Try - The Complete Romance Series (30 page)

Finally, though, both Patrick and I ran
out of oxygen. He broke away from me and we both grinned at each other,
catching our breath.

 
“Time to call Landon?”

I frowned in confusion and then
remembered. “Let’s do it,” I said, taking his hand in mine and leading him back
towards the kitchen. Patrick slipped his phone out of his pocket and opened up
his contacts list. I watched him dial out, smiling.

After a minute I saw his face light up.

“Hey buddy! Happy New Year!” he paused,
and I thought Landon must have been talking his ear off, going a mile a minute.
“Let me put you on speaker and you can tell Mack too.” He took his phone away
from his ear and tapped the speaker icon.

“Hi Mack! Happy New Year!”

“Happy New Year to you, too!” I grinned at
the phone even though I knew that Landon couldn’t possibly see me. “Are you
having a good time at your grandparents’ house?”

“Yeah! Did Dad kiss you?”

“He did,” I confirmed. “We were talking
about going to brunch tomorrow—does that sound good?”

“What’s brunch?”

“It’s breakfast for lunch,” Patrick
explained. “That way you can sleep in and still have pancakes.”

“Cool! Yeah, yeah let’s do that!”

We talked to Landon for a few more minutes
before his grandmother came on the line, explaining that while she’d given the
boy some coffee milk, she was pretty sure he had only stayed up so late by
sheer force of will. Patrick said goodnight to his son, and I seconded it, and
then we hung up to return to the party.

We were just in time to hear the New
Year’s resolutions; I thought the one that said, “Giving my son the love and
attention he deserves,” might have been Patrick’s, since it didn’t sound like
anything that any of the other guys at the party would have said. One look at
him confirmed it—and he looked at me when mine was read.

The party started to wind down, and
Patrick and I managed to dance for a little while longer before we had to
excuse ourselves for the night; it was almost one, and we hoped that the roads
would mostly be clear. Mom and Dad insisted that if we wanted to, we could stay
the night in my bedroom—but I wanted to be alone, really alone, with Patrick
for the first night of the New Year. I told my mom that we would talk about what
had happened with Noah in a day or two, gave my siblings and my brother a kiss,
and then I walked out with Patrick, more than ready to make good on the idea of
spending the rest of the night making love.

“When do we want to go to brunch?” I asked
him.

“As late as humanly possible,” Patrick
replied. “I want to have sex from the minute we get home until we can’t stay up
a minute longer.”

“I like that plan.”

Chapter Ten – Patrick

I had taken a glass of champagne after my
midnight kiss with Mackenzie, but that was the only alcohol I’d had in hours.
By the time we got into the car and headed out onto the road back into the
city, I was well under the limit. I would never in a million years have risked
Mackenzie’s life or mine by driving drunk.

“All in all that wasn’t a bad party,” I
said as the heater started to kick in. I turned onto the highway; there were a
few cars on the road—one or two of them seemed to be weaving a bit, and I
avoided them, speeding up just enough to get past them.

“Apart from the bullshit with Noah,” Mack
said, making a face.

“Ah it was a hiccup. Most of the people at
that party were at least as drunk as him, so they’re not going to remember it.
Everyone else will just remember that he was an asshole.” I reached out and gave
Mack’s hand a squeeze. “And I’ll remember that you kissed me at midnight, and
that you drove me absolutely crazy with the dancing.”

“Did I?”

I glanced at Mack to see her grinning,
totally satisfied with herself.

“Then it was a good party after all.”

“Oh yeah—if we’re apart from each other
for more than a couple of days, I am going to take a suspiciously long shower
and think about you bumping and grinding to me while “California Love” plays,”
I told her. Mackenzie laughed, shaking her head.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said,
grinning a little bit.

“Not even a little,” I agreed. “I mean,
you’re looking even more amazing than usual, and I’ve spent all night wishing I
could get you alone—really alone, not just in the kitchen.”

“You know,” Mackenzie said, “one year—I
think it was maybe three years ago—I walked in on my sister full-on making out
with her husband in there.”

“Is that why people kept occasionally
peeking in on us?”

I laughed. “I thought they were just
worried that you were upset.”

“No, I think they were hoping they’d catch
us being scandalous,” Mackenzie said. I changed the subject then, and we talked
about where we wanted to go to brunch the next morning, or if we’d rather do it
at home. Mack’s mom had had handed her a bottle of champagne—unopened—on the
way out, with a wink.

“What was that wink from your mom about,
by the way? I forgot to ask you.”

Mackenzie laughed. “Okay—don’t freak out
on me. Apparently she conceived my brother John on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s
Day, drunk on champagne. So I guess she figured it would be the joke of the
year if I went the same way.”

I grinned. “No getting knocked up
tonight,” I said. “If we’re going to have a kid together, I want to have at
least some planning behind it.”

“You—I didn’t really have kids on my
mind,” Mackenzie said, blushing. I took a quick breath to settle my nerves; I’d
been thinking about more than just having sex with Mack when we got back home.
I’d been thinking about my bet with Landon, and whether or not it was time—now
that the deadline was on me—to tell Mack about it.

“I’m not thinking of kids in particular,”
I said, giving Mack’s hand a squeeze. “But there’s something I want to talk to
you about.”

“That sounds like it will either be great
or awful,” Mack said. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Okay, tell me
what it is.”

“I made a bet with Landon, right about the
time we first met,” I told Mack. “It wasn’t—I didn’t make it because of meeting
you, but it was around the same time.”

“What was the bet?” Mack looked at me
intently.

“That I couldn’t find him a new mom by New
Year’s Day.”

“What?”

I glanced at Mack, hoping that she didn’t
look too appalled. “It was a silly bet,” I said, shrugging. “The wager was that
if I couldn’t find him a new mom, I had to buy him a second Christmas-worth of
gifts—his entire list, all over again.”

Mack stared at me a moment longer and then
started to laugh, shaking her head. “That is a silly bet for sure,” she told
me. “So I guess this is the deadline, since
it’s
New
Year’s Day as of about an hour and a half ago.”

“It is,” I said, nodding. I hesitated for
a moment. “I’m not going to propose to you right now, by the way,” I glanced at
her and tried to smile. “But I was thinking that if—if you wanted to be part of
my life, and Landon’s, that would make me happy. I’m glad to buy him another
round of Christmas presents.”

“I think—I think it would be crazy to go
so far as to get engaged,” Mack said. “But…after everything so far, I think…I
think I’m ready to at least commit to being part of your and Landon’s life.”

I pulled over onto the shoulder.

“Are you okay?” she asked, startled.

Instead of answering, I put the car in
park and leaned over to kiss Mack. I couldn’t help myself—and I couldn’t
possibly wait any longer. I kissed her until we were both panting, and then
broke away.

“Landon is going to get double-double
presents,” I told Mack, grinning. “We’ll do a whole Christmas morning thing,
the three of us, in two weeks.”

“That’ll be beautiful,” Mack said,
smiling. I took a deep breath and took the car out of park; I had to get her
back to my place as fast as possible.

Epilogue:
New Year’s Eve, One Year Later

“Everyone’s taking their seats,” Amie said
behind me. “They’re going into the chapel from the lobby right now.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to do a first
look photo set?”

I couldn’t open my eyes to look at the
photographer; the makeup artist was busy applying shadow to my eyelids,
blending it with brushes. My ass was starting to go numb from how long I had
been sitting in the chair, but I knew better than to complain; I had asked for
a particular hairstyle, and a particular makeup look—it wouldn’t be fair for me
to bitch about how long it took.

“That’s going to take too long,” I said,
keeping my eyes obediently closed. “Just get pictures of him at the altar, and
pictures of me coming down the aisle; that will be good enough.”

I thought that my heart couldn’t possibly
beat faster in my chest; I pictured the beautiful cream-white dress I would be
putting on in a few more minutes in my mind. A little more than a year before,
I would have given long odds for me getting married at all—much less so soon.

“Okay,” the makeup artist said quietly.
“Open your eyes carefully, and take a look in the mirror. Tell me if it looks
as good to you as it does to me.” I slowly lifted my eyelids; they felt heavy
with all the makeup already on them, but when I looked at myself in the mirror
it didn’t look like I was wearing a ton of makeup—it looked like I was only
wearing a little bit, but that my eyes were even bigger, bolder, more vivid
than ever.

“I look gorgeous,” I said, my breath
catching in my throat.

“You look gorgeous even with no makeup
on,” Jessica said from somewhere off to my right. The hair stylist was still
working on my hair, wielding a curling iron and a mouthful of bobby pins.
 
“But I will say that you’re starting to look
like a total princess.”

I laughed as carefully as I could—I didn’t
want to get a burn or mess up my own hair while it was being styled—and
carefully looked over my shoulder without turning my head. “If I’d had my way,
we’d all be at the Justice of the Peace, and I’d be wearing jeans and a
sweater.”

My parents had insisted on me having a
“real wedding,” with bridesmaids, a reception—the whole nine yards. I had tried
to get Patrick on my side, but Landon had trumped us; one of his friends at
school had been a ring bearer at a cousin’s wedding, and he had campaigned hard
for us to have a wedding so that he could follow in the trend. Patrick had done
his son one better: he’d made Landon his best man, and my two brothers were
groomsmen. I’d taken Jessica as one of my bridesmaids, Evie as my Matron of
Honor, and Amie as my third bridesmaid. I’d enlisted my niece as my flower
girl, and one of Landon’s cousins was our ring bearer.

I struggled to sit still as the two stylists
finished up their work, getting more and more excited by the moment. I was
tingling all over, hot and cold flashes washing over me. I was nervous about
the ceremony—even though I’d managed to pare down the guest list to the bare
minimum, there were still easily fifty people in the chapel—but I was happy and
excited at the idea of the reception afterwards, and then the honeymoon that
Patrick and I would be going on.

It had taken Patrick no more than six
months after telling me about his bet with Landon to propose. I’d thought that
maybe he would ask me at the end of the year; I didn’t suspect anything even
when Patrick told me about the date: he’d scheduled all of the places we’d gone
to in the first month of dating, including the park where we’d gone ice-skating,
one of the restaurants where we’d had dinner, and the café where our first date
had been. While I waited at the table for him to go and get our coffees,
someone appeared out of nowhere and delivered a bouquet of peonies—late for the
season, but just as beautiful as any I’d ever seen—directly to my table. I’d
been shocked at the fact that the delivery guy had somehow managed to find me
in the middle of a crowded café, much less that he knew I was the person he was
supposed to deliver to.

And then Patrick had appeared with our
coffees, and asked if I liked the flowers. “I have no idea how you managed
this,” I had told him, still staring at the beautiful blooms.

“You’ll be really surprised by this,
then,” he’d said. I looked up and saw that he’d put an open jewelry box on a
little saucer, and inside of the jewelry box was a beautiful diamond ring.
“Will you marry me, Mack?”

I had barely been able to stop crying from
happiness enough to say yes, and we’d immediately agreed to have our wedding on
New Year’s Eve, since that had been the night that we’d finally, truly come
together as a couple. It just made sense to us.

“Okay, time to get you into that dress,”
Jess said, just as the two stylists finished up their work.

“Give me a second to look at myself!” I
protested, smiling. I looked into the mirror and saw myself transformed. I
didn’t look like a completely different person—I wouldn’t have liked that—but I
did look more beautiful than I thought I had ever looked in my entire life
before.