Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 120838 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 604(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120838 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 604(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
“And I have a beautiful, loving second born who knows her own mind, is wholly herself, spends her time doing good things for people who unfortunately need her to do that work, and will do anything for someone she loves.”
Alex sent Dad a wobbly smile.
Rix already had his arm around her.
Dad turned to Marlo with such a besotted, happy expression on his handsome face, I nearly lost it again.
Dair somehow felt it and pulled me closer.
For my part, I braced for what was to come.
“And now I have a beautiful, loving wife who fills me with such happiness, I cannot wait to start each day by her side, and end it in the same manner. Marlo, my darling, you’ve enriched my life so completely I could use a hundred million words and add a hundred million more and still not express how much you mean to me. I love you. And I’m so damned happy you let me make you my wife.”
Marlo lost it and Dad took her in his arms.
So, of course, Alex and I lost it again too.
Thus, Rix held his wife.
And Dair turned me into his embrace.
A half an hour later, after time spent together (and me fixing Marlo’s makeup, not to mention, Alex’s and my own), Dair and me, Alex and Rix hustled back to the Rotunda so the newlyweds could make their grand entrance through the flower festooned double doors.
I went right to Cadence so I could check off what just happened.
When I returned to Dair, he muttered, “I’ll be glad when ye can retire that fucking binder.”
“I still have the one for Alex’s baby shower,” I warned him, and the one I’ve just started for my revamp of the NYC flat and the other one for Davi’s bathroom reno, I did not say.
“Aye, and I’ll be glad when that one’s gone too.”
He said that, but his gaze had wandered.
I followed it to where Davi was sitting with her recently-promoted from-casual-fuck-buddy-to-boyfriend, Ewan, and Kenna was sitting with her new beau, Craig.
I returned to my man.
“You all right?” I asked.
And my all-honest-all-the-time Dair said, “She’s happy. He thinks the world of her and treats her like it. It’s just…I’m not used to it, lass.”
Davi wasn’t used to it either, but she was ecstatic.
Bally knew about it, and he was devastated.
Dair wasn’t used to it, but he’d get used it because of what I was about to say next.
“She’s happy.”
He cast his eyes down to me. “Aye, my love. She’s happy.”
I smiled at him.
“Ms. Sharp?”
I turned to the staff member who was hovering.
“They’re approaching,” she told me.
I nodded. “Thank you.” Then louder, I announced, “They’re approaching.”
Excitement swept through the room, and everyone gathered around the double doors.
“I cannot wait to see what she’s wearing,” Chloe said as she came to stand by me.
“You won’t be disappointed,” I assured her.
She wasn’t, as the happy couple, wreathed in smiles, strode through their arch of flowers.
A cheer went up.
More glasses of champagne were pressed into their hands.
And a hundred million words couldn’t tell you how thrilled I was for my father, my pregnant sister…
And me.
It hadn’t been the easiest journey.
But we made it.
Boy, did we.
Brilliantly.
Dair
* * *
“And then, kaboom! We slammed into the slip about five feet left of where we should have, and that’s…it,” Blake finished.
Dair roared with laughter.
“I’m glad you find it funny,” she said snottily. “I was lucky Dad had attorneys on retainer. He still had to pay for the houseboat repairs and the damage I did to the slip.”
“Remember, lass, your dad mentioned this story last night, and he was laughing about it nearly as much as me.”
Ned hadn’t shared the details, they were all just reminiscing about a variety of things, and he’d brought it up.
But Ned hadn’t hidden, even if it might have pissed him off at the time, he gave no indication it did, and now he found it hilarious.
At this reminder, Blake just pouted.
“You weren’t even drunk?” he asked.
“No.”
“Not even tipsy?”
“No,” she snapped. “And I know how to handle a boat. It’s just, apparently, I don’t know how to handle a houseboat.”
He laughed again.
She cast her gaze to the side in annoyance.
In was after the wedding and they were in her bedroom at her father’s house. Rix and Alex were down the hall in Alex’s room. His mum was in the guest suite, aye, with Craig (and Dair was making absolutely certain not to think about that). Davi was in another room down the hall with her man.
Rix’s family had chosen to stay at a hotel that was closer to things they wanted to see in the city.
Last, Blake was lazing on him, naked, after coming back from cleaning up post-sex.
“She did it,” Blake said.
He let his laughter die and asked, “Who did what?”
“She redecorated my room and Alex’s. It’s subtle, like she just enhanced what was here so we wouldn’t feel like she’d edged us out. But she did it. And she hasn’t done much to the house, but what she’s done, it’s entirely different.”