The Beach Wedding (Married in Malibu Book 1) (9 page)

T
he first thing
Liz saw when she woke up was the ocean...and the first thought in her head was of Jason.

Last night had been wonderful, and even if she still didn’t know what the future could possibly hold for them, she wanted to see his face again right away. Quickly putting her clothes back on, she headed downstairs, but he wasn’t at his writing table, nor was he cooking breakfast for them both. Back when they’d lived together, she’d often awakened to the smell of bacon and eggs and had loved going into the kitchen to wrap her arms around his waist as he cooked. Any excuse to be close to him.

“Jason?” Liz went through the house room by room, but he was nowhere to be found. She stepped out onto the beach, but she didn’t see him there, either.

“Liz.” She turned to see Jason come out of the house. “Are you out here enjoying the beach?”

“I came out to look for you,” Liz said, but just that quickly, she felt nervous. Nervous about what was going to happen between them on this morning after, considering that they hadn’t made a single plan or come to any kind of agreement about the future before leaping into each other’s arms last night.

“I’m sorry. There was something I needed to do, and I didn’t want to wake you—not until I was able to surprise you with it.”

“What is it?” Liz asked, her heart already beating a little unsteadily. “Have you been researching something for your book?”

“No, this doesn’t have anything to do with my book.”

Up until a few minutes ago, Liz had felt languid and a little bit sleepy, whereas Jason seemed to be bouncing with energy. Or, she thought as she looked at him more closely, possibly with nerves? Nerves that she couldn’t help but feel in increasing measure, too.

Well, if he was worried how Liz would feel about the night they’d just shared, she could understand that, given that she still wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about it. But rather than examining it too closely—and starting to freak out—she tried to remind herself that it was just one night, and one night couldn’t possibly turn into a problem, could it? Especially after such a magical day.

“So where did you go?”

Jason reached into his pocket. “To get this.”

As soon as he began to go down on one knee, Liz knew what he was going to bring out. Joy speared her a beat before fear raced in to squash it. At the same time, a part of her still couldn’t believe that he was actually proposing to her...not until she saw the box in his hand and he opened it to reveal the beautiful ring within, a gold band set with diamonds and sapphires.

“Jason, what are you doing?” She hadn’t wanted to panic this morning, but how could she not when he was holding an engagement ring in his hand? The most beautiful ring she’d ever seen.

“I had to find this quickly,” he said, still down on one knee, holding out the ring. “There was only one jeweler open so early. Fortunately, he was willing to open up his store for signed first editions.”

“Jason!” Her freak-out was quickly ramping up to higher levels than she had seen in a decade. “Please—”

“Liz, will you marry me?” The words were out of Jason’s mouth before she could find a way to stop them. “We’ve spent ten years apart, ten years that I would’ve loved to spend with you. The last couple of weeks have been the happiest of my life. I don’t want to miss any more time with you. Not when I love you so much. I want to be with you—and not just for another week, or month, or year. Forever.”

“Jason, I…” Her heart was racing, her palms sweating, her brain going around and around in dizzying circles. “I can’t talk about this when you’re kneeling in the sand.”

With obvious reluctance, he stood, but that just ended up putting him a step too close to her. Close enough that, once again, Liz could feel the burning need for him running through her. So much dangerous desire that her thoughts zigzagged from terror to elation and back again.

“It was all supposed to be fake...these past two weeks...they weren’t even supposed to be real dates!”

“It wasn’t fake for me,” Jason said, certainty and passion both crystal clear in his voice. “Not the dates, not the time with you getting the wedding ready, and certainly not the way I feel about you.”

“But when you first came into my office, you were so angry with me.”

“That’s because I didn’t understand why you left me ten years ago. But even that didn’t change how I felt about you.” He reached out with his free hand and clasped hers. “Do you think there has been a single moment in the last ten years when I haven’t been completely in love with you? It wouldn’t have hurt if I hadn’t still loved you, but I did. I would have gone to you at any time in those ten years, if I’d thought you still wanted me.”

Of course she still wanted him. There was a big part of her that simply wanted to say yes right there and then. To let him sweep her into his arms. To let him sweep every care away.

But that was exactly what had happened ten years ago—and look how that had turned out. No, she couldn’t go through that kind of heartbreak and pain again. She wouldn’t survive it this time.

“I can finally see that we both needed space to live our lives,” he continued. “But we’ve had ten years. We’ve gone out and achieved our dreams. We’re the people we always planned to be, except for one major detail—we aren’t together.”

Everything he said sounded perfectly reasonable. Except for one thing that he’d left out—the fact that he’d come back into her life without warning and completely turned everything topsy-turvy. Here she’d been carefully building her life for years, thinking she was a million times stronger now than she’d been at twenty-one. Only to completely lose control of herself in only two short weeks with Jason.

Liz took a deep breath. Then another when she couldn’t quite get enough oxygen into her lungs. “Last night was amazing,” she said slowly. “But that doesn’t mean it should have happened.”

“It didn’t seem that way last night. I thought you were ready to be with me.”

“I was swept up in the emotion of the wedding.” Her voice was tight with the tears she was trying desperately to hold back. “I mean, of course I was after watching Amber say her vows.”

“We both know it was more than that,” Jason countered, but he finally dropped the hand holding the ring to his side.

Liz half turned away from him as she said, “How could we not get carried away when the wedding was so great? Maybe I didn’t do a very good job of keeping things separated…” She wasn’t sure which of them she was trying to convince more.

He put a hand on her shoulder to turn her back to face him, the contact as electric as always. “You don’t mean that. I know it hasn’t happened between us in what you would call a traditional way, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t right. I want to be with you, Liz. I want us to be together. I want us to have a home, a family.”

That sounded so good, but at the same time, Liz could feel the panic rising even higher inside of her. How much of her own life would she have to sacrifice to this new future that Jason had suddenly planned for them? Would starting a family mean that he’d expect her to give up building Married in Malibu from the ground up?

“I can’t,” Liz said. “I just can’t.”

“Why not? We both have everything we want except each other.”

“But it’s not as simple as that,” Liz insisted, her voice rising. “You’re painting this scene as though it’s one of your stories, as if everything just wraps up neatly because that’s what the plot demands, and then everyone lives happily ever after. But real life doesn’t work like that.”

“Why can’t it?” His question was a demand now. “Why can’t we finally have our happily ever after, Liz?”

“Because this has all happened so fast that I don’t even know what I really feel yet. Like it’s all just what you’re feeling washing over me, and I’m being swept away like driftwood into the ocean about to be carried away with the tide.”

With that, she turned to walk away—no, to run—before Jason could say something that would have her losing what little self-control she had left. Before she ended up in his arms again saying yes to absolutely anything he wanted.

E
ven though Liz
was the only one at Married in Malibu, it was still better than staying at home, sitting in her garden thinking about Jason, rewinding his shocking proposal over and over again in her head until she was more confused than ever. She even appreciated the hot and sweaty work of stacking and moving chairs, clearing a space in a room that was as empty as she felt. She didn’t have to think in order to tidy them away—only lift and move, lift and move, lift and move.

“Hi, Liz. How are you doing this morning?”

Liz turned, surprised to see Kate in the doorway, ready for work in her gardening gloves. “I thought I gave you the day off,” Liz said, forcing herself to smile even though it was the last thing she felt like doing.

“I figured there was a lot to do cleaning up,” Kate said. “We all did, actually.”

“All of you?”

One by one, each of her employees headed inside. Travis and Daniel were planning to take down some of the heavier pieces of set dressing. Jenn and Margaret wanted to remove the drapes and lighting arrangements. Daniel and Nathan intended to put the final touches on the photographs from the wedding.

Liz was amazed that they were all here. Their dedication to Married in Malibu was almost enough to reduce her to tears. Then again, the truth was that she had been on the cusp of crying ever since Jason’s proposal that morning.

“Are you okay?” Kate asked a little while later as she passed with the wilted remains of some flowers from the ceremony.

“I’m fine,” Liz said automatically, and fortunately Kate wasn’t the type of person to press the issue.

Even so, Kate paused, looking at her with a slight frown. Thankfully, Nathan saved the day when he called out from the other side of the hall, “Liz, you’re never going to believe what’s happened.”

His laptop was set out on one of the tables, and Margaret, Travis, Daniel, and Jenn were already gathered around it, their excitement palpable, even through the layer of gray that clung to Liz. Her team looked like they wanted to jump for joy or start dancing around the room.

“What is it, Nathan?” she asked. “And seriously, did none of you hear me when I said you didn’t have to come in today?”

“You’re here,” Jenn pointed out.

“Besides,” Margaret said, “it looks like we’re going to be pretty busy.”

Liz finally looked at the computer, where a selection of blogs and celebrity gossip magazines were on the screen—and every single one was reporting on Amber and Robert’s wedding. None of them had photographs, but a few had quotes from the more famous guests about how wonderful the wedding had been.

Nathan pulled up one of the bigger style blogs next, big enough that Margaret gasped when she saw that Married in Malibu was featured.

“
I
t seems
that we’ve all been fooled, and beautifully so. Instead of marrying in a French château later this year, Amber Blakely and Robert Wakefield tied the knot yesterday in a private ceremony at a small wedding venue called Married in Malibu. No one here had heard of the venue until this morning, but judging by some of the comments from the wedding party and by how happy Amber looked as she and Robert jetted off on their honeymoon yesterday evening, we’ll soon be hearing much more about it. Anywhere good enough for the happily ever after of Los Angeles’s favorite celebrity couple is good enough for us.”
—SoCalStyle Online Magazine

“
T
hat’s
…” Liz was nearly speechless. “Incredible.”

It was everything they could have hoped for—a perfectly private celebrity wedding followed by a big splash the next morning. If it weren’t for what had happened with Jason, Liz would have been ecstatic. But as exciting as it was, she felt the joy almost secondhand, caught behind the walls she’d thrown up to keep from breaking down. Especially when she was being congratulated for putting on happily ever afters that she still couldn’t quite believe in for herself...

“You should probably let us take care of putting away the rest of the chairs,” Jenn said. “It looks like the phone in your office is going to be ringing off the hook pretty soon.”

“But there’s still a lot of clearing up to do,” Liz pointed out.

“We can handle that,” Kate assured her. “But you’re the only one who can book the next wedding.”

As if on cue, Liz’s phone began to ring. She made it to her office just in time to speak with a prominent journalist who wanted to hear more about what they did at Married in Malibu. One after another, a mixture of potential clients and interested journalists called, and somehow Liz managed to keep herself on task, rather than derailing with thoughts of Jason that lay barely beneath the surface.

When a knock came at her door, Liz was surprised to see it was late afternoon—and to find Rose Knight standing in her doorway.

“Liz, I hope you don’t mind me dropping by like this.” Rose’s auburn hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was casually dressed in jeans. “Congratulations!”

For a moment, Liz froze, thinking back to Jason’s proposal—but of course Rose wouldn’t be talking about that, even if Liz had been thinking of little else for hours. “You mean on the wedding?”

“Of course. What did you think I meant?”

“The wedding, of course,” Liz said in what she hoped was a bright tone. “I’m so glad it went well.”

“Better than well. Jason called me to tell me how brilliantly it all went. He wanted to tell me how impressed Amber and Robert were with it all, too.”

Jason had called Rose. What else had he said?

“You really went above and beyond, Liz,” Rose continued. “And I want to say that I’m extremely proud and pleased at the way you took my dream and made it into a reality.”

The first tears came then. Liz had been holding them back since the beach, but she simply couldn’t do it anymore.

“Liz? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she replied, hoping that it would work on Rose the same way it had on Kate. But it didn’t.

“Let me rephrase that,” Rose said as she put an arm around Liz’s shoulders. “You’re not okay. Can I help?”

“I’m fine,” Liz said again, but she could barely get the words out. The first racking sobs ripped through her, only made worse by her efforts to stop them and by how much she hated herself for falling apart in front of Rose. “I’m sorry. I’m…”

“Come on,” Rose said, gently guiding her toward the door. “There’s a coffee shop across the street, isn’t there?”

Liz nodded and just barely managed to pull it together long enough for Rose to get her over to Tamara’s shop. When they walked in, Liz saw the look that passed between Rose and Tamara—shared concern and the determination to help, even though the two of them likely hadn’t even met yet.

Malibu T & Coffee had quickly become the place everyone on the team went to get their caffeine fix. Nate, in particular, seemed to spend almost as much time there as at the wedding venue, but Liz figured computer specialists needed coffee to run at top form.

The fact that the coffee shop was conveniently located wasn’t the only reason Liz liked it. It was a homey, comfortable place with an arrangement of chairs that switched from day to day, so that one day the seat by the window might be a high-backed Georgian style but woven bamboo the next. The room caught the sun perfectly, and the coffee was so good that at rush hour it could sometimes be hard to get a seat. This being Malibu, there were plenty of tourists passing through, but it said a lot about Malibu T & Coffee that the locals kept coming back.

But the best thing wasn’t the beans, the decorations, or the location. It was the owner. Tamara Truscott was tall, tanned, and wore beaded jewelry and brightly patterned scarves that made her look as if she might have just run away from a new-age community. Or was at least on her way to the beach. Tamara was friendly, intelligent, and down-to-earth, and the coffee shop had quickly become a great place for Liz to retreat to when things got stressful at work.

“Why don’t the two of you sit tight,” Tamara said as Rose sat the two of them down on the old-fashioned barstools at the counter, “and I’ll make us all something special?” Tamara set to work with coffee...and what looked an awful lot like vanilla ice cream. “Even I don’t believe that coffee cures all ills―just most of them. But today, I’m thinking we should get out the big guns and add a whole lot of ice cream to the mix.”

“I’m Rose,” Liz’s boss said to Tamara. “And I think you’re spot-on about the ice cream.”

“Nice to meet you, Rose. Don’t worry, I’m making enough of this sinfully good drink for all three of us,” she said with a wink. “That’s some great place you’ve got there across the street. With the best staff on the planet, if you didn’t already know.”

Liz was glad to have a few moments to sit back and let the whir of the blender and Rose’s and Tamara’s voices wash over her.

“I agree,” Rose said. “I only wish we had a café like this across the street from our San Francisco wedding venue. Something tells me you must know the crew here almost as well as Liz does. I know if it were me, I’d certainly be here every day.”

Tamara smiled at that before confirming Rose’s guess by saying, “Margaret likes to come in before she starts work. Daniel usually drops in at the end of the day, often with Jenn. Travis is coming in more now that I’ve started making healthy smoothies for him. I don’t actually see much of Kate, although I’m working on a new floral drink that I hope will entice her. And Liz normally breaks in midafternoon when she realizes that she’s worked through lunch.”

Rose raised an eyebrow. “I’m impressed.”

“I don’t normally spend this much time watching all my customers,” Tamara said with a grin. “Only the ones I’m hopefully going to be seeing a great deal of for the foreseeable future.” She slid their coffee milkshakes over, then settled in on a barstool on the other side of Liz. “First, I think you should take a long drink from your glass,” she urged in a gentle voice. “And then you should get whatever is bothering you off your chest.”

Rose waited until Liz had mainlined nearly half her frosty, cream-filled glass before she said, “This is about Jason, isn’t it?”

Liz looked at her in surprise. “How…?”

“You told me about what used to be between you, remember? And I’ve seen the pictures the paparazzi has taken of the two of you during these past two weeks. It didn’t look like just an act to me.”

“It wasn’t,” Liz found herself blurting out. “And then this morning Jason asked me to marry him.”

“I take it I shouldn’t be saying congratulations right now?” Tamara asked.

“I panicked and I ran away. I told him I couldn’t do it, that I couldn’t marry him and still be me.”

“I know relationships can be difficult,” Rose told her, reaching out to cover Liz’s hand with her own.

“How would you know? You and RJ are perfect!”

Rose laughed softly. “RJ and I definitely didn’t have the perfect relationship that you think we had. For years I pushed him away. I worked with him, and I kept him at arm’s length, always denying what I felt about him. I even had a fiancé I left at the altar.”

“You did?” Liz couldn’t believe it, not when Rose and her husband were so perfect for each other. “How? Why?”

“Because I finally realized how much I loved RJ. Fortunately, I had some wonderful people around me at the Rose Chalet who helped me see that I didn’t have to push away the man I loved just to be who I thought I needed to be. They showed me that what I felt in my heart counted for more than what seemed sensible or logical or safe. And now I can’t imagine what my life would be like without RJ as my husband.”

The look on Rose’s face as she said that—as if living without RJ was the worst thing she could possibly imagine—impacted Liz in a major way. Because the thought of never seeing Jason again...

“Now, tell me why you think you can’t be with Jason,” Rose said as more tears threatened to spill down Liz’s cheeks.

In a halting voice, she explained how they’d started dating ten years ago and had become so close so fast that it had been utterly overwhelming—how it had felt as though her independence and her own dreams had been completely swept away.

“And now?” Tamara asked.

“I’m worrying about the same things. I’m only just getting started at Married in Malibu, and I’m terrified that being with Jason will cause the rest of my life to fade into the background. I’m scared that there won’t be anything left of me if I say yes.”

“You’re not some twenty-one-year-old kid fresh off the bus from Kansas anymore,” Rose pointed out. “You’re a successful woman with everything in front of you, including the man you love, if you want him. But only if you have the courage to truly talk to him this time rather than running away again.”

“It’s okay to be scared,” Tamara added. “We’ve all made mistakes when it comes to romance, but how many of us really get the opportunity to set them right? Whereas you actually got a second chance with Jason.”

Liz knew they were right. She also knew what a big mistake she’d made earlier that morning. She wasn’t the same person she’d been ten years ago, nor was Jason. And she shouldn’t have run again. Instead, she should have trusted herself—trusted both of them—to be strong enough to actually talk things through this time.

Because even if they were both so different in so many ways, and they still had plenty of things to work out between them, one thing hadn’t changed.

Love.