I sighed and bent my knees, pulling her down to the warm blanket we’d been given when we got here. I held her gaze as I spoke to make sure there was nothing I said that would escape her realm of comprehension.
“You once said this was a goal for you,” I said, waving a hand around the set around us. “My goals were always career-driven, and when I attained those, I realized my goals had changed a little and that somewhere along the way you became my goal. I’m in love with you. I’ve achieved a lot in my thirty-one years, and I’m proud of those accomplishments, but none of them make me feel the way you do. When we go back home, my next goal will be to get you to move in with me, and later on down the line it’ll be to get you to agree to marry me, because I love you and I never want to be without you.”
It took a moment for my words to sink in, and when they did, she blinked, and blinked, and the tears forming in her eyes began to fall. I caught them as they did, brushing them away.
“I’m goals?” she whispered, smiling.
“You are every goal I never knew I wanted.”
Our lips met in a slow, sensual, long kiss that made me want to run back to the hotel and fuck her in our hot tub. When we broke apart, we smiled at each other.
“You know, this is the second time you’ve proposed to me,” I said. “That’s a record for somebody who says she doesn’t care to get married again and just finalized a divorce.”
She blushed, looking away. “I never said I was against marriage just because it didn’t work out for me before.”
I caught her chin and made her look at me again. “Good, because I’m going to marry you.”
“You say that as if you know I’ll say yes.”
“Haven’t you learned by now?” I asked, pulling her bottom lip into my mouth and letting it go with a pop. “I always get what I want.”
She was it for me. I’d never in my thirty-one years wanted anything the way I wanted my beautiful, feisty, and sexy Nicole Alessi, and I knew I never would.
Two years later
“YOU SHOULD JUST quit your job and design wedding dresses for a living,” Talon said as she did my makeup.
“Maybe one day I will,” I said, looking up as she applied eyeliner.
“You’re going to look incredible. Victor is going to wish he’d asked you to marry him eight years ago.”
I smiled. “I wasn’t ready for him then.”
“He is pretty intimidating,” she said, smiling.
“A little.” I paused. “Are the girls ready?”
“If by ready you mean dressed, yes. Mike said they’re picking up all the flowers they scattered during their practice session, though.”
I laughed.
“Stop moving.”
“Sorry.”
There was a knock on the door, followed by the loud voices of Hannah, my mom, Mia, Estelle, and Chrissy. Mia and Chrissy hadn’t stopped talking since they met at the bachelorette party last week. They were highly entertaining to be around. I think all of us agreed on that. All of us except Victor, who groaned every time they walked into a room together.
“I so hope you guys have daughters,” Estelle said. I smiled and reached to touch her pregnant belly when she stood beside me.
“So your brother can have a heart attack by the age of forty?” I asked.
Estelle laughed.
“He’ll be a great dad,” Hannah said. I completely agreed with that sentiment.
“He would be, and they’d make beautiful babies,” my mom agreed. When I first told her that instead of moving into another place when my lease ended, I was moving in with Victor, she flipped out, but then she came to the U.S. and met him, and they instantly hit it off.
“I completely agree, and so will you,” Meire added as she walked into the room.
Mom’s head whipped around quickly. We’d all gone out to dinner numerous times through this process and it had given Mom and Meire a chance to get to know each other. I doubted Mom would approve of anybody Dad married, but she seemed to have a lot of respect for Meire.
“You look incredible,” Chrissy said.
“I know, right? I wanna marry you right now,” Mia added.
I laughed. I was already feeling overjoyed, but having these people in my life, on this day, took my excitement to another level. I didn’t want a big wedding this time around, but once we started adding up our family members and friends, we ended up with two hundred people on our list. I put eloping on the table, but Victor turned it down as quickly as I said it. He didn’t say it in so many words, but I knew he didn’t want me to compare this wedding with Gabe’s and mine. Not that I ever would. Victor made me feel stable, and cherished, and loved, and even though I could make a million comparisons and give a million reasons as to why this marriage was a one hundred percent sure thing, I didn’t. It wouldn’t have been fair for me to diminish the good I’d once had with Gabe just because we hadn’t worked out.
I’d seen him a couple times when he’d met up with me at the dog park to see Bonnie. Something the paparazzi loved to speculate about, much to Victor’s annoyance, but he was okay with us maintaining a friendly relationship.