Even if she was a child then, she looks that way now, as though she can’t quite believe that reality would contort so cruelly like this.
Guilt shivers and shatters in my chest, and suddenly I know that she’s not going to approve, that the very idea she could approve was a sick joke.
“Angie,” Tess says, a sob turning my daughter’s name into a plea.
Angela spins on us, striding over to the couch and standing over us.
“Explain,” she says, her voice clipped and filled with tension. “From the beginning. When did this start? How far back does this go?”
“The day I returned,” I say.
“What?” Angela cries, the same way Caitlin did… the same way most people likely will when we explain the fate-fueled clashing that brought us together.
“I know,” I say, sighing heavily. “It sounds ridiculous. But it’s the truth. Let me explain.”
Angela sits and listens as patiently as she can while I put all this amazing madness into words, as I tell her how I wanted Tessa the moment I saw her before I even recognized that she was Angela’s best friend.
I tell her about the date and the feelings that have captivated me, and all through it, Angela stares, shaking her head slowly, as though she’s expecting some punchline to be nestled within the words.
“Is this real?” Angela says, looking at Tessa.
“Yes,” Tessa murmurs. “It’s the most real thing I’ve ever felt. I know it makes no sense, Angie. I know that, logically, it sounds absolutely insane. But I felt the same as Trent—I feel the same as Trent.”
“I know you’ve always had a crush on him,” Angela says quietly.
Tessa stiffens next to me, as though she’s just been slapped by an invisible hand. “You knew?”
Angela smiles shakily, caught between disbelief and empathy for her oldest friend. “Of course I knew. We’ve been best friends for years. I was waiting for you to tell me one day, and when you never did I thought, well, that’s her business. I never resented it or judged you or anything like that. I just thought it was a…”
She trails off, biting down on whatever she was about to say.
“A silly girl’s crush?” Tess says.
“Yeah.” Angela nods. “No offense.”
“I felt the same.” Tess giggles through an interfering sob. “I can’t believe you knew all this time, but yeah, of course, I thought it was just a silly crush. But when Trent told me he wanted me as badly as I want him, it became so much more. I know it makes no sense, Angie. But this isn’t some fling.”
“Isn’t it?” she says firmly, glaring at me now. “Because we all know how this cliché goes. An older man meets a younger woman and takes advantage of her, playing on her naivety, on her inexperience. He uses her up and then tosses her aside when he’s done with her.”
“Angela,” I growl, anger flaring at the absurd thought. “You know me. Do you really think I’d do something like that?”
“No,” she flares, leaping to her feet again as if she can’t stay seated with all the tension surging through her. “But what the heck am I supposed to think? I’ve never seen you with a woman, Dad, not since Mom. I guess I always assumed you kept that side of your life private.”
“No,” I say. “I haven’t been with a woman since your mother. I’ve been on a couple of dates here and there, but never…”
I trail off, biting down.
“Never this,” I snarl. “Never what I feel now. Tessa is my soulmate. We’re going to have a family together. We’re going to be together for the rest of our lives. There isn’t anything seedy or underhanded in this, Angela. This is…”
Love, love, love.
The words sing in my mind, true, undeniable.
And yet I can’t have the first time I tell my woman I love her to be under these circumstances.
“What, Dad?” Angela prompts.
“Everything I ever wanted in a relationship,” I go on huskily. “But I convinced myself it was impossible. I’d accepted that I’d spend the rest of my life focusing on my business and my daughter, focusing on you. But Tessa has opened up so many doors inside of me. I feel like a new man.”
“You seem like a new man,” Angela sighs, returning to her chair. “And you seem different too, Tess.”
“How so?” Tess asks, her voice quivering with emotion.
I can’t fight it anymore. I reach over and take her hand.
Angela flinches, but she doesn’t explode into rage.
She doesn’t storm out.
Complicated emotion play across her face and then she nods, subtly, a movement so small I doubt she even did it on purpose. It’s like she’s silently saying, look how happy they are. How can I fight against that?
Or maybe that’s what I hope she’s thinking.
“More confident,” she says after a pause. “I’ve always wanted you to hold yourself like I knew you deserved. You’re so pretty and funny and smart and talented. But you let those high school douches beat you down. No, not let. It isn’t your fault.”
“I know what you mean,” Tess says, squeezing my hand as emotion surges through her. “It’s Trent. He’s helped me realize I don’t have to be self-conscious all the time. He’s helped me believe maybe I do have something to offer the world.”
“You have everything to offer the world,” I growl.
“Go on,” Angela whispers, staring at me with shiny eyes.
“Isn’t it obvious?” I growl.
“To me,” my daughter says. “But I didn’t think it would be to you.”
“She’s an incredible photographer,” I say. “I’ve seen the passion she puts into her work. I’ve seen how much it means to her… to you.”
I turn to Tess with a smirk.
“It feels weird talking about you when you’re sitting right here.”
Her cheeks glow as she gazes up at me, her eyes glistening with feeling. Her oak hair falls messily and alluringly around her shoulders. She bites her lip as I go on.
“You’re beautiful and gorgeous, inside and out. You’re kind. You’re empathetic. You’re forgiving. You’re mine. You’re everything I could dream of in a partner, a life partner because that’s what we are. It’s me and you forever, Snapshot.”
“I want that so bad,” she says, voice cracking.
“Snapshot?” Angela giggles.
Wait, did I hear that right?
She laughed?
And it wasn’t a mocking laugh. It wasn’t a resentful laugh.
It was a laugh I recognize well, joy-filled, the same way she let fly with her happiness when she got the lead role in Anne Frank at the school play.
“It’s her nickname,” I smirk, turning back to my daughter. “Don’t you remember?”
“I haven’t heard it in years.”
I shrug. “I think it still suits her.”
“I love it,” Tess rushes to say, as though she thinks Angela is going to judge the nickname. “I’m even toying with the idea of calling him Frogman, you know, because of the SEAL stuff. I haven’t quite made the leap yet though.”
Angela smiles at us, as though she can’t stop the shape her lips take, as though she can’t deny the starry warmth cascading over this moment.
“You two look like the real deal,” she says. “If I didn’t know you, I would think you two have been together for years. I’d never have guessed it’s only been a few days. How the heck is that possible?”
“Don’t ask me to explain it,” I say warmly, stealing a precious glance at my woman. She smiles radiantly up at me. “It just is, Angela. I’m so, so sorry that we went behind your back. I wanted to tell you right away—”
“But then I left town and you didn’t want to do it over the phone,” she says.
I nod. “Exactly. And the truth is—”
“You were scared I’d go crazy and make you stop.”
I chuckle. “Damn. It’s like you’re reading my mind.”
“I need to say something.” Angela lean
s forward, staring hard at me. “Dad, you need to listen to this, listen closely.”
She’s never looked more like my daughter. She has a SEAL look of determination in her eyes.
“If you ever hurt Tessa, you’ll lose both of us,” she says passionately. “Tessa is my best friend and she means the world to me. My instincts are telling me that this is the real deal. Looking at the two of you, it’s kind of hard to deny that. But maybe my instincts are wrong.”
I nod solemnly, taking my daughter’s words seriously.
“I swear, Angela,” I tell her. “I’d die – I’d kill – before I risked what Tess and I have.”
“Good.” Angela nods. “Then I think you should reach for the freaking stars with what you have. Even if it’s the biggest shock I’ve had in my entire life – and that includes getting picked up for a TV advertisement – I don’t want to stand in the way of your happiness.”
“Do you mean it, Angie?” Tess cries, rising to her feet and walking over to my daughter, to her best friend.
“Yes,” Angela says, standing.
“It doesn’t change anything between us?”
“Oh, Tess,” she says, tears quivering in her voice. “Nothing could change what we have. Come here.”
They embrace each other tightly, their emotions rising to the surface. I watch them with pure hot joy leaping around my chest, relief like I’ve never felt washing through me.
It’s even more potent than the relief I felt when I was overseas and came out of a nasty gunfight alive, even more, potent than staring death in the face and winning life instead.
And that’s what this is.
I thought the rest of my life would be a kind of slow death, putting my all into my business and being there for Angela… but never living in love, never experiencing what so many people take for granted.
Now I have more than most people could ever dream of.
I have the woman of my dreams and my daughter’s blessing.
I smile. I don’t smirk. I smile like the happiest luckiest bastard alive.
Because that’s what I am.
And I won’t ever forget it.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tessa
“Why are you smiling like that?” I ask mom as she flips the pancakes.
She shrugs, causing her billowing kaftan to swirl around her. Morning sunlight shafts into the kitchen, coming to rest on the new hardwood flooring Trent installed a few days ago, working away with his T-shirt soaked with sweat, outlining the muscles that will never stop making me crazy for him.
“I’m not allowed to smile now, hmm?”
“I feel like you’re planning something,” I say.
“I’m not planning anything.”
“Who is, then?”
She shrugs again, with that same enigmatic smile on her face.
I giggle, laughing in a carefree way that has become my new regular these past few days.
Ever since Angie said she was on board with me and Trent, my worries have started to drift away like sand through my fingertips. I don’t find myself sinking into holes of anxiety, breathless as I try to climb out.
I can just be.
It’s the best feeling in the world.
If I was scared Angie didn’t mean what she said, I was soon proven wrong. We’re closer now than ever before.
The five of us – Mom and Liam, Trent and me, and Angie – even had dinner together a few nights ago. It was wonderful, laughter quivering in the air, with smiles and jokes and happiness.
“What sort of answer is a shrug, Mom?”
She shrugs over and over, doing it with turbo speed until I’m left with no choice but to break out into frenzied giggles.
There’s something so wonderful about seeing her like this, carefree and playful like she was when I was a kid. In the really bad days during her illness, a sad part of me started to believe I may never get to experience this side of her again.
I know I’m not going to get any more answers out of her this morning, but my mind can’t help but skip to crazy places, to Trent-touched places.
He was weird last night. I don’t know how to describe it exactly.
On the surface, everything was the same, and yet beneath his every gesture, buried within his every word, I sensed there was a double meaning that was just beyond my reach. I sensed that there was something he wanted to say.
Or maybe I’m just wishing, hoping—
My thoughts are cut short by the doorbell.
“I think you should get it,” Mom says. “I’m busy with the pancakes.”
I look closely at her, trying to gauge the mischief in her eyes, trying to see if I should be worried or relieved.
She shrugs again – of course, she does – and I walk from the kitchen toward the front door.
The door is new, the paint no longer chipped, replaced by my man just like the kitchen floor was. I’m hardly going to say no when he offers to do jobs around the house. It makes mom’s life easier and I get to see him all sweaty, his muscles showing through his shirt.
It’s a win-win.
I open the door and then open my mouth to let out a shivering gasp.
“Are you kidding?” I say, staring at the sight of my man in a tuxedo, the jet-black jacket hugging onto his irrepressible body.
Behind him – looking more than somewhat out of place on our quiet Youngstone street – sits a carriage and two patient horses.
Trent smirks down at me, his clean shaven face looking somehow boyish in his delight. His eyes dance with light.
“Are we going somewhere fancy for breakfast?” I ask, hardly hearing my own voice.
This is all so wonderful and unexpected.
“Something like that,” he says, offering me his hand. “That is… if you’re free.”
“If I’m free?” I cry in delight. “Um, yeah, I think I might be. I knew something was going on. Did you talk to my Mom?”
“I had to ask her something very important,” he says with a nod as he pulls me onto the porch, crushing me against his unyielding body and moving his hands up my back and through my hair.
My belly swirls as I walk onto the porch and down the steps toward the carriage. Trent has his hand on the small of my back, that special place he so often touches, pressing into me with what feels like all the affection in the world bursting out of him.
“Is this why you asked me to wear the dress?” I murmur.
I was supposed to be meeting him in half an hour at his place, wearing the golden dress I wore for our first real date. I’ve worn tights with it this time since it’s daytime and I know my man doesn’t like me displaying too much of myself for other men to see.
I know other women might find this too possessive, but I love how he wants to save me all for himself.
He chuckles and opens the carriage door, waving me inside.
“No comment.”
“Oh, aren’t you mysterious?” I tease. “Wait a sec… who’s driving?”
He smirks and leans down, kissing me tantalizingly on the forehead. My skin tingles and shivers move down my neck and over my breasts, scorching me, setting me alight.
“Who do you think?”
“You really are crazily multitalented, Trent, you know that?”
“Careful,” he says, “or you’ll give me a big head.”
I giggle at the callback to one of our earlier jokes when he said I was giving him a big head in a whole different type of way.
Climbing into the carriage, I let my head fall back and the warm spring air dance over my skin. Trent climbs into the driver’s seat and softly moves the reins, the horses moving slowly down the street.
Part of me wants to ask where we’re going, but another part doesn’t want to ruin the surprise.
We move through Youngstone and Mrs. Pennyworth stares up at us from outside the bakery, a warm smile spreads across her face. The other residents smile too.
People have been so wonderful now that Trent and I have gone public
, surprising me with how much support they’ve offered. It would be different if I was with another older man, but everybody knows how loyal, honorable, and downright good Trent Tanner is.
We leave Main Street and head out toward the residential streets in the fancier part of town, not the low-income housing where mom and I live.
“I used to come out here when I was a kid,” I say, drinking in the sight of the three and four and even five bedroom homes.
The lawns are all pristine and the house at the end of the row has a big beautiful gate and a fountain out front. The gate is shiny metal and it glistens in the morning sun, the water shining even brighter as it spurts in the fountain.
“The mayor lives here, doesn’t he?” I murmur, as my eyes move over the gorgeous grandeur of the colonial-style house, with its red façade and its big family-sized porch. “Wait… he’s selling?”
My eyes move over the For Sale sign.
“Not anymore,” Trent says.
“He changed his mind…”
I trail off when the realization thunders into me.
“You bought it?”
He jumps deftly down from the carriage, landing with his characteristic grace. It still surprises me how a man of his towering stature can move so fluidly, but it shouldn’t. He danced around those ass-hats in the lettermen jackets like a professional fighter.
He offers me his hand, his jaw suddenly tight, his eyes brimming with intensity.
I squeeze onto him and step down from the carriage, my heart pounding frantically in my chest, whispering this is it, this is the moment.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, I try to warn myself.
“I bought it for us,” he says, his hands on my hips, his eyes pinning me in place.
It feels so good being captive by his gaze.
“It’s ours,” he goes on, his voice a shivering growl. “The sale went through this morning. And I was so goddamn relieved, Snapshot. Because I’ve been waiting until now, while we’re standing outside our family home, to tell you I love you.”
I gasp and tears prick my eyes, joy dancing around my body.
“I love you,” he growls, sighing heavily as though he’s glad he finally gets to speak those sacred words. “I love you more than a man like me should be able to love. I thought I was cold. I thought I was closed-off. I thought I was a thousand things and all of them were damn wrong. Nothing compares with the love I feel for you, Tessa. Nothing can compare.”
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