangling them in my flower-strewn veil, and draws me in for a deep kiss.
Gray has always been an intensely physical man, saying so much more, showing so much more in touch than he sometimes does in words. It’s no different now.
He kisses me with a slow, sultry reverence that makes me gasp. His tongue glides over mine, filling me with a heat that has nothing to do with lust. Well, not everything to do with it.
That kiss is every bit of him.
Nothing held back.
No masks. No deceptions. No denials.
What he gives me with that touch, with that vow, is Gray freaking Caldwell personified.
It’s the raw honesty of who he is, and a promise that he’ll never hide anything from me ever again.
There’s so much pure, intense emotion in the sizzle of his lips, in the way he traces my mouth so softly, it brings tears to my eyes and takes my breath away.
It’s almost too much to endure, bright and warm and tearing me to pieces. I’m nearly delirious by the time the pastor clears his throat.
“Now, now,” he teases softly, even if Gray must’ve warned him this was coming. “It’s not quite time for that yet.”
We break apart with breathless laughs, and I sniff, wiping at my eyes. Gray meets my gaze, green sparkling like blown glass catching the sun.
Do you understand? he mouths, a secret just for us, and I can’t stop my smile.
I do, I mouth back, and his smile brightens until it outshines the sun.
And then I have the chance to say it again, as our officiant resumes the litany, reciting off those famous words.
To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, till death do us part.
Does he? Do I?
“I do,” he says with total conviction.
“I do,” I echo, with everything in me.
This time, when we kiss, it’s full of passion, of promise, a thing that we make together in the heady and breathless tangle of our lips, in the clutch of our hands.
Around us is music and laughter, applause and joy, but we’re in our own little world, lifted up by the happiness our people have for us.
The rings on our fingers are just a symbol.
The true bonds are the ones we make together, when I can’t tell where he ends and I begin.
Suddenly, though, it’s a whirlwind. Our wedding turns into a full-on party.
Everyone wants to congratulate the newlyweds, wish us well, offer us drinks, food, gifts. The ceremony rolls seamlessly over into an open-air reception, and we dance like fairy children in the flowers. My mother steals my husband for a dance, and from the indulgent laughter, I know she’s flirting, saying inappropriate things, but I don’t care.
Mom adores Gray. Treats him like family. And that means everything to me. To give her someone else to love.
I actually end up dancing with Warren, then Blake, before Haley herself takes me for a spin just to prove she’s a better dancer than her husband. Eventually, though, the reception breaks down into quiet socializing, and we glide among groups, my arm hooked in Gray’s. We stop and speak with all our guests, thanking them for all the kind gifts that make it so easy for a new couple to start a life together.
Most of them involve coffee. Thanks, Felicity.
It’s almost like everyone just knows we’re both workaholics, though, and there’ll be no settling into life as a happy homemaker for me.
Gray and I are always up with the dawn, out the door together, chugging our breakfast in his shiny new truck on the way to the clinic.
It’s funny how people come to know you so well in a small town. I guess, deep down, that’s why I like it.
Little by little, evening becomes night, and the string lights hanging around the meadow switch on.
We manage to steal a quiet moment together, looking out over the valley, leaning hard on each other to catch our breaths. I study him and realize what he’s thinking.
I feel a presence, one unseen, shadowy but watching. I can’t help looking over my shoulder into the darkness of the trees, searching, before I rest my cheek to Gray’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry Nine couldn’t be here,” I tell him, leaning hard on his arm, and he rests his chin to the top of my head.
“One day,” he murmurs. “But until then, I’ll do everything for him I can.”
“I know you will. Because you’re a good man, Gray Caldwell.” I smile, snuggling deeper into him. “My man.”
“Oh?” he lilts teasingly. “Possessive now, are we?”
“I stole you from the jackals. So, yeah, I think that counts.” I hook my arm firmly in his. “And I’m going to keep you for a good, long while.”
He bursts into laughter, then – that rich, warm, full-bodied laughter that was once so rare and now lights up my day.
“Ah, Firefly,” he growls, drawing me up to kiss me. “You act like it was almost impossible. Truth is, the moment you walked into my clinic, nobody else ever had a chance.”
No one ever tells you your own wedding is exhausting.
I’m worn out and never want to see another pair of heels again by the time we stop back at the house to change into comfortable travel clothes and fetch our bags.
We’d meant to run off in a faux-kidnapping, traditional style, toward the end of the reception, but so many people wanted to talk to us and congratulate us and love us.
We couldn’t just pull away until the end of the night.
We still have time to catch our flight to Austria and make our cruise ship.
I just think I might sleep the entire flight, rather than basking in the afterglow of being the newly-minted Mrs. Ember Caldwell.
Basking can come after I’ve had a nap.
I end up dozing in the airport, barely waking up long enough to board the flight before I crash out again, snuggled against Gray’s side. I’m not sure if he sleeps at all on the trip, or just spends the hours quietly watching the lights of the world go by below.
It’s a happy, calm eternity before we touch down in Passau on the German-Austrian border.
We’ve got a wonderful week planned in Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, but what I want to see most are the smaller towns along the rivers, the places that make real homes in every street just like Heart’s Edge.
I will. Soon.
But another kind of wonder captures me while boarding our cruise ship on the Danube and being escorted to the honeymoon suite.
It’s all silver and blue, like moonlight and water.
From the sunken bath to the ornate decorations, you’d never think we were on a boat, but rather a state-of-the-art luxury hotel. And with a little whimper of delight, I drop my bags and toss myself onto the lush bed, stretching out limbs made sore by a twelve-hour flight until I no longer feel a single cramp.
Aw, yeah.
The deep, plush mattress soaks all the aches and pains right out of me.
My husband – God, I love saying that, my husband – is more reserved, following me into the room and setting our bags neatly aside before loosening his shirt’s collar. He sinks down on the edge of the bed, leaning over to watch me with a touch of wickedness in his eyes.
“Hello, wife,” he whispers softly.
I’ll admit it: I shiver a little inside, way more thrilled than I should be just hearing it.
Wife. His. Forever.
“Hello, husband,” I murmur back, reaching up to trace my fingertips over his lips. “Don’t look at me like that.”
He kisses my fingers, capturing my hand and stroking his thumb over my palm. “Like what?”
“Like you’re thinking about consummating our marriage this very second.”
Gray laughs, a low, deep chuckle, sinful in his chocolate baritone. “Woman, I’ve been thinking of consummating our marriage since the instant you said I do.” His eyes gleam darkly, hot green, as he bends down toward me, bringing his delicious mouth within reach. “This is just the first time I’ve managed to get you on a bed since w
e said our vows.”
“Welllll...” I draw the word out softly. “Technically, it’s not consummating our vows if I’m not still in my wedding lingerie, is it?”
“That’s a formality. But if you’d like to show me if you’re still wearing it...” His gaze slips down my body, across my clinging tank top and the cute little white capris I like because of how they hug my thighs. “Are you?”
His fingertip hooks in the waist of my capris, tugging gently, and I smirk.
“Actually, it’s worse,” I say, pushing myself up, leaning to whisper in his ear with my best teasing tone. “I’m not wearing anything under this at all.”
His gaze sharpens. A growl rumbles in his chest. One possessive, thickly scarred hand curls against my hip, his very strength making me feel delicate and small.
“Are you trying to bait me, wife?”
“Yes, husband,” I say, nipping at his ear. “And it’s working.”
Oh, God, is it working.
In a split second, he shoves me down on my back in a rough breath, tumbling down so fast it almost winds me as he moves over me. His full cock strains between my legs.
It’s like he’s desperate, wild to prove for himself that I’m naked underneath my clothes.
He doesn’t even strip me before he ignites.
Raging heat on my neck, his hands rough on my skin, and it only takes one graze of his hand across my breasts to make my nipples peak, magically sensitive without the shielding layer of my bra, and when his knee nudges between my thighs, the capris push up between my folds and rub and rub and rub.
I think we set a new record, being this wet for Gray this fast.
I’m totally indecent.
I’ve been insanely wet this whole time, but as long as he wasn’t turning me on, no one could tell.
Now, though...
My nipples strain against my thin tank top. I’m soaking my capris, so ready for him already with just the lightest touch. He does that to me.
Ever since the first time he touched me, I’ve done nothing but crave.