Make Me Believe: Jilted: The Bride

by Tarina Deaton

  “Would you change anything, if you could?”

  He tilted his head to look at her. “Just one thing. You?”

  “Just one thing,” she whispered.

  “We can’t go back and change things.” He kissed her forehead. “We can only go forward and try not to make the same mistakes we did before.”

  They lay there for several minutes. Rowan closed her eyes and was on the edge of falling back asleep when Luke asked, “What made you change your mind?”

  “About what?”

  “Coming out here.”

  “Michael.”

  “What about him?” She could hear his disgruntlement.

  “He came by the apartment and we talked about what happened.”

  “How’d that go?”

  She shrugged. “It was fine. I think we realized we’d both been having doubts about getting married for a while, but neither of us wanted to hurt the other. We weren’t in love with each other anymore. He asked about you and I told him you wanted me to come here. He said I should do it. Not because you deserved another chance, but because I did.”

  She tilted her head back to look at him.

  “Hmm. I’ll have to send him a thank you card.”

  She smiled and snuggled back into the crook of his shoulder.

  “How long are you staying?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  He shifted under her. “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I bought an open-ended ticket,” she said. “I didn’t want to come out here with a timer counting down in the back of my mind. I wanted to see how things went without any external pressure.”

  He rolled over her and settled between her legs. “So you could stay forever.”

  “I have a job and an apartment in Colorado.” She ran her hands on the outside of his upper arms.

  “You could have a job here and you already have a house,” he said with a smirk.

  “If I moved back here, I would want my own place to begin with.”

  “No. When you move back here, you’re moving in with me. This is it—you and me. It always has been and I’m not wasting any more time pretending otherwise.”

  A surge of adrenaline coursed through her veins.

  “What if I want to stay in Denver?” she asked.

  “Then I’ll move to Denver.”

  She cocked her head. “You’d do that?”

  “Rowan, you’re not getting it. I will do whatever it takes if it means we’re together—I thought I had already proved that.”

  Her heart thudded in her chest and she teetered on a precipice. She’d known when she made the decision to come out here that this moment would happen. This or they would figure out they shouldn’t be together. But she hadn’t really prepared herself for either. Fear was a powerful thing and her fear of being hurt again was as great as her fear of never having Luke in her life again.

  The question was—which possibility was worse? ’Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.

  “Okay,” she said.

  A wide, slow smile split his face. “Okay? Really?”

  “Yes. We need to talk about some things. I really like Colorado and I’m not sure I want to move back to Tennessee, so if you weren’t serious about that say something now so I can resign myself to the idea, but I want to be with you.”

  His kiss was hard. “That’s all I want. I like Colorado. I can record anywhere. I might have to find a new band, but if I can convince the label to pay for their moving expenses some of them might be willing to move. Or I can come here to record. I can afford to fly back and forth. We can keep this house and buy another one in Colorado, maybe not as big though.”

  She laughed. “Luke, slow down. We don’t have to figure everything out right this minute. We have time.”

  “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” He peppered her cheeks with kisses between each thank you. “I thought I was going to have to tickle you into agreeing with me.”

  “That’s not even funny,” she said.

  “What? You don’t like being tickled?”

  She jerked when his fingers found the sensitive spot between her ribs. “Don’t, Luke. I’m not kidding.”

  “Don’t what?” He got her again.

  That was it. He seemed to have forgotten she knew his spots, too. Reaching between them, she dug her thumb into his hip joint at the top of his thigh.

  “Whoa! Hey now.” He tried to get away.

  “What?” she asked. “Something wrong?”

  “Okay, you’re right. No tickle torture.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she said.

  “For me!” He grabbed her hands in one of his and tickled her ribs with the other.

  She shrieked and tried to wriggle away, kicking and squirming. Her legs became tangled in the sheets, limiting her range of motion. She got one of her hands free and jabbed him in the hip, forcing him to retreat. They wrestled around on the bed, laughing and yelling.

  “Luke!” A woman’s voice rang out, followed by a sharp whistle.

  Rowan gasped and scrambled to cover her exposed body.

  Luke did the same thing. “Marla. What are you doing here? How did you get in?”

  Who the hell was Marla?

  “I used my key. You weren’t answering your phone.” She stood in the doorway, one hand over her eyes. “Is it safe to look now?”

  Why the hell did she have a key?

  “Yes,” Luke said as he adjusted the sheet around his hip.

  She peeked through her fingers before lowering her hand. “You forgot, didn’t you?” Whoever she was, she sighed the sigh of a woman used to being put out.

  “About what?”

  “The gala in two days? Your sister will be here in the morning.” She tapped at the tablet in the crook of her arm. “Your tux is at the cleaners—I’m picking it up later today. Shelby has a dress fitting at ten tomorrow—I’ll update the appointment to include Rowan.”

  She looked up from her tablet. “You are going to be here on Saturday, right?” She didn’t give Rowan a chance to answer. “There shouldn’t be a problem getting you a ticket…the seating arrangement might need some adjustment. I’ll have to talk to Lisa about that.”

  Rowan thought she might have been talking to herself out loud at that point.

  “I’ll be here at nine-fifteen tomorrow to pick you up, Rowan. What kind of coffee do you like?”

  “Uh…regular. With cream. I can fix some here.”

  “Perfect.” She lowered the tablet. “It’s very nice to meet you, Rowan. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Frowning as the woman disappeared, Rowan looked at Luke. “What just happened?”

  “Marla.” He sighed and flopped back on the bed.

  “And she is…?”

  “My new PR slash PA. The woman’s a powerhouse. I’m pretty sure that tablet is physically attached to her arm.”

  “What happened to Joe Bob?”

  “Bobby John? He retired.”

  She tilted her head. “Huh. Where am I going Saturday?”

  He grinned. “Wanna go to a party with me? It’s for a good cause.”

  Chapter 26

  “You’re really here!” Shelby launched herself out of the car and hugged Rowan.

  Rowan hugged her back. In many ways, Shelby had been closer than Adalynn. The backs of her eyes stung as the realization she’d lost more than Luke when they’d broken up hit her hard.

  “I missed you too, Shelby,” she said.

  Shelby pushed her away. “Whose fault is that?”

  “Touché.”

  “I don’t care if my brother screws this up again—”

  “Hey! I can hear you,” Luke said, joining them and wrapping his arm around Rowan’s shoulders.

  Shelby glared at him. “If he screws up again, I get to keep you.”

  Rowan smiled. “Deal.”

  “Good. Now, he promised to pay for my dress if I went to the gala thingy and this is pro
bably the only time I’m ever going to be able to walk a red carpet, so if he can’t take us both, he’s going to have to stay home and we’ll go together.”

  “I’m right here,” he said. “Could you stop talking about me as if I’m not?”

  “No,” Shelby said. “But I’ll leave the important stuff for when you’re not with us.”

  Marla came through the front door. “Okay, let’s get a move on. Our appointment is in forty-five minutes and it’s going to take at least thirty to get there.”

  Luke pulled Rowan closer and wrapped his arms loosely around her waist. Leaning close to her ear, he whispered, “If they get too nosy, call me and I’ll rescue you.”

  “I think I’ll be okay,” she said.

  “Call me anyway.” He clasped her jaw and kissed her.

  She pressed closer as their tongues caressed each other. How badly did she really need a dress?

  The clearing of a throat split them apart. Shelby stared at them, grinning like a crazy person while Marla looked pointedly at her watch. She was probably the one who cleared her throat.

  “All right,” Luke said. “Have fun.” He followed them out the front door and waved as they drove off.

  Shelby leaned between the front seats. “On a scale of one to set everything on fire, how mad were you at Luke when he objected at your wedding?”

  One thing she’d always loved about Shelby was her willingness to lay it all out there. “He didn’t actually object. We’d decided to leave that part out since we hadn’t seen the point.”

  Shelby laughed. “Oh, the irony.” Her laughter trailed off. “Sorry I didn’t RSVP, but going felt kind of like a betrayal to Luke. I was happy for you, but at the same time, it didn’t seem right. You know?”

  She did. “I debated whether or not to send you and your mama an invitation, but in the end, it felt more wrong not to. I didn’t get an RSVP from your mom either, not that I was really expecting one. Although, I didn’t know she moved to Johnson City, so she might not have ever received it.”

  “Luke surprised her with a house. He bought it with his first big royalty check.”

  Buying houses for the women in his life seemed to be a thing. “That was sweet of him.”

  “It really was. And it’s a cute house, too. He paid off all my student loans and paid for graduate school.”

  “What’s your degree in?” Rowan asked.

  “Early childhood education. I started out as a teacher, but I love working with kids that need a little extra attention so I ended up transferring to the special needs program.”

  “That’s so impressive. I don’t think I would have the patience to teach kids.”

  “I love it. Kids are honest—what you see is what you get. Your mama said you finished dental school.”

  Rowan’s eyebrows rose. “You guys still talk?”

  “We run into each other every now and then. She seems really proud of the fact that you’re a doctor.”

  Hmm. She’d never said as much to her. “It’s not like I’m curing cancer—I fix peoples’ teeth.”

  “It still makes you a doctor.”

  A ringing noise sounded through the car’s speakers. “La Privé.”

  “Hi, Gloria. This is Marla. We’re about five minutes away.”

  “I’ll send Adam out to wait for you.”

  “Thank you. See you soon.” Marla pressed a button on the steering wheel and disconnected the call.

  She glanced at Rowan. “Parking is a pain in the ass this time of day, so they block off one of the spots whenever I make an appointment.”

  “Wow, that’s service,” Shelby said.

  “For as much as we’re going to spend, it’s the least they do.”

  Rowan’s cheeks flushed. “Uh…Marla, not to be crass but I don’t have a lot of money to spend on a dress. I wasn’t planning on spending more than a couple hundred dollars.”

  Marla smiled. “Oh, you’re not spending a dime—Luke is.”

  “I’m not really comfortable with that,” she said.

  “Too late,” Marla said. “He called ahead with his credit card information and gave me explicit instructs to spare no expense, so I don’t plan to. It’s the least he can do after what he’s put you through.”

  “Amen, sister,” Shelby said from the back.

  Apparently, Marla was on Team Rowan. She turned left at the next light and stopped half-way down the block and waved at a man in a suit standing in front of a parking spot.

  He leaned forward, glanced through the windshield, then smiled and stepped out of the way when he saw Marla.

  She parallel parked on the first try, earning a decent amount of awe from Rowan. It always took her at least three tries when she had to do it.

  Her door was opened as soon as Marla shut off the engine and the man offered a hand to assist her out. She managed not to clothesline herself with the seatbelt and made what she thought was a semi-graceful exit.

  “Thank you, Adam,” Marla said.

  “Of course. Gloria is waiting for you upstairs.” He jogged ahead of them to open the door to the nondescript storefront and they followed Marla in.

  Rowan clenched her teeth to keep from gaping. The color scheme was beige and muted bronze with plush couches and glass tables.

  Shelby slipped her hand into Rowan’s and squeezed. “I dare you to ask one of the employees if they work on commission,” she whispered.

  Rowan stared at her for a heartbeat and snorted out a giggle. “I thought it was just me.”

  “Oh, no.” Shelby shook her head. “I feel like Julia Roberts following Richard Gere into the store. All that’s missing is the hooker dress and thigh-high boots.”

  “How much money do you think we’re going to spend?” Rowan asked in a low voice.

  Marla stopped in front of a curtain and pulled it back, revealing a flight of stairs. “Not quite obscene, but we’re definitely going to do some damage.”

  She gestured for them to go up and then followed them, drawing the curtain closed behind them.

  Rowan’s head lolled back against the chair as the pedicurist rubbed her feet.

  “Is this normal?” she asked.

  “If it is, I need to marry someone famous,” Shelby said.

  “For something like the Academy of Country Music awards, yes,” Marla said. “For a fundraising gala, not usually. But Luke said to make sure you both received the VVIP treatment.”

  “VVIP?” Shelby asked.

  “Very, very important person,” Marla explained.

  “Oh. In that case, I definitely need to marry someone famous. Do you know anyone?”

  Marla smiled wryly. “Matchmaking isn’t usually something I put on my resume, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Excellent.” Shelby sipped the sparkling wine they’d been provided as soon as they’d sat down.

  Almost four hours later, they’d been pampered, poked, and fitted for exquisite dresses that would be delivered to Luke’s the next day in plenty of time for them to be pampered again by a hairdresser and professional make-up artist and make it to the gala.

  “Can I see your phone for a second?” Marla asked as they waited for Shelby to return from the restroom.

  “Why?” Rowan asked.

  “I want to program my number in it.”

  “Oh. Sure.” She unlocked her phone and handed it over.

  Thumbs flying across the screen, Marla said, “Don’t hesitate to call if you need anything.”

  Rowan took her phone back. “I think you’ve covered just about everything. I can’t think of a single thing I would need for tomorrow.”

  “Not just tomorrow. For anything.” She crossed her arms, seeming not to know what to do with her empty hands. “Look, I get paid a lot of money to keep track of Luke. He’s a pain in the ass sometimes because he doesn’t care about all the publicity stuff that goes along with his job and that makes my job harder. But he’s also one of the most down-to-earth honest people I’ve ever met in this industry
and I genuinely like him. I—”

  “What?” Rowan asked when she didn’t continue.

  “Well…other than when he’s on stage or in a recording booth, I think this morning is the first time I’ve seen him truly happy. I think you’re the reason for that. I know a little bit about what happened before and I want you to know I’m an ally and I hope eventually a friend. So if you ever need anything, please call me.”

  Rowan searched Marla’s earnest gaze and found nothing but sincerity. “Thank you. I feel like I’ve been on an emotional rollercoaster since my almost wedding. I think things are finally settling down, but at the same time there’s a lot of unknown ahead.”

  “I’m only a phone call away.” Marla rubbed her shoulder.

  “Thank you. It’ll be nice having a friendly face out here.”

  Chapter 27

  “Ready?” Luke asked as they pulled up to the front of the Parthenon. He should have remembered the gala was going to be here—he could have taken Rowan somewhere else the other afternoon instead.

  “Yes,” Shelby said. “Is someone walking us in while you take pictures?

  “Shell—you’re walking in with me.”

  “Wait—what?” Rowan asked.

  “Yes!” Shelby pumped a fist in the air.

  Luke took Rowan’s hand and wrapped it in his. The color had drained from her face. “Marla didn’t explain how tonight would go?”

  She shook her head, eyes wide. “No. I just assumed you’d do the press thing while we—I—went inside to wait for you.”

  “You can if you want.” He leaned closer. “I’d really like to walk in holding your hand though.”

  This was the first chance he had to introduce her to the world as his. He knew the reporters were going to go nuts when they saw him and Rowan together—he’d talked to Marla about it—but one, it would hopefully help kill any rumors going around and two, he wanted there to be no doubt that they were together.

  Rowan swallowed visibly but nodded.

  “Thank you. I’ll be right by you the whole time.”

  “Me, too,” Shelby said.

  The limo stopped and the door opened, an usher waiting for them to exit. He knew these things were timed to the second, so he levered himself out of the car. Reaching in, he helped Shelby out first—he didn’t want to have to let go of Rowan once he had her hand.