Fly With Me (Wild Aces #1)(36)

It had been so much easier when I was younger. If I liked a guy, we had the whole boyfriend-girlfriend talk and got it over with. But in my thirties, calling someone my boyfriend just sounded kind of weird, and all the other euphemisms never really sat well with me.

So, yeah. Awkward.

Noah was silent for a second. “I’d like to try to come visit you in Florida.”

“I’d really like that.”

He smiled. “Good. I can talk to the guy who handles leave for the squadron on Monday and see if there’s time for me to get away. Worst case, maybe I can just come in late on a Friday after work and then leave Sunday.”

My next question made me nervous, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity. I already felt kind of like a loser considering I was an unmarried bridesmaid in my sister’s wedding. Having a smoking hot fighter pilot for a date? That’d make up for it.

“Would you want to be my date for my sister’s wedding?”

I sort of blurted it out, my heart pounding in my chest. Maybe it was too fast. Maybe he would think it was too much pressure—I mean, my family would be there. He’d already met Meg, but my parents were another matter. I could see him being freaked. I would be freaked.

“If you don’t think it’s too soon or anything,” I added, unable to stave off the word vomit escaping from my lips. “It probably is too soon. And you totally don’t have to go. I was just thinking—”

“Jordan?”

I stopped talking.

A smile played at his lips. “I’d love to take you to your sister’s wedding. I’ll check with the squadron, but I don’t think we’ll have anything going on around that time so I should be good to go.”

The fact that he wasn’t scared off by meeting my family filled me with all the warm and fuzzies. Definite Chupacabra.

I gave huge mental thanks to Meg for not dressing us in poufy lime green dresses or something equally hideous. Hopefully, my parents would be too busy marrying off their younger daughter to embarrass their older one. And really, I was pretty sure Noah didn’t need to see my parents to get a glimpse of the embarrassing sides of me. I did a pretty good job of that on my own.

“Do I need to wear a tux?”

I nodded.

Meg’s wedding was taking place at this gorgeous country club in town. It was black tie, and they’d been planning it for, like, a year. I had no idea how much my parents had spent on it, but I figured a lot. I also figured they were so excited to get a daughter married off and on her way to giving them grandkids, that they hadn’t batted an eye at the expense.

“Do you think you could come out again for a visit in March?” Noah asked.

My heart thumped and my voice squeaked with excitement.

“Yeah. Maybe not for a couple weeks so that I can be at the store for the spring break rush, but I should be able to make it happen once things settle down.”

He grinned. “Good.”

I hesitated, and then went all in.

“So are we dating?”

He laughed. “Yeah.”

“Exclusively?”

His gaze sobered. “Do you want to be exclusive?”

So freaking much.

I nodded.

He smiled again.

“Then yeah, we’re exclusive.”

It wasn’t every day that you got a hot wedding date and a boyfriend in one fell swoop. Apparently, my romantic luck was changing. Finally.





TWELVE




JORDAN

The next few weeks were every bit as chaotic as I’d anticipated. The spring break crowd had come in droves, and while the town had been bursting at the seams, thankfully so was our bank account. Sophia and I extended our normal hours, our lives utterly consumed by the shop. Between that and helping out with last-minute plans for Meg’s wedding, I’d barely had time to talk to Noah. He was swamped with work, too, and even though we still talked every day, the conversations were shorter than either one of us liked. It wasn’t just difficult to juggle the distance; the time difference and the erratic hours we both worked made finding time to talk even more challenging.

Long distance sucked balls.

“Are you really bringing a date to your sister’s wedding?”

I looked up from the bathing suit catalog I was flipping through. My mother stood in the entrance of the store, a slightly manic look on her face, dressed from head to toe in Lily Pulitzer. She and Meg were pretty much preppy twins. I was the one who totally stuck out like a sore thumb.

“Hi, Mom.”

She came over to the register, giving me a quick hug, her gaze running over me as though the existence of a wedding date had somehow altered me physically.

“Who is he?”

So Meg hadn’t totally spilled the beans to our parents. I appreciated that, at least. I wasn’t entirely sure how to make, I met a fighter pilot in Vegas a few weeks ago and now we’re sort of dating even though he lives across the country, sound any less crazy. Although, to be fair, I figured they’d be so excited for me to be in a relationship that they wouldn’t care too much how it came about.

“He’s someone I’m seeing,” I answered, keeping my tone evasive. If years of dating had taught me anything, it was not to get my parents’ hopes up. Sometimes it seemed like they handled my breakups worse than I did.