by Ali Parker
I smiled, set the coffees and invitation down on his nightstand, and sat down beside him on the edge of the bed.
Wes stirred. His eyes opened slowly and he peered up at me. He smiled. “Morning, good lookin’.”
“Morning.” I picked up his Americano and handed it to him. “I went on a coffee run.”
Wes propped himself up on one elbow. “My angel.”
He lifted the blankets, shimmied himself up so he could sit against the wall of pillows against the headboard, and invited me to join him. I snuggled up beside him and he tucked the blankets around me. We sat all cuddled up together and sipped our coffees as the room continued to grow brighter with autumn sunshine.
“I had the perfect evening last night,” I said. “I knew it was going to go well but I never imagined it would go quite that well. My parents really like you. I can tell.”
“And I really like them. You never told me your dad was a comedic genius.”
I giggled. “I didn’t want to spoil the surprise. He misses the mark sometimes and wastes a lot of one-liners on dad jokes, but for the most part, he’s pretty darn funny.”
“I don’t understand why society turned on dad jokes in the first place.”
“Apparently, people are elevating their humor standard.”
“I don’t believe that for one second. Scroll through the internet for five minutes. People are most definitely getting dumber, not smarter.”
I laughed. He wasn’t wrong.
“Oh,” I said, remembering the invitation on the nightstand. I leaned over to pick it up and handed it to him. “I checked the mail when I came in and this was there. Looks like a wedding invitation.”
Wes frowned. “I don’t know anyone getting married.”
“Well apparently, you do.”
He slipped his finger in the groove and tore the end of the envelope open. A shimmering gold cardstock fell out and he held it under the stream of sunlight to read the names written on the card. He grinned. “Well, I’ll be damned. Katie’s getting married.”
“Katie?”
“She’s the honeymoon coordinator at the resort I go to for my writing retreats.”
“The Virgin Islands hotel?”
“That’s the one,” he said. “Damn, they moved quickly.”
I peered over his shoulder. “Do you get a plus one?”
He hid the envelope from me. “Someone’s nosy.”
“What? I love weddings. And a tropical wedding in the Virgin Islands? Sign me up.” I tried to snatch it out of his hands but Wes pulled away. I pouted. “Come on. Let me see!”
Wes angled himself away from me so I couldn’t see the card, but he read aloud as he scanned through it. “The wedding is at the hotel. I’d say I’m surprised but not really. Katie lives and breathes for that place. Oh and look. I do get a plus one. Maybe I should bring Harriet. I’m sure she’d like—”
I whacked him on the shoulder. “Don’t be a smart ass, Wes.”
He snickered. “Is the honeymoon phase of our relationship already over? You’re going to start knocking me around?”
“Only if you keep antagonizing me.”
Wes relinquished the invitation. “Of course, you’ll be my plus one. You’ll like Katie. She’s a sweetheart and an impressive businesswoman.”
“I’m an impressive sweetheart sans the businesswoman part.”
Wes chuckled and kissed my cheek. “You are an impressive woman. My woman.”
Those words still made me giddy whenever he said them, and he said them a lot. “Maybe businesswoman isn’t off the table yet. I’m hopeful the right job is waiting around the corner for me.”
‘I’m positive that it is,” Wes said certainly.
He’d been an excellent support system for me over the past several weeks. Initially when I’d moved in with him, I couldn’t help but feel like a burden. I was sweeping into his life and bringing nothing of value with me, besides myself, of course. But I wasn’t contributing financially. In fact, I was having the opposite effect. I was costing Wes money.
Granted, he had a lot of it to go around, but I still wanted my own job and my own purpose in the workforce. Wes had sat me down and told me not to settle for something just to make some cash. He told me to take my time, take advantage of having a home and access to his funds, and find something that really fit me and made me happy. He’d stuck to his guns and insisted on this when I tried to take an interview to work as a hostess at a restaurant nearby, knowing it wasn’t what would make me happy.
I tapped his knee. “Is your laptop still beside the bed?”
Wes leaned over and peered between the crack between the bedframe and his nightstand. “Yep.” He pulled out his laptop and handed it to me.
I flipped it open and rested it on my thighs and opened up the tab I already had open. I refreshed the page and loaded the new job postings from the last couple of days. With all the Thanksgiving prep, I hadn’t had any time to job hunt.
“You don’t have to do this right now,” Wes said. “Let’s just relax.”
“What if the perfect job was posted this morning and I missed it?”
He kissed my neck. “I can make it worth missing.”
I giggled and shied away from him. “Down boy. I need a job.”
“You don’t need one,” he amended. “I can take care of you. But I understand that you want one. But there’s no rush.”
“Wes, I don’t want to be a burden. I’m—”
“You could never be a burden. You make my life better. I just want you to be happy.”
“Hanging around the house all day won’t make me happy forever,” I told him. “I know I can be an asset somewhere.”
He waggled his eyebrows at me. “I can make you an asset if you want.”
I rolled my eyes. “What am I going to do with you?”
Wes chuckled and took my coffee from my hands. He put it on the nightstand and closed the laptop. I put up a fuss but he wasn’t having it as he fluffed the pillows and pulled me in close.
“I wanted to tell you something last night but I never had the chance,” he said. “Something important.”
Butterflies took flight in my belly. “What is it?”
He stroked my hair and gazed into my eyes.
I smiled and gave him a light kiss. “I love you too, Shakespeare.”
The words fell from my lips with ease.
Wes grinned, cupped my chin, and worshiped my lips with more kisses. “I love you.”
My heart soared and all thoughts and pressure of needing to find a job slipped away as things heated up beneath the sheets.
Chapter 38
Wes
Briar bit her lip and stood back to inspect the dining-room table. Once again, we were having company, except this go around she felt like she was the one in the hot seat who had to impress my friend, Walker, who would be joining us for dinner to meet Briar for the first time.
As I sat at the kitchen island nursing a beer, she straightened place settings and lit the candles in the middle of the table.
“Walker is an easy guy to impress,” I told her. “You’re overthinking this whole thing. So long as there’s food he’ll be happy.”
“A nicely set table is important,” Briar insisted. “My mom always taught me to take pride in my home and my things. I want to show him that I care and that he’s worth the effort.”
I loved when Briar referred to this house as her home. I felt the same way. The first couple of times she’d done it, she’d been embarrassed, but I told her that was exactly what I wanted, for her to feel like she was home. Not like she was crashing temporarily and not like she was living with a boyfriend but that she was home.
“He’s going to like it,” I said before tipping my head back to polish off the beer.
“I hope so,” Briar mumbled as she padded past me to check on dinner in the Crockpot. On her way, she stopped in front of the fridge and plucked a neon pink sticky note off the door. She held it up. “Do you
still need this?”
Written on the note was an address provided to me by Katie, who I’d called the other night to congratulate on her upcoming wedding and confirm that yes, my plus one and I would be there. Katie, delighted, had asked if I could do her a favor and swing by her friend Hailey’s house, a devoted fan of my books, to drop off a signed copy of my newest work. Apparently, Hailey was drowning in the madness of being a new mother to a newborn and Katie thought a little surprise might be just the thing she needed. A good book to curl up with for some alone time couldn’t hurt, either. I’d already signed the inside cover of the book and written a nice note about motherhood with Briar’s help, but I hadn’t gotten around to dropping the book off to Katie’s soon-to-be sister-in-law yet.
“I still need it, yes,” I said.
Briar frowned at it.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Having a neon pink note on the fridge with no other pictures or magnets or anything bugs me.”
I laughed. “Put it in the drawer for now if you want. Just don’t let me forget it’s there. Katie might uninvite me from her wedding if I forget to drop off the book to her brother and his girl.”
Briar opened the junk drawer beside the fridge and stuck the note to the inside of the door. “We’ll bring the book to them tomorrow,” she said decidedly.
I could tell she was flustered and the sticky note was a glaring reminder of something that still needed to be done. She’d insisted on cooking dinner alone tonight despite my numerous attempts to try and help her. She claimed that this was a one-woman recipe and my big hands would mess it up. Secretly, I suspected she just wanted to be the mastermind behind the evening so she could take all the credit for its success.
Or failure.
I slid off my stool so I could peer over her shoulder into the Crockpot. “How’s it looking?”
She closed the lid after giving the contents a stir. “Good. Perhaps the best it’s ever turned out.”
“Look at you knocking recipes out of the park.”
She smiled and ran her hands under the kitchen sink to give them a wash. “You have no idea the difference a good quality Crockpot will make. My mother’s Crockpot that I’ve always used was actually my grandmother’s. It’s almost forty years old.”
“Damn.”
“You can say that again. It still works. It’s just not all that sophisticated and it only has two settings.”
“On and off?” I asked sarcastically.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “High and low.”
I chuckled. “My mistake.”
Walker arrived just after six o’clock. Unlike Briar’s parents, who we’d entertained a few nights before and had caught their flight home the day before yesterday, Walker let himself in. He hollered down the hall that he had arrived and that the house smelled better than ever.
Briar smiled hopefully.
I put a hand on her shoulder. “You’ll win him over the minute he sees you. Trust me.”
Briar was putting a lot of pressure on herself. She knew how good a friend Walker was to me and she so badly didn’t want to mess it up. She refused to believe me when I told her that was impossible. Walker was the most easygoing guy I knew. So long as she was good to me, he’d like her.
And damn, was she ever good to me.
Too good, to be honest. I didn’t deserve her.
Walker came around the corner with a bottle of red wine in one hand and a case of beer in the other. He stopped in his tracks when he saw Briar, who stood beside me in a pair of jeans and a rusty-colored sweater. Her makeup was shimmery and gold, her lips deep red, her hair pulled back by a large gold clip at the nape of her neck. She looked like she belonged on the cover of an autumn style magazine. At least, to a guy who had no sense for women’s fashion, she looked that way to me.
“Briar,” Walker said warmly. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
Briar beamed at him. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, too. Wes has told me so many things about you and showed me some of your artwork. You’re very talented.”
Walker flashed her one of his dazzling, charming smiles. “I know, right?”
Briar, momentarily surprised by his complete lack of anything resembling humbleness, blinked. Then she giggled bashfully and took the wine from his hand that he offered to her.
“Can I pour you a glass?” she offered.
He shook his head. “Thanks, but I’m going to stick to beer for now. But you know what you could do for me?”
Briar paused on her way to grab herself a wine glass. “Yes?”
“You could explain to me what a woman like you is doing with a guy like Wes,” Walker said. “Is it his hermit lifestyle that appeals to you? Or perhaps you like the way he eats his cereal. Have you heard him eat cereal by the way? He slurps it off the spoon like a third grader trying to piss off his mother.”
I groaned and pinched the bridge of my nose. “Why did I think this was a good idea?”
Briar laughed and went about pouring herself a glass of wine. “You know what? The cereal thing doesn’t bother me that much.”
“How is that possible?” Walker asked. “It makes me want to punch him in the nose.”
Briar shrugged. “I find it kind of endearing.”
“Endearing?” Walker asked incredulously. “Endearing? All right Wes, you’d better be paying close attention. She’s a keeper because there isn’t another woman on the face of this planet who could possibly find your obnoxious slurping endearing.”
Briar sipped her wine and nodded approvingly. “You know what does drive me a little crazy though?”
“Hey now,” I warned. “Don’t go exposing me. Walker will never let me live it down.”
Walker turned his back on me. “Tell me, Briar. Tell me everything.”
She licked her lips. “How he puts his socks on.”
I blinked. “How I put my socks on?”
She nodded. “Yes. You scrunch them up all tiny and put your toes in against the seam and then take your sweet time slowly unrolling them up to your ankle, where you obsess about them sitting just right. I bet you’ve wasted hours of your life just putting on your socks.”
Walker slapped the counter, making Briar jump. “Yep. It’s official. She’s a keeper.”
I scowled at Walker. “You act like you’re telling me something I don’t already know.”
Briar gave me a loving, warm smile when Walker wasn’t looking.
My friend came and clapped me on the shoulder before opening the drawer where my bottle opener usually was. He frowned when he found it full of extra dish cloths and sponges instead. “Where’s your shit, Wes?”
I opened a cupboard on the opposite side, closer to the fridge, and handed him the bottle opener. “Briar and I did some rearranging.”
Walker popped the cap off the beer bottle and looked back and forth between us. “Ah, I see. So when’s the wedding?”
Briar turned pink.
Walker grinned deviously. “Rearranging kitchen cupboards and drawers? Living together? Finding little quirks that annoy the shit out of each other? Oh yeah, kids. This is it. Might as well sign the marriage papers and be done with it.”
Briar laughed.
“And she thinks I’m funny,” Walker said. “Even better. Ten out of ten from me. Well done, Wes. I like her better than I like you.”
Briar checked the Crockpot once more and gave it one final stir before moving to the stove to check the pot of rice she had cooking. “If you spent every day with me, you might not like me so much. I bet Wes is looking forward to me finding a job and getting out of his hair for a bit.”
“Nonsense,” I said.
Walker perked up. “You’re job hunting?”
Briar nodded absently as she removed the rice from the heat and turned the burner off. “Yeah, I had a job when I first came to New York but that sort of went up in smoke when I ran out in the middle of my shift. So it’s back to the grindstone, trying
to find something I’m good at and that I like. It’s not easy when you’re from a town in the middle of nowhere and have no special skills on your resume.”
“You have special skills,” I muttered.
Walker snorted.
Briar scowled at me. “You won’t benefit from said special skills if you make cracks like that at me.”
“Sorry,” I amended quickly.
She nodded, satisfied with the apology, but I caught a smile playing in the corner of her lips.
“Anyway,” Briar said, clasping her hands together. “Dinner is ready. Grab your plates from the table and help yourselves. I suggest putting the rice on your plate and then moving on to the Crockpot, but if you want to be a psychopath and do it the other way around, go right ahead.”
We fetched our plates from the table and collected our food. Briar had prepared a delicious-looking dish. In the Crockpot was chicken and veggies which had all been simmering on low all day in a sweet, tangy sauce to be served over coconut rice.
The first bite had my taste buds singing hallelujah.
Walker praised her for the meal. “You can invite me over for dinner anytime.”
“The more the merrier.” Briar grinned.
Chapter 39
Briar
“I’m glad you like it. I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out.” I was pleased that both Walker and Wes had enjoyed their meals so thoroughly that they’d even gotten up and helped themselves to a second serving.
Walker leaned back in his chair with his beer. “It was delicious. Best meal I’ve had in a long time. Can we circle back to this job-hunting stuff?”
“What about it?” I asked as I set my utensils down on my empty plate.
Walker studied me for a moment. “As I’m sure Wes has told you, I own a couple of art galleries. One here in New York, another in Los Angeles, and a third in Miami. I travel between the three but spend most of my time here and business has been rapidly picking up and I need an extra set of eyes and hands to help me manage things. Please don’t think this is a handout. It’s just good timing. I need someone with attention to detail to step in and work as the receptionist at my New York gallery as well as overseeing shipping, inventory, and sales. You could set your own schedule and take as much vacation as you need. Is this something that might interest you?”