Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 93578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 468(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 468(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
“Thanks.”
He stood there for a moment, staring at the blue dress I wore, like maybe he was picturing it coming off before my shower.
Which gave me an idea.
“Would you mind?” I turned around and presented my back. “It’s hard for me to get this unzipped on my own.”
“Oh. Sure.” He dumped the clothing on the bed again and came up behind me.
I felt his hands at the back of my neck, making my pulse quicken. Slowly, he slid the zipper down, pausing at my bra line. A few seconds passed.
I held my breath, fighting the impulse to fill the silence with words that would ease the tension. That’s good enough. I can take it from here. Thanks for the help.
Instead, I waited to see what he would do.
Then I heard the sound of the zipper again as he lowered it to my waist, his knuckles grazing my spine all the way down. My legs tingled.
Hutton paused, his fingers lingering on my tailbone. “Is that good?”
“Perfect. Thank you.”
“No problem.” Stepping back, he gathered up the pile of clothing on the bed and left the room, leaving me with a smile on my face and a galloping heart.
After closing the door behind him, I looked at my suitcase and the empty dresser drawers. Did this mean he actually wanted to share his bedroom with me?
Or was it all part of the act?
“I just can’t believe it.” Frannie’s eyes misted up again, even though she’d already cried twice—once when she and my dad had arrived, once during the appetizers on the deck, and now she was tearing up over her tacos. Seated across from me at the kitchen table, she dabbed at her eyes with her napkin.
“Jeez, Mom. Again?” Emmeline, seated at the island with Audrey, Hallie, and Luna, shook her head. “It’s not sad.”
“I know, but . . .” Frannie took a breath and smiled at me, her eyes glassy. “It’s overwhelming, how happy I feel about it.”
“And how sudden it was,” added my dad, who was next to her.
I smiled at them, trying not to feel bad. “It was sudden. I get it.”
“But it’s not like we didn’t all suspect,” gloated Winnie. She was seated next to our dad, with Dex at the end of the table nearest her. “You should have seen them back in high school,” she said to him. “It was obvious this was how it was going to turn out.”
“It’s cool that you were friends for so long,” Dex said.
“So how did you go from just friends to engaged so quickly?” Winnie asked. “Like when did it happen?”
On my left, Hutton grabbed his beer. To my right, at the other end of the table, Millie picked up her wine and took a big swallow. I wasn’t sure which of them was more nervous.
“Well,” I said, launching into the explanation Hutton and I had agreed on as we prepared dinner, “you guys know we’ve been close since we were twelve. And even when we’d go for a while without seeing each other, we were always in touch. In March, when Hutton came home for a visit, we really reconnected. Then when he moved back in May, we started spending more time together.”
“So it really wasn’t sudden at all,” Winnie said with a laugh.
“You realized what you’d been looking for was right there,” Frannie said, blinking back tears again.
“Just like in a song,” Audrey gushed. “Or a movie.”
“Or a storybook,” said Hallie. “Except not a fairy tale, because Felicity wasn’t, like, a servant or a mermaid.”
“Or in a sleep like death,” said Luna. “Or stuck in a tower.”
“Good thing, because she just chopped all her hair off. There wouldn’t have been anything for a prince to climb.” The two girls giggled at Hallie’s joke, and the twins joined in.
“At least you got to be a prince,” Dex said to Hutton. “When they put me in a story, I’m an ogre.”
“Are you going to have a big wedding?” asked Audrey.
“No,” I said firmly. “We’d like something very intimate at Cloverleigh Farms. Millie and I are working together on a date.” I gave my older sister a look, silently begging her to corroborate.
“Yes,” she said. “We’ll work it out.”
“But Cloverleigh must be totally booked for the season,” Frannie said with concern.
“On weekends, the barn is booked up, yes,” Millie said. “But since their event is small, we might be able to accommodate them somewhere else on the property.”
“We could close down the bar and restaurant on a Sunday evening,” Frannie said. “We’ve done that for private events before.”
“Sure,” said my dad.
“We know this is last minute, and we apologize,” I said to them both.
“No need.” My dad’s eyes met mine. He wasn’t an outwardly emotional guy—he was a Marine, after all—but the long, tight, bear hug he’d given me when he arrived told me how he felt. “We’ll make it work. Nothing is more important.”