Second Chance Mess (Bad News Billionaires Book 1) Page 14

  "I remember you," she said as she eyed us up and down. "You were the man who wanted a ring made out of stars. I assume this is the young lady wearing it?"

  "Yep," I said as I held up Brooke's hand for the woman to see which ring her associate had sold to me. I knew that she had to have known that the commission on such an expensive piece of jewelry was very substantial, even besides the giant gratuity that I had left.

  "So what can I help you with today?" she asked.

  "Well, I think we are looking for bands that look like they're made out of moonlight," I said with a smirk on my face. I could see the other associate trying not to laugh as she finished ringing up her customer.

  The older lady rolled her eyes. "Moonlight?" she said. "I'm afraid you'll need to be a bit more clear in your description than that if you'd like an actual piece of jewelry instead of an abstract concept."

  I looked over to see if the other lady was without a customer now, which she was, and then politely excused ourselves so that we could go ask for her help instead. She smiled at Brooke and me and complimented how beautiful the ring looked on Brooke's hand.

  "I see it was a perfect fit," she said. "Now we know what size she is. So you want wedding bands, right?"

  "Yes, please," Brooke smiled.

  "Silver bands, that glow as if they're made of moonlight, right?"

  "Wow," Brooke said to me as she smiled at the girl. "You're right; she is an amazing salesgirl."

  The woman laughed and lifted the counter for us again so that we could go back and pick out the wedding bands. Brooke and I sat in the little fitting room together, and the woman returned back after a few minutes with a tray of a few choices, just like the last time.

  Immediately Brooke and I both spotted the same ring in the center of the tray. It looked like it was glowing, and even though it was silver, it had a blueish tint in the light that made it seem just like moonlight.

  "It's perfect," Brooke said.

  The saleswoman measured the two bands to size and then put them into neat little boxes and rang us up. I tipped her generously again, and this time she thanked me gratefully before we walked out.

  "Okay, so we have the dress, the bands, the guests invited, and Max is done building the arch. This is it," I said. "We're getting married."

  The next few days leading up to the wedding were a busy flurry of plans and excitement. But each night, the three of us went out to sit by the bonfire to talk and laugh and talk about things we wanted to do. On the night before the wedding, we even invited Nick and Kate up to the house, and we opened a couple of bottles of wine, brought out a pile of blankets, and all five of us sat around the warm fire in the cold snow. It was actually a pretty magical night, and everyone ended up enjoying themselves and staying in the evening.

  The next morning, there was an excitement in the air when we woke up. The wedding wasn't until that night, and we had plenty of time to spend together and still get everything prepared, but there was a definite buzz of energy that we all felt in anticipation of what would be a wonderful night.

  I made coffee for everyone and held Brooke in my arms as we drank it in the kitchen.

  I knew that Kate would try to woosh her away soon, and even though I knew that she would be fully and completely mine after tonight, I still didn't want to let her go. Not even for a few hours. Everything was too wonderful and too perfect, and I didn't want to chance anything going astray. Tonight, Brooke and I would be alone in our home for our wedding night. Max had pulled his van a bit farther into the woods, and Kate and Nick would be going back to the apartment. Tonight belonged only to us, and I had a wonderful plan for after the ceremony.

  "Okay, lovebirds," Kate said.

  I knew it was coming.

  "I'm stealing the bride," she said.

  "But Kate, it's still morning, and we have all day," Brooke said as I felt her press her back against my chest. I didn’t think she wanted to be separated yet, either.

  There is a lot to do," Kate said as she turned to look at Max, Nick, and me. "You boys stay out of trouble before the wedding! No drinking and no touching things, except for Max, of course. He seems to make things beautiful when he touches them, so he's excluded."

  "Should I be worried that you're going to steal my girlfriend?" Nick joked to Max. All three of the guys busted out in laughter.

  "Last kiss until tonight," Kate winked at Brooke.

  Brooke turned around in my arms, and I leaned my face down to kiss her. The taste of her tongue in my mouth made my whole body feel energized. If it weren't for the other three people currently in our house, I definitely would have snuck in some love-making before the wedding ceremony. Kate would have said it was bad luck or something of that nature. I couldn't wait until tonight.

  "Love you," I whispered into Brooke's ear as I let her go slowly and reluctantly from my arms.

  27

  Chapter Twenty (Brooke)

  "Are you nervous?" Kate asked as she clipped up sections of my hair and affixed little clip-in rhinestones to them so that it looked like I was wearing a crown of stars.

  We had designed the whole wedding theme to look like an entire galaxy in the sky, and between my lacy, sequined dress and all the rhinestones in my hair, I was beginning to feel like a celestial body.

  "A little," I answered. "But it's a good nervous, the exciting kind."

  When she finished doing my hair, I stepped back to take a look in the mirror. Everything was perfect. I felt perfect.

  "Thank you for helping me so much," I said as I turned around to hug her.

  "Oh, it was nothing," she said. "I just happen to have a flair for style."

  "That's not what I meant. You helped me through every step of this bumpy road, and I wouldn't even be here on this wedding day if it weren't for you."

  Kate smiled and teared up as she looked at me. "Don't make me cry," she teased. "I have too much makeup on that will smear. You and Tim would have made it here eventually; you just might have taken a long and overly difficult road to arrive at the same point."

  I laughed because she was probably very right. We sat down on the side of the bed together and held hands.

  "We've known each other since high school," Kate said. "And I've known you throughout lots of ups and downs and several boyfriends. I may have had my doubts about Tim in the beginning, but I can tell you now, as your best friend and as someone who will always be brutally honest with you, this guy loves you. Stick with him, Brooke."

  "I will." I smiled as she gave me a kiss on the cheek.

  "Okay," Kate said, standing up and trying to wipe her eyes without getting her mascara all over the place. "Nick is going to walk you down the aisle, and Max is going to be Tim's best man. I'm going to multitask as both your maid of honor and also as the twelve-year-old flower girl who throws petals down the aisle, simply because I've always wanted do to that."

  I took one last look in the mirror before we left the room and walked outside.

  "You ready?"

  "Absolutely"

  When we walked out the back door, it was the most wondrous scene I could have ever imagined. Max had laid down a white tarp to serve as the aisle to walk on through the snow, and at the end of it was his handcrafted archway that framed the scenery of the mountains behind it. There were a few guests on either side of the aisle who were all sitting on piles of blankets in the snow, and the bonfire was blazing off to the side to give warmth in the chilled air. It was dusk, so there was still plenty of light to see, but there was a magical dimness that hung in the sky. Standing at the end of the aisle was everything I had ever wanted since the very first moment that I had seen him.

  Nick was waiting for me with his arm out, and as soon as I took his it, Kate walked out in front of me and scattered an array of colorful wildflowers onto the ground. Nick and I followed slowly behind her, and when I got to the end of the aisle, he kissed me on the cheek and handed me off to Tim, who took my hands in his. Behind him, Max gave me a wink.


  The ceremony was simple and short; we hadn't wanted to say anything that belonged to anyone else. We wanted the few words used to be meaningful to us, the things that got us to this very point in time together, and then have the officiant conclude the ceremony so that we could enjoy time with our friends and then time alone with each other. So, Tim and I challenged each other to come up with one single sentence that we wanted to exchange as our wedding vows. So many weddings had endless paragraphs of vows that most people would forget most of by the following week or maybe even the next morning. This one sentence would be something that we would each remember forever, and since we had kept them a secret from each other until this moment, I was surprised by how similar our sentences turned out to be.

  "Even the stars in the sky are jealous of our love," Tim said to me.

  "Even in the night sky, we belong to each other," I said in return.

  "Wow," Kate whispered in my ear even before the ceremony was finished. "That was kind of like you guys just finished each other's thoughts."

  It was perfect.

  We slipped the silver wedding bands onto one another’s hand and kissed each other before the officiant even made the announcement. Then we turned to join our friends in a celebration of the best day of our lives.

  Everyone stayed until it got dark, and we all enjoyed good friends and good wine around the fire. Then, once everyone had left, we went inside to get comfortable.

  "I have one last surprise for you," Tim said as he was helping me to unzip the back of my wedding dress.

  "Oh?" I said. "What is it?"

  "Something that you have wanted."

  "I already have everything that I want now," I said as I turned to kiss him.

  "You'll want this, too," he grinned. "It's something that we both wanted." He gently pulled me by the hand. "Come on."

  "But I didn't put any clothes on yet," I said.

  "I know," he said as he dropped his own clothes by the bedroom door.

  The two of us walked nakedly through the hallway and out the backdoor.

  "We're going to freeze," I said.

  But then, as soon as we got outside, I saw what he had done. We hurried across the blankets that were laid into a path until we got to the large pile of furs that was close to the fire.

  He must have asked Max to lay out the blankets and furs and to restoke the fire while we were saying goodbye to the guests. We got beneath the warm furs and lay facing each other with the crackling fire in the background. And just as we had wished for, there was light snow still falling. Every part of my body was drenched in a comforting and enthralling sensation.

  The furs and fire mixed with the heat of our bodies were so warm that it was toasty, and the cold ground beneath us with the bursting little icy snowflakes that fell against our skin gave shots of chill that kept our senses on the peak of wonder. The cold air wafted underneath the furs when we moved and then created a warm pocket when we wrapped them tightly back around us.

  "Do you remember when we talked about making love under the stars and beneath the furs while the snow was falling?" he asked.

  "How could I forget?" I smiled.

  "This is the final gift that the world is giving to us tonight on our wedding night," Tim said. "And even though we have given ourselves to each other many times before, tonight will be different."

  "How?" I asked curiously.

  Instead of answering me, Tim crawled over me, and as he kissed me, he pulled my body up to meet his. I couldn't put into words what was different this time, but he was right. There was something more intimate, more powerful, about the way that we made love that night than had been there at any other time.

  I couldn't put my finger on just one thing, and maybe it was the innate and passionate mix of everything that made it so much more potent than before. But tonight, making love against the snow and fire, beneath the stars and furs, as husband and wife, something happened. Something that felt as though it had a profound effect on things to come. Something that we wouldn't know about until weeks later.

  28

  *** (Brooke Continued)

  We were driving back to the house after work, and I was both nervous and excited to show Tim my ideas. I pulled out some sketches from my bag that I had asked Max to help me create. I knew the thoughts that I wanted down on paper, but he was a much better artist at drafting them and bringing them to life.

  "What is it you wanted to show me?" Tim asked as he drove us home.

  "I was thinking about maybe adding another container home to the house," I said.

  "Another one? What, it's not big enough for you already?" he teased.

  "Oh, it's plenty big," I said. "I just thought that a new wing with a new design might be cool."

  "What kind of new design?"

  I fumbled with the drawings in my hands because I was so nervous. I dropped several of them onto my lap on accident and had to flip through them and pick them all back up until I found the one sketch in particular that I'd been looking for."

  "Did Max help you draw all of those out?" he asked.

  "Yeah, some of them were ideas for the client homes for the new phase of the Spokane project, but a couple of them were things that I asked Max to help me with."

  "Okay, well, let's hear it. What kind of new wing do you want to add?" Tim asked.

  "I think it would be easier if I showed you instead of trying to explain it," I said. I reached to pull out the one particular sketch that I wanted him to see, and I held it up in front of us so that he didn't need to take his eyes off the road.

  Tim looked at the sketch, and he looked confused for a moment. Then he looked nervous; the excited kind of nervous like the feeling I had before our wedding.

  "Brooke," he asked as he continued to stare at the sketch without blinking. "What is that in the corner of that sketch?"

  "The bay window?" I asked.

  "No, the thing in front of the bay window."

  "Oh," I couldn't stop the smile from spreading across my face as I answered him. "That's the crib."

  Tim looked at the drawing, which was very clearly a sketch layout of a baby nursery, and smiled. I didn’t think that I had ever seen him cry, not like that, not with plump, happy tears that cascaded down over his cheeks and dripped off of his jaw.

  He pulled the car over to the side of the road and took the paper from me as he held it up with his shaking hands.

  "This is what you want to add on to the house?" he asked as he stared at the drawing as if it were the most precious thing he had ever seen.

  "Yes," I beamed.

  He turned and looked at me with his mouth hanging open and astonishment in his eyes. "You're pregnant?"

  I nodded my head and started to cry, too. "You were right," I said. "Our wedding night was more special than any other night, and you did give me a wonderful gift, our wonderful gift. You're not upset, are you?"

  There were so many tears running down his face that I couldn't tell if he was overcome by joy or completely freaked out.

  "Upset?" he asked. "Are you kidding? Brooke, this is the happiest thing ever."

  He kissed me as we sat parked on the side of the road and clasped the sketch of the nursery in his hand.

  29

  Epilogue (Tim)

  "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" Her little voice chimed like the chirping of birds as she ran across the yard and jumped up into my arms.

  "And what is my little princess up to today?" I asked.

  "Daddy, can we play? I want you to be the dragon, and mommy will be the queen, and I will be the princess."

  "Then who will slay the dragon if there is no knight?" I asked.

  "Daddy," Beatrice said as she rolled her little eyes at me. "You know that girls can slay dragons, too."

  "Oh, silly me," I said dramatically. "Of course, they can." I set her down and got on my hands and knees and roared like a dragon.

  Beatrice giggled into fits of laughter at the sound. "You make the best dragon sounds, Daddy," she sque
aled.

  I pretended to run toward Brooke and grabbed her in my arms—or dragon claws, as the case may be—and Brooke let out a little scream as if she were being eaten.

  "It's okay, Mommy!" Beatrice shouted as she climbed onto my back. "I will save you from this awful dragon!"

  "Hey now," I said, acting as though she had hurt my feelings because I knew it always garnered me a kiss.

  "Sorry, Daddy," she said as she gave me a little peck on my cheek. "You know I'm just playing."

  "I know," I grinned. Then I gave Brooke a kiss on her cheek, too, just because I wanted to.

  "Dragons don't kiss the queen," Beatrice said as if we obviously should have known better.

  "Why not?" Brooke said.

  "They just don't, Mommy." Just as she was about to slay the dragon and save the queen from certain death, a new threat emerged.

  "Roar!" the voice startled Beatrice, and I had to wrap my arm around my back to catch her before she fell off and tumbled onto the ground.

  "Uncle Max!" she giggled. "Are you a dragon, too?"

  "Yes, I'm a very fierce dragon, and I've come to take the queen for myself."

  "I'm not sure my husband will approve of that," Brooke teased.

  I gently set Brooke down onto the ground and pretended to play fight with Max. Beatrice laughed and watched and then slyly snuck her mother, the queen, away, thereby saving her from both dragons and securing the kingdom.

  "You are a very smart princess," I said to her after the game was done, and we were all laying around in the springtime grass, catching our breath again from an exuberant playtime.

  "Thank you," she said, feeling very proud of herself.

  I pulled Brooke next to me as I lay on my back against the ground and then wrapped Beatrice up between us. Max lay a little farther away; being a dragon really wore him out sometimes, and he was a little too stiff right afterward to move.