by Ted Evans
Whatever had her so engrossed on her cell, she didn’t even notice I was standing right there looking at her. I smiled softly and just watched her for a moment, with her hair tucked back in a ponytail, a few wisps falling out of it and around her face. She was chewing down on her lip, her hands holding tight to the cell. As far as I could see, she wasn’t really doing anything besides staring at it with a single-minded focus. I’d been so anxious before that I couldn’t help letting out a small laugh.
“Brooklyn,” I called, still chuckling.
Her head snapped up and she gaped at me. Then she looked between her cell’s screen and me, and slowly stood up.
“Wait, did I actually call you?” she breathed. “I thought I was just imagining all those times I called or texted…”
She looked fretfully down at her cell, and I smiled goofily at her, warmth filling my chest at the thought of her thinking so hard about wanting to talk to me before she left that she was frozen.
“Can I ask, if I didn’t come here, would you have called or texted before you got on that plane?”
“I… I’m not sure,” she said quietly without looking up.
I stepped closer and touched her chin with my finger, gently tilting her head up so she would look up at me. She blinked her clear blue eyes at me, and I resisted the urge to press a kiss to her lips.
“I’m glad I caught you,” I murmured. “But you really should have tried to talk to me before leaving, at least. What’ll you do when I start thinking you don’t care about me anymore, hmm?”
“It’s not that I don’t,” she said quickly, her face darkening in a pink blush. “I just…wasn’t sure what to say? And you’ve been so busy I didn’t want to interrupt you.”
“I’m on leave from work for a month,” I retorted. “I mean, I’ll probably still be taking calls, but you can interrupt me as much as you want now, with all the free time I’ve got.”
“You…” she let her voice trail off, eyes wide.
“We were still in the middle of talking things out,” I reminded her.
She paused. “Oh.”
That night, when she and I were heading to my sister’s place to chat about us, before the con artist business came about, and it had been put on hold since.
“Or…did you decide to give up in the end?” I asked slowly, feeling my heart squeeze in my chest. It loosened immediately when she shook her head quickly.
“No, it’s just that I’ve got things back home. I mean, I live alone, but there’s work, I’ve pretty much used up my days off, I can't be late getting back. Originally, I would have taken an evening flight just to get back by tomorrow, but then I thought I could get back early and clean up the house…”
“We can deal with your job later.”
“We…?” Her eyes widened.
I smiled and reached into my pocket. Then, I took one of her hands into mine and got down on one knee. I heard a gasp, and it wasn’t just from her. Murmurs were starting up around us, and I could feel all the eyes on me, but I ignored them.
“Brooklyn. This proposal is…very late in coming, but I’d like to think we’re both ready now. I loved you six years ago and I still love you now. However way things are going to go from here on out, I want to have you in my life. Will you marry me?”
Her eyes misted as she brought her other hand over her mouth. She just stared at me for a long moment, and I worked to appear a lot more confident than I really was. There was still a chance that she could say no to me, and the proposal was just the beginning of it, after all.
After what felt like eternity to me, she nodded her head as she blinked the tears out of her eyes. When she pulled her hand away from her mouth, it was to reveal a happy, if shaky smile.
“Yes, Abe. I’ll marry you.” Then she laughed. “And you’re right, you were a little late with it.”
I grinned then stood up. I pulled the ring out of the box and slid it onto her finger. There were claps and catcalls around us, but I hardly heard them.
“Let’s get married right now,” I suggested next.
Brooklyn’s eyes widened as she gaped at me again. “What?” she breathed out.
“The wedding, remember?” I said, tightening my hands around hers. “It was supposed to be Nora’s, but she’s no longer getting married. Everything was prepared, and the wedding was supposed to— I thought she was going to cancel everything, though.”
I shook my head. “I’ve been talking to Nora the past week, more than I ever had before, honestly. She was going to cancel it all, but I figured it would be such a waste. I got some cards done quickly and all the guests are invited. None of the events got cancelled, and you even tried on the perfect dress…”
“This is going a little fast,” she breathed out. “And what were you thinking, doing something like this? What if I’d gone yesterday instead, like I’d planned?”
“Then I would have been a jilted groom,” I said with a smile, internally thanking Nora for her interference. “But that didn’t happen, and I don’t see this as moving too fast. Brooklyn, we were together for three years, and apart for six. In all those years, neither of us was able to forget the other. I don’t want any more regrets, and I am absolutely sure I want to commit myself to you for the rest of my life. So, please…. Brooklyn, marry me. Right now.”
I held my breath and waited. She’d already agreed to marry me, so even if it wasn’t today, it was going to happen someday. But then she grinned and pulled one of her hands away, squeezing the other around mine. She reached for a suitcase, then looked up at me in complete trust.
“Let’s go,” she said determined.
I grinned at her, picked up her other case, and we ran out of the airport, with more claps and catcalls behind us.
Epilogue
Brooklyn
I didn’t know how they’d done it, but in less than a week, Nora’s wedding had been turned into my wedding. I was even surprised when, as I was getting dressed, my parents showed up out of nowhere. Abe had arranged absolutely everything. There were even clothes ready for my parents, and my mom helped me get ready, then Dad was there to lead me down the aisle.
The whole time, I felt like I would break down crying. Instead, I had on the biggest grin as I was led out to a crowd of people, waiting for me to arrive. Nora had managed to book the hotel’s garden, and a side of it had seats arranged in neat rows on two sides with a literal red carpet down the middle, it was the wedding I’d imagined, even if it wasn’t for me.
My eyes weren’t on the decoration, or the people, or the scenery. It was on the man waiting for me down the aisle, dressed in a dark suit with his hair styled away from his face, a wide smile ready for me and his hazel eyes twinkling happily.
My breath caught in my throat, and I was very glad to have gone with the dress with the thick veil, or everyone would have gotten a good look at my face as I tried to hold back the sobbing. By the time I made it to the front, and my dad handed me over to Abe, I still felt like all this was too good to be true. Abe’s hand was solid in mine, though, giving a light squeeze, just enough to keep me grounded.
The wedding proceeded, with the pastor giving a short speech, then having us recite our vows. We both said I do, a pair of golden rings were brought, and we put them on each other. Abe pulled my veil back and gave me a chaste peck on the lips, with his eyes burning with the promise of more for later. Then, off to the side, we signed the necessary documents, and just like that, we were husband and wife. Afterwards, onto the reception.
Even going through the whole process, I was left a little dazed.
This is the day that I’d been waiting for, for the past six years, and it went by so fast.
“What are you thinking about?”
Abe snuck up behind me and pulled me into a back hug, resting his chin on my shoulder. I sighed and leaned back into him, pressing my own hands on top of his. I was standing off to the side watching the festivities, feeling tired but happy.
“Is it strange, how
all these people are here for me, and I feel like I’m an outsider looking in?”
“Of course, not,” Abe said with a chuckle. “Although, you did get that backwards. Today is all about us, and they’re the outsiders.”
“So many of them here to peek at us?”
“At our moment of happiness,” he added softly. “Because they’re people that care about the both of us.”
Abe was right about that. Besides my family, his own family was there. He’d even managed to find some of our old friends from college and invited them. The guests didn’t number a hundred, but they were all people we were close to.
I’d even had the chance to talk to his parents. They were a little stern, and I couldn’t tell if they were disapproving of me or not since I had been so nervous the whole time. I couldn’t even be bothered to try and impress them, I struggled to act normal, and Abe, the traitor, had left me alone at the time. I’d seen him receiving similar treatment from my parents, which was why I wasn’t still mad at him.
“Do your parents dislike me?” I asked suddenly, looking over my shoulder at him.
“Why would you say that?” he asked back, arching his eyebrows.
“I don’t know… I mean, I really don’t know anything about them. I just realized when I was standing in front of them, that we dated for three years and I met your sister a few times, but I never met your parents. Did you ever tell them anything about me?”
He sighed, eyes moving slowly across the room. “You could say that I did, but you could also say that I didn’t. I mean, I always knew how my life was going to go from when I was a little kid. I didn’t know if they’d accept you or not before, so I’d only told them bits and pieces. They didn’t even know your name until I called them to come for our wedding today.”
“What!” I yelped, trying to turn around. Only, he wouldn’t let me go, and I stopped struggling.
Abe, completely unconcerned, chuckled. “They thought it was something that I would get over, and I didn’t try to change their minds. You were something of a surprise in my life, and I really did intend to propose to you six years ago.” He took one of my hands, the one with the rings on it, and raised it up for the both of us to look at. “I bought this engagement ring for you long before you graduated. But I still finished a year before you did, and the extra year I stuck around was against my parents’ wishes. In the end, they thought I just needed to settle down, so they set me up on a blind date with a woman they thought suitable.”
I could feel a chill spread through my chest, but I waited for him to finish.
“I refused to meet the girl, I was still with you then, and it caused a bit of a problem. Not enough to take down the family empire, but enough to cause trouble for a lot of our employees. You see, I’d always known I would have to take up the mantle someday, but after watching my dad do it for years, I thought it would be simple. It hadn't occurred to me that I would be responsible for the lives of thousands of people until that incident.”
“Was it fixed?” I asked, feeling curious.
He sighed. “In the end, it was, but it wasn’t easy. I figured I needed to take responsibility, and you didn’t need to share that burden with me. I thought we could both move on…but I ended up pining for you for six years.”
After listening to what he had to say, I tugged on his arms so he would release me, then circled around in his arms and cupped his face between my hands.
“You should have talked things out with me before deciding on your own.”
“The first couple years were exhausting,” he said in a whisper, tucking stray strands of my hair behind my ear. “It was good distraction, too, and there were a few times when I thought I would fail. Thinking back, I’m still surprised I managed to get through those times. Even now, though, I can't really relax.”
I smiled, and felt my lips tremble, as I pressed my forehead against his. “Well, like you said at the airport, however things go from now on, I am definitely with you for the rest of our lives, okay? I’ll prove that you can depend on me. I’ll have my parents clear out my apartment for me and I’ll request a transfer from my job, or look for a different one here. I’m not letting you go this time.”
He smiled back, leaning closer to peck me on the lips. “I’ll hold you to that.”
I let out a light laugh as I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face in his neck, then I sighed.
“New York isn’t so bad after all,” I said. Then shivered, and felt his arms tightened around me. “Even if it is a little cold.”
“I’m glad you think so,” Abe said back. “And I promise I’ll do my best to keep you warm.”
He pulled back at the same time I did, and we both leaned forward as our eyes slid closed, meeting in the middle in a soft kiss of promise.
Maybe it was better that we spent the time apart. Six years felt like a long time, but right now it felt perfect.
No longer was I the fake bride, but a real one and with the man I never stopped loving, but he was a better man and the right one for me.
###The End###
More Books by Ted Evans…
About From Stepbrother to Daddy…
Liam was the moody, bad boy of our town.
I should have kept my distance.
But I couldn’t.
Even though he made my life hell.
I wanted to get out of our small town and the only way to do that was to get good grades.
I knew that it was wrong.
I knew that he would get up to no good.
My mind said no, but my body kept saying yes.
One night changed everything!
It got worse when I found out that he was going to be my stepbrother and the father of my baby…
Author’s Note:
It’s the whole series in one box-set with bonus scenes at the end of the book.
Have no fear, there’s no cheating in the book!
Chapter One
Chapter One
I hated her so much. Chanel had dragged me to one of those parties that the popular girls and boys went to on the last Friday of every month. It was some kind of crazy ritual that every kid in school dreamed about being invited to.
Not me.
I had a dream, and it was to get an education and get out of town. Don’t get me wrong; there’s nothing wrong with the town of Small Borne, but there’s more to life than one place and I want to experience it.
And that’s why my body, mind, and soul were focused on college.
Not like Chanel; she only had her body, mind and soul focused on Dwayne, the all-star quarterback that was going places. Just like me.
“Adele, can you walk faster? We’re late!” Chanel half-whispered and half-screeched at me.
“I would if I didn’t have this stupid skirt on, and make-up that’s a second skin on my face.”
Okay, so it was a bit of an exaggeration. The make-up wasn’t stopping me from seeing, but I was only keeping her company and I didn’t want to be anywhere near Dwayne’s best friend, Liam.
“Oh, don’t be silly. If we get there too late then they may hook up with some other girls.”
She’d said the wrong thing. But we’d had already taken our bikes and were already almost at the secret spot. I never understood why they called it that, when everyone knew how to get there. Then we changed out of our jeans into skirts and she touched up our make-up in the dark, using our cell cells as lights.
I didn’t even want to know what I really looked like.
I doubt I looked sexy. More scary. But I did it just to make her happy.
“Isn’t hanging around your dad’s barber shop and waiting for Dwayne to come in every week enough for you?”
I put my hands on my hips thinking that maybe she’d get the message and just stick to her usual routine of trying to get the guys’ attention.
“No!”
She sighed, that long exaggerated thing that she did whenever she wanted to make a point. One that I didn’t wan
t to hear.
“You know that it’s nearly Prom don’t you?”
I couldn’t see her, but the sarcasm in her voice was enough to put me off going any further.
“Besides you don’t want to stay at home and listen to Henry and your mom making out do you?”
I shook my head, “No way. Why did she have to date him, out of all the men in town?”
“And we know that ever though since your dad died, you’ve still not got over it. I’m sure your mom dating has been hard on you.”
“It was at first, but it’s been five years. I know that Mom has to move on eventually. She had to work for the first time in her life since he died and she’s managed to pick herself up. It’s just why she had to date him. Henry’s fine. It’s his son, Liam, that has issues. Big issues. I don’t even understand why any girl would even hook up with him. The guy’s a mental case.”
I didn’t know if I was trying to convince her or myself.
“Is that why whenever he walks in the room, you go bright red and you can’t get keep your eyes off him?” She took my hand, “I told you, your secret’s safe with me. I know you have a crush on him.”
“Now, you make me sound about five. I don’t have a crush. The guy’s a jerk.”
“I know he took your homework, handed it in and said you copied him.”
“Like that was likely? As if I would ever copy him.”
“And then Liam turned up at your date saying that you asked him to come and save you from Pete.”
“And I really liked Pete. I couldn’t even explain to him that Liam’s a jerk and how could I ask two men out at the same time?”
“I don’t even know why you asked Pete out in the first place?”