by Strong, Mimi
Dinner was served under the biggest tent, and from where I sat at the head table, I couldn’t hear what Dalton’s father was saying to all my aunts and uncles. By the looks on their faces, they certainly weren’t bored. Not one bit.
Marita and her new husband made a very special toast, congratulating us, and then announcing the upcoming arrival of their first child. People clapped and cheered and generally pretended to be surprised. (My family is nothing if not supportive.)
Throughout everything, Dalton didn’t leave my side. He was either holding my hand, staring adoringly at me, or both. When nobody was looking, he’d drag me off behind a van or a tree and try to get his hands up under my skirt. I swatted him away every time, telling him to wait just a little longer. He threatened to take me out on the lake in a canoe, but I called his bluff. He hadn’t acquired a canoe… yet.
I tore myself away from Dalton just long enough to freshen up and reverse my dress to the colorful side, carefully transferring the blue broach to the bodice again.
By then, the music had started and the party was in full swing.
The band was a folk rock duo from out of town, but they took requests and played great cover songs, which made everyone happy, and isn’t that exactly what weddings are all about?
I danced with my father, who mentioned he might take flying lessons.
“Do you still think I’m too young to get married?” I asked him as he twirled me around.
“Not if it makes you happy,” he said. “You are happy, right?”
“Of course I am.” The song ended and I kissed his cheek.
He went looking for my mother, who he was afraid to let out of his sight with Jake around.
Dalton took my hand. “May I have this dance, wife?”
“Of course, husband.”
The band started the next song, and we danced under the twinkling lights strung between the trees, under the moon, and the starry sky.
~
After the last song had been played, and the caterers and tent rental people finished packing everything up, Dalton and I walked down to the edge of the water alone.
He’d offered me a dozen options for where we could sleep that night, and I chose the Airstream trailer. I didn’t care if we rocked it off its foundations, because choosing the trailer felt right.
Dalton and I had crashed into each other in a tiny bookstore, then shared intimate moments in the backs of limousines, and who could forget the canoe excitement?
“Mrs. Deangelo,” he said, gazing down at me as we stood in the loose pebbles near the water’s edge. “You married me on this spot, today. Any regrets?”
I picked up a flat stone and tossed it out onto the water, where it skipped seven times.
“No regrets. Everything that happened, good or bad, was a pebble that formed the path that brought us here.”
He looked down at the broach on my dress. “My father must have given you that. He surprises me sometimes.”
“He surprises a lot of people. Every time he opens his mouth. He’s kind of a loose cannon.”
“Well, it takes one to know one,” he teased.
“Don’t laugh. You’re the one who married me!”
“How about for our first anniversary, we throw a big party here, and we both jump out of the plane and parachute down?”
“Sure, baby. Anything you want.”
“This is going to be fun,” he said, looking solemn. “I’m going to share my life with you, forever and ever, happily ever after.”
He leaned down and sealed his promise with a kiss.
I gazed up at his loving face.
“I love you, too, baby. Let’s go get that trailer rocking.”
He grabbed my hand and whinnied like a horse. “Your Lionheart is ready for everything you’ve got.”
Giggling, we rushed up the path and into the trailer.
He whinnied once more, and then we stopped talking.
Slowly, gently, we undressed each other. We lay our nice clothes carefully across the little round table at the front of the trailer, and then he led me down the short distance to the elevated sleeping nook. I slipped off his shorts, and he removed my slip, bra, and panties, dropping them to the floor.
He climbed up into the nook first, then helped me in.
We lay on our sides, face to face, and kissed slowly as we stroked each other’s bodies, hands caressing every inch of skin.
The touching and kissing moved seamlessly to making love. We moved together, first one gazing down at the other, and then rolling again to switch places. He moved deep inside me, and neither of us dared look away from the other.
I came first with him on top, and then again after a roll. After the third orgasm, I was delirious with ecstasy, and lost count. He shifted my leg and drove deeper, trembling with his desire. I gazed up at him through my eyelashes, and I saw his face change before he climaxed. I saw him surrender to love, for the second time that day.
CHAPTER 44
One year later.
What happens next, after you marry the perfect man?
First of all, you float around in a cloud of happiness, and the things that usually bother you don’t seem so bad. I feel like the weather has gotten better since I married Dalton, but it could be all the time we spend in sunny LA.
We’ve been married a year now, and so many wonderful things have happened in the last twelve months.
I’ve got an incredible new career. I’ll tell you about it in a minute, but first let me catch you up on what everyone’s doing.
My new bestie, Mitchell, convinced my original bestie, Shayla, to move in with him after his roommate took a job in an off-Broadway play in New York. Shayla gave notice at her job and moved to LA two weeks later.
If you think I spend a lot of time over at their apartment, you’d be right! I’ve added several pieces of inspirational art to their art wall.
Shayla is still working in the restaurant business, only now she’s a manager, and working her way up the corporate ladder. She has vowed to stop dating unattainable, inappropriate men. That’s what she says. What she actually does is another story. It’s a lot like how Mitchell swears off dating models, only to dive right into a relationship with the next one, swearing it’s “different this time.”
Speaking of male models, Keith Raven is doing well. I thought he’d get back together with his ex, Tabitha, but he fell for an Italian girl. I don’t know too many details, because we haven’t kept in close contact. Our brief relationship was so intimate that I don’t feel right talking to him now that I’m happily married.
As for my other ex, Adrian Storm, he kept to his word and worked at the bookstore through Christmas. After that, he hired and trained a replacement, and left for Chicago. We haven’t stayed in touch, but whenever I see his parents over at my parents’ house, they tell me he sends his best.
Adrian and Golden became an official, monogamous couple at the first annual Beaverdale Duck Pond Park Picnic, which happened the same day as my wedding. I felt sorry for Golden for a while, because she seemed to have been his second choice, though who could say, really? They had this whole funny drama between them that seemed straight out of a romantic comedy movie. He wanted her to come to Chicago with him in January, but she wasn’t sure she could give up her job, then he proposed, and she freaked out and said he was only worried about being alone, and didn’t actually love her. He packed his bags and took a bus to the airport to leave a day early, so when she came to her senses, he had already left town, and… you can guess where this is going, right? Yes, she raced against time to get to the airport, where they declared their love for each other in front of everyone getting frisked and scanned for security.
Good for them, I say!
My parents just celebrated their twenty-seventh anniversary in March of this year, and added a twenty-seventh decorative pillow to their bed. They may have to get an extra bed soon, just for the pillows.
My mother told me that every time they see Dalton’s
father at a family event, my father is extra attentive to her needs for several weeks after. They seem as happy as ever, though my father still has the recliner up in the attic for when he needs to annoy her about something.
Kyle is eight now, and he surprises me by how great he is at sports. The kid is way more coordinated than I was at his age, and he’d be on every sports team in town if my mother let him. I really notice the changes in his maturity. He’s more guarded with his emotions now, mostly because he wants to spare my feelings. It’s not always easy for him, having a big sister who gets talked about on the gossip sites, but I try to make time for us, one on one, whenever I visit. I think he’s going to grow up to be a remarkable man one day, and I’m going to cry at every single graduation and milestone. When he’s old enough, we’ll tell him the truth about how he came into this world, and I think he’ll understand.
I’ve been in touch with Kyle’s father, Toby. He’s living in Idaho these days, where he got married to an older woman with two children from a previous marriage. They’re expecting another baby any day now, and he called me last month, almost too emotional to speak. He wanted to apologize to me for not being more supportive after Kyle was born. I think he was nervous as hell about being a father, and dealing with some pretty colossal guilt. I told him the same thing I’d been telling myself for years. We were just dumb kids, trying to do the best we could, and everything worked out, so there was no point punishing ourselves. We certainly weren’t going to do it again!
After that phone call, I went a little baby crazy. I poured a glass of wine and got the laptop out, my excuse being that I was looking for a gift for Toby. His little baby girl would be a part of our big family one day when she was old enough to meet her half-brother.
I’m telling you, I started looking at changing blankets with little ducks and kitties, not to mention the frilly dresses, and a fever took hold of me. For an hour, I wanted nothing more than a little girl to dress up in adorable baby clothes.
Then I got another phone call, this one from Dalton, inviting me last-minute to a film opening. I dashed around my fabulous LA house, running between my two giant walk-in closets to find the right shoes and handbag to wear with one of my red carpet dresses. As I touched up my makeup in the back seat, while Vern drove me to the TV set to pick up my husband, I knew that my baby fever could wait a while—at least until the novelty of this fabulous new life wore off.
We have the best of both worlds, with our LA life, full of glamorous parties and Dalton working way too hard, plus our quiet getaways to the cabin in Washington State.
In October, I was able to celebrate my twenty-third birthday at my usual place, DeNirro’s. My whole family joined us. I had the deep-fried tortellini, and Dalton went crazy and ate an entire basket of bread all by himself. (Don’t worry, fans, his personal trainer made him sweat it all off.)
We get up to the cabin at least twice a month, which makes it all the more shameful that we haven’t gotten around to hanging up our wedding photos or any of the other artwork we collect on trips. I guess there’s no rush, since we have our whole lives ahead of us to get everything perfect.
Perfect.
That word has taken on a funny meaning for me. Whenever I do an interview, people ask me what it’s like to be married to the perfect man.
I don’t dare tell them the truth—that he does about a million things that drive me crazy. For example, he takes twice as long as I do to get dressed. He’s got to lay out the clothes and carefully ponder what designer-hole-filled T-shirt to wear that day. Perhaps the most maddening thing he does, though, is tease me with little tidbits from his scripts for the show. He’ll tell me enough to get me excited, but not the whole storyline. All through the season that just ran, I kept threatening to quit watching entirely. It was bad enough having to see him put his lips and teeth on beautiful actresses, let alone being subjected to the same brutal cliffhangers as regular people who weren’t married to the star. For crying out loud!
At least I get some perks from being Mrs. Deangelo, and I don’t just mean the nice house, beautiful pool, and staff to take care of me. Dalton makes even married-people sex feel deliciously naughty. I’ve had those crazy high-heeled platform shoes on so many times, I’m starting to be able to walk quite gracefully in them.
Of course these are all things I can’t tell reporters and magazine editors, so when they ask me what it’s like, I just smile and say, “Perfect.”
I’ve been doing more press lately, so I can build up publicity contacts for when my movie comes out.
Hold on now, don’t get too excited! Nothing is for sure, and I certainly won’t be the one on screen, so you won’t see me up there.
The big news is that not long after leaving the bookstore, I found my new career—the one thing I’d always dreamed of doing but hadn’t dared tell anyone.
The whole time I worked at Peachtree Books, I was doing research for this dream job, and I didn’t even know it. I brought home so many books, and whenever I ran across one that would make a perfect movie, I’d imagine how to adapt it to the screen. I’d figure out what scenes to cut, which ones I might change around a bit, and I’d even cast the roles with my favorite actors and actresses.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but when I met Dalton’s aunt, I also met my fairy godmother. Her name is Jamie Adair, and she’s a powerful TV executive. She doesn’t just run the vampire show, but a half dozen others, as well. The woman is tall and thin, with bright red hair and even redder lips. When you first meet her, you think she’s “hell on heels” (to borrow Dalton’s father’s term of endearment), but she’s actually very kind, and very family oriented.
I’ve learned that she and her sister, Dalton’s mother, were as different in personality as in looks. Jamie was a skinny child with red hair, and Lyra was the beautiful brunette who charmed everyone she met. Unfortunately for Lyra, she fell in with a party crowd as a teenager and never met a drug she didn’t like. She was clean through her pregnancy with Dalton, and on and off for many years after that, but eventually her demons caught up to her.
I know in my heart that it wasn’t the money Dalton sent to his parents that killed her. Poor people die of drug overdose all the time. What was probably the hardest on her was being rejected by her son, and losing contact with him. I can imagine what that would feel like, yet I can’t blame Dalton for wanting a different life for himself.
We all dream of being someone, after all.
Jamie wanted to be a Hollywood big shot, and she didn’t stop working until she got there.
And now she wants to be my fairy godmother, and help me out the way her mentor helped her.
In between my underwear modeling gigs (I’ve done two more campaigns since my first one), I’ve secured the rights to one of my favorite books, and I’m adapting it into a movie screenplay.
The story has a little bit of horror, plus some romance, and a big mystery. I think it’s going to be amazing, but the agonizing thing is I won’t know for years.
Seriously, these movie things take forever. For example, I’ve seen an early cut of the indie film Dalton shot in Beaverdale, but we don’t even have a date for when it will be in theaters. They’re going to do the film festivals, and then hopefully get wider distribution after that.
This constant waiting means we Hollywood types have to always be working on multiple projects. That’s why I’m also working on writing an original comedy series about a charming girl who works at a bookstore and just happens to be curvier than your typical actress. If that one goes ahead, we may need to fly in some actresses from outside LA for the auditions.
Well, that about sums up my life up until now. If you’ll excuse me, I’m about to jump out of a perfectly good airplane with my husband. He says it’s the best way to sneak onto the Weston Estate and enjoy their natural hot spring without setting off the security system they have set up along the road.
I don’t know why I let him talk me into these things.
I guess it’s because I love him so much.
~The end.~
This is the end of the Peaches Monroe Trilogy. Do you love these characters and want more? Sign up for Mimi's newsletter to be notified when new books are released - click here or sign up at www.mimistrong.com.
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MIMI STRONG BOOKS AND SERIES
Mimi Strong on Facebook | website: www.mimistrong.com
Her Teddy Bear
Laura's Two Ice Cream Boys
Borrowed Billionaire (USA Today bestseller)
Typist / Billionaire Novelist
Kissing Coach
Pretty Girls
For You (USA Today bestseller)
Stardust - Peaches Monroe 1 (USA Today bestseller)
Starlight - Peaches Monroe 2
Starfire - Peaches Monroe 3
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27