Let Me Love You
Page 25
She laughed as she looked at James with pure love. “That’s what Tom says.”
After the rocky period Tom and Darcy had been through, I was glad to see them so solid. The three of them had formed a nice little family and I had no doubt that Tom would make things official before long. He was a good person and good to my sister. I knew she would be loved and well provided for and I couldn’t hope for more.
Rene took over with James then while Darcy, Luke and I headed to pick out our suits for the wedding. With Rene’s input, Darcy had picked out a casual, light colored suit. I liked the look but knew that even though they were linen, Luke and I were probably going to be sweating bullets in them on the beach in Puerto Rico in April. It was ok though, I could suffer if that’s what Rene wanted me in. I would pretty much do anything that girl asked of me.
Chapter Nineteen
Rene
“How many bags did you bring, Caitlin?”
“This is not all my stuff! Most of it’s for you, silly. If that rumor about you turns out to be true you’re going to need a ton of clothes. These are samples the designers provide for my site.”
“Don’t jinx me! I feel like it’s bad luck to even talk about it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Please. You have been making your own luck your whole life, Rene. Luck has nothing to do with it.”
I smiled at her confidence in me. A rumor had been swirling at the show that when Mike Turner retired at the end of June, network executives were looking at me to replace him as the lead-in contributing reporter, meaning that I would do a brief spot at the opening of Meredith’s show and then lead off the second half-hour reporting the day’s top national and international events. Nothing was official and I’d kept mum about it to everyone except Caleb and Caitlin. I didn’t want to get my hopes up but Meredith had been priming me and Chris Quivers had divulged that the response had been overwhelming and positive to my on-air Olympic spots. He told me the network had big plans for me. If it did happen, I was ready. I guess I was a confident person, as Caleb described me, because the initial response in my head was along the lines of…I CAN DO THIS!
Getting married in the midst of all this, me working long, crazy hours and Caleb getting a new business off the ground, was probably insane. Caitlin came in the weekend before and we were flying down to Puerto Rico Thursday night after work. Caleb was coming Friday morning with most of the guests. The plan was a casual dinner Friday night, wedding at seven o’clock on the beach Saturday, and a lazy Sunday before people made their way back to the airport on Monday.
Caleb and I were literally only missing two days of work for our wedding. He promised me that next year he’d jet me off someplace great but I honestly didn’t care. I just wanted to be married to him and to know I had my life ahead of me with him in it. I really felt like I didn’t need anything but Caleb.
Caleb
The day we got back I had Marie send a giant floral arrangement to Kate’s sister, Audrey. The wedding really was perfect—great weather, the people who meant the most to us in life and Rene walking down the sandy “aisle” to me barefoot in her wedding dress. That was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen.
As I stood holding her hands when we exchanged vows, I was overwhelmed with emotion. Rene told me later that she was overcome at one moment realizing that it was Luke and Caitlin standing beside us, as the only two other people in the world who knew everything, had been with us and supported us through everything. That hadn’t been lost on me either. I knew how blessed we were to have friends and family like ours.
That night was crazy with the combo of the Puerto Rican Jack Johnson impersonator and the DJ not shutting the music down until after four. At one point, nearly all of us were in the pool, Mick with no clothes on. Like I said—not a traditional wedding.
I didn’t manage to get Rene for a night swim until Sunday and it wasn’t the same, as Mick and Caitlin were making out—mauling each other really—in the sand when we got down there. So even though we swam a beach over, we settled for suits-on.
I know Rene was hoping there was a romance in the making with those two. I didn’t think Caitlin had more than a passing interest in Mick at first but when she started dropping hints that she might relocate to New York after grad school, I thought I might be wrong. Whatever, either way they were having fun.
Once we were back in New York together I felt like that was when our life together really began. I was like an excited kid the day Maureen, Tom and Darcy helped move the rest of Rene’s things to my place. She joked that she could have done the move herself with one grocery store shopping cart. It was a nod to her nomad-like past. She did still travel light and didn’t accumulate a lot, as she was so used to picking up and moving, but that was going to change. She was with me, she was home and she wasn’t going anywhere.
EPILOGUE
Rene
Things hadn’t changed in some respects. When Caleb surprised me with a trip to Paris for our fifth anniversary, my initial reaction was, that’s ok, I’m fine just being at home with you guys. I didn’t say that because he would have been disappointed but I really was totally content to be home, in our house, with my men.
Leaving the boys for five days would be hard but I was looking forward to having some time alone, just me and Caleb, with nothing to do but be together and love one another.
Sometimes I would think about where my life started out and where I was now and I literally had to pinch myself. Today, a sunny Sunday morning, I sat on my beautiful, albeit tiny, garden patio drinking coffee as they boys took their morning nap. They woke up at like five-thirty so they were wiped out by eight and so was I. Our twins, Daniel and Matthew, were eighteen months old and the loves of our lives. They were the best, most unexpected miracle.
Life changed dramatically once we found out we were expecting. Caleb was overjoyed and subsequently on a mission. The bachelor pad was exchanged for a brownstone across the street from Luke and Kate, where he had an office fully outfitted so that he could work from home sometimes. I kept my position working alongside Meredith as a correspondent on the A.M. America show until I was seven months pregnant. Since giving birth, I had filled in for special assignments and had covered weekend anchor shifts, but for the most part, I was home taking care of the twins and loving it. I still felt like I had my foot in the door at the network but I was fortunate in that I could take care of my babies nearly every day.
I never thought this would be my life. I envisioned myself as a full-time career girl with a nanny if children ever came into the picture, but I turned out to be the opposite.
Maybe it was because I didn’t have the doting parent experience myself that I was hell-bent, from the day I held those two in my arms, to be committed to them entirely. They would grow up so differently than I had. They were never alone. Not only did they have one other as constant companions who already could, by the way, finish each other’s sentences, but they had James, Charles and John to rough house with.
Darcy and Tom’s boys were now six, four and two. When we babysat and they were all together it was crazy, in a really great way. Luke and Kate’s princesses across the street were, by comparison, all frill, flowers and sweetness. All of the cousins adored each other but I noticed that Rebecca and Lucy would retreat to the kitchen with me when the boys really got rowdy.
I was so happy to be a part of this family. It was the best kind of chaos. We split our time between the city and the beach, just like Caleb had as a kid. Our beach house was still the two bedroom bungalow we started out with but Caleb had started talking to Luke more and more about an expansion. When I protested one morning that I loved our little house just as it is, he came up behind me, rested his chin on my shoulder, placed both hands on my belly and whispered that he wanted more. I could still melt every time he touched me. Every time he whispered in my ear I was achy for him and he knew it. As my body eased back into him he kept at it, tilting himself into me suggestively. “I want more, baby. I want some l
ittle Renes and some more little guys running around here too.”
I shrugged. “Are you going to love me fat and lumpy if we have twins again?”
I was playing him and, I guess, fishing for a compliment. I had bounced back nicely after the boys were born. I mean, it was my job to keep myself camera-ready but nursing the boys whipped my body back into shape quicker than any killer workout routine ever could have.
He turned me to face him and said what I always wanted to hear. “I will love you, no matter what, until the day I die, Beaumont.”
Caleb
As I came in from my morning run with Luke, the house was silent. I knew better than to make even the slightest sound, for fear of waking up Matt and Daniel. I crept through the kitchen and downed some water standing by the sink. I saw her, lazy on the chaise in the backyard. Her robe was sliding off one shoulder, revealing the thin strap of a tank top that I imagined hugged her breasts and barely covered a lacy pair of panties. Yeah, I still daydreamed about this woman nonstop. I watched her sipping her coffee, looking like she was lost in good thoughts as a smiled turned up the corners of her mouth. I made my way out there and stood there quietly until she noticed me. “Caleb, you’re like a cat sneaking up on me!”
I laughed quietly. “No, it’s just that I always have to tip-toe and whisper in my own house so that I don’t wake the terrors. And I do just like watching you sometimes. You look happy.” I said as I sat facing her with our hips touching.
She leaned over to kiss me. “You’re sweaty. I like you sweaty.”
“Next week, mon amour, you can have me sweaty all over Paris when I ask you, voulez vous coucher avec moi?”
She choked on her coffee and then laughed. “Just so you know, I’ve been starting to teach the boys French and you are banned from participating since you only know cheesy, sleazy phrases.”
“I know the important ones, mon petit morceau doux de cul.”
“Did you just try to call me a sweet little piece of ass?”
“Yes, I like to type dirty things into internet translating sites on my down time.”
“Oh my Lord.”
I moved in and spread both palms across her belly, slid them up her torso and cupped both of her beautiful breasts. “Mine, all mine.”
She arched up into me and laid the hottest kiss on me as her hands found me and stroked me through my shorts. No sooner did she have me rock hard and groaning when a fierce, assertive voice demanded, “MAMA!”
That was Daniel, the spokesperson for the duo. I pulled away with a frustrated growl on my lips. “I cannot wait to get you on that plane next week.”
She pouted her lips. “Oh, don’t you say that. I am going to miss my little loves so much.”
I let out a deep breath as she stood, smiling. “I know. I will too. But I want…” I slid my hand up her leg underneath her robe, “my mon petit morceau doux de cul.”
She giggled and then went to get the boys as Daniel barked, “MAMA!” a second time.
A minute later she was back with both of them, one in each arm, planting kisses on one and then the other, back and forth. They were giggling. She was a fantastic mother to our children. She was patient, loving and met their every need.
Sometimes I would feel my heart ache thinking of her as a sweet little girl with no one to care for her. But I had to give Rene credit, she didn’t wallow in self-pity, never did. She just made it better by being the parent to our children that she never had. As she set them down to toddle around the yard she eased herself between my legs on the chaise and I wrapped my arms around her. My whole world was wrapped up in my arms and that thought often overwhelmed me. She broke into my thoughts. “When you thought of your ‘someday’, is this what you envisioned?”
I squeezed her tight and breathed her in deep. “Beaumont, my life, because of you, is so much better than I ever could have imagined.”
She looked up at me and said the simplest, purest words to me; the ones I would always need to hear. “I love you, Caleb.”
About the Author
Lily splits her time between New York and Maine these days. When she’s not hanging out with her hysterically funny, loving and supportive husband, she spends her time running, suffering through spin classes, reading any book she can get her hands on, and locking herself away to write.
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Other Titles by Lily Foster
Let Me Be the One
Book One: Darcy and Tom’s story
Let Me Go
Book Three: Kasia and Dylan’s story
Let Me Heal Your Heart
Book Four: Anna and Declan’s story
Table of Contents
Other Titles by Lily Foster
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
EPILOGUE
About the Author
Other Titles by Lily Foster