Gage: A Love Under the Lights Novel

by Paige, Rochelle

  “Another benefit to the emerald cut is that it does an excellent job of showcasing clarity.” She opened a black velvet pouch and poured out several large stones. “I think we can rule out anything in the fifteen to twenty carat range because of how big they are.” She selected one of the diamonds and held it out for me to study. “This one is five carats. It’s the smallest emerald cut that I brought with me today, but the stone is flawless, so it still fetches a high price.”

  The diamond was beautiful, but it didn’t feel like the right choice for Morgan’s ring. “I think I want something bigger than this.”

  She set the diamond back down and picked out a larger one. “Is ten carats about right?”

  Since I could easily picture the stone she held on Morgan’s finger, I nodded. “Yeah, I think that’ll work. It’s big but not ridiculously huge.”

  Lorraine’s lips curved up in a small grin. “This particular stone is rated VVS1, or very, very slightly included, which is two levels beneath the smaller diamond I showed you. It means that it has minute inclusions that are difficult for a skilled grader to see under ten times magnification.”

  “I’d prefer something flawless. Morgan is only getting married once, and I want her to have the best stone possible for her engagement ring,” I explained.

  “There’s a big price difference between Flawless and VVS1,” Lorraine warned.

  “I don’t care what the ring costs; I just want it to be perfect for Morgan.”

  “That’s an answer I wish I heard from every client.”

  “C’mon, Lorraine,” I chided. “You work with A-list celebrities all the time. I can’t imagine that too many of them complain about the price tag on your designs.”

  “You’d be surprised,” she laughed, shaking her head. “The bigger the celebrity, the more used to getting free stuff they are. I’ve grown used to having clients balk at paying full price for the best of the best. I don’t hear that price isn’t a factor as often as you might think.”

  “Maybe I should’ve asked for a special deal then,” I joked. “But I guess it’s too late for that.”

  “Yeah, too bad for you since you already showed your hand. You do know that I’m going to find the most expensive, flawless, ten-carat, emerald-cut diamond out there to use for this ring,” she cautioned.

  “As long as you can do it fast, have at it,” I encouraged.

  She gathered the loose stones from the table and put them back in the black velvet bag. “Since money is no object, I’m sure I’ll be able to hunt down the perfect stone for you by tomorrow at the latest.”

  “How much time will it take for you to finish the ring once you have the diamond?” I asked.

  “That depends on how complicated the style is.” She selected a ring from the remaining display and turned it so I could see the design from the side. “From what you’ve told me about Morgan and with a stone of this size and cut, I’d recommend a split shank band.”

  I took the ring from her hand and peered at it from all angles, envisioning what it would look like with a bigger stone. I could easily see myself sliding something similar to it onto Morgan’s finger. “Let’s go with this style.”

  “In platinum as well?”

  I glanced at one of the gold rings and decided that it wouldn’t fit Morgan quite as well. “Yeah, platinum sounds good.”

  “Perfect.” Lorraine clapped her hands together in excitement. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find your diamond, and I should be able to make some headway on the band while I wait for it to be delivered.”

  I wanted to get my hands on the ring as quickly as possible, so that sounded good to me. “I guess we have a plan.”

  “There’s still one last thing to discuss”—she lifted her hand and rubbed her fingers together—“the money. I’m going to need you to wire some funds into my account to cover the cost of the diamond once I find it.”

  “Sure, I can do that. If you give me a ballpark estimate, I can have the money sent over before end of business today if that helps,” I offered.

  “That’d be great.” Lorraine put the last display into her briefcase before pulling out a notebook and jotting something down. When she tore the note off and slid it across the table in my direction, face down, I chuckled. But my laughter dried up when I picked it up and read the number there.

  “Two million dollars, huh?” I whistled. “You weren’t joking about paying for that flawless rating.”

  Lorraine didn’t look the least bit contrite. “Eh, you’re getting off easy when you consider the two-month rule.”

  “Two-month rule?” I echoed, having no idea what she was talking about.

  “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you’re not familiar with it since you always said you’d never get married.” She shook her head as she finished packing up the rest of her stuff. “But the general rule of thumb is that the guy should spend two months’ worth of his salary on the engagement ring.”

  I couldn’t really complain about the two mil I was going to send to her account, then. Since it didn’t come close to what I made in two months, I was just going to have to go all out on the wedding instead. Once I got Morgan to agree.

  * * *

  It only took Lorraine two weeks to create the perfect ring for Morgan. Shawn had picked it up from her this morning, and I already felt like it was burning a hole in my pocket. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect since we already had plans for a romantic dinner at home tonight. I just amped up my plans a little by setting everything up on the patio and adding a fuck ton of flowers and candles to the table.

  By the time Morgan joined me outside, I was pacing back and forth with my hands in my pockets. Her eyes went wide, and her lips formed a perfect circle that made me think about sliding my cock between them when she gasped, “Oh!”

  “Hey, beautiful.” I strode across the patio and took her hands in mine, tugging her closer and bending my head to claim her lips in a deep kiss. I felt her curvy body melt against mine, and all my plans for how I wanted to ask her to be my wife flew out the window. I didn’t want to wait until after we had the five-course gourmet meal I’d had catered. Didn’t care if the heart-shaped, flourless chocolate cake I’d ordered from Il Cielo wasn’t on the table when I got down on one knee to propose. None of that mattered. She was here, and that was the only thing that I needed. Well, that and the ring in my pocket.

  I kept my gaze locked on Morgan’s face and her hands in mine as I bent my knees and knelt before her. I watched as the realization of what I was about to do filled her gorgeous blue eyes. “Holy crap! Is this really happening?”

  “I hope so”—I pulled the ring box from my pocket and flipped it open with my thumb—“or else I bought this for nothing.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  Her eyes filled with tears, and her knees buckled. I caught her before she crumpled to the ground and gathered her in my arms. Lowering my other knee, I held her close with one hand as I took the ring out of the box with the other and placed it on the tip of her finger. “Morgan Kelly, it’s a well-known fact that I didn’t believe in love and forever before I met you, but now I can’t imagine my life without you in it. I’m sure there will be tough times in our relationship, worse than what we faced with Kerri, since our careers mean we live in the limelight, but I know we’ll be able to tackle them head-on if we face them together. Because you’re the one for me, and I’ll regret it for the rest of my life if I don’t ask you to spend yours with me. Say you’ll be mine in every way possible.”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes,” she cried as I slid the ring farther onto her finger. As soon as it was in place, she threw her arms around my neck. I tumbled backward with her sprawled on top of me. “Of course, I’ll marry you,” she breathed against my neck.

  Her enthusiastic response had my dick as hard as a rod. The stone tiles under my body were way too hard for us to have sex out here, so I surged to my feet and took her with me. The food was all in the warmer in the kitchen and would hold
there for at least a couple of hours. By the time we finished celebrating our engagement, we’d be more than ready to eat.

  Carrying Morgan through the French doors and into our family room, I poured all of my emotions into our kiss. We collapsed in a heap onto the oversized couch and ripped away our clothes, both of us frantic in our desperation. Rolling onto my back, I set Morgan astride me and moaned when I felt how wet she was. “Fuck, beautiful. You’re already ready for me, aren’t you?”

  “Always,” she breathed out as she wiggled her hips and lined up my tip with her entrance.

  Curling upward, I sucked one of her pebbled nipples into my mouth at the same time that I drove my hips forward. Her body writhed on top of me as I let go of her tit with a pop and switched my attention to the other side. With my hands on her hips, I lifted her up and down my cock. Her palms were on my chest, nails digging into my skin as she rode me. I continued to play with her nipples while our bodies moved in unison, her hips slamming down each time I thrust up.

  “Oh, fuck! You feel so damn good with your pussy strangling the hell out of my cock.” She threw her head back, and I felt her hair brush against my legs. Her tits swayed each time she bounced on my dick, and a sense of triumph filled my veins because I was the only man who’d ever get to see her like this for the rest of her life. “I want to feel you come for me, beautiful. Give it to me.”

  She lifted her head to look at me, her eyes hazy with passion and her teeth buried in her bottom lip. Moving one of my hands from her hips, I slid my finger over her finger right above where my ring rested. Her entire body tensed, and I hammered up into her two more times before she exploded and took me with her.

  We lay there panting, with her cheek pressed against my chest, until she lifted her head and said, “You realize that the press is going to have a field day over our whirlwind romance, right?”

  “They’ll get over it eventually,” I reassured her. “Someone else will hookup, breakup, or makeup and they’ll take our place in the limelight.”

  Epilogue 1

  Gage

  One year later...

  Gripping my phone in my hand so tightly that I was surprised it didn't crack, I stormed into the home office Morgan and I shared to wave it in her face. “Surprise, surprise. There’s yet another story about a mythical baby bump in the gossip rags online this morning.”

  I’d been wrong about the paparazzi getting bored with us as a married couple. They’d been particularly relentless in their hunt for any possible sign of a pregnancy in Morgan ever since they found out we were a couple. If she wore anything loose over her belly, they jumped all over the possibility of her being pregnant. Eight months ago, they spotted us out on a date. Morgan had been drinking fruit juice while I had a beer. There were stories all over the place about us trying for a baby when those pictures came out. Two months ago, they caught us listening to a band in the VIP section at a local hotspot. Morgan’s back had been pressed against my chest, my arms were wrapped around her body, and my hands rested over her stomach. I hadn’t held her like that for any reason other than I wanted her close while we watched the show, but that hadn’t mattered to anyone but us. It took almost two weeks—and a picture of her drinking a glass of champagne at an Oscars after-party—for the story to die down again.

  I’d known the press would focus on us back when we came out publicly as a couple, but I’d underestimated how focused everyone would be on the possibility of Morgan and I having a baby. It’d been worse than any other baby watch I could remember—including for the royal couples. I’d mostly ignored all the crap at the start, but then Morgan went off her birth control a little more than half a year ago. I’d quickly lost my patience with the stories since then because it was nobody’s business but ours that we were trying to have a baby.

  Morgan took the phone from me and quickly scanned the story. This time, she was the one who’d been caught with her hand resting over her stomach as she stood waiting for the elevator at her agent’s office. “Dane needs to clean office if his staff is sneaking photos of his clients and selling them to the tabloids,” I growled.

  “You don’t know that it was anyone on his team,” she chided, handing me the phone back. “It could’ve been just about anyone in the building.”

  “Which is why you should use Mario. He’ll come to you whenever you want.” I’d first suggested she switch to my agent after we got engaged, then again when we got married six months ago in a private ceremony on a beach in Bali surrounded by our closest friends and family, and each time a new story popped up about her being pregnant. Although Dane had done a good job with her career since she landed the starring role in his mother’s movie, I would’ve preferred to have the same person representing us because having one fewer person involved would make crisis management easier. Morgan had stood firm in keeping Dane on because she was loyal to a fault. It was one of the things that I loved most about my beautiful wife, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t stop asking.

  “The same thing could’ve happened even if Mario was my agent,” she argued, stepping close and wrapping her arms around my neck. Her eyes held an odd mixture of excitement, anxiety, and happiness as she stared up at me. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but those stories aren’t going to go away any time soon.”

  “I know,” I sighed. “If only you weren’t so damn gorgeous, maybe they would’ve gotten over their fascination by now.”

  Her lips curved up in a grin of pure feminine satisfaction. “I think it’s more a case of their obsession with the confirmed Hollywood bachelor who slid into the role of a married man as though he’d been born to it.”

  I brushed my lips over hers before bragging, “Can you blame them? I am kind of awesome.”

  “There’s no kind of about it, but that’s not why I think the stories aren’t going anywhere.” Her breasts pressed against my chest as she took a deep breath and let it out. “It looks like the gossip rags finally got it right.”

  With her body so close to mine, my brain was slow to register the point she was trying to make. “Got what right?”

  “Baby bump watch is going to turn into baby watch.” She took a step back and moved my hand to press it against her belly. “I’m pregnant.”

  “You’re pregnant?” I echoed in shock.

  “Yeah. This time, I made Allie go out and buy the pregnancy tests because I wanted it to be a surprise to you. But it looks like there’s no way to fool the paparazzi because they still caught me touching my stomach right after Allie commandeered Dane’s office so I could use his bathroom to take the test.” Her smile was so bright, she almost glowed. “Spoiler alert—it was positive.”

  “We’re pregnant!” I picked her up and twirled her around, only to stop abruptly when I realized what I was doing. “Shit, I shouldn’t do that. You might get sick, or dizzy, or something.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “You aren’t going to be one of those impossibly overprotective husbands who tries to wrap me in bubble wrap while I’m pregnant, are you?”

  I gave her my most innocent look, widening my eyes and pressing a hand to my chest as I said, “It’s like you don’t even know me.”

  Of course I was going to be impossibly overprotective. Morgan—and the baby we were having—were my entire world. She’d be lucky if I let her out of my sight for the next nine months . . . or if I was being completely honest, the next fifty plus years.

  Epilogue 2

  Morgan

  4 years later…

  "Daddy, tell me again how many old years I have to be to be on TV."

  I covered my mouth and bit back a laugh as I stood outside Maya's bedroom door and listened to her talking to her daddy. She was obsessed with the idea of being an actress, and poor Gage was beside himself. No matter how many times he tried to point her in a different direction, she wouldn't have it. Despite his best efforts, she continually asked him how old she had to be before she could be on TV.

  "The law says you have to be twenty-two
," Gage answered.

  "But them girls on the shows I watch wasn't twenty-two," Maya pointed out.

  "Well, those girls are from another state. In California, the law says you have to be twenty-two before you can be an actress."

  I swear, I often wondered how he kept a straight face. The tall tales he told our daughter were quite something.

  "That's more fingers than I has to count on, and I don't wanna wait that long, Daddy. Can we move away from California so I can be on TV now?"

  "No, baby. This is our home."

  "But I wanna be on the TV," Maya pouted. "It's my dream."

  Our daughter came by her knack for drama naturally. I was starting to believe that someday she would win awards by the armload, in spite of the fact that her father was hell-bent on making sure she chose a career that wasn't acting.

  "Maybe you could also dream about being a librarian," Gage offered.

  "But I don't wanna be 'brarian, Daddy."

  "Well, then what about becoming a doctor?"

  "Like how Uncle Jasper plays one on TV?" Maya asked, her voice hopeful.

  "No, baby. I mean you could be a real doctor who works at a real hospital."

  "I don't want to be a real doctor. I just wanna pretend."

  "Keep your options open," Gage said. "Maybe you'll change your mind."

  Maya giggled. "You silly, Daddy. I'm gonna be an actress and win those gold things that you and Mommy keep on the shelves in your office. First, I'll be on TV like Mommy, and then I'll be in movies. Then someday when I'm tired of doing that, I'm gonna be a director like Auntie Gloria."

  Gage let out a heavy sigh. "I guess we'll find out when you're twenty-two."

  Figuring it was time to put my husband out of his misery, I went into Maya's room to start our nightly bedtime ritual.