He didn’t cry until Ro declared them married and Cara leapt into his arms, and he was secure she’d be there forever.
TWELVE
Reid
Fucking weddings. Reid rubbed his eyes and looked away from Cara and Owen. Much as his break and enter was vindicated, there was only so much loved-up happiness he could take. He had an overwhelming need to pull Zarley into his arms, drag her upstairs and bury his face in her neck till he felt more like himself again, but she’d left Cara’s side and he couldn’t see her anywhere. Fucking weddings. These weddings had done something to his intestinal fortitude and he needed a drink.
They’d started serving dessert and coffee but he took another beer. Drunk was a bad idea and this was only his second drink for the night but the idea of blanking out the emotional overload was attractive.
It was the idea of the century when Dalton approached. “Any more surprise weddings tonight?” he asked with a pointed look.
Not going there. “None that I know of.”
Dalton went there. “Are the two of you intending to get hitched?”
This glass did not contain enough beer for Reid to handle this well. “Not that it’s any of your business, but no.”
“Because?”
“The part about it being none of your business, I didn’t say it for my own amusement.”
Dalton grinned. “You sure are a hardhead. I’m making it my business because Zarley’s important to me and I can see she loves you. I’m hoping you’re not some rich, entitled douche who’s going to waste her time.”
“You had your shot with Zarley.”
“I had my shot and yeah, I blew it. I should’ve stood by her no matter what. We were too young to know what we were doing. But she’s a different person now and so am I. I’m not your competition. I’m standing here so you don’t blow it.”
He should walk away. Plenty of other people to be awkward with. “Like I said, Zarley and I are none of your business. Back the fuck off.”
“I’d do that, I would, except I might actually like you.”
They locked eyes. Reid was accustomed to people looking away. Dalton didn’t flinch. “Surprises the shit out of me,” he said.
Fucking weddings, fucking ex-boyfriends with honorable intentions. “Look, you want to know the truth. She doesn’t want to marry me. I’ve asked her a thousand times. As far as she’s concerned we’re already partners and no ceremony is going to change the way we feel about each other.”
That shut the guy up. It also severed their eye contact, but not before Reid saw what looked like pity pass across Dalton’s face.
“Marriage is not something she needs, all right. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for her.” Sometime tonight, when he could get her alone, he’d demonstrate that. And so what if it sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
“I’m sorry,” Dalton said, without a trace of triumph in his voice, and Reid had never felt more like hitting someone, because while he accepted Zarley’s vision of their future, a part of him wished it was different.
Dalton stuck out his hand and they shook for the second time that night, but this time they understood each other. There was still no sign of Zarley when Dalton disappeared into the room, and Reid had lost the inclination to socialize. He was headed to the bar for another drink when Cara ducked in front of him and thrust a hand to his chest. She was barefoot and wore a don’t fuck with me look.
“Hello, married woman, to what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Hello, yourself. I need two things from you.”
“Still a pushy squirt I see.”
“One.” She held a finger in front of his face. “I want a hug.”
That was easy. He gathered her to him, Zarley’s best girlfriend, his two-time roommate, who gave as good as she got, who made Owen happy in a way he hadn’t been for years.
“You and me are the same in a way,” she said, when he released her.
She was a five foot nothing much, copper-haired, ex-gymnast, ex-help desk worker turned designer. It was hard to imagine a better opposite. “This’ll be good.”
“We both love people who’ve loved deeply before. Owen loved Lacey and Zarley loved Dalton.”
“Your point?” He’d had enough of Dalton for one night
“We both, um,” she chewed her lip, “lack relationship experience.”
He groaned. “What are you saying?” He was suspiciously conscious that when she finally got to the point it was going to be a good one.
“They know what they’re doing better than we do. They know what they’re choosing. We just need to trust them to choose us.”
“Is that married person wisdom?”
“It’s me tossing my bouquet.”
“Bouquet?” A girly bride thing. He’d seen that happen at other weddings. Never understood why it was done, same as that ludicrous thing with garters.
She laughed. “Tossing it straight at you.” When he looked at her blankly, she said, “Oh never mind.” She held up two fingers. “Two. Zarley is performing tonight. So get your ass back in there, otherwise you’ll miss it.”
That got his attention. Zarley had kept that from him.
“Yes, she wanted it to be a surprise.” She gave him a shove. “Go on.”
He didn’t need a second prompt, but he got one anyway. Cara called after him. “Her father is here.”
He made it back into the main room as it went dim and the lights on the stage came on. There was a ripple of piano and then a spotlit dancer in a red dress with a torn-up skirt that fell in uneven pieces down her muscular legs moved to the music. It was the simplest stage costume he’d ever seen her wear. Its effect was artistry over sex, ballet not burlesque. Her dark hair was pulled back from her beautiful face and her perfect body took his breath away. He recognized the song, John Legend’s “All of Me,” the lyrics sending a chill down his spine while the girl spinning on her pole robbed him of the power of thought. He was reduced to a throb of emotion so strong it made him shake. He watched Zarley’s aerial choreography, the love song of her flying limbs with his blue whale heart fit to explode, his head full of the memories of how he’d first fallen for her and his hands aching to touch her.
He wasn’t aware of the other man until he spoke. “You’re Reid McGrath. I’m Joe Halveston, Zarley’s father.”
He didn’t take his eyes off Zarley to answer. He didn’t offer his hand. This was the man who’d cut Zarley out of his life when she was sixteen. “I love Zarley. If you’ve come to upset her, you’ll need to deal with me.”
Halveston didn’t respond and Reid didn’t wait for him to regroup. As John Legend sang about giving his all, he left the room. He made it to the backstage passageway in time to see Zarley take a bow on stage. Out of view of the audience, he blocked her way to the dressing room. She came off the stage blind and breathing hard, and ran into him with a shout of surprise that morphed into a groan of delight as he lifted her in his arms and she wrapped her legs around him like she did her pole. His mouth found hers and her hands went to his hair. He didn’t need to hold her; he could use his hands to feel her. Her skin was hot and slick with a sheen of sweat, her mouth hotter, her tongue seeking his. She was buzzing from her performance, and he was edgy as fuck from the emotion of the night, from talking to Dalton and Cara and Joe Halveston, on top of what he wanted to say to Zarley.
He sucked at her mouth, she rolled her pelvis against him. Together they were messy and noisy and achingly frantic, as if they’d been apart for weeks, as if they were new at this. What they had together was an algorithmic magic he knew was bright and precious, and so freaking rare he had a tendency to mistrust its existence until they were like this, and then he knew it was real all over again.
“You’re extraordinary.” He was utterly lost in her.
She put both hands on his face, her eyes going wide. “You’re trembling, Reid.”
“You killed me with that routine.”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“Mission accomplished.” He backed her up against the wall, impatient to feel all of her. “I’m not going to enjoy you doing that every night for other men to watch.”
“You’ll get over it.”
“Like you’re giving me a choice.” He ground against her, a hand behind her head to stop her smacking it against the wall as she flexed around him.
“It’s wrong of me to love how you get all growly and possessive.”
No point denying it. “I don’t mind sharing you when I know you’re coming home to me every night.”
She stilled. “I’m coming home to you. We’ll have breakfast together.”
“About that.” Time to tell her. “I’m moving in. When you’re working nights, I’ll be here.” She was imagining him camped out in her office and her expression told him how doomed she thought that was. “I’ve got plans, already drawn up. Construction at my expense and it won’t take long.”
“Put me down.” He stepped back and released her so her feet were on the ground. The fact her hands went to her hips wasn’t a good sign. “Plans you didn’t include me in.”
“I wanted to surprise you. And Vi approved it.”
“Exactly what are we talking about.”
Without shoes she was tiny. She could still intimidate him into feeling like he’d gotten it all wrong. She was the only one who could. “Converting the attic storeroom to a loft apartment. Pop the roof, put in plumbing, a bathroom, a small kitchen, a bedroom and an office for me. When you’re working we live there. We can go back home the nights you have off.”
“You want me to live at Lucky’s.”
“I don’t want you traveling back and forth alone in the early hours of the morning. I don’t want you sleep deprived. I don’t want you worried about not having time for us.”
She frowned. He wasn’t winning her over and yet this was the most sensible solution.
“You work nights, I work days, but I have flexibility around that. I can name my hours but you can’t. Especially in the early days, you need to be here. I don’t want to be without you. I’m making it easier for us to be together.”
“Reid, you can’t just decide something like that.”
“You left me over not wanting to have your ambition consumed by mine, because you knew we’d have jobs that made being together difficult. I’m making it not difficult. I’m not giving you any reasons to leave me again.”
“You should’ve talked to me.”
“The way you talked to me about what’s been getting to you?”
She put her hand to his chest. His once crisply ironed shirt looked lived in. He’d ditched the suitcoat, pocketed his cufflinks and turned his cuffs back.
“I didn’t want to make a big deal of it,” she said.
“The closer you got to this place being ready to open, the more worried you got. It is a big deal. But it’s not going to wreck us. Not if I can help it.”
She broke eye contact. “I don’t know, Reid. You made a decision about my life without consulting me.” This was not the reaction he’d hoped for. He’d wanted more of the grinding on each other and less of this ground-out irritation. “You knew Lucky’s was my business and you had no say, but now I find you’ve been working around me.”
Fuck. “Zarley, I—”
She shifted past him, moving toward the dressing room. “I need to change. I have get back out there.”
He’d fucked it up and he still had to tell her. “Your dad is here.”
She turned back, her exasperation with him transformed into dismay, a gasp to the left of horror. “Did he see me dance?”
Two strides and he had her hands in his. “He saw you dance. He tried to start a conversation with me but I was too busy watching you to give him the time.”
She took a deep breath. He watched her face, her expression hardening. “I need to see him.”
“Not if you don’t want to.”
“He made the effort to come. The least I can do is say hello.”
“Do you want me with you?”
She hesitated, before pulling her hands away from his and shaking her head. “I need to do this alone.”
She left him in the corridor with questions he couldn’t answer and the desire to drink himself into oblivion so he could forget he’d disappointed her. But he wouldn’t do that, no matter how attractive the idea had been all night. He hadn’t done it since she’d picked him up off the street and put him to bed. She might want to see her father alone, but he’d be ready for whatever the fallout from that was.
He planned to drift though the rest of the night, avoid getting tied up with people he barely knew and into conversations he had no heart for. He watched Zarley return to the room in her silver dress and speak with Vi and then Cara before she went to the table where her parents sat. He watched Joe Halveston stand but make no attempt to touch his daughter, while Tricia covered her face with her hands, her shoulders jerking with the tears she shed. Father and daughter spoke for no more than five minutes before Zarley turned away, the tension in her posture yanking him across the room to her side.
She came into his arms at the edge of the dance floor, while Leona Lewis’s “Bleeding Love” played. He couldn’t dance for shit, but he could hold her, stroke her back and murmur in her ear while her muscles softened and her arms shifted to wind around his neck. He had a view over her head of her parents. Tricia looking stoic while she put her coat on to leave. Joe looking like he’d been sucker punched.
“They’re leaving, baby. Do you want to say goodbye?”
Zarley lifted her face. “Have said all I’m going to say tonight.” She sighed. “It’s a start. Maybe one day we’ll be able to forgive each other.”
“Got any juice left to forgive me?” He was a lame asshole for asking.
She pinched his cheek. “You meant well.”
He trod on her foot and then stopped moving so he didn’t do it again. “It’s a start.”
“I need time to take it in, Reid. It’s a lot more serious than dumping a wedding on me.” She pulled out of his arms. “Right now I need to see to a cake cutting.”
And so he lost her again to two brides and one cake. The next person to claim his attention was his mom, praise for Zarley, a hug and a kiss and as she was leaving. He noticed the Patel family filing out, and Kuch gave him a nod from across the room. Dalton left at the same time as Kathryn, which might have been coincidental but he preferred to think it was prophetic. Sarina’s parents stopped to say goodnight and Vi was busy showing a rowdy bunch of Plus people out.
On his way to the door, Christopher stopped, looked Reid up and down and said, “I like you better now I know about Zarley.”
“I like me much better because of her too,” he said, shocking Christopher into laughter.
“I feel like we got cheated though.”
Of course he did. “How so?”
“Tell me you didn’t want to marry that goddess tonight?”
He wanted construction started on the third floor apartment. He wanted Zarley happy with the idea. He wanted her curled up in his arms at whatever time she came to bed at night, and tousled in her sleep when he woke in the morning. He wanted what she wanted and she didn’t want to be married. “Goodnight, Christopher.”
Eventually the crowd thinned, the music went soft and he cajoled a waitress into bringing him whatever leftovers the kitchen would put together before the chef quit for the night. He ate at the bar with two brides, two grooms and their celebrant, while Vi and Zarley did whatever it took to close up for the night. Dev was tipsy, Sarina had trouble keeping her eyes open but refused to give in to her exhaustion. Owen wore the expression of a very contented man and Cara complained of a backache she blamed on her shoes.
“You can have a massage when we get to the island,” Owen told her.
“What island?” she said.
“The one we’ll be landing at in,” he checked his watch, “six hours, give or take.”
“We’re go
ing to an island?”
“Did you think I’d let you go without a wedding dress and a honeymoon?”
She jumped to her feet, wincing. “We need to go so I can pack.”
Owen dragged her onto his lap and shut her up with a kiss, making the rest of them laugh.
“We need to go,” said Dev, “or Sarina will need to be carried to Gita and I’m not sure I’m the man to do it.”
“We can stagger together,” she said. “Hey,” she pointed at Owen and Cara, “if we’re all taking honeymoon time, that means,” she poked Reid in the arm, “he’s in charge.”
“That was bad planning,” said Owen.
“Try not to break anything too important till we get back.” Dev yawned, and both Sarina and Cara caught the yawn bug from him.
“Do they all not so secretly hate you?” Ro asked him.
“We don’t hate him,” said Sarina. “We occasionally fear him.”
“With good reason,” said Dev.
“Would any of you be happily married tonight if not for me and Zarley?” he said.
“There is that,” said Owen. He looked at Cara. “Are you going to be a Lange?”
“Will it get me better poolside service on the island?” she asked.
Ro covered her head with her arm and muttered, “Aren’t you supposed to have stuff like that sorted?” She peered out from behind an elbow. “Did I just marry people who aren’t prepared?”
“I was joking,” Cara said. “I’m keeping my name.”
“You are?” said Owen, looking a little hurt.
“I’m keeping mine,” said Zarley. She’d come up behind Reid’s barstool and put her hands over his eyes. It was like the moment where Dalton left with Kathryn. It could mean nothing or everything. But before he could work out if it was simply something she’d said to join the conversation, Vi appeared and the two women were pulled into chatter with the happy couples.
The night was Zarley’s triumph and he was proud of her. Everything had run on schedule, nothing more disastrous than a few dropped plates, and a power failure in the men’s bathroom that was fixed with a candle. With Vi, she’d rescued Lucky’s, she’d survived the renovation, a soft opening and two weddings. He wanted to take her home to a hot bath and tumble her into bed, hold her while she fell asleep, wake her late for breakfast and keep her between the sheets and his own skin most of the day. He’d have time to explain about the loft apartment, to talk more about her dad and Dalton and anything else she was worried about and failed to mention. He wasn’t letting her up and dressed until he knew all her recent secrets.
Shotgun Wedding (Sidelined #4) Page 12