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They weren’t surprised in the least.
“I just knew that this was going to happen the moment you told me how you met him!” my mother cried. “Your brother is going to be so excited!”
I looked at her blankly, wondering what alien had replaced my mother.
Surely this woman standing before me with her giddy smile on her face wasn’t my mother.
My mother was a skeptic. She didn’t believe in love. She had two marriage and one divorce under her belt to prove it.
What she did believe in was hard work and commitment.
None of which I had.
My mother loved me in her own way—as one would love a daughter that wasn’t hers.
Yes, you heard me correctly.
My father had been her second husband. Shortly after they’d divorced, my father had been in a car accident that had taken his life, leaving me with no one at the age of six.
Mom—who’d ordered me to call her mom shortly after my dad had married her when I was four—had taken me home with her after picking me up from the hospital where I’d been transported after the accident. From then on, she’d fought for me, and given me everything that one could give her daughter—even one that wasn’t hers by blood.
It was a miracle that my mother took me in, to be honest. Especially after the way my father had caused their marriage to fail.
Let’s just say that multiple hookers in their marriage bed wasn’t something Mom could overlook.
“I won the bet, by the way,” my sister exclaimed moments later. “What did we bet? Two hundred bucks? I’ve slept too much since then.”
“It wasn’t two hundred bucks, you boob. You damn well know it was a hundred.”
My sister grinned at my mother’s words, and Rhys’ hand on my hip tightened slightly. I looked over and up at him, seeing his large grin widening on his face.
“I’m glad y’all are both on board,” Rhys said sweetly. “Now, y’all can try to convince her to take a few photos for the press so we don’t have to have them following us around at the mall stores trying to sneak some shots. Luckily, the one they published yesterday of the two of us only showed some cleavage instead of anything too intimate. But they got us both, and the look I was giving her wasn’t a chaste one.”
My cheeks blushed a fiery shade of red that I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, was quite obvious to my sister, my mother, and hell, even my niece.
Shit.
“You’ll have to go shopping,” my sister teased.
I hated shopping, and she damn well knew it. But if that was what I had to do to look good in pictures…
“A simple pair of jeans and a tee will work for now,” Rhys said. “She’s damn beautiful in anything she wears. No need to get fancy.”
The words flooded my heart with pleasure, and though I knew them to be a simple ‘prop’ so to speak, they still made me feel good.
“I don’t know about that,” I hedged, picking at my clothes. “I’m not all that attractive in simple jeans and shirts. And I’m sure they’re gonna want to see the wedding dress, right?” I shuddered. “I’ll have to take them off for the picture. Putting on a wedding dress for thousands to see? Then, to have them all see my transmitter? Yeah, no. I’m defective enough. I don’t need them to point that out. That’s my worst nightmare.”
“But someone’s going to want to take a photo of you. I mean, you’re marrying Rhys Rivera. It’s bound to happen at some point. Why not just allow them to take a photo of you and be done? Then you don’t have to worry about paparazzi swarming,” my sister pointed out.
While my sister spoke, I happen to catch Rhys’ face, and I frowned at the look that was there.
It was somewhere in between disappointment and anger.
What the hell?
“Rhys?” I asked. “What is it?”
He turned his eyes to me, and that was when I realized that he was much angrier than he was letting on, and he’d been concealing it—poorly—by keeping his eyes downcast.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
I frowned. “Sure.”
I got up and Rhys followed. “We will be back in just a second,” I said.
“Don’t hurry. I have to look up bridal locations in Longview that’ll house at least five hundred people,” my mother cried excitedly.
I barely contained the urge to roll my eyes and followed Rhys out of the room.
He didn’t stop at just the room, though.
Nope. He continued to walk out of the house and then went even farther to round the side of the house where the trees and shadows concealed our movements.
“Rhys?”
Before I could gasp, he was on me.
His body was crowding mine, and he was practically breathing the air I exhaled, he was so close.
