by KB Winters
My mother’s frosty tone melted, as she continued, “You can make it up to me by coming for a family dinner tomorrow night. I’ve already called to make sure Jeff and Lyle are free.”
I stifled a sigh by gritting my teeth together. A family dinner was the last thing I wanted to do. Especially with Karena here for less than a week. Sunday afternoon, I’d be at the airport, dropping her off for her flight back to Seattle.
Beyond that…I still didn’t know.
“Seven o’clock,” my mother chimed in, interrupting my thoughts, and completely ignoring the fact that I hadn’t even agreed to go.
I grit my teeth together, feeling my jaw flex tightly around each terse word, “Mother…I can’t. Maybe next week.”
A cold silence stretched between us. I didn’t have to check the connection to know she was still there. This was one of her tactics. She was used to getting her way with my brothers and me, and she didn’t have any reservations about the means to force our hands.
I sighed, this time letting my frustration vent loud enough that she could hear. “Mother, listen, I’ve been seeing someone. And I want to spend as much time with her as possible before I leave.”
“Colton! Why didn’t you say something?” she squealed.
Shit.
I’d just thrown Karena into the shark tank.
“Now you have to come! I need to meet this woman that’s captured your attention. Oh, Colton, I’m so happy!”
Panic and irritation welled up inside me, but there was nothing I could do. At least, nothing I could do if I wanted to avoid a relentless guilt trip that would span the length of my deployment and beyond. What would Karena say about meeting my family? We’d only known each other a week, and while it was serious, and getting more so by the minute, meeting my family hadn’t been part of our arrangement. In fact, I’d been purposefully avoiding the topic with her.
“Colton, seven o’clock, and if you’re going to bring that same wine you brought on your last visit, maybe try an older vintage,” my mother added.
I stifled a growl. It was done. There was no going back now. I nodded for a moment, searching for something to say, besides the string of expletives that were exploding like fireworks in my head. “All right, mother, we’ll be there.”
I clicked off the call, and silenced the phone before setting it back on the table.
A pair of warm fingers traced down my bare back, interrupting my jumbled mess of thoughts about introducing Karena to my family.
“I was starting to miss you,” Karena’s husky voice purred from behind me. I smiled when her fingers found the waist of the boxer briefs I’d pulled on before going out to the kitchen.
I turned and pressed a quick kiss to her beautiful pout. “What would you say to meeting my family?”
Her nose wrinkled. “Really?”
I sighed and nodded. “My mother called just a minute ago. She heard about the deployment and wants to have a big family dinner to see me off.”
“Oh,” Karena replied, her lips staying open as she turned the thought over. Her eyes drifted away from me and I wished I could tap into her mind and see what she was thinking. We’d gotten much closer in the past forty-eight hours, but there were still so many things to learn. We weren’t anywhere close to the type of bond where I’d be able to guess what she was thinking before she said it.
“Talk to me, Karena, tell me what you’re thinking,” I prompted, setting a finger under her chin to bring her beautiful honey colored eyes back to mine.
“What would we tell them? Your family doesn’t know about…this…” She shook her head, discarding whatever thought had followed her statement. “I don’t really know anything about them. What would they say?”
I sighed. It was a great question. One that, unfortunately, I didn’t have an answer to.
“I really don’t know,” I started, pausing to run a hand through my hair. “We could be honest, and tell them why we’re doing this, or we could leave all that out, and just tell them we’ve been dating for a few weeks and let that be the end of it.”
I had oversimplified the reality to an extreme degree, and I knew it. But if I told her the truth, about my family and the complicated dynamic, I was pretty sure she’d go running for her life. Or, at the very least, fall ill with a mystery bug right before we were supposed to leave.
She shrugged. “You’d know better, but from what I’ve seen, most people think we’re kinda nuts for doing this whole experiment.”
I laughed. I couldn’t argue. Karena had confessed that her best friend, Becca, thought we were insane—well, mostly that she was insane—and my buddies weren’t too far behind in that line of thinking. Neither of them had gone so far as to tell me I’d lost my mind, but the sentiment was there, unspoken, anyways.
“I think you’re right. We’ll keep that to ourselves for now.”
Truthfully, there was a much larger issue floating in the back of my mind. One that I hadn’t wanted to bring up, but knew that it would need to be discussed soon. With the deployment on the horizon, the window of time for Karena and I to decide what to do, and act upon whatever decision we made, was rapidly shrinking. We still had a week left in our original plan but now, the added weight, made the already restricted time line feel even more enclosing and small.
I stared down at her as she was processing the new hurdle in our path. I traced the lines of her face and lips, and reached out to stroke away the wisps of her hair that had been ravaged by the afternoon spent together in bed. She turned at my soft touch and met my eyes with a soft smile. “It’ll all be okay,” I said, somehow aware of the question in her eyes. “I promise.”
Chapter Nineteen: Karena
The clock in Colton’s bedroom was on the fritz. The hands were moving entirely too fast. I confirmed it was, in fact, correct, with a quick glance at my cell phone and groaned, before popping back into the bathroom. My hair was still up in hot-rollers, and I hadn’t applied a swish of makeup yet. My mind was racing, on the verge of a breakdown over the thought that in less than an hour, I’d be walking into Colton’s parents’ house to meet his entire family.
Since the plans had been made, Colton had patiently answered my questions, going into his dad’s military career, his brother’s family and his younger brother’s relationship. I was armed with the basics, but it didn’t take the edge off my nerves. In telling me about his family, Colton had spilled that I was the first woman he had ever taken home to meet them, and that even if we tried to downplay the seriousness of our relationship, his family would assume certain things and would treat me accordingly. Which, Colton had all but said, would include asking lots of questions.
And that, right there, was what had my heart climbing higher and higher up my throat as I hurried to get dressed and made up to some impossible standard of what Colton’s family would be expecting.
There were things I hadn’t even told Colton yet. Things I wasn’t ready to discuss with anyone other than Becca, who knew everything about me. The good, the bad, and the very, very ugly.
When my makeup was set, I reached for the first of the rollers in my hair, and with trembling fingers, unrolled each section of hair from the now cold curlers and fluffed the gentle curls with my fingers until they were tamed into bouncy waves.
Colton stepped into the doorway just as I blasted myself with a coat of super hold hair spray. “Holy—Karena!” He choked on the fumes and fanned his hands to clear the air in front of him as he took a backward step into the narrow hallway.
“Sorry, I’m almost…” I paused, spritzing again, “…done!”
He coughed again. I set the can down on the counter and looked up into the mirror just as he was staring at the array of beauty products with wide eyed horror. “What?” I demanded. “You think all this just happens?”
His lips curled into an infuriatingly sexy smile as his eyes slid up my body and met my gaze in the mirror. “I’ve seen you au natural, and I’ll tell ya, you don’t need all this stuff.�
� He reached for me and I melted into him, my defenses falling away.
“What if they hate me?” I mumbled against his chest, no longer caring if my makeup smeared.
Colton chuckled softly and reached for a strand of hair, twisting the still-sticky section around his finger. “They won’t hate you. I don’t think anyone could hate you.”
He pulled away before I could argue and tipped my chin up to him, meeting my lips with a gentle, but scorching kiss that sent my mind careening into an entirely different set of thoughts. Thoughts that couldn’t have been further from his parents and siblings sitting around a table with raised brows in my direction.
“Mmmm,” I purred when Colton’s lips left mine, my eyes still closed, absorbing the sensations that danced over my skin. “Maybe we could just stay here…”
Colton laughed again. “You have no idea how tempting that is.”
My eyes opened slowly and found Colton’s offered hand. I took it and let him lead me down the hall after he reached around me to flick off the bathroom light. “You look amazing.”
I smiled. I’d agonized over my limited choices and had eventually gone with a jade dress with thin straps and a form fitting, but not skin tight, cut. I’d accessorized with silver hoop earrings and a small initial pendant necklace that Becca had gifted me on my last birthday. “Not so bad yourself, handsome.” Colton was more dressed up than I’d seen him before, in a pair of crisp, dark slacks, and a navy button up shirt. He wasn’t wearing a tie, but as we headed out the door, he grabbed a jacket that matched the slacks from the back of the couch. His broad shoulders filled the jacket out just right, and I was halfway tempted to ask him if he’d had it tailored or if it just worked that well for him. Colton wore all of his clothes with a casual elegance, that came naturally to him. He wasn’t the kind of guy that took more than five minutes to get dressed, and yet, he always managed to look like he was so put together.
As someone who spent the majority of her day picking out outfits for others, it was a skill I also shared, but Colton made it look far too easy, and most of the time, didn’t even seem aware that he was doing it. He naturally made good fashion choices without more than a minute of thought.
I had a fantasy of letting him loose in the Beckham’s menswear department and seeing him come out of the fitting room looking like a scruffy James Bond.
I’d be his Bond girl any day…
“You ready?” Colton asked, an eyebrow raised in question as he looked down at me. I realized he’d asked me before and was repeating his question at my blank expression. He squeezed my waist. “You’ll be fine.”
I smiled and decided not to tell him that I’d secretly been distracted by fantasies of us blowing up bad guys on a high-speed chase through Europe.
There were some things he didn’t need to know.
* * * *
We’d been at Colton’s parents’ home for less than half an hour when the hammer fell. After the initial introductions, that were pleasant and generic, Colton’s mother, Cynthia, had ushered the group into the formal dining room before she bustled into the kitchen to retrieve the first dishes. Once everyone was seated, and digging into the meal, Colton’s father, Robert, had turned to me and asked the question I’d dreaded the most, “So, Karena, where did you attend college?”
My cheeks went pink and my hand automatically reached for my glass of ice water, but all eyes had swiveled in my direction, and I set the glass back down. “I—uh—I actually didn’t attend…um…college.”
Robert’s face remained unreadable, but I had little doubt what he was thinking. “I see, and what is it that you do for work?”
A bubble of hot frustration swelled in my stomach, insulted by the way he phrased the question, as though going to college were the only way one could find a respectable job. I knew plenty of people who hadn’t gone to college and had found great careers. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of them.
Colton set a hand on my thigh under the table and his touch comforted me. “Karena is a buyer at a high end department store.”
“Well, actually,” I coughed, “I’m a personal shopper. So, I don’t do the buying…I just help my clients to buy!” The smile at my little joke, died on my lips when no one else reciprocated.
Tina, Colton’s sister-in-law, chimed in, giving me a warm smile from across the table. “That’s lovely. I’ll have to book a consultation after I’ve worked off the baby weight.” She rubbed her tiny baby bump absently. “Which shop do you work at? Is it Pinkerton’s? I just love their stuff.”
I flashed a confused look at Colton. He gave a small cough. “Um, Karena actually doesn’t live here. She lives in Seattle.”
“Seattle?” Cynthia repeated. Her wrinkle-free brow lifted ever so slightly.
“That’s right.” Colton flashed a look around the table. “She’s just here visiting for another week.”
The silence that resounded back was deafening. I channeled every ounce of willpower into staying in my seat and not running for the powder room. Instead, I sipped my ice water.
“I’m confused,” Robert said, commanding every eye back to his end of the table. “Where did you two meet?”
“We met online,” Colton replied, setting his own glass down with a firm thump on the table. I could feel waves of irritation radiating from him. He’d warned me that his family could be a bit of a challenge, but the tension in the room was something I hadn’t expected.
Cynthia cleared her throat and all eyes shifted back to her at the opposite end of the table. “What on earth were you doing online, Colton? I’ve tried to arrange introductions to dozens of perfectly lovely women who live right here in Georgia!” She waved a hand in my direction. “No offense meant to you, dear.”
Right.
I sucked in a deep breath and started to push away from the table. Colton’s grip on my thigh tightened and I froze in place. “Mother, can I see you in the kitchen, please.”
It wasn’t a question.
My eyes flashed to his as he pushed out of his chair, his hand sliding from my leg. I pleaded with him, silently begging him not to leave me alone with the rest of his family. He responded to my plea with a quick kiss. I turned my attention back to the table as Cynthia carefully folded her linen napkin into place and set it off to one side of her plate. “I need to get the hens from the oven anyways.”
They left the dining room, Colton paused to close the double doors on the way out, and an even heavier silence descended on the rest of the party in their absence.
“Where are they going?” Sammie, one of the young twins asked.
“They’ll be right back, dear,” Tina answered, before looking back across the table at me. “I’ve visited Seattle before. Before the girls came along, I worked for a corporate event planning company, and we did a company retreat there with a tour of Pike’s Place Market and the Space Needle. It was lovely.”
I smiled and nodded politely, grateful for her attempt to break the tension.
Jeff, Colton’s brother interjected by asking his father something about a football game that had been on over the weekend, and the rest of the table was content to let them carry on the conversation for the rest of us. I picked at the lettuce leaves on my plate, shoving them from one side to the other, while my mind stewed over what Colton and his mother were off discussing. I knew it was about me, and hated not knowing what exactly was being said.
After what felt like an hour, they appeared, each carrying a serving tray with plates that contained what looked like a miniature chicken, each dressed and garnished, on a bed of wild rice. Colton set a plate down in front of his brother Lyle, his girlfriend, and then in front of me, before taking his seat with the last of the plates and setting the tray off to the side. I glanced down to his mother’s end of the table as she took her own seat after serving the rest of the guests their tiny bird. Her face was tight and pinched looking, but from what I could tell, that was thanks to an afternoon spent with a plastic surgeon, and less to do with her emo
tional state.
“Well, Colton, aren’t you going to share your news with everyone else,” Cynthia said, her voice overly sweet. At her prompting, Colton’s head jerked in her direction, his bite of food hovering between his plate and open mouth. She pointed her stare at him and smiled. “Come on, let us all join in on the celebration of the happy couple!”
My heart froze at her icy words and I cut a look to Colton, wide eyed and terrified of whatever she was insinuating. Colton didn’t meet my glance. He pinched his eyes closed and took in a long breath, before lowering his fork back to his plate. He opened his eyes and wiped his hands on his napkin as he looked around to each of the occupants of the table, before locking his eyes with mine.
“Karena and I are getting married.”
Chapter Twenty: Colton
“Married?”
I wasn’t sure who had repeated it first, but the table buzzed with an echo of my announcement. Karena stared at me, her eyes pleading for answers. A hot blade of guilt ripped through me. I hated not being able to explain what had just happened to her, at least not until we got to be alone. Until then, she would feel confused at best, betrayed at worst.
“What’s this nonsense?” My father boomed, commanding the attention of everyone around the table.
“He just asked me for my mother’s ring,” Cynthia chimed in.
My throat went dry.
“We’ve never met this young woman before, and you come over here and drop this news!”
Jeff met my eyes across the table, but I knew he wasn’t going to be able to dive in and save me with a sidelining conversation starter. He looked just as shocked as my parents.
I grabbed her hand under the table. I forced a smile onto my face, hoping she’d play along. There was no derailing the runaway train now. “Karena, I know I wasn’t supposed to spill the beans, but I just couldn’t keep quiet.”
Karena licked her lips to keep from gaping like a guppy. “A ring?” Karena echoed, finally finding her voice. I wondered if she’d even heard the rest of the commentary, or if her thought process had stopped there.