“I wanted to give you a sense of the full range of my emotions,” she said. “And that’s why there’s a third and final layer. But to see that one, you first have to close your eyes. Really close them,” she emphasized.
Just in case he cheated, Shelby took the rearview mirror from him and hurried to the back of the sofa. She stripped down, tossing her clothing aside as quietly as she could until she was wearing only her birthday suit.
“Keep your eyes closed,” she reminded him, and she put the mirror back in his hand, positioning it so that she and her nakedness would be the reflection he’d see. “Okay, eyes open,” she said when she had the pose right.
She immediately saw a problem with what she’d thought would be a laugh-out-loud, sexy gift. She couldn’t see his expression. Only his eyes as they met hers in the mirror and then his gaze as it tracked down her body. He had to shift the mirror some to take her in.
“Very nice,” he concluded.
Callen turned, lightning fast, and he caught onto her, pulling her across the back of the sofa and onto him. There was laughter, all right, followed by a scorcher of a kiss.
“This is much better than the gifts I gave you,” he drawled.
“Then you’ll have to make up for it.” And she scorched him with a kiss of her own.
* * *
MAYBE IT WAS because of the raw energy and emotion he’d brought to her doorstep, but Callen decided to try to smooth some of that away.
Of course, Shelby had already smoothed a whole bunch with that incredible gift. One that’d made him laugh while it also reminded him that he’d just plain sucked with that old goodbye—or rather the lack of a goodbye. That meant he needed to do better next time—He pushed the notion of “next time” aside. That wasn’t going to help what he had in mind here.
And what he had in mind was making love to her.
Yes, they’d had sex, and it’d been better than great, but there had always been that need gnawing away to make everything feel so urgent. So life and death. So now. He wanted to take that down a notch and build a slow but steady fire that would soothe them both.
Since she was already naked, Callen scooped her up, tossing her over his shoulder caveman style, and because slow and steady could still be fun, he gave her a light smack on the butt. Then gave it a little kiss because, after all, it was right there next to his mouth. She giggled, reached down and gave him a swat, too.
He eased her onto the bed and nearly lost his breath when he got a good look at her. “So much better than the view in the mirror,” he let her know.
Callen went to her, putting his knee on the bed between her legs, and he lowered himself to kiss her. Yes. Much better because now he could touch her. He took her mouth as slowly as he could manage, tasting and teasing while he slid his hand down her body.
No way was he going to just skip over her breasts since they were one of his favorite parts. Her breasts were small, almost delicate, which didn’t exactly mesh with her personality, so it was like finding an extra special hidden treasure. He kissed her there, too, and enjoyed the way her body bucked beneath him when he took her nipple into his mouth. He sampled and tasted there until she hit him on the back.
“Get naked,” she demanded.
Obviously, Shelby was starting to feel some of their usual urgency.
Callen did pull off his boots, and he unbuttoned his shirt, but he didn’t stop kissing her. Undressing just gave him different angles of her that he could reach with his mouth.
Her stomach. He kissed her there while he undid his belt.
Her hip. That was a nice spot for his tongue while he unzipped his jeans.
He went for the inside of her thigh when he shucked off his shirt. Since Shelby was making some sounds of pleasure, he lingered there while removing his jeans.
Getting out of his shorts required something special. He kept his mouth in the general area of her thigh. Then moved in. And in. Until he hoped he made the kiss very special. Judging from the way Shelby groaned out his name and pulled his hair, he had succeeded.
Callen would have kept on succeeding, if she hadn’t used the grip on his hair to pull him back up to her. “In me now,” she demanded.
So, even more urgency. It was there for Callen now, too. He was hard as stone and starting to throb. It didn’t help that she had hooked her legs around him and was trying to pull him into her.
“Condom,” he reminded her, and it was possibly the only thing he could have said to her that got her to release his hair and the leg grip she had on him.
He grabbed a condom from his wallet, and the second he got it on, Shelby latched on to him. Not on to his hair this time. But his dick.
It got his attention, and his own urgency went through the roof.
Thankfully, there was a fix for it. Him inside her. Just as she’d demanded. And she was clearly ready because he’d barely managed a couple of thrusts when her climax came. There was nothing delicate about it. She closed around him like a greedy fist, and all those muscles went to work. Squeezing and pulsing. Drawing right in.
Callen wasn’t sure how he managed to hang on, but he did. Still moving inside her, he waited until her eyes had cleared. Until their gazes were locked. Until he saw the pleasure glow around her, and only then did he let himself go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
SHELBY AND LUCY stood side by side as they looked at themselves in the mirror. It was a full-length mirror, one at the Lightning Bug Inn in what had been designated as one of the dressing rooms for the bridal party. Because it was full-length, Lucy and she had no trouble seeing that something had gone horribly wrong.
“Don’t you just love the embellishments I made to the dresses?” Rosy asked them.
No. Shelby didn’t love them, and she suspected from Lucy’s grim reaction that she didn’t, either. Rosy’s embellishments were what appeared to be tiny cloth armadillos that had been haphazardly glued to the red dresses. Well, haphazard except for the row of them that lined the side pockets. There were at least two dozen on each of the dresses, and it looked as if someone had sneezed the ashy gray critters all over them.
“I got a whole box of little Billy replicas,” Rosy added. There was plenty of glee in her voice and expression, and since Shelby would have rather sat on a cactus than dim that glee, she just smiled. Lucy managed to do the same.
“Very touching,” Shelby settled for saying. “It’s like Billy will be right here with us instead of only being at the hospital with Dad and you.”
“Yes!” Judging from her enthusiasm, that was exactly what Rosy had been going for.
“It’s...special,” Lucy piped in.
Such a clever—and kind—girl. Both a lie and the truth, and it caused Rosy to give another “yes!”
“I didn’t have time to put them on all the dresses,” Rosy went on, “but I’ve left the box and some glue out at the reception table for the other bridesmaids so they can help themselves.”
She hoped Rosy wouldn’t be too disappointed if there weren’t any takers for the armadillos, but she doubted Rosy would even notice. Soon, Rosy would be whisked away in a limo that Callen had arranged, and she’d be taken to the hospital where Buck would be waiting for her so they could finally say their I dos.
Shelby had considered being there with them, but she’d nixed the idea. Her dad and Rosy had had so few times when it’d been just them as a couple, and she thought that maybe this was the way to start their marriage. But to start it, they first had to get Rosy into her dress.
And there were time and space constraints.
Time because Rosy needed to leave for the hospital in less than a half hour. Plus, there were thirtysomething other bridesmaids, and while most would arrive in their dresses, they might still need to freshen up, and there was only one bridesmaid’s room. A room that was the same tiny size as Callen’s office—which w
as now being used as a groomsman’s dressing room. They were no doubt bumping elbows in there right now, but that would be small potatoes compared to the bumping that was about to go on in here.
Shelby went to the pink bridal gown that was draped over several chairs. It had been pressed like a frozen fish filet in a plastic bag. Not a regular garment bag, either, but one of those space-saver deals that had required a vacuum cleaner to suck out the excess air and flatten it enough to be transported. The moment Shelby released the seal on the bag, Lucy, Rosy and she might be knocked unconscious or get trapped under the expanding fabric.
“Take cover behind the mirror,” Shelby told Lucy and Rosy, and she waited until they were in place before she gulped in some air and went for it.
The dress expanded like a self-inflating pink bus. The fabric swooshed out, flinging sequins in every direction. Some landed on Shelby’s eyelashes. Probably in her nose, too. But when the fabric had finally finished swooshing, she was relieved that she still had about six inches of space to move around. Heaven knew how Rosy was going to fit in the limo, but that wasn’t Shelby’s problem.
“Oh, it’s so beautiful,” Rosy gushed, and she managed to sidestep and maneuver to make her way to Shelby. Lucy was right behind her. “And I was wrong to worry about it looking wrinkled. It doesn’t.”
Yes, it did, but that was because it was crinkled satin. Hard to tell which wrinkles were supposed to be there and which were a result of the pressurized bag.
“Go in and find the zipper,” Shelby instructed Lucy. They’d already worked this out on paper, complete with a diagram and dimensions of the dress. Too bad Rosy couldn’t just wear the paper because getting her into the garment looked a lot more hazardous in person.
Lucy dragged in the kind of breath that a diver might take before jumping into deep water, and she trudged forward, shoving aside the wads of satin, toile and lace until she reached the back of the dress. She slid down the zipper and motioned for Shelby to go on to the next step. Shelby took hold of a giddy, giggling Rosy and moved her toward the open zipper.
It took more than a little effort, but they finally got the woman into the dress. It took even more of an effort to zip her up. Then even more for Lucy and Shelby to back away without stepping on any of the fabric.
Rosy turned toward the mirror. “Oh, it’s so beautiful,” she repeated, and added “happy tears” when she started to cry. “I’ve been fighting them all day.”
So had Shelby, but she wouldn’t cry. Would. Not. Cry. This was a day for happy stuff, and red eyes and a clogged nose weren’t on her happy list. Rosy, though, had lost that particular fight now, and her mascara was running. Since Havana was in charge of makeup, that would be a fix she’d need to make.
For now, Shelby gave Rosy another once-over to make sure everything was covered that was supposed to be. It was. Of course, with that much fabric, it would have been impossible to screw that up.
And Shelby saw it then.
When she looked at Rosy, she looked past the yards of pink and at the woman’s face. Dazzling. Just dazzling.
“You’re such a beautiful bride,” Shelby said. She hadn’t tamped down the emotion in her voice, so it set Rosy to crying again. But since they were more happy tears, it only added to the dazzling.
“Okay, let’s get out of here before I start blubbering,” Shelby told Lucy. “You and I go first, and then Havana can get in here for the makeup touch-up.”
The six-inch walk space wasn’t easy, especially when the armadillos on Lucy’s dress tangled with some of the ones on hers. The little Billys now had spatterings of pink sequins on them. But they finally made it out into the hall.
Where there wasn’t much more room.
Bridesmaids were literally lined up on both sides of the wall. They were primping, adjusting dresses and bobbling around while they put on heels. There was plenty of elbow bopping going on out here, and it would have felt like some kind of walk of torture had it not been for the friendly, familiar faces and the warm welcomes.
It was one blast from the past after another.
Rosy had made name tags for everyone and on them she’d had printed the dates when the girls—who were now women—had lived at the ranch.
Buck’s kids.
Shelby remembered many of them. Zinnia Carter, the blonde beauty who had introduced Shelby to beer—which Shelby had promptly thrown up. Elie Monroe, the genius who’d helped Shelby through algebra. Lupe Sanchez, the busty brunette who had almost certainly been Callen’s first lover.
Shelby smiled at Lupe in spite of that.
It didn’t matter to Shelby that she hadn’t been his first. She was his current lover, and that was better than being first. However, there weren’t enough rose-colored glasses to make herself believe that her “current” status would last much longer.
No.
Now that his promises to her dad were nearly fulfilled, Callen would be going, and he would unknowingly take a sizable piece of her heart right along with him.
Shelby felt someone squeeze her hand and looked up. Lucy. “You look like you’re about to cry, and I don’t think they’ll be happy tears.”
Clever indeed. Shelby smiled at her, kissed her cheek and then studied her. “Are all of yours of the happy variety?” she asked when she spotted the girl blinking back some of her own.
“Mostly,” Lucy answered after a hesitation. “But I’m worried about Mr. Buck. Mateo and I went to see him, and he said he was okay, but he had to wear a mask, and he looked really pale.”
Of course this had been bothering Lucy. Probably Mateo, too, and Shelby silently cursed herself for not talking to them more about it.
“Yes, he’s pale, but he’ll get better,” Shelby assured her. “The doctors believe they got all the cancer, but he’s getting the treatments to make sure of that.”
“You’re sure?” Lucy asked. “Because sometimes grown-ups try to keep things from kids. Don’t keep anything bad from me.”
“I’m not, and I won’t.”
Despite the crowd, Lucy stopped, studied her expression and then nodded. “Good. Because I, uh, love Mr. Buck. I, uh, love you.” The relief came, and she gave Shelby a long, hard hug.
“I love you, too, Lucy.”
Well, crud. Shelby had to go another round with fighting the blasted tears. Somehow, she managed to keep her eyes dry. Well, dry-ish. But it was hard to do because it was an incredible moment. Lucy—her newest sister—was going to be okay. Even if things didn’t work out with the Millhouse family, the girl was still on her way to recovery.
By the time Lucy and she made it to the end of the hall, Shelby had fought her way through the latest tear threat, and she’d got through the wall of kids with minimal damage. She had also lost some of the sequins but now had what she was certain was lipstick kisses on various parts of her face. Maybe Havana could fix her up, too.
And speaking of Havana, Shelby spotted the woman at the reception table. She was gluing armadillos on her already-armadillo-covered dress.
“Aren’t these just the coolest things?” Havana asked.
“They’re special,” Lucy said when Shelby was at a loss for words.
“Exactly!” Havana agreed. “They’re so Rosy. Say, is Rosy ready for me to do her makeup?” Havana picked up a hamper-sized bag that would take up at least 75 percent of the free space in the dressing room. “Got my primp stuff.”
“Yes, she’s ready, but you should probably hurry,” Shelby explained. “Rosy needs to leave soon.”
“I’ll get right on it.” Havana added a kiss to both Lucy’s and Shelby’s cheeks before she started her trek down the hall. “In the meantime, you should take a final look at the party room. The guests are starting to arrive,” she said from over her shoulder.
Shelby and Lucy headed that way, but they stopped when the front door of the inn opened and snow blew in.
Nico came in right along with it.
“It’s snowing?” Lucy blurted out.
“Sort of. I rented one of those machines. It’ll follow Rosy to the hospital and spew some of the white stuff there, too. I thought she’d like that.”
“She will,” Shelby assured him. “What about the cameras? Are they working?”
“They are. Just doing the final test on them right now.”
He led them into the party room, where there were indeed already guests milling around and seated at the tables. The room was not only where the guests would watch the ceremony, but it was also where the reception was being held.
Rosy had gone for all the flowers that she’d considered. All of them. Sunflowers, poinsettias, violets and roses. The explosion of colors worked surprisingly well with the pink tablecloths.
Nico motioned to an open laptop that was sitting on a small corner table. “This image will be projected there.” He pointed toward a large screen mounted on the wall. “We have audio, too.”
Nico pressed a new button, and not only did Shelby see her father sitting in his hospital bed, she heard him say, “There’s my girl.” He smiled, but there was some alarm on his face. “Are you okay? Are those bruises?”
It took Shelby a moment to realize what he meant. “Oh no. Lipstick kisses from your other girls. There are a lot of them here, Dad. Here, because of you.”
Buck’s alarm morphed to a reaction that Shelby knew all too well—misty eyes. There was a lot of that going around, but once again she fought the tears and won. No stuffed-up nose and red eyes for her on one of the most important days of her father’s life.
“I love you, Dad.” She touched her fingers to her lips and then pressed them in the direction of the screen. Later, she’d give him a kiss in person, and she didn’t mind that she’d have to do that through a mask.
“Love you right back,” he said.
Since Nico was waiting to adjust something on the laptop, Shelby waved goodbye to her father and took a look around the party room. It was perfect—despite the prominent placement of the rearing stallion as a centerpiece and the zombie bunnies that Rosy had apparently ordered in bulk. It got even more perfect when Callen walked in.
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