Chapter Eleven
“The bride says she wants to get out of here,” Kolby told Charity. “Says she’s sick of kissing relatives and wants to start kissing her, quote, hottie husband, unquote.”
“I don’t blame her. Her husband is hot.”
Kolby narrowed his eyes at her while trying to suppress the grin dancing across his lips.
“What?” she said. “I’m female, alive and have two functioning eyes. It’s just fact he’s hot. And the bride’s pretty as a peach.” She glanced down at her phone to check the time.
“Your Southern roots are showing,” Kolby said, hoisting his tripod over his shoulder.
She waved a hand at him. “Okay, they’ve cut the cake, danced and been toasted. If they want to leave, I can facilitate that. Where did you leave them?”
“By the reflecting pool. Groom wanted a few pics there. Come on.”
They found the happy couple where he’d left them.
From the degree and severity of the tonsil hockey playing between them, Charity knew she had to usher them out of their reception quicker than she’d surmised. Another minute and their wedding attire was going to be off and chucked into the pool.
After clearing her throat twice, they finally came up for air and faced her.
“Had enough of the reception?” Charity asked.
“Yes,” they both replied, then giggled.
“Okay, just to make sure. There’s nothing else you guys want to do? Done with photos? Done with visiting?”
“We just want to start the honeymoon,” the groom said.
“Okay, here’s what we’ll do.”
Fifteen minutes later, after making the announcement to the reception crowd of friends and family, Charity and Kolby drove the couple to their private cottage – one that the groom himself had insisted on – at the back end of the hotel property.
While Charity unlocked the door to the cottage, the groom hoisted his bride up in his arms, turned with her and grinned to a waiting Kolby, who snapped away.
“Okay, kids,” Kolby said, lowering his camera. “You are officially done.”
The groom hooted and all but ran through the cottage door, the bride kicking it closed with a white stilettoed shoe.
Back in the golf cart, Kolby laughed. “Talk about anticipation.”
“My Granny Quinlan calls that Carly Simon-itis.” She gave him a side eye, adding, “You know? ‘Cuz of her song?”
“I get it, Charity. Just because I like country doesn’t mean I know nothing else about music.”
“Just checking to make sure you got the reference. Okay. Let’s head back and see if the parents need anything or want any more photos.”
“I’ve already done all the posed family shots. Anything now will just be requests or candids.”
“Which are sometimes the pictures people like the best.”
He nodded.
An hour later, they said their goodnights to the still-dancing guests.
“We'll get some morning after shots tomorrow,” Kolby said when they were back at their cottage. He’d pulled two bottled waters from the fridge and handed one to her.
“Thanks.” Charity slid down on the sofa, kicked out of her shoes and then emitted a sigh of thanks to the Lord above that came from deep down in her soul. And the bottoms of her feet.
Kolby laughed and plopped down on the opposite side of the sofa.
“Why do you wear those things if your feet hurt when you do?”
She graced him with a speaking glance, then flexed her toes. “Spoken like a true clueless man.”
He pointed to himself, the water bottle lifted to his lips. Before drinking he said, “Card-carrying member.”
Headache be damned, she rolled her eyes then extended her toes, feeling the stretch all the way to her spine. The tightness in her calves had a quick hiss blowing from between her teeth.
“Here.” Kolby put the bottle down on the table next to him. He made a come hither motion with his fingers.
“What?”
He swept his fingers again. “Haul’em over, sweetheart. I’m a champion foot rubber. Just ask my mother.”
Horror flooded her. There was no way – no way on God’s green earth. Hell would freeze and Lucifer would be a cherry-flavored popsicle before she’d let him touch her feet. Or any other part of her.
“You’re not getting in a country mile of my feet, O’Brian.”
That damn smirk. “Your Southern’s showing again. Yor not gettin’ in a country myyyle of m’feet, O’Brian. So adorable.”
Why did his imitation of her accent make her want to laugh instead of dropkick him?
Before she could reply, he stretched over, wrapped a meaty hand around one of her ankles and gently tugged it to his lap.
She had to shift her butt so her body faced him with the turn, otherwise her leg would be at an awkward angle.
The notion she’d resemble one of her mom’s Thanksgiving spatchcock turkeys ran briefly through her mind.
The image flew the moment he pressed his thumb into her arch.
“Oh, sweet baby Jesus and the three wise men!”
Her eyes involuntarily closed as his thumb pressed the one spot that had been aching for hours, relieving the area of all the pain spearing through it.
One hand clawed the sofa-back as the other sought purchase on the cushion underneath her.
With no will to prevent it, her butt lifted from the sofa as Kolby pressed and then released her foot’s arch.
And then did it again.
“Extend your toes for me,” he said as he cradled it.
She did.
He wrapped his hand around them and pushed them backward. An immediate release spread through her calf akin to when her Sensei ran her through a series of stretches prior to a workout.
“That feels...” She moaned when he cupped her ankle and massaged it between his thumb and first two fingers.
“You’ve got such pretty feet,” he said. “Girly, with the bright red toenail polish.”
Her eyes opened to find him staring down at the foot he held in his hands as if it were a rare and precious artifact.
He blinked, then shifted his gaze to her face, that grin she wanted desperately to kiss off it lifting in the corners of his mouth.
“It’s kinda hot that this pretty little foot could render me unconscious with one well-aimed kick. ”
“More than just knock you out,” she declared. “I know four kicks that could stop your heart cold if aimed at the perfect spot.”
The grin grew. “Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase my feet are killing me.”
The joke was horrible but that didn’t prevent her from finding the funny behind it, so she laughed. In the next second, she flung her head back and groaned when his thumb dug into her arch again.
“Now that’s a sound every man likes to hear a woman make.”
She ignored him and the implication of that statement and zeroed in on the pleasure shooting up her leg.
“Where did you learn to do this?” she asked as his nimble fingers continued working on her ankle and the sole of her foot. “Do you have a secret life we all don’t know about working in a massage parlor?”
“Nothing so sordid. My mom was a waitress. Sometimes she’d work two shifts and by the time she dragged home, her feet were a mess and all she did was sit and cry from the pain.
I did an internet search at the library in school one day and found some foot massage techniques.
When I used them on her, she was so thankful her tears were now from relief. She's still a fan of my foot rubs.”
That was the most information he’d ever given her about his past. Mom a waitress, he figuring how to help her.
He hadn’t mentioned a father, and she didn’t feel comfortable asking if one had been in the picture, so she said, simply, “I can see why. You’re really good at this.
Like, second career as a foot masseuse good. ”
“I’m happy taking pictures,” he said, easily. “Okay. Other one.” He rested the foot he’d been working on across his lap and reached for her opposite leg.
This time she didn’t hesitate, instead willfully offering her foot up to his skillful hands.
From the first press of his thumb against her arch, she let her mind go blank and just reveled in the exquisite feel of her feet being pampered.
The money she put aside every month for a pedicure and accompanying foot massage was the one simple indulgence she granted herself.
Her budget stretched only so far, especially since she was trying to save up to buy a house, but the monthly self-care ritual went a long way in helping relieve the stress she carried around every day in her body.
Plus, the vigorous workouts and katas she had to do to keep up with her karate studies made her feet ache hours after she’d completed them.
But the cost of those monthly sessions was worth it.
Kolby’s skill was so much better than the girl she paid to massage her feet every four weeks, though.
Infinitely better.
And much more...intimate.
Kolby’s hand snaked up her ankle to palm her calf.
“You’ve got incredible muscle definition,” he said, his hand gliding up and down, not pressing, but simply touching.
And driving her insane.
When God made Kolby, she mused, He gave him the hands of a magician, because there was no other way to explain how he’d mesmerized her with his touch.
Charity considered herself fairly resistant to the seductive tendencies of the male species.
She’d had enough practice with the myriad of jerks she’d dated over the years.
She’d protected her heart from ever falling for a single one of them.
But something about Kolby made all her self-protective barriers disintegrate, opening her up to possibilities, ideas, and desires.
“Twenty-five years of karate will do that,” she eked out.
He chuckled and went back to working on her ankle. “I gotta tell ya, I love the drawl that keeps popping out when you don’t think about it. Why do you mask it?”
“The reasons are many, but the biggest one,” she said, settling her butt back down on the couch and leaning back into the side pillow while his hand worked her ankle, “is that people tend to think you’re a stupid hick when they first hear it. I learned that pretty quick when I got to college.”
“Where’d you go?”