Chapter Forty-Nine Lee
Chapter Forty-Nine
Lee
‘What are you doing?’ I gasp, and I flail about, until Nico jumps up and carefully lifts me down from the ladder, my overlong skirts tangled around us both.
‘I thought it would be romantic,’ he says ruefully. ‘But I should have remembered you’d be wearing impractical shoes.’
‘Forget my shoes!’ I hiss. ‘What… what were you just doing?’
He rubs a hand over his jaw. ‘Well, I get the impression Cynthie planned for me to do it in the entrance hall, but I think this is a bit more us, don’t you?’
‘I honestly don’t understand anything that’s happening tonight,’ I say slowly.
‘Right,’ he agrees, and he seems nervous. ‘Let me start again.’
‘Okay.’
He takes my hand in his and there’s so much tenderness in his face that it almost hurts to look at it.
‘Last year,’ he says, ‘when I met Phoebe, it changed me. I felt like all the molecules in my body had rearranged themselves and I was something different, something new. I was her dad, and I was scared but I’d never been happier about anything.
It was like my entire world shifted in that moment and nothing would ever be the same. ’
He takes a deep breath. ‘And then three weeks ago it happened again… when we stood outside this building and you fell into my arms. One moment, a single instant, and my life changed for ever. I changed for ever. I don’t know what games the universe was playing when we got married in Vegas, but I know that you were meant to be my wife.
That I was meant to be your husband. I know it with every fibre of my being.
’ He keeps hold of my hand, and in his other he holds the engagement ring, the diamonds glinting in the soft light.
‘Marry me, Lee. Not by accident, do it on purpose. Marry me like you mean it.’
I think he’s smiling, but honestly, it’s hard to tell through my tears. He brushes his thumbs tenderly under my eyes, and I wonder if it’s possible to experience so much happiness that you simply burst into a million shiny pieces.
He looks down at me, cradling my face in his hands as my whole body collapses against him. ‘Well?’ he says, and I can feel my ring in his hand, pressing against my skin. ‘Are you going to keep me waiting for an answer?’
I laugh, a watery sound. ‘You built me a book ladder,’ I manage. ‘Of course I’ll marry you. Or stay married to you, or whatever we’re doing.’
He slips the ring onto my finger and then he’s kissing me, and I’m kissing him, and he lifts me up off the floor, his arm clasped around my waist, my feet kicked in the air like the romantic heroine I know I am.
‘Okay,’ I say when we eventually untangle ourselves, ‘I actually have some news, too.’
His eyebrows lift. ‘So you did figure it out?’
‘Figure what out?’ I ask, but I’m too impatient to wait for a reply. ‘Gran’s moving here,’ I blurt.
He pauses. ‘What?’
‘Well, not here, or at least not all the time, but she’s going to be here with us or in LA with Jack. I can stay.’
I watch him absorb the words, watch so many emotions pass across his face until he settles on one: joy. Fierce, absolute joy. ‘You can stay,’ he says, his forehead resting against mine. ‘You can stay,’ he breathes it like a mantra.
‘If you want me to,’ I tease.
The answer I get is another kiss, a soft kiss that melts into something deeper, sweeter. My hands press to his jaw and I pepper kisses everywhere I can reach and he laughs, a sound of such pure happiness that I want to get drunk on it.
‘We’d better go downstairs,’ Nico says when we finally break apart, attempting to straighten his bow tie. ‘They’ll all be wondering what’s keeping us.’
I pout, play with one of the buttons on his shirt. ‘No one will even notice we’re missing. Let’s stay up here for a bit longer.’ I trail my lips across his jaw.
‘I absolutely think they will notice,’ he says, a strange note in his voice.
I step back so that I can look at him properly. ‘What do you mean by that?’ I ask, suspicious.
He grins down at me, his eyes sparkling with mischief. ‘I mean that the whole town is downstairs waiting for us to get married.’
My mouth drops open. ‘What?’
He laughs. ‘Daisy,’ he gestures towards me. ‘You really didn’t notice? You’re wearing a wedding dress.’
I look down at the beautiful gown. ‘No. It’s not like it’s a white dress. It’s cream. Gran says it brings out the gold in my hair.’
‘Baby,’ he brushes the backs of his fingers across my cheek, his smile wide, ‘it has a train.’
‘It does not,’ I say indignantly. ‘It’s just a bit too long because Cynthie is taller than me.’ Although, now that he says it, I suppose the length is a bit train like. A very, very short train that a person could easily miss.
‘I could be wrong,’ he shrugs, ‘but weren’t Tara and Cynthie wearing matching bridesmaid’s dresses when they arrived?’
‘I—’ I open my mouth. ‘They were different colours. The necklines weren’t the same.’
‘I’m wearing your grandfather’s cufflinks,’ he says, pulling up his sleeves. ‘Your brother cried when he gave them to me.’
‘What?’
‘Well, he said it was sawdust, but I think we all know there’s not a speck of the stuff in here.’
‘Oh my god.’ My hands go to my earrings. ‘Gran’s earrings. Something borrowed, something blue.’
‘And I don’t know if you noticed but it’s like a florist’s shop exploded downstairs. I’m pretty sure there’s a string quartet down there as well. Possibly some doves. They might have run away with things a bit… I can only assume there was a town meeting involved.’
They played me, I realise. They all played me like a fiddle.
Especially Cynthie, making me feel like I’d be a monster not to wear her too-long, photo-shoot-reject dress, which I now realise is obviously couture bridal wear.
I suppose the woman is one of the greatest actors of her generation so it was hardly a fair fight, but still.
‘They threw us a secret wedding?’ I murmur. It finally sinks in. ‘The whole town threw us a secret wedding!’
‘Welcome to where I was about an hour ago.’ Nico nods. ‘And you know, if this isn’t what you want then I get it. It’s a lot. I know about a dozen different ways we can sneak out of here and drive off into the sunset. We could head straight back to Vegas, the two of us.’
He grins, and every time I think I can’t fall any more in love with him, it happens all over again.
‘What do you think?’ I ask.
‘I think you look beautiful. I think everyone we love is downstairs. I’d marry you right now, or any other day, anywhere, any way you want.’
‘Okay,’ I say, slipping my hand in his, the decision as easy as that. ‘Let’s do it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Oh yes,’ I smile up at my husband, at the man I’ve loved for as long as I can remember, ‘I’m sure.’
I wonder if there’s ever an end to this, a floor or a ceiling to how much love I can hold for him, or if it’s just something that spins on forever, infinite.
I suppose I have a whole lifetime to find out.