Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 92899 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92899 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
“Huh. I didn’t realize your boyfriend was married. Weird.”
He shot me a look. “You know what I mean. That was the last time I was surrounded by this many Marians. It’s a lot.”
He wasn’t wrong. Last night at the rehearsal dinner in the barrel room, my cousins, aunts, and uncles had all given Foster the third degree, peppering him with questions about search and rescue, his old sheriff job, and what it was like to “turn a guy gay.”
“We’ve heard about it from gay lore, but we’ve never seen it in real life,” my cousin Rosie had teased.
Foster had looked right at her with a straight face and said, “I have a magical—”
“Okay!” I’d cried, slapping a hand over his mouth.
He’d laughed and pulled my hand away, not without kissing my palm first, and finished, “—way with men. Baby, what did you think I was gonna say?”
They’d all loved him. He’d charmed the pants off them, as usual, which meant his insecurity today made no sense.
“What’s gotten into you?”
Foster grabbed two champagne glasses off a passing server’s tray and handed one to me before taking a healthy swallow from the other. “Nothing. Well, other than you getting into me this morning in the shower. That what you mean?”
“Definitely not. You’ve been acting strange all day.”
I suddenly realized what it could be and pulled him over to the edge of the room for a little privacy.
“Are you feeling pressure to get married?” I asked, trying not to laugh at the idea. “Is being at a wedding with me making you squirrelly because you think everyone’s going to put you on the spot about us? Baby, we’ve only been together for four months. Nobody’s thinking about that right now.”
His eyes pierced me with the same intensity he always seemed to get when he told me he loved me, like it was the most serious declaration he’d ever make for the entirety of this life and all the lives that came after it.
My throat thickened with emotion. Fuck, I loved him.
“Thomas Marian, you will be marrying me when we’re ready to take that step. It’s not a question of if but when. And, listen, I’m not in a hurry. You know that. But if you think for one minute the idea of marrying you would make me squirrelly, you haven’t been paying attention.”
My heart tripped into its usual rapid pace whenever Foster got like this. “Not if but when, huh?”
He grabbed my tie and yanked me in for a bruising kiss. “That’s right. Notice I didn’t ask your opinion.”
A laugh bubbled up. “Duly noted. But for the record, I concur.”
“Mpfh.”
“So then why are you acting weird? It’s not about…” I glanced at the couple exchanging longing glances in the corner and lowered my voice. “It’s not about the Robyn thing, is it? Because I swear, until two days ago, I had no idea the best man had even met her when he was in Legacy last month, let alone hooked up with her and invited her to the wedding as his plus—”
“Of course not. You know I like Robyn a lot.” Foster winked. “And I like her even better now that she’s not swinging her ponytail in my boyfriend’s direction.”
I rolled my eyes. “Then I’m officially out of ideas as to why you—oof.”
He pulled me over to one of the nearby leather sofas and sat, yanking me down practically on top of him. His arm immediately came around me, holding me close, and his lips brushed my ear.
It took me a minute to realize he was preparing to tell me a secret, not seducing me at a family wedding.
Damn.
“I saw something I shouldn’t have, and now I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Continue.”
The warm breath of his huff tickled the skin on my neck, but I tried to stay focused.
“Okay, I was sitting next to Tilly last night at the rehearsal dinner—”
“I remember. She swapped out my place card with her own,” I grumbled. “And claimed it was to ‘thank Commander Quadzilla for the lovely bottle of Macallan he sent me.’”
“Right. But apparently, she was in the middle of a scheme with her fellow evil-doers. She needed to sit next to Alex so she could steal his phone when he went to the buffet.”
I snorted. “Babe, Tilly’s gonna Tilly. She once stole my phone to put herself on my Amazon Prime account, but then she loaded a two-hundred-dollar gift card on it to cover the fees. Don’t ask me why. She said it had something to do with governmental spy agencies, but I honestly think she was just being lazy.”
He gave me a meaningful look. “She was in the Flint app.”
I blinked at him. “I don’t know that one.”
Foster’s warm bark of laughter surprised me. “Jesus fuck. Sometimes I forget you’re a little baby bisexual with literally zero experience in the gay world.”