Since He Really Feels (He Feels)

by Lisa Suzanne

  “Nothing about why I want to marry you is wrong.”

  “I just don’t want to rush it if we’re doing it to stake a claim on each other.”

  I thought about that for a moment. Maybe he wanted to tie me down to alleviate his fears that I was going to leave him for Travis – which I would never do – as much as I wanted to tie him down to alleviate my own fears that he was going to fall under Bree’s spell or any one of the hundreds of other women that would likely be knocking down his door if he was single.

  Even though I knew in my heart that neither of those things would ever happen, he was absolutely right. Getting married to possess each other was wrong. Getting married because we were deeply in love and wanted to commit our lives to each other was right. And I knew that was my true motivation in marrying him.

  “You still want to marry me, don’t you?” I hated that I sounded like I was pleading.

  “I can’t think of anything I want more in this world than to marry you. I love you. I want you to be my wife. I want our wedding to be everything you dreamed it would be, and I don’t want anything else to be the focus of our day except our love for each other.”

  “I love you, too. And that’s all I want, too.”

  “Then let’s give ourselves a couple more months to plan.”

  “So not August?”

  He shook his head, and I felt conflicting feelings of relief and sadness.

  “Let’s check the calendar later,” I said.

  He smiled and leaned over the seat for a kiss.

  All stupid drama aside, I just wanted to marry the man of my dreams. It had nothing to do with Bree or Travis or anybody else. This was the man I was meant to spend the rest of my life with, and I could not wait for that to begin.

  Besides, I thought to myself, just because he had a ring on his finger didn’t necessarily mean a girl like Bree wouldn’t still offer herself up on a silver platter.

  The really odd thing about all of those revelations was that we still ended up apart.

  It took awhile, but the wedge that had started dividing us eventually broke us, and I wasn’t sure how we were going to find our way back to each other.

  We were fine at my sister’s house. In fact, Nick really bonded with Brandon while Jamie and I fussed over the baby. I saw our future together, the four of us having dinner while our little ones played together.

  Even that night when we got home, everything was mostly back to normal.

  It wasn’t until the night of our surprise engagement party that the wedge that had started forming between us turned into an irrecoverable gulf.

  CHAPTER 10

  NICK MATTHEWS

  Dinner with Jamie was fun. Julianne’s sister was hilarious, and her brother-in-law, Brandon, was a good guy. He was the type of guy I could hang out with, make small talk with, watch sports with; and he seemed happy to have another man joining the family. We talked sports, in particular baseball since spring training would be starting soon, while the girls talked all things wedding. I met Brady, Julianne’s nephew, just before Brandon took Brady in for bedtime, and Jamie took us into her brand new baby girl’s room to show us the beautiful, sleeping Hadley.

  I’d never really thought about having a family. I figured it would happen someday, but I never thought far enough into the future to really consider the possibility of children. But now that I’d met the woman I wanted to share my life with, I imagined for the first time what my house would be like with a wife and some kids running around. I thought about Julianne and what she would look like pregnant someday with my baby. And I liked those images. A lot.

  Julianne told her sister that we were pushing our wedding date back, and I saw the secret look of panic that passed from sister to sister. But I knew that we had made the right decision. I understood Julianne’s frustration with Bree. Bree had been overly flirtatious with me since the day I’d met her, but a ring on my finger wouldn’t change that. She was harmless, though, and I didn’t feel right about setting a wedding date so soon when I had a feeling that the main reason Julianne had been so flexible in moving up the date was because of Bree and her “breasts pressed against my shoulder.”

  To be honest, I hadn’t even noticed. I was engrossed in my work and establishing my name at a new company; and besides, I didn’t have eyes for anybody except my fiancée. I knew Bree was a beautiful woman, but I really didn’t see her as anything more than a coworker. I wasn’t attracted to her, not like I was to Julianne. She didn’t set my blood on fire. She didn’t distract me from everything or make me feel anxiety and excitement in the same breath the way Julianne did. I didn’t feel her presence when she was near, and my body didn’t respond to something as simple as her scent. And I most certainly didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with Bree.

  I just needed Julianne to understand that.

  She was worried about something that was completely insignificant.

  The ride home was less tense than the drive to Jamie’s. Julianne’s mood was considerably lighter after a couple of glasses of wine with dinner and an evening with her sister, and I wondered if she felt a little relief that we were pushing the wedding date back.

  I was secure enough to know that any relief she might have felt had nothing to do with me or her feelings about me and everything to do with planning a wedding in five months. She needed time, and I understood that.

  I just couldn’t wait for her to be my wife. Not because I wanted to tie her down. Not because of some outside force, and certainly not because of Travis.

  It was because she was everything I had ever looked for in a woman.

  And since I loved her as much as I did, I knew I needed to solve the biggest issue in our relationship: Travis Miller. I just wasn’t sure how to go about doing that.

  “Did you have fun?” Julianne asked tentatively as we drove toward home.

  I glanced over at her, her face beautiful even lit by the dashboard dials. I squeezed her thigh under my hand. “I had a great time. Your sister is fantastic. It clearly runs in the Becker family.”

  Julianne smiled. “Thanks, Nick. That’s a sweet thing to say.”

  “And Brandon is a good guy.”

  “You two seemed to get pretty heated about baseball.”

  “The guy’s a fucking Dodgers fan. What do you expect?”

  She giggled. She knew how much I hated the Dodgers.

  We were both quiet for a moment, and then I spoke again. “So have you thought about wedding party at all?”

  She nodded. “Of course. I’ve thought about it since I went to my aunt’s wedding when I was five.”

  “And?”

  “And I want my sister to be my matron of honor. I already asked her.”

  “I want my brother to be my best man.” It was something I’d known since I’d first started toying with the idea of getting married, which, honestly, I never thought I’d do. I thought I’d be a perpetual bachelor. And then I started working at McMillan, and the moment my eyes found Julianne’s in that conference room on my first day, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that my single life was over even though it took a year for me to do anything about it.

  “I figured. Do you have any other family you would like to include?”

  “Josh is the only person I consider my family.”

  “Are you going to ask Eric, too?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “How many bridesmaids do you want?”

  She glanced over at me and shrugged. “I guess I figured I’d ask Lucy and Holly. And I always thought—” she stopped midsentence.

  “Thought what?”

  “I always thought Travis would stand up in my wedding.” Her voice was a whisper, but I could sense the pain laced in her words.

  She may have talked a big game about not being in love with the guy, but I didn’t totally buy it.

  I didn’t want to share her heart with anyone, least of all the guy who thought it would be a good idea to come into my
office to tell me that he had fucked the woman I planned on marrying when we had been briefly apart. But I had no other option. The only other option was ending things with her, and I was certain that ending it wasn’t something I would ever be able to do.

  The three times we had been apart added up to a total of seven days of my life that I had lived without her in them since we had first revealed our true feelings for one another, but they were seven days of hellish torture that I never wanted to experience again.

  I was a fucking walking contradiction. While I hated the idea of sharing her heart with someone else, on the other hand, I didn’t have a choice. I had to commit to taking her as she was and loving her with everything inside of me, because the alternative was impossible.

  I’d learned through a lot of hard work and some tough experiences how to be disciplined in my life, and this was just another time where I’d have to exercise that discipline.

  “If that’s what you want, Julianne, then that’s what you’ll have.”

  I felt her eyes studying my face, but I didn’t look over at her. For one, I was driving, but I didn’t want her to see the hurt that would certainly be in my own eyes at the thought that she wanted someone she’d slept with to stand up in our wedding.

  “No,” she whispered. “He doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

  I thought about that. From what I’d pieced together from our various conversations, Travis had met someone. Apparently he’d moved on from Julianne, but I didn’t buy it. You don’t just get over a girl like Julianne. You don’t just move on from the person you loved your entire life, but I had to give the guy credit for trying.

  “Baby, you know where I stand on this issue. I’m not going to get into another argument about him. I want our wedding day to be everything you ever dreamed it would be, and if that means including Travis in it, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  “I know you do.” I pulled her hand up to my lips and kissed her fingertips. “And I love you.”

  “So when do you want to do this?” she asked, moving onto safer subjects.

  “October 3.”

  “October 3?”

  “I checked my calendar when you and Jamie were checking on Hadley. It’s a Saturday, and it gives you just over seven months to plan.”

  “October 3. I love it.”

  “As much as August?”

  “More.”

  “Me, too.”

  I glanced over at her, and she was grinning. She looked like a beautiful bride-to-be, glowing and gorgeous and all mine.

  CHAPTER 11

  JULIANNE BECKER

  Nick really was nothing short of a Prince Charming. How the hell did I get so lucky? I knew for sure that I didn’t deserve him. He was willing to put aside his personal feelings to make me happy, and to me, that was the true sign of the forever kind of love.

  That’s one of the things that showed me how stupid I’d been acting.

  While he was willing to do anything to make me happy on our wedding day – including allowing someone I’d had sex with to stand up as part of our wedding party – I was being indecisive, or worse, I was making decisions that directly struck a nerve with him.

  Work was basically awful all week. Aside from Nick, Cash was the only one who I even remotely liked or felt like I could connect to. Working with people like them made for a miserable environment. I had no one to bounce ideas off of; I felt intimidated during our team meetings, and my creativity was severely being stifled. I missed Lucy and Holly and the rest of my team at McMillan, and I wanted to go back there. I wanted Nick to be my boss at our little company again. Things were great back then, even when we had to hide what was developing between us, but I guess if the trade-off for going public with our relationship meant that we had to quit McMillan, it was worth it.

  Friday slowly crept up on us, and Nick and I had already decided that we were going to spend the night at home, organizing wedding stuff. It had been his idea, actually. He wanted to help me get organized, so I invited my mom and my sister over and we spent the night setting up a plan and figuring out where to even start planning a wedding. My mother was ecstatic that we were waiting longer, and my sister thanked me about a million times for giving her more time to lose her baby weight.

  While we flipped through magazines looking at dresses, my mom told me she had a surprise for Nick and me the next night. She said that we needed to dress up and meet at my parents’ house at 5:30. I hadn’t a clue what she had in store for us, but I was excited. I thought maybe she and my dad wanted to take Nick and me out to dinner to formally congratulate us and welcome Nick to the family. I knew they were ecstatic that Nick and I were getting married; they loved him dearly after the way he’d taken care of me after my accident, and they could see how much he loved their little girl.

  So, as instructed, I pulled on a fancy white, sparkly dress, and Nick dressed in a suit. I was in our shared master bathroom, putting the finishing touches on my makeup when he strolled in. I dropped my mascara wand on the counter when I saw him. I saw him every day dressed for work, but something about seeing him dressed up for an evening out with my family and knowing that he did this for me was just plain sexy. He chose my favorite suit – a charcoal gray one with a white shirt underneath. He skipped the tie, opting to leave the top button of his shirt undone, and the little patch of neck that stuck out where he normally tied his tie was enough to send a tingle of lust through my body. I wanted him, and I wanted him now… but, unfortunately, we were running late as it was, so we had to get going.

  “You look hot,” I said, picking up my mascara wand and wiping off the counter where I dropped it.

  “You’re looking pretty damn fine yourself,” he said as he came up behind me and positioned himself so the length of his body warmed the back of mine. That tingle of lust turned into a full-blown quiver, and then his lips found my neck and I was done for.

  I shivered at his touch, goose bumps making their way down both of my legs. I wanted him to take me right there on the bathroom counter. I leaned back into his touch, a quiet moan escaping my lips, and I felt his grin against my neck.

  “We need to get going,” he whispered.

  “Dammit,” I murmured, and he chuckled.

  “To be continued?” His eyes met mine in the mirror and he smirked.

  I turned around and faced him, and his hands found my cheeks. His rough thumbs traced down my face, and his eyes burned into mine. All I saw there was heated lust.

  I leaned up and pressed my lips to his. “Definitely,” I whispered.

  I felt a bit off balance from our lust-induced scene in the bathroom, and as we pulled into my parents’ driveway, I realized I still hadn’t cooled down. I was hot for my man, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to get through dinner without ripping off his clothes.

  As he pulled in the driveway and cut the ignition, I admitted, “I am still so fucking hot for you.”

  He turned slowly to look at me. “Feeling’s mutual, baby.” He grinned, and damn if that didn’t make my panties even a little wetter.

  “What if…” he trailed off, but he definitely had my interest. “What if we played a little game tonight?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like when I say some predetermined key word, that means we’re meeting in some predetermined place for a few minutes of private time.”

  “What do you mean by ‘private time’?”

  “I mean I’m going to find a way to get inside of that hot body of yours.”

  I felt my face heat up. He didn’t pull out the dirty talk too often, but when he did, his words always hit their intended mark.

  “What’s this predetermined word?” I asked, my voice breathless as I thought about this little game of his.

  “Well, it would have to be something appropriate to say in front of your family…”

  “How about ‘McMillan’?”

  “That might come up in casual conversation,
and then you won’t get my secret message.”

  “True.”

  “What about ‘margarita’?”

  “Okay. I’m drinking wine tonight, so ‘margarita’ works for me.”

  “Wait for me to say it. I’ll try to scout out a location before I say our key word.”

  I was suddenly really excited for the possibilities of the evening ahead.

  We got out of the car, and Nick guided me up the sidewalk to my parents’ front door. His hand found the small of my back, and I leaned into it. I loved the feeling of his hands on me anywhere, but somehow especially there. His big hand was warm and made me feel absolutely cherished.

  I rang the doorbell, and my parents’ Jack Russell Terrier, Max, started barking. My mom appeared at the door a moment later, and, holding Max back so he didn’t jump on me in my white dress, she greeted us. She was dressed up, too, and my dad walked up behind her a moment later, dressed in a suit and tie.

  “You two look nice,” I said, hugging my mom while Nick shook my dad’s hand.

  We switched, and my mom greeted Nick with a kiss on the cheek while I hugged my dad.

  “You two look nice, too,” my mom said, smiling at me. It was no secret that she nursed a little crush on my fiancé, but, then, who didn’t? He was as charming as he was gorgeous.

  “So what’s the plan?” I asked.

  My mom’s eyes gleamed mischievously. “You’ll see. Glass of wine?”

  Nick and I both nodded, and I looked over at my handsome fiancé, wanting so badly for him to say “Margarita” so we could head up to my childhood bedroom and he could alleviate the throbbing ache between my legs.

  After our glass of wine, the four of us piled into my dad’s Ford Explorer, and we were off. Ten minutes later, we were pulling into the driveway of the Millers’ house.

  A ripple of some unknown emotion traveled through my spine. Pulling into the driveway of Travis’s parents’ house felt strange with Nick seated next to me. My entire history with Travis flashed through my mind, my memories centering most specifically on the times we’d been intimate and landing on an image of his lips. I felt immediately guilty at the thought and banished it from my mind.