I certainly never felt happier. Or more jealous.
Now that she’d said yes, I wanted to steal Elise away. I knew I couldn’t get very far before I had to do what I wanted to do with her. Behind the restaurant might be all I could manage. I wanted to kiss her like there was no tomorrow. Run my fingers through her artfully coiled hair and slide a hand up her skirted thigh until I found her, parted her, and betrothed her again in a profoundly more primitive way.
But that would have to wait. A couple of hours, but no more.
I moved to Elise and took her hand in mine. “Let’s go inside and celebrate,” I said, my eyes on her alone.
She squeezed my hand, keeping her gaze locked with mine as our friends and family began to file into the restaurant.
Elise leaned in and whispered. “You mean we can’t just sneak away for a quickie?” she asked, nodding in the direction we’d just come from. “Your car’s just up the street.”
Her wicked grin lit me on fire and had me chuckling in response. “You are the perfect woman for me. I love you madly.”
She leaned, kissed me, and captured my bottom lip between her teeth for the briefest instant, but it was enough to send all my blood rushing south. “There’s nothing sane about the way I love you,” she whispered once she freed me.
“Good. I don’t need sane,” I whispered back. “I just need you.”
And then with my eyes on the merciless allure of her backless dress and a flagpole of lust trapped in my pants, I followed my fiancée into the restaurant. We’d celebrate — civilized and respectable — with our friends and family.
And I’d count the seconds until I could take her home. My Elise. Mine. For good.
Acknowledgments
I have lots of people to thank for helping me bring Cole and Elise’s story to life. First, I’d like to thank Ed and Nora Buttross at Buttross Jewelers for letting me use the name of their store. In real life, Buttross Jewelers has been a family-run business in Lafayette for more than forty years. I am grateful the Buttross Family didn’t mind the liberties I took with fictionalization. To me, there would be no better place for Elise to hone her craft.
Thanks, also, to my dear friend Chris Dardar and his business partner Scott Schilling for allowing me to use Cafe 20.3 on the Bayou as the setting for Flora’s new job. If you’re in Lafayette, be sure to check out the cafe, order a local draft beer or a “boosie smoothie,” and enjoy!
I hope Kelly Rhodes doesn’t mind that I named Cole’s karate instructor Sensei Kelly. Who better to teach him to be such a badass? On a much more serious note, I’d like to thank my former student Samantha Sawvel for bringing my attention to the pervasive use of child labor in the cashew industry. I seriously cannot find fair trade cashews in Lafayette, and now that I know what I know, it’s fair trade or no trade for me.
To Tom Stevens, thank you for giving Flora your wassail recipe. (Yes, he really uses Red Hots candy, and it’s delicious!) My inspiration for Elise and Flora’s snowflake decorations comes from my Aunt Bev, and Flora’s homemade peach ice cream is straight from Easter Sundays at my Aunt Keth and Uncle Marvin’s when I was a kid.
Thanks to Coach Colleen Barczyk who gave Cole his swim times, which would have made him competitive as a high school swimmer, but not a college athlete, and that was exactly what I needed. Colleen took the time to ask me about Cole as a person to put him in just the right event. How awesome is that?
Taking a story from the manuscript to the published novel is absolutely a team effort. Thanks to Nathan Van Dyken, Kay Tate, Paula Buckendorf, Jena Brignola, and everybody at Blue Tulip Publishing. I’m so grateful for all of you.
And as always, thank you to my alpha reader, my husband John Robideaux, with whom I will be celebrating twenty-five years of marriage this December. I am an incredibly lucky woman. I get to live with a man who makes me laugh on a daily basis and who places the highest value on my happiness. I love you, babe.
Finally, dear readers, thank you so much for picking up this book. As I’ve said before, I give thanks for every single one of you. If you’ve gotten this far, please consider posting a review on Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, Smashwords, Goodreads — wherever! Reviews really do matter. Also, if you’ve been reading my books for a while, I hope you enjoyed the glimpse into Corinne and Wes’s life (Legacy) that appeared in Chapter Eighteen. If you read Drive, then you know that Elise actually made her first appearance in Chapter Twenty-Nine when Rainey drives to the jewelry store. And to give you a little tease, the heroine of my next novel actually pops in here in Chapter Thirty. So meditate on that. Until then, happy reading!
About the Author
Stephanie Fournet, author of seven novels including Leave a Mark, You First, and Shelter, lives in Lafayette, Louisiana—not far from the Saint Streets where her novels are set. She shares her home with her husband John and their needy dogs Gladys and Mabel, and sometimes their daughter Hannah even comes home from college to visit them. When she isn’t writing romance novels, Stephanie is usually helping students get into college or running. She loves hearing from fans, so look for her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, and stephaniefournet.com.
Website
www.stephaniefournet.com
Email
[email protected]
Also by Stephanie Fournet
You First
Leave A Mark
Drive
Shelter Page 42