A kiss on the cheek from the both of them, and I was facing Declan, swearing to myself that I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t.
Shit.
I was.
He grinned.
“If you don’t pull yourself together, Amelia, I’m going to throw you over my shoulder and take you back home this instant.”
The threat, and the promise, were enticing as hell. But I squared my shoulders just as he commanded me to do, and I nodded.
“I’m good,” I promised, feeling anything but.
With a final kiss, I turned and boarded the plane, worried my heart was going to rip apart in my chest, but knowing that I was in charge of my future and that this was a goal I’d given myself. If I didn’t do it now, I knew I’d regret it later when the marriage, the restaurant, the house, and the babies made it more complicated.
I deserved to do this, and I would do it now with no regrets.
Finding my seat, I settled in, put my earphones on and waited for the plane to carry me off to the next step in my future: California.
EPILOGUE
Declan
Three months later…
We were married on the first of the month. A Saturday. It was early summer and the blooms in the botanical garden we’d chosen were just opening. A perfect backdrop to a perfect day.
I stood at the altar with Brennan and my brothers beside me, waiting for my bride.
Part of me thought I’d been waiting my whole life for Amelia, something in me knowing the first time I’d ever seen her that she was the one.
The people in attendance were a mixture of Casey and Byrne family members, but up front and center sat my two uncles, Jimmy and Joseph. I was pretty sure Joseph was crying into a hanky, and his brother sat beside him rolling his eyes.
They’d taken the news of our engagement the way I thought they would: with whooping cheers and a few rounds of drinks bought for everyone at the Backroom that night. On my dime, of course.
“We’re on Social Security, you know,” Jimmy had reminded me.
The music started, and adrenaline raced through me, speeding up my heart rate as I waited for her and Jack Sr. to appear in the doorway.
“There’s still time to run,” Finn hissed from his spot. Brennan, beside me as best man, laughed under his breath.
“You two wait until it’s your turn,” I said, trying to move my mouth as little as possible. “I’m going to torture you.”
Brennan just shook his head.
“Never happening,” Finn whispered.
“Famous last words,” I shot back.
Behind us, Father Mike cleared his throat and gave us a pointed look. Giving him an apologetic smile, I focused on the doorway again and on my bride-to-be, who had appeared like a vision with her father holding her arm.
The gown was sleeveless and left her shoulders and arms gloriously bare, her skin practically glowing against the white of the dress and the veil. She carried a bouquet of orange roses, her favorite she’d informed me, and leaned heavily on Jack Sr., who looked better every day.
Our eyes met as she got closer, and the shy little smile she gave me had all the blood in my body rushing to my groin. Holy shit. How was I going to make it to the hotel tonight without dragging her in a broom closet somewhere and making this marriage real in the biblical sense? The woman set my blood on fire.
The service was a giant, Catholic blur. I had a hard time concentrating on anything that wasn’t my wife. Oh yes, I’d been referring to her as my wife in my thoughts — and a couple inadvertent conversations with her since she returned from California — frequently and figured this whole wedding thing was just a formality for her parents.
My mother wasn’t in attendance. She was out of the country on a mysterious retreat in the south of France, but I was okay with that. I still hadn’t forgiven her for the stunt she pulled when she gave Claudia Vickers a key to my apartment and encouraged her to “surprise” me.
Jack and Rosie Byrne were there, front row, with Amelia’s two grandmothers. JJ wasn’t, of course, but that was a given.
“You may kiss your bride.” Father Mike’s words brought me back to the present as I lifted the lace veil to reveal Amelia’s beaming face. I leaned in, making her my wife before God and man, forcing myself to pull back just a little, no matter how badly I wanted to kiss an orgasm out of her. This was still a wedding, after all.
“I now pronounce you man and wife,” the priest declared, and the small gathered crowd erupted in cheers.
I didn’t hear or see anything other than the vision that was my wife — the happy tears in her eyes, the swollen lips I’d just given her, and the rosy blush to her cheeks at the ruckus going on around us.
“I love you,” I mouthed as I took her hand in mine.
“I love you too,” she replied as we faced the crowd and made our way to the reception downtown as Mr. and Mrs. Declan Casey.
Amelia
I was dead on my feet by the time we managed to get ourselves away from the reception. From the dinner that we were too busy to eat. The wine we were too busy to drink. The endless photos we were forced to pose for.
I wasn’t complaining though. It was a dream come true for me, and I had gotten to marry my own Prince Charming, the boy who’d stolen and kind of broken my heart eight years ago.
The wedding was everything I dreamed it would be — small, intimate, and personal. And it was all over before I knew it.
We were staying at a nice hotel by the airport for the night, and in the morning, we were heading to San Juan for our honeymoon. This time as a married couple and where I would be encouraging Declan to tell me he loved me before every single orgasm I’d give him — and I promised him a ton of those.
He helped me get free of the veil and my intricate hairdo with painstaking gentleness, carefully pulling the hairpins free as the curls tumbled down my back. When the last pin was out, and my hair was down, he knelt in front of me, the look on his face hard to decipher.
He was silent and didn’t speak for a long moment.
“What is it?” I was nervous suddenly.
He smiled, squeezing my hands.
“I’m just memorizing this,” he said, waving his hands toward me, then the room. “All of this. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect bride. A more perfect wedding. A more perfect wedding night.”
His sentimental side choked me up a little, and I smiled, leaning forward to kiss him.
“I love you, Declan Casey,” I whispered, unable to form the pretty, poetic words that he had for fear that I would blubber and totally ruin my makeup before we could get the consummating underway.
“And I love you, Amelia Casey.”
The sound of my name on his lips sent a shockwave of red-hot desire through me, and I was suddenly in a rush to get the damned dress off.
Wiggling to get free, he helped me step out of the gown as it pooled to the floor, leaving me in stockings and the white lingerie I’d picked out to wear under it. It was a lace corset and matching thong set, and while I knew it’d make one hell of an impression, I hadn’t expected Declan to drop to his knees in front of me like he was worshipping some statue.
“You’re gorgeous, baby,” he said, kissing one hip bone and then the other. “I’ll never get this image out of my mind, holy shit.”
I loved that I made him weak, but he returned the favor by placing kisses on my inner thighs as he popped the fasteners on the back of the corset free, exposing my chest in the action. I knew better than to be shy and cover myself, so I stood there and let my husband roll the G-string over the swell of my ass and down my legs.
He pushed me back on the bed once the last of my clothing was shed and took about a half second to shed his own, before pushing my knees apart and thrusting his tongue into the very core of me. I fell back and groaned at the sensation, and he pushed me further, not letting me shy away and exploring every inch of me with his talented tongue.
Just as I was about to crash, he stopped and
moved to lay above me, holding his weight off me with his elbows.
“I love you, wife,” he said, as he gently pushed himself into me, making me bite into his shoulder and moan as he moved.
“I love you, husband,” I hissed through a held breath as he moved inside me, pulling me quickly into an orgasm that had been building all day from the teasing touches and stolen kisses at the reception.
Declan followed close after and gave me everything he had, shouting his release as he came.
I knew I was new to it all, but from what I could tell, married life with Declan Casey suited me. He rolled gently off me and gathered me into his arms as he swept the hair from my face.
“Day one,” he whispered, sealing it with a gentle kiss.
I smiled.
Day one, indeed.
THE END
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Book One
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CHAPTER ONE
Worth
I woke to sensations of burning, each somewhat different but all equally unpleasant. I rather reluctantly dealt with the most pressing first, as I leaned over the edge of the bed and emptied my stomach into an empty pizza box. It occurred to me that one must give to receive and the box had just been rewarded with its end of the deal. I rinsed with whatever liquid remained in the glass on the nightstand, but it didn’t taste much better.
The second and third burning sensations seemed to emanate from the same source — the east-facing grimy window that brazenly spewed the hot morning’s sun into my eyes and heated the room, magnified by the stench that was my body.
I debated rising long enough to close the stained fiberglass drapes and decided it would not be enough. With a curse, I rolled off the bed, carefully avoiding the pizza box and headed in the direction of where I expected the bathroom to be. Sure enough, a little fumbling on the inside wall and the flickering gray light of an old, overhead fluorescent slowly shocked itself on. I could identify with how the old thing must feel.
I turned on the shower as hot as it could get, reasoning that, by comparison, the room would feel cool, but it was also experiencing a deflated morning and barely kept the goosebumps away. It wasn’t until I wrapped myself in the yellowish towel and watched a roach scurry down my leg that it occurred to me. Where the hell am I?
After using my finger and some putrid water to sort of rub my teeth clean, I rummaged on the floor near the bed until I found enough crumpled clothing to be allowed in public. As I pushed open the entrance door with the shattered glass, I was amazed once again that no matter how bad you felt at one moment, you could always feel worse. The humidity of the August morning was already in the upper ninety percent and hit me like a wall of water. I thought it might be more therapeutic than the shower I’d just had.
I found my cell still in my pants pocket and tapped for a taxi I kept on auto-dial. I was no novice at this. They knew me, by name and by face. The cab’s cool interior prompted me to doze off again as it headed toward the farm.
My father, Worthington LaViere, II — which incidentally made me Worthington LaViere, III, Worth to my friends or Worthless to those who knew me best — was waiting in the shade of the paddock, a mint julep resting in his iron-grip. We LaVieres were known for our ability to drink, and he was no exception. He emerged long enough to stuff a hundred into the hand of the driver and motioned him to drag me out of the back seat… again.
The grizzled driver was kind. My cheek was only mildly grazed by the mulch in the flowerbed Mother had lining the drive. Mother had flowers lining everything. It was the grace she exuded to counter my father’s far cruder tendencies.
I wondered how long I might get away with lying there, but my father quickly answered that question. “Get your ass up and in the house!” he snapped in a growl colored with decades of Cuban cigars and Kentucky bourbon. “I want you clean and presentable in half an hour. Jervis is comin’ by for cocktails and damned if you’re not goin’ to be sittin’ in the chair like the cock of the walk when he gets here. Hear me, boy?”
I avoided pointing out that anyone within three counties could hear him, reasoning that given the pounding in my head, restraint was the order of the day.
Not at my best for sarcastic discourse, I made it to my feet and staggered into the house and up the cherry staircase with the railing my grandfather had carved. I should be specific. My grandfather didn’t actually do the carving himself, he had it carved. We LaVieres were far more suited to giving orders than taking them… of which I was living proof.
I heard my mother’s voice down the hallway, her plaintive, carefully-cultured drawl asked her maid to bring her a tall glass of iced tea with two slices of lemon. Mother always ordered two slices — one to squeeze into the drink and one to decorate the lip of the glass. As I said, my mother exudes grace.
In honor of Dr. Jervis’ impending arrival, I chose charcoal dress slacks and a white Polo. A quick glance in the mirror exposed the circles beneath my ordinarily vivid blue eyes. At the moment, they looked more like someone had punched me. Perhaps they had? I couldn’t remember. I could only focus on one thing at a time while my head felt this muddled. At the moment, it appeared it would be two things — my father and Jervis.
I dutifully sat in the mulberry leather wingback and sipped a tonic water, with one lemon, while my father met Dr. Jervis at the door and ushered him into the study. My father’s boisterous voice and shoulder slapping put me in mind of a character in a Faulkner novel, and I wondered whether it was intentional. Everything my father did was done with great deliberation. That included his plans for my wastrel life, or so he regularly termed it.
“Worth, how are you, my boy?” Jervis asked as he came through the cherry-framed door, his hand extended. Why did I feel like the screw up sitting outside the principal’s office? I nodded and shook the hand, noticing the ring with the insignia. That, too, was deliberate. It was his class ring from Stanford University where he graduated years ago, with honors, as my father so regularly pointed out. He was now a successful psychologist with offices on the east side of Louisville in a building he’d personally designed. He was a man of essence; another expression my father was fond of using.
I listened as my father and Jervis swapped brags, each clearly only listening for a break in the other’s conversation until he could interject his own escapades. I watched the performance, for that’s truly what it was. It always was a carefully choreographed performance that allowed two men past their prime to feel as though they owned the world and were the only two who knew anything worth a damn.
I felt myself beginning to doze again. The lack of sleep, ha
ngover, and tiresome performance lulling me away. “What do you say, son?” Jervis asked, looking at me.
“Sir?”
“I said, how about you comin’ on over to the office on Monday and givin’ us a look-see. Thought you might like to join me as a partner,” Jervis repeated. Behind him, my father’s head nodded his approval. Yet another set of lines from the performance.
I’d recently graduated with my own Ph.D. from Harvard. I could hardly believe the certificate Mother had so tastefully framed. I was a fully-fledged psychologist with a string of letters behind my name beginning with III and ending with various Ds. They weren’t so much an indication of how far I’d gone in school, as how far I’d stayed away from my father. As long as I pursued degrees, he stayed off my back and kept my wallet full. After everything was said and done, I had enough Ds to treat any fuckin’ head case who walked through my door.
I smiled and nodded, the combination of which multiplied the pounding still hammering my alcohol-soaked brain.
So it was agreed that I would stop in on Monday, which was enough to break up the pow-wow and let us pass through to dinner. This was strictly where Mother reigned and she was waiting, her long, pink nails impatiently tapping the side of her martini. I must have smiled at the appropriate times because there was a haze of smiles around me and eventually, Jervis left. I can just remember waving a casual goodbye with one hand as I ascended the cherry stairs and died in my room. My own room.
CHAPTER TWO
Auggie
People had always said I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth and a riding crop in my hand. Named Elizabeth Augusta Langford for a great-aunt somewhere back in family history, I was rumored to be a distant relative of the Earl of Langford, although the family had long ago moved their title to these bluegrass knolls where our love of Thoroughbreds could be more fully indulged.
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