I’m calmer when I leave the bathroom, but my stomach is a mess of twisting. “Okay,” I say brightly. “Let’s practice.” I move to stand in front of the TV.
Jordan steps up to face me. It’s times like these that I remember how large he is. I’m used to big guys. I grew up around pro football players, and my brothers-in-law are both well over six feet tall and large, like Jordan. Still, he’s so tall and so broad and so muscled. He dwarfs me. Maybe it’s the safety I always feel with my brothers-in-law that extends to Jordan because he’s sweet, like them. If he took me in his arms?—
I stop the thought abruptly.
This is practice, like a rehearsal for a movie. I call back to mind the moments we did similar things when we were filmingBeing the Bennets. Sometimes we’d run through a conversation or blocking first and Victoria would give us direction for how to amp up the drama in the scene.
Jordan takes my hands in his. They’re warm, and they make heat travel up my arms. “So they’ll pronounce us man and wife and the whole ‘you may kiss the bride’ thing.” He draws in a breath.
“And we’ll kiss,” I say.
“Should we…” He grimaces. “I don’t know, are there, like, specific moves we should make?”
When I told him we would plan out our affection, this wasn’t what I had in mind. “Um? Just … kissing?”
“Right. Okay.” He rolls his shoulders, like he’s getting ready to jump over the little wall between the bench and the ice in a hockey game. “So we’ll just kiss.”
“Yup.”
We go in for the kiss, but there’s no natural coordination to it. We’re both too nervous. It’s nothing like in my dream. Our noses bump, and we both apologize, pull back, and try again. Thistime we do manage to make our lips meet, but I try to cup his cheeks the same time he tries to put a hand to the back of my neck to draw me close. Our lips meet only a second before we both rear away from each other.
Jordan sighs and scrubs a hand through his hair. “Maybe one of us should take the lead.”
“Right. Yeah. Probably should be you.”
“Okay.” He claps his hands together, and I half expect a pep talk.
We move toward each other again. I tilt my head to avoid nose-bumping and press my face toward his. The problem is that he leans his face the same way and we end up headbutting each other.
“Ohhh,” I murmur softly, pulling back to rub my head.
“Sorry.” He lets out a breath.
A laugh bursts from me at how bad we are at this. How can we be bad at it? On the plane, everything was fine. And I don’t mean that dream. We moved in for that light kiss like we did it all the time. At least Jordan did. I was overthinking everything, as usual. Am I the problem?
He chuckles with me. “I don’t know how well the practice is working,” he says ruefully. “If you let me take the lead at the ceremony, we can trust our natural chemistry.”
“I did let you take the lead!” I cry defensively.
“Um, okay.” He holds up his hands in surrender. “But at the wedding, if you stood still and let me make all the moves, I think it would be better.”
I chew on my lip. I was making moves and it didn’t turn out well. “Yeah, maybe that will work. Natural chemistry.” I can’t help the sarcasm when I say that, given how the last few minutes have gone.
“Wearerunning on very little sleep,” he excuses.
I smirk. “True.”
He reaches over to the bed and grabs my bag for me. “Ready?” he asks.
Not really, but I nod anyway. I don’t like admitting that Jordan is right, that we do have natural chemistry. I’ve felt it almost since the first moment I met him.
That’s what scares me so much about the fact that I’m about to marry this charming, good-looking man that I’ve only known for a month.
CHAPTER 8
JORDAN
Baylee
