One and Only by Jenny Holiday (25)

Forty minutes later, Elise and Jay were married. The bride looked stunning in white tulle. Two sets of Pinterest-worthy groomsmen and their bridesmaids followed the happy couple down the aisle, impeccably dressed in tuxedos and mulberry—not plum—dresses.

Last came Xena and Hercules.

Jane was happy. She was so happy, it felt like she was taking up a huge amount of space, which was an altogether unfamiliar feeling. After a lifetime of minimizing her needs, of trying to be quiet and small and good, to suddenly be doing the opposite was…indescribable. It hurt a little, but it was a good kind of hurt, the kind you get when you stretch stiff muscles or when you blink against the blinding sunlight after a long time in the dark.

As the guests crossed the farm, walking from the lavender fields where the ceremony had taken place to the reception hall, Cameron held her hand. What an astonishing thing, to be holding a man’s hand. In public. Like it was normal.

What an astonishing thing to be loved.

Cameron snagged two flutes of champagne off the tray of a server standing in the entranceway and handed one to her, winking as he held up his glass in a silent toast.

She choked a little as they entered the reception room. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “That’s what the teapots were for!”

At the center of each table was an arrangement of gold-spray-painted teapots and vintage teacups, all planted with flowers.

They looked fabulous.

“Huh?” he said.

She threw back her head and laughed again. “Never mind,” she said.

Dinner took forever. The toasts took forever. The freaking couples’ dance took forever, though Cam did appreciate the hell out of being included this time.

“Now if all the single women in the room will come to the dance floor,” the DJ said, “it’s time for the bride to toss her bouquet.”

Jane, who had been soft and pliant in his arms during the couples’ dance, stiffened. He pulled away long enough to search her face, his protective instincts kicking in.

“I have to get out of here,” she whispered. Then she turned and hoofed it toward the door at the back of the reception hall, and, like a fish swimming against the current, she passed dozens of women going the opposite direction.

“What’s the matter?” he said, following, grabbing her hand, and digging his heels in to stop her progress. “What’s happened?” He allowed a hint of the panic that was rising in his chest to come through in the question. Had she changed her mind about him?

She turned, her beautiful face painted with a warm smile. “Nothing’s wrong. I just don’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity when she throws that bouquet.” Then the smile became a wry grin. “No offense.”

He smiled back. “None taken.” Though he had to admit that the idea of marrying Jane someday…well, certain images had taken root in his mind, images of his goddess in a white dress on a roller coaster, to be specific, and he was pretty sure it was going to be impossible to dislodge them. But there was no hurry.

“It’s just that I’m done with the whole wedding thing,” she said emphatically. “I need a break from the matrimonial scene. I’ve already, like, confronted a lifetime’s worth of emotional baggage. That’s enough drama for the day. If I catch that bouquet, it will be like some kind of—oof!”

The bouquet in question thunked against the back of Jane’s head.

Cameron’s arms came around her, searching her scalp to make sure she was okay. Her eyes were wide with shock, but she didn’t look injured. Once he was assured that she was well, he had to turn his attention to fighting the wave of laughter that was threatening to engulf him.

“Was that what I think it was?”

He nodded, even as the heat and brightness of a spotlight found them, and let the laughter overtake him.

“Oh, shit,” she whispered as the entire hall burst into applause.

Finally, finally, the party seemed like it was plateauing. Elise and Jay both seemed slightly buzzed and totally blissed out. Some people were dancing, and others were clustered in small groups, talking and laughing.

He couldn’t wait any longer.

He hadn’t really left her side all evening, feeling like a kid in a fairy tale, like if he lost sight of his goddess, she’d vanish forever.

But when she got up to go to the bathroom, he made his move: he had a quick word with his brother and then found a quiet corner and whipped out his phone. He might be stupidly, head-over-heels in love, but he was still the same person. And Jane, inexplicably, wanted that person.

The return text came immediately.

He could almost hear the sexy defiance in the word.

He was about to text back to ask why—he only had a single bed in his room, and hers had a double—when another one from her arrived.

Ah, yes. She was smart, his Janie. Then, a second later, one more text from her.

When he came crashing into the B&B lobby a couple minutes later, Jane was already on the bottom landing of the stairs. She paused when she heard him enter, frozen like she’d been caught in the act of doing something bad.

He paused, too, staring at her from across the lobby, his heart in his throat. Jane. His Jane.

She smiled a coy smile, full of wicked intentions, and it was a jolt to his system. He crossed quickly over to her, cursing the chairs and sofas he had to walk around. When he reached her, he slapped her ass. “Move.”

Thirty seconds later, he was clawing at her Xena breastplate, desperate to get it off, as they fell into his room. “I used to think these metal tits were sexy as hell,” he growled.

“But not anymore?” she panted as she turned, showing him the ties at the sides that fastened the front and back of the armor together.

He started working the knots loose. “No. Now I want it on the floor.”

Finally, he got her hardware off, and she helped him with clothing underneath it, then bent to remove her boots.

When she stood back up she was finally, gloriously naked. And she was…

“Mine,” he said.

“Yes,” she answered immediately, sliding her hands inside the scrap of fabric that passed for a shirt on his costume, and sliding it off his shoulders. Her hands on his skin were like brands. He’d claimed her just now as his, but the truth was she owned him.

He shoved out of his pants and underwear and fell to his knees in front of her, wrapping his arms around her waist and burying his nose between her legs. “Mine,” he said again, not caring that he sounded like a goddamned caveman.

She yanked him to his feet, grabbed his dick, and said, “Mine.”

“Yes,” he agreed on a groan, his surrender as easy and absolute as the desire that overtook him. “Yours.”

As if to demonstrate her claim, she bit him on the shoulder. But then, as if to demonstrate his claim, she wound her arms around his neck and hitched herself up, wrapping her legs around him.

He carried her over to the dresser, nodded at the toiletries bag on top of it, and said, “Condom.” She giggled and grabbed one. When they reached the bed, he laid back on it, pulling her on top of him so she was straddling him.

She tore open the condom, and because she somehow knew he was about to object, she said, “Fast now; slow later.”

He grinned. The concept of “later.” The idea that there would be more. Endless opportunities to love this woman. “Yeah,” he groaned as she unrolled the condom onto him and kneeled up over him. Floating his hand up between her legs, he found her clit with two fingers. She rolled her hips against his hand, still on her knees, still hovering over him. “Come on, baby, ride me,” he said.

And she did.

“Oh my God!” Jane sat bolt upright when she was awakened by the sound of someone coming into her room.

No, into Cameron’s room. She was in Cameron’s room.

“Oh my God,” she said again—but this time it was tinged with disbelief—when her sleep-addled brain caught up to the enormity of what had happened. She was in Cameron’s room. He loved her. She was pretty sure he was her boyfriend.

And Elise’s stupid bouquet was lying on the top of his dresser.

She didn’t have time to analyze the weird mixture of exhilaration and fear that bouquet inspired—it was like riding a roller coaster, somehow—because Cameron was shedding his clothes. He must have gotten dressed and gone out for some reason. She stopped wondering what that reason might be when he pulled off his T-shirt, causing predictable things to happen between her legs. Would she ever get tired of looking at that muscular, inked chest? Once he was naked, he prowled toward her looking like he wanted to eat her for breakfast.

Breakfast. As hard as it was to tear her eyes from him, she looked around. Sunlight was streaming through a crack in the curtains.

“Oh my God!” she cried one final time, but this time the dominant emotion was panic. “What time is it? We have to go to the breakfast!”

He landed on the bed as she tried to get up. Grabbing her, he pulled her onto his body so she was lying on top of him, but his arms banded around her, rendering her immobile. He was hard between her legs. “We missed the breakfast. It’s eleven.”

“Oh, no!” she wailed, even as her hips, almost against her will, rocked against his.

“That’s what happens when you stay up all night fucking,” he said, grabbing her ass with both hands and grinding himself against the wetness between her legs. “Awww, fuck, you feel good.”

She moaned, suffused with happiness so strong it was like she was high. She didn’t want to go to breakfast. She didn’t want to do the right, expected, responsible thing.

“If you want to go downstairs, though, let’s do it,” said Cameron, stilling his movements but not letting go of her. “Though I ran into Jay and Elise, and they don’t expect us to make an appearance anytime soon. I told them we were doing two very important things up here.”

Her face heated, and she swatted his shoulder. “You did not.” It wasn’t like everyone didn’t know what was happening, but it was hard to shed a lifetime of inhibition.

“I did indeed. Number one, you need to help me look at a course catalog. That’s included in your babysitting services, right?”

She grinned. “So you are going back to school?”

“Yep. There’s a program at the University of Toronto that caters to non-traditional students who are older.”

“Are you sure there’s no way to make things right with the army? Did you have a lawyer at your trial? I’m sure Wendy would—”

He shook his head. “The army was about growing up, getting myself out of the rut I was in. It played its role. I’m thinking night school. Part-time—I don’t know if I have it in me to be a full-time student. Jay is going to hook me up with this foundation that does networking and career counseling for former military. I figure I can get a job and take a few classes at a time, get my feet wet.”

She was so proud of him she could bust.

“And Elise has gotten this crackpot idea that I should move into Jay’s condo. They were going to sell it, but now she’s talking investment property. She wants to renovate it.” He rolled his eyes.

Jane laughed. “She is going to need another project now that the wedding is over.”

He smiled. “I think it will be great, actually. Mind you, I plan on wearing out my welcome at your house, but I don’t want to crowd you.”

A flash of uncertainty flared in his beautiful blue eyes. Jane squeezed him as tightly as she could with her arms and legs and whispered, “Crowd me, crowd me.”

He twisted them so she was flat on her back and kissed her deeply, working his tongue against the inside of her mouth until her belly had gone molten. Then he stopped suddenly and pulled his whole body away from her. She cried out, reaching her arms up to try to hold him, but he was already off the bed.

“I forgot,” he said, moving to where a bag rested on the floor by the door. “I said we were doing two important things up here. The course catalog was only the first item on this morning’s agenda.”

“Yeah,” she said, “and I’m pretty sure you just rudely interrupted the second.”

He shot her a wicked grin as he opened the bag and removed a Styrofoam container. “Nope. The second thing is French fries.”

“What?”

“I promised you French fries the morning after the wedding, did I not? I went back to that diner and got a large order, extra grease.”

He opened the container. They weren’t just fries. On top of the golden potatoes lay a pair of poached eggs generously slathered with hollandaise sauce.

“And eggs Benedict,” he said, winking.

Tears rushed into her eyes. There was nothing he could give her—no jewels, no flowers, no expensive gift—that would be more perfect than this. She sat up and held her arms out to him, and he came, setting the food on the bed between them. He dipped a fry into the hollandaise and fed it to her.

“Oh my God,” she groaned, falling back on her highly unoriginal refrain, which had apparently become the catchphrase of the morning. “These are so good.”

“Eat up,” he said. “You need to keep your strength up.”

“And why is that?”

“Because I counted wrong.”

She furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

He stood. She looked up at him, her strong, beautiful, naked man, the man who somehow knew exactly what she needed, even when she didn’t.

“You were right,” he said again, looking her up and down like she was the box of French fries. “We actually have one more really, really important thing to do.” He walked over to the dresser where the condoms were.

Her whole body started tingling, but she made a feeble protest anyway. “I really should go and make sure everything is okay. I can’t abandon Elise.” He stalked toward her, and when he arrived, he took the box of fries from her and set it aside. “I’m a bridesmaid,” she added. “I’m supposed to be, like…doing important things. Important jobs.” But then, she had a wild, radical thought. What if she stopped? What if she let her adult friends take care of themselves?

It was a strange, but not unpleasant notion. One she could get used to, actually.

“You are doing an important job,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow at him.

“You’re babysitting the groom’s brother.”