Cancun: Bad Boys on the Beach: A Standalone Romance Novel (23 page)

Everyone is just watching in silence at the tragic spectacle. I’m not sure who is worse off of the two. I just pray that one or both of them is sterile.

Stephanie grabs the mic off the table. “We’re getting married!” she screams to a dance floor of blank faces. The bartender in the back gives her a lazy clap.

Man, fuck this. She always has to steal everyone’s moment.

I walk straight over to the DJ booth and yank out the microphone cord while she’s in mid-sentence.

“I love this m-” she’s saying when the mic gets cut.

I hit play on the mixer and the music comes blaring through the speakers. The wedding guests cheer and start dancing again, ignoring my pathetic cousin and her new pathetic fiancee.

Tanya is in the middle of the dance floor hooking her finger at me, enticing me to come over. She’s all awkward elbows and knees when she dances. She looks like an injured duck. How can I resist?

I dance over to her and she grabs my tie, pulls me down and kisses me on the lips.

God, I love her.

Chapter Nineteen

Tanya

Day Seven

“I’ll see you Saturday,” I say standing on my tippy toes and kissing Ethan on the lips.

“I can’t wait,” he says with a smile. “Call me when you get in.”

“I will.”

We walk to his terminal and the stewardess takes his ticket. He waited until he was the last one boarded so he could spend an extra few minutes with me. My man is a good one.

“Okay bye,” he says, giving me one last kiss. He passes the stewardess and then stops at the little waist high fence behind her. “Tanya,” he says, calling me over.

I meet him beside the fence and the stewardess gives me a dirty look. “Miss you’re not supposed to be there.”

“Just one second,” I plead.

She just frowns and turns back to her computer.

He cups my jaw and runs his thumb over my cheek. “I just wanted to say that I’m really happy I met you.”

“I’m really happy that you met me too.”

He smiles a sexy smile. “Saturday.”

“Saturday,” I repeat.

It’s going to work out. I know it will.

He disappears through the terminal and I rush to the window. I stay there watching as the plane disconnects from the terminal and rolls out to the runway. My plane only leaves in half an hour so I watch it until it takes off and disappears into the sky.

I feel good. I feel positive.

An arm snakes around my waist and I step back, clenching my hands into fists ready to punch out Aaron. “Oh,” I say letting my hands relax when I see that it’s only Megan.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say, telling the truth. “I really am.” I know that it’s going to work out. I can feel it in my heart and in my gut.

“I’ve never seen you so happy,” she says.

“I’ve never seen
you
so happy,” I repeat to her.

Megan smiles and I feel a song coming on. She starts humming Pharrell and we start dancing in the airport terminal. Everyone watches as we take turns singing:

“Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like a bride without a care

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like you have so much love that it’s unfair.”

“Because I'm happy

Clap along if you found a love that you never knew

Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like your one is now a two.”

“Because I'm happy

Clap along if you know that your love was meant to be.”

“Because I'm happy

Clap along if you feel like you’re on a loving spree.”

“Alright, that’s enough.”

“Agreed.”

Epilogue

Tanya

Three Months Later

I knock on the door of the townhouse and wait for an answer with my pulse racing. The moving truck is waiting on the street with everything that I own sitting inside. I’ve jumped in the deep end with two feet.

Ethan answers the door in a black housecoat with a coffee mug in his hand. He’s not wearing a shirt underneath and his robe is open just enough that I can see a peek of his chiseled abs underneath. Just one of the many reasons I’m moving out here.

He looks down at me with a furrowed brow. “Sorry, but I didn’t order a stripper.” He tries to close the door but I wedge my foot in it.

“Are you sure?” I ask. “Because I have great tits.”

The door opens back up a crack. “I’m listening,” he says.

“If you come out here and help me unload the truck I might let you see them,” I say.

The door swings open and Ethan is standing there with a huge smile on his sexy face.

“
Might
, I said.”

He pulls me in and kisses me long and passionate on the lips. “Welcome home,” he says, when he finally pulls away and I’m feeling weak in the knees.

Ethan closes the door behind me and drops his robe. It crumples to the floor and he’s standing there in just his tight gray briefs and a grin on his face. “Should we celebrate now or later?”

“Tempting,” I say, biting my bottom lip as my eyes explore his hard body. “But the truck is double parked so…”

“Okay fine,” he says, walking into his room. He comes back out with an old faded Nirvana t-shirt on and some shorts. “Let’s get you moved in.”

He helps me unload the truck for the next hour. I sold all of my crappy furniture back in Buffalo and only have boxes of clothes, shoes and other crap that I didn’t have the heart to sell or throw out. Ethan takes the heavy stuff like my shoe and book collection and I take all of the light stuff like the throw pillows and lamps.

By the time we get the truck unloaded I’m exhausted. I left Buffalo at two in the morning and drove all night. I always liked driving at night better and it cut out all of the traffic but now I need a nap.

Ethan tucks me in bed and parks the truck in the back alley for me. It doesn’t have to be back for another few hours so I close my eyes and sleep in his bed. No.
Our
bed. I have to get used to saying that.

I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow and am surprised when I wake up to see that I’ve been sleeping for over two hours. I love waking up in this bed. The room is so nice with the high ceilings, enormous windows and the video camera set up in the corner.
Fucking Ethan
.

It feels weird to think that I’ll be waking up here from now on. It’s been great the past three months. Ethan and I have visited each other almost every weekend and have grown even closer. He sold his bar and is focusing on his tattoo shop only now. I am coming to work as the manager and he’ll be able to focus on what he loves, doing tattoos all day. He even drew me up a heart tattoo for the back of my shoulder but I’m still trying to get over my fear of needles to get it. One day…

After a month of traveling back and forth, Ethan asked me to move in with him and I quickly agreed. I love Chicago and his place was way better than mine anyway.

I crawl out of bed and head into my new living room. “Ahhh,” I say, feeling a tingling warmth in my body. Ethan has been busy setting up my stuff and making me feel like I’m at home. My books on the shelves, my little knick knacks are over the fireplace mantel and on the coffee table. Even my flower pillows are on the couch. It looks strange but also incredible to see my stuff here mixed with his.

I find him in the hallway taking down some of his pictures to make room for mine.

“Wow,” I say laughing. “It looks like my apartment threw up in here.”

“My bachelor pad got married,” he says.

“Who is this?” I ask, taking the picture from his hand. “Ex-boyfriend?” The photo is of a good looking, muscular guy who kind of looks like Ethan but maybe a bit shorter with a cropped haircut. He’s wearing a nice, fitted suit as he grins at the camera.

He furrows his brow and takes the picture from my hands. “That’s my little brother, Chase,” he says, dumping it into the box. “He’s with the seals.”

“Like in Sea World?”

“No. Like in the Navy Seals.”

I take the picture back out of the box.
He’s hot
. “Is he single?” I ask. “Maybe we could set him up with Cynthia?”

“I don’t think so,” he says, taking the picture from my hands and tossing it back into the box. “He’s a little wild.”

“More than you?” I ask with a raised eyebrow.

He takes a picture from my box of a nine-year-old me posing with my new bike. It had colorful streamers coming out the sides of the handlebars. It was awesome.

“He’s not someone you want to hook your friend up with,” he says, hanging my photo on the nail. He steps back and smiles as he looks at it. “He’ll never settle down.”

“The same could have been said about you before you met the right girl.”

“Not him,” he says, pulling out another picture from the box. It’s the family dog, Sparky, who died over ten years ago.

We’ll see…

Ethan brings me into the kitchen and makes me a sandwich for lunch. “I think I’ll like living here,” I say, watching him move around his gorgeous kitchen like a master chef.

“You better,” he says, pointing a spatula at me. “Because I’m getting used to those flowery pillows. It would break my heart to see them go.”

“Then we’ll stay together,” I say, nodding. “For the pillows’ sake.”

We finish lunch and then go outside to return the truck. It’s parked in the back alley behind his townhouse. Once it’s gone I’m officially moved in and am a citizen of Chicago.

Ethan throws me the keys. “Check the back I think you forgot one box.”

“Huh?”

I open the large sliding door and my hands fly to my mouth when I see what’s inside. There’s a little white box sitting in the middle of the vast, empty truck.

“What’s that?” I ask with my heart pounding. My hands are trembling and I have to grab the side of the truck to keep myself up.

“That’s our future in a box,” he says, stepping up beside me. “That’s years of love, happiness, peace, passion, friendship, children, commitment, affection and fun. Go open it.”

I walk over slowly and pick it up. I seem to have forgotten how to breathe because the air keeps getting caught in my throat. I stare at the soft box in my shaking hands and open it slowly. I gasp at the stunning diamond ring inside. I stare at it for a good thirty seconds before I turn around.

Ethan is in the truck behind me, down on one knee.

“Tanya,” he asks. “Will you marry me? Please?”

Happy tears flood my eyes and I run forward and tackle him in a hug. He falls backward with me on top, and I say ‘yes’ a million times as I shower his face with kisses.

“We’re getting married!” he says in disbelief.

“We’re getting married!” I repeat. The words feel weird on my tongue but they also feel so right. “Back to Cancun?”

He smiles. “I’m thinking Belize.”

“Sounds perfect.”

I kiss him again, deep and passionate. It’s time to celebrate properly now. I want to feel my fiancee inside me.

“Now we can celebrate,” I whisper on his lips.

He grins as he gets up and yanks the door of the truck down. It slides closed leaving us in pure darkness. I hear steps coming forward and then feel his soft hands and warm breath on me.

I’m going to like being married to my bad boy.

THE END

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Bonus Chapter 20

Tanya’s lunch with her strict, prudish parents doesn’t go well when she tells them about Ethan. It goes even worse when the three of them walk into her apartment and find a surprise from Ethan: He’s cooking lunch. Naked.

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Coming Soon!

Tanya and Ethan get married!

And the sexy Navy Seal, Chase, has his crosshairs aimed on Cynthia.