“Say you’ll let me love you forever in the ways you deserve. Say you’ll bear our children and raise them in ridiculous matching outfits and shoes. Say you’ll fill our house with rocks that speak to you, and—”
“Yes! Oh yes, Pete. Yes! Yes! Yes!” She launched herself into his arms as he rose to his feet, and covered his face with kisses, causing him to stumble backward.
“Oh my gosh.” She kissed him again. “I never expected…” Their lips met again. She hung from him like a monkey, arms locked around his neck, legs dangling a foot off the ground. With his help, she moved down his muscular body until her toes hit the ground, and she clutched the waist of his jeans for support as Pete slid the sparkling ring on her finger.
“This was my mother’s. If you don’t like it, then we’ll pick one out that you love.”
Tears of joy streamed down her cheeks. “Your mother’s? Is your dad okay with this?”
“I love that you’re worried about my father instead of yourself, but yes; Pop gave it to me. I asked him to come with me to pick out your ring and he offered Mom’s. I asked Sky, of course, in case she had hoped for it, and she said Mom would have wanted you to have it as her first daughter-in-law.”
“Oh, Petey.” Jenna looked at the gorgeous square-cut diamond surrounded by several smaller rubies and was powerless to stop the flow of tears spilling down her cheeks. “I’m honored to wear your mother’s ring, and there’s nothing I want more than to be your wife.”
Their lips met again, and the sounds of the morning came rushing back in.
Sky ran toward them with Joey on her heels. She squealed with delight. “You gave it to her! I’m going to have a sister-in-law!”
“We can have a triple wedding!” Bella hugged Jenna.
Jenna glanced at Amy, her smile genuine, her eyes alit with sincere excitement, but Jenna knew her heart must be aching at the idea of not being included in the wedding.
“I don’t think a triple wedding works,” Jenna said as she pulled Amy into her arms. “Either we wait for a quadruple wedding, or we each have our own.”
“No, have the triple. It will be fun,” Amy said.
Tony moved to Amy’s side. Jenna wanted to smack him into loving Amy, but as she felt Pete’s hand touch her lower back, she knew there was no rushing love.
“Jenna’s right. Sorry, Ames. I wasn’t thinking.” Bella hugged her while Jamie and Tony congratulated Pete, and his father stood off to the side, taking it all in.
After being passed around from friend to friend, Jenna joined him.
“Thank you for allowing me to wear your Bea’s ring. I’ll cherish it forever.”
“I wish she were here to be part of this.” He glanced at Pete, and Jenna saw a worried look flash in Pete’s eyes. She knew that look. She’d seen it many times over the past few weeks. Pete was worried about his father turning back to the bottle. Every day took renewed commitment from his father, and they were all bound together, equally committed to helping him through it. She realized how this emotional time could be overwhelming for him and send him spiraling backward and was relieved when Pete came to his father’s side.
Two men with a world of worry between them—and a world of love to pull them through.
“You okay, Pop?” Pete placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Fit as a fiddle. Now, get that worried look out of your eyes. I want to be sober every second of the rest of my life. I missed two years. I’m not going to miss another minute. Let’s name this boat.”
Pete and his father had nixed the idea of breaking a bottle across the bow or holding a traditional naming ceremony. Instead, they stood arm in arm before the group, with the sun shining down upon their shoulders and smiles on their lips.
“We never had any doubt about what we should name this boat. It was just a matter of when it would happen.” Pete glanced at his father.
“Sheesh. Let’s not get all sappy,” his father grumbled. He handed Pete one side of a vinyl banner and they stretched it out between them. “Without further ado, we give you New Beginning.” The banner read, NEW B-E-A-G-I-N-N-I-N-G.
“Uh-oh. I think they spelled beginning wrong,” Bella said with a furrowed brow.
Jenna’s heart swelled with the value that Pete placed on family and the thoughtfulness of the name they’d chosen. She didn’t think it was possible to love him more than she did, but in that moment, when their eyes met, the pride in his was palpable, and love blazed an unyielding connection between them.
Pete mouthed, “I love you,” and Jenna knew that he would always honor their love, and the family they were bound to have, with the same conviction as he did his nuclear family.
“No,” Jenna said. “They spelled it just right.”
Please enjoy a preview of the next Sweet with Heat novel
Sunsets at Seaside
Chapter One
JESSICA AYERS COULD hold a note on her cello for thirty-eight seconds without ever breaking a sweat, but staring at the eBay auction on her iPhone as the last forty seconds ticked away had her hands sweating and her heart racing. She never knew seconds could pass so slowly. She’d been pacing the deck of her rented apartment in the Seaside cottage community in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, for forty-five minutes. This was her first time—and she was certain her last time—using the online auction site. She was the high bidder on a baseball that she was fairly certain was her father’s from when he was a boy.
“Come on. Come on. Come on.” Fifteen seconds. She clenched her eyes shut and squeezed the phone, as if she could will the win. It was only seven thirty in the morning, and already the sun had blazed a path through the trees. She was hot and frustrated, and after fighting with her orchestra manager for two weeks about taking a hiatus, and her mother for even longer about everything under the sun, she was ready to blow. She’d come to the Cape for a respite from playing in the Boston Symphony Orchestra, hoping to figure out if she was living her life to the fullest, or missing out on it altogether. Finding her father’s baseball autographed by Mickey Mantle was her self-imposed distraction to keep her mind off picking up the cello. She’d never imagined she’d find it a week into her vacation.
She opened her eyes and stared at the phone.
Five seconds. Four. Three.
A message flashed on the screen. You have been outbid by another bidder.
“What? No. No, no, no.” She pressed the bid icon, and nothing happened. She pressed it again, and again, her muscles tightening with each attempt. Another message flashed on the screen. Bidding for this item has ended.
No!
She stared at the phone, unable to believe she’d been seconds away from winning what she was sure was her father’s baseball and had lost it. She hated phones. She hated eBay. She hated bidding against nonexistent people in tiny little stupid phones. She hated the whole thing so much she turned and hurled the phone over the deck.
Wow.
That felt really, really good.