13. Lacie
LACIE
I didn’t know how long I sat in the inn’s dining area, but it was long enough for several clusters of guests to come in and out, to eat and leave again. For the hotel staff to clear the tables those guests left behind. For the sky to darken outside and a fresh round of snow to drift in the darkness.
The handsome chef strolled out of the kitchen in his white apron and pulled the shades closed over the windows. Festive music played on the overhead speaker system, and more guests filed in until the dining room was half full.
Utensils clanked. Dishes were served. The delightful aromas of seasoned chicken and freshly baked bread swarmed in the air, and I blinked to find Jared slipping into the chair beside me.
His hands were fidgety, fisting and flattening against the table. His knee bounced, shaking the tablecloth.
“How long have you been here?” he asked.
I blinked from my afternoon-long stupor.
“Long enough,” I said.
I nearly asked if something was bothering him, but that was a stupid question. Because something clearly was.
And plainly, it had to do with the psychotic circumstances in which we found ourselves.
“You hungry?” Jared gestured to the waiter, getting his attention.
The man approached our table and offered us menus.
I ordered in a daze, selecting the prime rib and mashed potatoes. Jared ordered a ribeye and steamed vegetables, and we spoke while we waited for their dinner.
“I take it you got another room?” Jared said. “I’m sorry for accusing you earlier. I know you and I like our little jokes, but this would be going a bit far.”
“Yeah,” I said, staring at my red-manicured fingernails with traces of gold along the tips. “It would. I didn’t plan this, Jare.”
“I didn’t either.”
I exhaled. It was nice talking to him again. Just talking. Hearing each other out.
I looked back on my behavior earlier with a grimace. I never was very good at keeping my temper. Unlike the scheduling habits I’d worked to develop, keeping my cool when things went upside-down was still a work-in-progress.
“And I’m sorry for getting so upset, too.” I made a mental note to apologize to Junie as well.
I never should have snapped at the kind receptionist the way I had. Something in me had broken.
In retrospect, I felt somehow responsible for the mix-up.
Jared hadn’t even wanted to come here in the first place. He’d expressed concern about the appearance of us together giving others the wrong impression.
But he’d come for me. The last thing I wanted to do was to make this trip any harder for him than it already was. Though, something told me that my outlandish behavior had done exactly that.
I had several questions to ask Junie. Magic was rumored to exist here at Harper’s Inn, but I’d never thought the inn would go so far as to create scenarios to make their guests think the magic was legit.
The website really should delineate just what kind of trickery people who came here would be facing so they could have the cards all laid out for them while making decisions about staying or not. I supposed that fact was pointless now.
“So what’s bothering you?” he asked.
“I called my mom,” I said.
“You feel better now?”
“Not really.”
“That’s unusual. What happened?”
I linked my fingers together and leaned toward him, wishing I could lay my head on his shoulder. Instead, I muttered low so the surrounding guests couldn’t overhear.
“Even our parents think we’re married, Jared.”
He tucked his lips into his teeth and stared at my hands. “I know.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. I called my mom, too. She asked about our honeymoon.”
“My mom did the same thing!”
“I told her she was deluded, but she insisted we’d just gotten married. In fact, she gushed about how the plans were everything she and your mom had hoped for since we were babies.”
“Sounds just like my mom.” Talk about lifelong besties.
“So I hung up and checked social media.”
Smart. I hadn’t thought of that. “And?”
He swiped his phone, tapped a few things, and then offered his phone to me. And the sight was nothing like it usually was.
His social media profile displayed adorable pictures of the two of us outside of a church in Fort Worth. Jared looked completely gorgeous in his tux, with his hair tousled, his skin glowing, his face flawless. He had an arm around a smiling me.
Me.
I was in his pictures. His wedding pictures.
The Lacie in the picture wore the same princess dress I’d planned on wearing with Wyatt, from the slimming waistline to its voluptuous skirt, to the way my auburn hair piled enticingly on my head.
My heart began to pound, but I couldn’t look away.
Another showed us facing each other, hands interlaced at our sides, foreheads touching, expressions lost in complete devotion.
A few images were selfies of us in the car, presumably before or after the ceremony, making silly faces or flashing unstaged smiles.
And there were pictures of us kissing. Kissing. Kissing. Kissing.
Lips lost in one another, eyes closed, arms securing me to him and him to me.
My heart sprinted in my chest. I devoured the look of us together—hands knitted, lips locked, bodies touching.
Heat pooled in my chest and coursed down my legs. The sight played a minuet on my subconscious. I’d seen a lot of joyfully married couples in my line of work, but the bliss radiating from both Jared and me in every picture could have rivaled them all.
“We look?—”
“Amazing.”
“Happy.”
“Blissful.”
“Perfect together.”
“You’re a knockout in that dress.”
“You don’t look so bad yourself.”
His gaze slid to mine, and the moment stretched, filling with anticipation and pumping with adrenaline like a skydiver on the brink of leaping from the plane. His pupils dilated, his eyes filling with desire as they took in the shape of my mouth.
My mouth went dry. My hands tingled. My lungs throbbed, grasping for air. All at once, every part of me needed to be touching him. I burned with longing, with the pull enticing me to press my lips to his.
I’d always thought Jared was good-looking, but the thoughts were always in the way I knew my brother, Tyrel, was handsome. Knowledge-only. No feelings had ever been involved in that intake of intelligence.
Now, though…
Desire flared, fed by the memory of the pictures we’d just seen. We’d obviously kissed then.
Would it be so bad to do it now?
I swallowed and cleared my throat. “Looks like we’re enjoying that kiss.”
“Yeah.”
We were frozen in the moment, and I found myself thinking thoughts I hadn’t had in years. Thoughts that had been popping up since he’d agreed to come with me on this trip.
What would it be like to marry Jared? To have my dad walk me down the aisle just like Mom said, to dress like this and be deliriously, unfakably happy with pictures and kisses and a love like this?
“I wish I remembered this moment,” I said softly, pointing to the pictures.
This was everything I’d ever wanted. How could I have ever thought I could live without Jared in my life? How could I have ever imagined marrying anyone but him?
Jared’s chair scraped the floor. He pushed away from the table so suddenly, the tablecloth caught and nearly toppled our plates to the floor.
I braced my hands on my thighs. “What are you doing?”
His large, warm hand grasped mine. “Getting out of here,” he said, barely giving me time to make it to my feet before he towed me out to the hall and up the stairs.
He fumbled with the key, worked it into the lock, and whisked me inside the way he might have done if this were our actual honeymoon.
The door barely closed before I found myself clasped to his chest, breathing in his scent, feeling the heat of his body against mine, his arms securing me to him.
My heart scarcely had time to beat. Lightness fluttered along with the rush of heady, breathless anticipation.
“Jared—what?—”
“If you don’t want me to do this, you’d better say as much now,” he growled.
His eyes burnished with cinders. With intensity and desire.
I was putty. I was molten. I barely registered the offer to withdraw before he took my lack of response as agreement and plunged his mouth over mine.