Rock Chick Reawakening (Rock Chick 0.5)(54)

He said nothing.

His face was slack with wonder as he stared at me.

God, I loved my man.

I swirled my skirt side to side with a sway of my hips. “I take it you like it.”

“Leave us,” Marcus ordered his sister curtly.

I stared.

He might get exasperated with his sister’s sweet brand of crazy, but he never talked to her like that.

“Marcus!” Michelle cried in shocked surprise.

See?

He twisted at the waist to look back at his sister. “Don’t make me shove my own sister out of a suite in a f*cking five-star hotel.”

“Your language!” she yelled. “I thank God you had the control to curb it in front of the kids.” She looked at me. “And he did. But barely.”

I giggled.

“Michelle,” he warned.

“God, you’re annoying,” she snapped.

She also gave me a look that included a roll of her eyes right before she left.

But when she did, I panicked.

Because what I knew would happen, happened.

The minute the door clicked, Marcus stalked to me.

I lifted a hand his way, grabbed hold of the back of my skirts with the other one, and retreated, warning, “Don’t you be messin’ up my face and hair, sugar. We got us a fancy photographer and I’m gonna be picture perfect, not have sex hair!”

“You take one more step away from me, darling, I’ll guarantee sex hair.”

I halted.

Marcus got close.

“Christ, how can you get more beautiful?” he asked when he stopped, looking me up and down.

I planted my raised hand in his chest, shoved (ineffectually, I’ll note), and hissed, “Now you’re gonna make me cry.”

“Yes, I am,” he declared. “But the makeup girl is outside. I stopped her from leaving so she can fix it if she needs to.”

“I don’t have time to cry and have a makeup fix,” I returned. “We’re gettin’ married in ten minutes.”

“Daisy, honey, I hired out the entire restaurant. The only guests they have are you, me, Doug, and Michelle. They’re good to wait.”

Well then.

“I don’t want a red face and puffy eyes in my wedding photos,” I tried.

“You won’t care.”

“Yes, I will.”

“No you won’t.”

“Yes I will!”

“Baby, every time you see it, you’ll remember the day you married me was also the day I returned these.”

And with that, he lifted his hand between us and from it dropped a necklace with a dainty gold chain and thirteen perfect pearls at the bottom. The biggest one in the middle, they got smaller but no less beautiful up the sides.

I’d know that necklace anywhere, if I’d seen it the day after I’d hocked it or if I saw it when I was old, addled, and a hundred-and-three.

My entire body seized.

Marcus moved behind me.

I felt the coolness of pearls and the tickle of a dainty gold chain at my neck.

Then I felt his lips at my ear.

“You thought Miss Annamae wanted you to get married wearing these pearls. And Miss Annamae helped make you the you for me. So you’re getting married in these pearls.”

He killed me, every time so softly, the fall felt like hitting a cloud.

“How—?” I started.

He kissed my neck and then wrapped his arms around me from behind.

“Your life starts now,” he said all gentle and still in my ear. “The one you’re meant to be leading. The one you’ve always deserved. I thought it best to mark that occasion in a way you’d never forget.”

I twisted my neck to look at his handsome face.

“I would never have forgotten, sugar.”

“It’s my job to be sure.”

God.

Marcus Sloan.

“I love you so much, I don’t even know what to do with all of it,” I whispered.

“I’m thrilled someone else understands that feeling.”

God.

Marcus Sloan.

The tear lingered but finally traced down my cheek.

Marcus leaned in and caught it with his lips.

My belly fluttered, my heart clenched, and my hands went to his at my middle.

He lifted away and looked at me. “That all you got?”

“For now.”

“Want to go get married?”

I nodded.

Fast.

And smiled.

It was shaky but it was big.

He smiled back at me, came around, took my hand, and tucked it into the crook of his arm.

He stopped long enough to offer me my bouquet and take hold of Michelle’s to give to her.

Then he led me out of the room.

I held it together until I walked into the restaurant of the hotel that Marcus had hired out because it had two stories of windows and an unencumbered view of the mountains of Aspen covered in snow. We were going to be married in front of them. Then we were going to have a five-course meal in front of a blazing fire, all alone, the only guests in a beautiful, cozy, five-star restaurant in a beautiful, cozy five-star hotel.

After that, Doug and Michelle were going back to the suite, Marcus and I were spending our wedding night at his (no, our) place in Aspen, and tomorrow we were going to fly to the Maldives.