by Dani Collins
“You know what your brother said to me? That I’m too self-sufficient. I am. I can solve my own problems, Paige. You don’t have to fix anything for me. What I need from you is for you to be in my life. I love you.”
She was dreaming.
She pressed her fingertips to her lips, trying to steady them. Her throat felt swollen, her heart too big for her chest.
“Don’t look so damned shocked.” He frowned, maybe self-conscious, maybe a little stung. “It’s always been you,” he said, palm out, voice not quite steady. “You must realize that by now.”
She swallowed. She really didn’t want to wake up. Not in her wildest dreams had she let herself believe this could really happen.
“Are you—” Her voice didn’t want to work. She cleared her throat. “You would really leave Liebe Falls? For me?” She touched fingertips to her collarbone, unable to process it. Of course, the likely fallout hit her like a ton of bricks, making her shake her head. “People really would hate me if I was the reason you left town again. Your mother...” She could only imagine.
He came across and settled his hand warmly against the side of her neck. “Stop caring what people think.”
“I can’t!” she groused. “And I’d feel really bad if the factory stopped making money and people lost their jobs.”
“Did you hear me tell you I love you? Because I’d really like to know how you feel.” He dipped his head, brow stern, nose almost touching hers, but so much tenderness in his eyes, she could hardly breathe.
“Of course I love you.” Saying the words made her eyes sting. Her throat grew tight. “Always. So much it’s stupid. I’m stupid, because I’m standing here thinking about moving back there to be with you and I just finished convincing myself never to go back there again.”
“I’m telling you we don’t have to. We can live anywhere, so long as we’re together.”
God, he really did know how to woo a girl.
“What if I want to?” she asked in a barely there voice. “Move back, I mean?”
“You want to live there?”
She shrugged, thinking about all the reasons she’d left. They had all centered around how much she’d been hurt by what happened between them. Things were different now. They were. “It’s a good job. I like working with you.”
“You’re okay to work with. Bit of a stickler for due process.” Warmth lit his blue eyes. She couldn’t look away, but that heat was making something swell in her. Something giddy and scary and wonderful. Hopeful.
“What if people... say things? Like that I married you for the company or something?”
“They might say that about me. Do you think my mother will put up with any sort of gossip for long?”
She acknowledged that with a trembling smirk. “My enemy’s enemy is my friend?”
“Something like that.” He stroked his thumb against her throat, expression solemn. “We could leave anytime, Paige. I mean that.”
“It’d be nice to be near Brit and the baby,” she mumbled.
“You’re killing me over here. Say you’ll be my wife, Paige. We’ll figure out the rest as we go.”
“Do I have to take your name?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. I’ll take yours.” He scooped her up and said, “Where’s the bedroom?”
She laughed, locking her arms around his neck, lips pressing to the spot near his Adam’s apple that always made him growl with pleasure.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Six months later and Sterling still tensed to think about how close he’d come to losing her, but she was his now.
He followed her voice outside to their backyard, where the lawn stretched unbroken all the way through her father’s property to the other street. Kids were playing tag over there, but here people milled around in suits and dresses, enjoying the light breeze that was bobbing the heads of the daffodils Paige had planted before Thanksgiving and were now blooming freely.
His mother was busy advising Paige on the protocol of bouquet tossing. She’d spent the day dutifully standing beside her husband the Mayor, only making one sideways comment about the woman here with Grady.
“Patty, you might get lucky,” Evelyn told his Best Woman, nudging her to join the single ladies in the scramble for the bouquet.
Patty was still shaking her head at his moving back to Liebe Falls, but had offered warm approval in his choice in wife after she and Paige had had their first lunch together.
“She’s sarcastic, smart, and hot as hell. Marry her before I do.”
He did.
“Hi,” he murmured, coming up behind Paige, curling his arm around her waist. “Ready to go?”
She leaned back into him, so the flowers in her hair tickled his chin, fragrant and soft. She reached up to cup his jaw.
“Almost.”
“Let Mom throw it. She’ll do it right.”
His mother was miffed that they hadn’t waited until June. She was dying to take control of something.
Paige tilted a smile at him. “I’m going to aim for Brit.”
Britta was handing off her newborn daughter to Cam, who cradled the baby with great care, trying not to wake her.
“Help me?” Paige prompted. When she smiled like that, like he was her own personal hero, it was like looking at sunlight bouncing off water, the brilliance so intense it made his eyes water.
“I live to serve,” he told her. “But I want you to myself. Hurry.”
A few minutes later, Paige’s ring—his grandmother’s—sparkled in the sun as she threw her bouquet over her head and behind her back. Squeals of laughter and a small scrum followed with a triumphant shout from a still plump Britta.
“Oh, good,” Paige said when she saw her friend blushing and making eyes at Cam. “That makes me happy.”
“That all it takes?” Sterling said with a mock frown.
“Oh, I’m insanely happy,” Paige said. “You know that. Lyle said I sound obnoxious with it.”
Her brother texted often and they talked over the screen every couple of weeks, but Lyle hadn’t made the wedding. He claimed he couldn’t get the time off work, but from what Sterling could tell, he was taking odd jobs that weren’t exactly binding. It was an excuse. Paige was bummed as hell about it, but coming back to a big event like this, where booze was flowing freely and another man was holding his baby, might be a hard place to stay sober. Sterling cut the man some slack.
And they were detouring on their way home to see him at the end of their honeymoon.
“Let’s go,” Sterling insisted now.
“The impatient bridegroom,” Patty teased as they started making their escape.
He was and didn’t care who knew it.
“Where’s the honeymoon?” someone asked.
“Mexico. And we’re not taking calls,” Paige said, laughing over her shoulder, thanking well-wishers for coming as they wound their way across the crowded lawn.
At the front of the house, Grady stood talking with Walter and the rest of the usual suspects.
Zack, still in his tux, came down the front steps with a beer in his hand. “It’s for Pops,” he said when Paige’s brow went up. “I don’t drink. You know that.”
His father and the other men came forward to shake Sterling’s hand as a final gauntlet, offering congratulations and playful advice for the honeymoon. Finally Sterling was able to help Paige gather her dress into the passenger seat of their new SUV. As he did, the men’s voices carried from behind him.
“You must be proud as punch.”
“She could have done better,” Grady said, arrogant as ever.
“All fathers feel that way about their daughters. Then the babies come and you don’t care anymore. She got a bun in the oven?”
“I sincerely hope so,” Walter said. “It’s about time Sterling became a father.”
Sterling smirked, exchanging a look with his wife. She wore the sly, secretive smile she’d been wearing for six weeks.
Yeah. About time.
~ * ~
Don’t miss the second story in Dani Collins’ Dreams Duet:
ONLY IN HIS SWEETEST DREAMS.
Read on for an excerpt, but first, would you like to be notified when Dani’s next book comes out?
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Excerpt - Only In His Sweetest Dreams
With serious misgivings, Mercedes left her sister’s kids in the sunroom and entered the meeting room where small private receptions were occasionally arranged for birthdays or anniversaries, and where card tables were set up for the monthly board meeting.
“Mercedes! Finally.” Mrs. Garvey’s Finishing School accent silenced the room as she broke away from the group beside the coffee service at the counter. Her teabag string waved from the edge of her cup and tea sloshed onto the saucer as she marched her thin frame across the room.
“I’m sorry.” Mercedes caught a brief glimpse of a fresh-faced college kid and a face that was definitely that of a man.
Her heart gave a teensy ba-boomp even before she got a proper look at him. Mrs. Yamamoto opened her arms for a hug and Mercedes had to bend way down over the woman’s tiny frame then turn to press a light kiss on Pete Dolinski’s cheek. Her vision was completely blocked by Harrison Michaels’s broad shoulders when she accepted his brief, back-patting hug. He smelled like cotton and cigars and love. Yeah, she loved this ol’ coot.
“Good to have you back,” he said.
“Good to be back,” Mercedes said, and stepped away only to have her attention demanded by Mrs. Garvey.
“We weren’t sure you were going to make it.” No affection from Mrs. Garvey. She was like Dayton. Liked her personal space.
“I was waiting for my sister.” And waiting and waiting. Cocking her head, Mercedes tried to hear the children and doubted it was good news that she couldn’t.
“They’ve been here ten minutes already,” Mrs. Garvey said.
In the quiet, her remark carried. Mercedes sent a faint smile at ‘they.’
She had understood from Harrison that four young men had broken into the back units of the complex, but only one stood across the room. He looked surprisingly clean-cut for a B&E artist.
However, if the man beside him was a relative—and he must be since they shared the same dark coloring—then it explained everything. The older brother or uncle or whatever he was, looked like cheap beer, dirty talk, and sweaty sex.
He smiled at her as if he knew she possessed a learning disability where guys like him were concerned.
Clenching her stomach against flutters of intrigue, Mercedes dredged up a cool smile and approached with her hand extended. “I’m Mercedes Kimball, the Manager of Coconino.”
In his mid to late thirties, the man straightened from a slouch against the wall, giving the impression he was on the wrong side of pulling an all-nighter. His hair was in need of cutting or combing. Both really, and his jeans looked clean, but were faded and frayed. He hadn’t shaved in days and he had to know that old-fashioned senior types like the ones in this room expected a tidier appearance for important meetings like this.
Then again, a man like him didn’t usually give a damn.
“L.C. Fogarty.” He shook with an all-encompassing grip that could easily lead her to the nearest broom closet. He kept her hand while he said, “My son, Zack.”
“Son,” she said with mild surprise and eased her tingling hand free, smiling at Zack.
Zack didn’t meet her gaze, too busy giving his father a weird look.
“What?” L.C. asked.
Zack shook his head, held out his hand for Mercedes, and said, “It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Kimball.”
Really the kid was too much a contrast to the punk father, his hair freshly cut, his slacks and collared shirt clean and ironed, his attitude respectful rather than knowing and wicked. He had shaved. Maybe the wrong Fogarty had been copped for the crime.
Mercedes drew back and briefly introduced the board before saying, “I’m not sure why you requested this meeting, Zack. I understood the school and police settled everything yesterday.”
“So did we,” Mrs. Garvey said behind her.
Mercedes sent a questioning glance at L.C.
“Don’t look at me. I just got here a couple hours ago.” His lips were well-defined in a masculine way, speaking of strength and purpose and a restless spirit. “But it seems he doesn’t want to be expelled.” He jerked his head at Zack.
“Right.” She dragged her gaze to Zack.
The young man cleared his throat. “I, um, spoke with the faculty and the judge, and, um, worked out a way for me to stay in school.” He rubbed a hand against his thigh. Sweating, not surprisingly, with the way the residents here resisted the cost of air conditioning. “I’ve, uh, written this apology.” He withdrew a folded envelope from his back pocket and offered it to Mercedes.
“Hardly sufficient,” Mrs. Garvey murmured in the background. “A letter doesn’t repair damage—”
“Oh, Ma’am, that wasn’t us,” Zack said.
“Did he just interrupt me?”
Mercedes turned to see Mrs. Garvey direct the question to Mrs. Yamamoto.
The board had taken their usual seats behind the table. Mrs. Garvey’s narrow cheeks flushed and she sat with her spine very straight, fully adopting what Mercedes privately thought of as her Stork On A Nest pose. Her gaze moved to the notebook in front of Mr. Dolinski. His pencil was poised but not moving, which seemed to displease her. Mrs. Yamamoto hunched over her knitting and Harrison leaned back, eyes closed, napping.
“Hooligan,” Mrs. Garvey muttered.
L.C. shifted, scraping his boot on the tiled floor.
Mrs. Garvey tensed and lifted her nose, but kept her gaze on the notebook, tapping the page. “Write down that due to the extensive damage to the duplex—”
“—that has been neglected for years,” Harrison murmured, rousing himself enough to open one eye at Mr. Dolinski. “Write down that I interrupted her, too.”
Mrs. Garvey made an impatient noise. “The windows were smashed, they left foul messages, and they intended to start a fire.”
“Don’t forget the sodomy they were planning, Edith.”
“Matches were found, Harrison.”
“Two of the guys smoke, Ma’am,” Zack said. He had his hands deep in the front pockets of his chinos. “No one was planning on starting a fire. I, uh, wasn’t planning on doing anything. Just some of the guys saw the hole in the fence and wanted to look around. I tried to stop them.”
Mrs. Garvey frowned at the notebook and said, “He’s wasting our time.”
“I don’t lie, Ma’am.”
Mercedes lowered the eloquent, seemingly sincere apology she’d been reading and walked it over to Harrison. He patted his chest and came up with his glasses.
Mrs. Garvey leaned forward to look past Mr. Dolinski to Harrison. “The police said they had all been reprimanded and the Dean expelled them for the semester.”
“That’s right, Ma’am, but the school is willing to let me finish out the year if I write a formal apology, serve community hours, and take care of the repairs to your building. I’d really like to do that, Ma’am. Finish the year.”
Mercedes felt something in her melt. She remembered her first community hours. The dollar-store earrings she had shoplifted had not been worth the six weeks of litter pick-up, making her forever averse to repeating that particular crime. Of course she’d wound up in a stolen car that other time, but she hadn’t stolen it. Those hours had been even more boring, working in an insurance office, taking calls and filing, but she’d come away with skills that had ultimately helped her on the job front. Serving hours worked for the right kids.
Still speaking to Harrison, Mrs. Garvey said, “In my day, we didn’t allow criminals off the hook by writing lines.”
“It was my idea, Ma’am,” Zack said. “Well, the repairs part. The Dean suggested a hundred community hours and that I serve them here.”
Yes. Mercedes me
ntally had him painting the main lounge, mowing the lawn, and reading the book club novel aloud before Mrs. Garvey could say, That’s absurd!
“That’s absurd! Let a jailbird into our homes?”
“Mrs. Garvey.” Mercedes forced a tight smile. “If it’s just the one incident, I’m sure he would appreciate the opportunity to turn himself around.”
Looking among the board members, Mrs. Garvey muttered, “I’d like to know if it is just the one incident.”
“Then why don’t you ask him?” L.C. scratched the stubble beneath his chin. “Rather than talking around him like he’s not here.”
Mrs. Garvey flared her nostrils. The rest of the board swung their gazes to Zack.
Please don’t help, Mercedes tried telegraphing to L.C., but only got a hello-there stare that slithered heat from behind her breastbone down to her pelvis. Her heart gave another skip of response and she jerked her gaze to Zack.
He shifted his weight, seeming uncomfortable.
“Is this the only time you’ve been in trouble with the police, son?” Harrison asked.
“Well, there was this one other time—”
“Why in hell would you bring that up?” L.C. asked.
“Language,” Mrs. Garvey murmured, touching the broach on her sweater.
“I just told them I don’t lie.” Zack waved his hand at the board.
“It didn’t count,” L.C. said.
“Now we’re playing horseshoes. How could an arrest not ‘count’?” Mrs. Garvey asked Mrs. Yamamoto.
Mrs. Yamamoto set her knitting in her lap and tilted her head questioningly at Zack.
“He was trying to take the rap for his old man,” L.C. explained.
“Oh, jeez!” Zack rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “You’re supposed to just look at the repairs with me, all right? I don’t need your help with this.”
“Apparently you don’t need help at all,” L.C. said. “Sounds to me like they’ve made up their minds and don’t want anything fixed.”
Zack’s sigh rang with impatience.
Mercedes’s feelings of affinity for the young man grew. She knew exactly how it felt to parent one’s parent. She was just about to go to bat for Zack, despite his convict father, when Zack spoke again.