Thirteen
Leighton hadn’t slept one lousy wink and the morning was a blur of coffee and robes and makeup and girlfriends and her mother delicately crying so as not to screw up her false eyelashes. She kept thinking about her parents, and Axl’s parents, and Bill and Soon-ja and the sanctity of marriage.
Of the fact that on the other side of town, in a stone church, Winnie was marrying Todd, some of the wind taken out of her sails.
Bill’s property was stunning. Her team had set up a gorgeous tent with floral chandeliers and boundless pink accents. Servers had handed guests a glass of champagne upon arrival. It was perfect. Exactly what she would want if she were really getting married.
Which she wasn’t.
Yet she was standing in a gown that she freaking loved, if she were honest, and her grandmother’s lace veil from Germany that her father had surprised her with. She’d had the very awkward moment where she had had to tell her father she did not want him to walk her down the aisle because it was essentially a single-file arch and aisle. The real reason being she didn’t want to waste that special moment on a fake ceremony. If and when she did get married, she wanted to hang on to her father’s arm and see his joy.
She thought, quite simply, she might throw up.
There were cameras everywhere, which further contributed to the feeling that this was just a big production. Which it was.
Yet the rose archway was in front of her and she was frozen. She could not bring herself to step through Soon-ja’s flowers and into a greenhouse only to be a faker.
She stood there and stood there. She paced a little.
The music started twice. She could hear the guests starting to murmur and shuffle restlessly.
Forcing herself forward, she took three steps and spotted Axl at the front of the greenhouse. She froze again, actually bumping into Jackson, who had his camera in her face. He lowered it.
Are you okay? He mouthed.
She shook her head.
She turned, planning to retreat and get the heck out of there but there was staff and two cameramen crawling all over the entrance to the arch. Feeling trapped, like she was either going to descend into a full-blown panic attack or vomit in the grass, she did the only thing she could.
Leighton lifted her skirt and took off up the aisle.
Standing at the makeshift altar waiting for Leighton was the scariest thing Axl had ever done besides combat. He was sweating bullets and feeling shit he had no business feeling.
“Are you okay?” Rick asked him, standing beside him. Rick stepped slightly in front of Axl to block him from the guests’ watchful eyes. “You don’t have to do this, buddy. I can spin a story while you slip out the front.”
“I don’t know what’s going on with me, man,” he told Rick. “But I feel like maybe there’s more to this than I thought.” He rubbed his jaw and said, “There’s just something about Leighton. I just think… I don’t know. I feel like I need to go talk to her.”
To say what, he had no idea. But he needed to see her.
Rick’s eyebrows shot up. “Dude, you’re in love with her, aren’t you?”
That took him aback. “What? No. Of course not.” They’d known each other a week. It was ridiculous. He didn’t fall in love that easily.
No one fell in love that easily. That was for movies and reality TV. Not life.
Yet when he glanced behind Rick and saw Leighton standing under the arch of roses, looking absolutely stunning from head to toe, he doubted everything he’d ever known about love and relationships and his future.
Holy shit, she was beautiful.
And if he wasn’t in love with her now, he sure in the hell could be soon.
She was wearing a form-fitting dress that showed off all her curves to advantage, nipping in at the waist and hugging her hips. It was sparkling and bridal and yep, there was cleavage. All the cleavage in the world. The veil on her head made her look like an angel. A vision in white, surrounded by pink flowers.
His bride.
For a second he seriously could not breathe.
They weren’t just playing with fire here, they were juggling with dynamite.
Because everything about this was so wrong and so right and so completely ass backwards that he didn’t know how he could do this without talking to Leighton first and telling her everything that was running through his head.
He was about to start down the aisle to her, to say what, he had no idea.
But Leighton beat him to the punch. She picked up her skirt with one hand and started running. Stunned, he just watched her.
“What the hell is she doing?” Rick asked, bewildered.
The guests were all giving gasps and exclamations. Jackson was running after her, camera up, as were two other guys behind him left and right. Leighton tossed her bouquet of flowers into her mother’s lap as she ran up to him.
And right past him.
What the fuck was going on?
Axl reached out and grabbed Leighton by the arm, whirling her around. Panic was written all over her features.
“Sweetheart, what are you doing?” he asked, trying to pull her close to him. “Talk to me.”
“I made a huge mistake,” she whispered frantically. “This isn’t me. I can’t do this.”
He knew exactly what she meant. He was feeling the same way. This wasn’t them. All the cameras, the elegance, the fuss.
The fakeness.
Speaking of cameras, one popped up over his shoulder. He turned and glared at Jackson. “Get that out of my face or I’ll break it.”
“I need to get the shot.”
Axl pushed the camera down so he could see Jackson’s face. “Back the fuck off. Now.”
When he turned back to Leighton she was breathing hard and swiping at her veil, which had dragged across her cheek. “I have to get out of here, Axl. Seriously.”
“Are you saying you don’t want to do this?” What shocked him was how much that made his heart drop into his gut.
“I want this to be real,” Leighton said. She looked up at him with her heart in her eyes, and he saw his future. “Is this real?”
“No, it’s not real.” He opened his mouth to expound on that. To tell her that it could be real.
But Leighton gave a cry of dismay and ripped herself out of his grip. She ran out of the back of the greenhouse, jumping off the back ledge and twisting her ankle.
“Leighton!” He ran after her, scared. He didn’t know where she thought she was going and he wanted a chance to talk to her. To explain.
“Holy shit,” someone said from behind him.
“Do not follow them,” he heard Rick order the cameraman.
A woman was wailing and trying to get through the crowd. A glance back showed it was Barbie dressed to the nines, slapping at her husband, who was keeping her from running after Leighton. “Let me go to my baby!”
It was chaos and drama and something he could honestly say he would have never thought he would be a part of in his entire lifetime.
Leaping off the stairs down into the grass he went after Leighton. She had thrown her veil off and abandoned her shoes so she could run faster, but she was wearing a skin-tight dress and it wasn’t easy to move in that thing. He caught up with her within fifteen feet.
But when he went to grab her hand and stop her, she slapped at her. “Get away from me.”
And tripped. He tried to catch her, but she was off-balance from her narrow skirt. He moved, intending to brace her fall. His foot got caught in her long train and he went down, Leighton falling onto his chest. After the initial rough contact, air pushing out of both of their lungs, Axl was not disappointed in the position. Her chest was spilling out of the dress, giving him a hell of a view.
“Talk to me,” he said. “What’s going on?”
But Leighton shoved off of his chest, hauled herself to her feet and took off again. For a second he lay there wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now. Then he jumped up because damn it, she was going to talk to him. She was going to listen to him.
Because he was falling in love with Leighton and she had to hear it from him.
So he reached her for the second time. Only this time he didn’t give her an opportunity to escape. He bent his knees, picked up Leighton with one arm under her ass, and threw her over his shoulder. She was shrieking and kicking. He ignored her and marched her down to the dock. He stepped onto Bill’s boat, knowing the keys were always under the seat, and plunked her down on a cushion.
“What are you doing?” Leighton asked, looked indignant.
At least her panic seemed to have receded.
“I’m taking you out on the lake so that I can tell you how I feel without you running away.” He fired up the motor and untied the boat. A minute later they were pulling away from shore.
Leighton pushed her veil out of her face and threw her bouquet at him. “Let me off this boat!”
It was so unlike her he just stared at the flowers after they bounced off his chest and tumbled to the ground.
He hoped someday this would be a funny story about how he had kidnapped his bride.
Right now he had no clue how any of this was going to shake out.
“You look beautiful,” he told her. “I like the dress.” He reached out automatically and drew a finger across her shoulders. She let him, which made him smile. “And I like you.”
Leighton wanted to kick Axl. He was smiling. Like this was all so damn funny. She was miserable, her heart breaking, and he was smiling. She sat on the bench and crossed her arms over her chest. Bill’s lawn was crowded with wedding guests, all staring at their departure. Their voices, all in shocked tones, were creating a collective hum. She couldn’t understand what anyone was saying but it was clear her dashing off had rocked the crowd.
She had flat-out panicked, then Axl hadn’t given her the answer she wanted, and now she was both broken-hearted and humiliated and she wanted to kick him in the crotch for making her fall in love with him.
Glancing at the water, she briefly debated jumping overboard but with the wedding gown on, she’d sink like a tank. On the heels of that thought, she considered taking the gown off first but then she would arrive on shore dripping wet in slutty underwear with fifty people watching her. No thanks.
She was stuck.
Axl didn’t go very far before he cut the engine. He turned to her. “Can you please tell me why you’re running away?”
“I told you,” she said, and her voice cracked. “I can’t do this. It’s not right. I don’t give a shit about my job anymore if it means I have to stand there and say ‘I do’ to you when the truth is…” She took a deep breath and laid it all out there. She wanted Axl to know how she felt. “A part of me wishes we were really doing this. Getting married. Because I really, really care about you.”
Axl came over to her and sat down on the bench next to her, the movement sending the boat rocking gently. “Leighton.” He stared into her eyes, running his hand over her glossy beach waves.
She steeled herself to be let down easily. To be told that she was getting a participation ribbon, but no prize.
“If you had let me finish,” he said, “I was going to tell you that while today might not be real, it could be at some point.” He kissed her softly.
Leighton trembled at the touch. “What do you mean?” she murmured.
“I mean that maybe this could be us in two years or a year, or hell, nine months from now. Six months. Because this week I found something I didn’t even know I was looking for—you.”
Her heart swelled. “Really?”
He nodded. “Really. I am crazy about you. In fact, I think I might be falling in love with you. As insane as that sounds.”
“It is insane. But I feel the same way.” Tears blurred her vision of his handsome face.
“You do?” He gave an exhalation of air from his nostrils.
For the first time ever it occurred to her that Axl might have the same fears about putting his heart on the line as she had. It made her feel tender toward him and overwhelmed with love.
“I do,” she told him, fully aware of the irony of those words. She leaned into him, gripping the front of his tuxedo shirt so she could give him a soft kiss. “I never thought, in a million years, that a guy like you, with a girl like me…”
He cupped her cheeks and he kissed her over and over. “Hey, California, haven’t you noticed that we have very similar personalities? It could work, you know. You and me. I want it to work.”
“Thank you for not wanting to change me,” she said, and she meant that with everything inside her. “For thinking that I’m enough.”
“You are more than enough. You’re everything.”
Her heart swelled to the point she thought it might explode.
“And hey, I want you to know I appreciate that you see in me stuff no one else does. That you think I’m, you know, normal.”
She’d never seen him look vulnerable but he did now. The marine turned cop had his own insecurities, she realized. She gave him a soft kiss. “Axl, there is nothing abnormal about you at all.”
“What do we do now?” she asked, when he didn’t seem inclined to do anything other than brush his lips over hers again.
“I say we cancel the wedding and figure out how we can date long distance and really get to know each other.”
It sounded like a plan to her. “Do you think that will work?”
“It will if we want it to.” He ran a finger over her bottom lip. “You look stunning, by the way. You blew me away. For a second, I couldn’t breathe when I saw you.”
She believed him, and it was the greatest, most amazing compliment. She felt her cheeks burn. From modesty, arousal. From love. “Thank you. You wear a tux well. You’re the hottest groom I’ve ever seen.” She meant that.
“I am so turned on right now by you, by knowing you care about me. Does that make me an asshole?”
She laughed. “No. I’m sitting here hoping we can still have a wedding night, even without the wedding.”
His eyes darkened. “Hell yeah.”
“I guess I’m going to get fired,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “And I don’t even care.”
“Maybe not. This right here.” He gestured to each of them, to the lake, and their guests. “This is TV gold. You can’t even write this shit.”
He probably had a point. “I guess we have to go back.”
“I could start the engine up and we can just drive. Go to Canada and have a fake honeymoon in a cabin in the woods.”
It was tempting. “As much as I’d love to, I think we might owe everyone some sort of explanation.”
“You mean telling everyone go home doesn’t cut it?” He gave her a grin.
“No.” Leighton shook her head at him. “Now drive, Ice Man.”
“Ten bucks says they start calling you Runaway Bride at work.”
Leighton laughed, her heart full. She was so happy to be with Axl, she didn’t even care. “They can bring it. I’m ready. I’m not going to keep my job anyway. I kind of think there might be other options I’d like to explore. Maybe a floral shop or a tea shop or a dress shop. In Minnesota. At some point.”
The look he gave her set her inner thighs aflame.