Page 62 of Blue Jean Summer

Hayes pulled the covers up to my chin, set my purse on the nightstand, and plugged my phone in beside it. His smile was tender. “I’m glad.”

“Took a while.” I yawned. “I wanted to find the right one for you.”

“Why for me?” he asked as he lingered by the door.

Starlight danced through the curtains. “ ’Cause I wanna be beautiful for you.”

Sleep began to creep in from the edges of my vision. Or maybe that was Hayes’s shadow as he leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “You already are.”

Chapter 16

Hayes

“Some bachelor party you’ve got going on,” Mason said as he moseyed through the tree line, carrying a six-pack of beer.

I chuckled. “Sorry. I’m not the steak and strip club type.”

The estate was blissfully quiet after nearly twelve hours of mayhem. Hallie and Catherine had been outside for most of it, giving marching orders as a giant white tent was erected in one of the pastures beside the rose garden. Catering staff had been bustling around the house all day, preparing for the meal tomorrow.

I had picked up the rings and my suit had been delivered.

This was real. I was marrying Catherine Foster.

Mason chuckled as he took a seat on the patch of grass beside me and stared at the pond. “Me either.” He offered me a beer from the six-pack, but I waved it off. He grabbed one for himself and popped the top. “You’re actually going through with it, huh?”

“Don’t have much choice at this point.”

Mason lifted a shoulder. “There are worse things in life than marrying a good woman and having some land to call home.”

“No arguments there.”

“So…” Mason’s voice trailed off. “The governor is dear old Dad, huh?”

I glanced over at him. “Where’d you hear that?” To my knowledge, Catherine had kept that information secret, though a lot of people were about to find out when he walked her down the aisle.

“Cath told Hallie. Hallie told me. Don’t worry,” he said as he rested his arms on top of bent knees. “That’s estate business. It doesn’t leave the gates.” He glanced at me. “I’m just curious how you got him to agree to walk her down the aisle.”

“Just took a phone call.” I snapped a blade of grass and twisted it around the tip of my finger.

Mason laughed. “So, you’re telling me that she’s tried to have a relationship with the man for her whole twenty-something years on this earth, and all it took from you was one phone call?”

“I can be persuasive when I need to be,” I said as I stared out at the glossy surface of the pond.

Mason took a long drink. “I guess money does talk.”

“I didn’t pay him,” I said. “We just had a conversation.”

“Be straight with me,” Mason said as he smoothed down his silver beard.

“I called him up and told him how unfortunate it was that we didn’t have a chance to speak more at the funeral, especially since I was going to marry his daughter.”

Mason laughed at my sarcasm.

A huff slipped free because of how ridiculously easy it had been. “I apologized for not getting his blessing before proposing, but that it would mean the world to Catherine and to me to have him in attendance.”

“That’s all it took, huh? A little emotional strong-arming?”

“He expressed his sincerest condolences for my granddad’s passing”—I paused and rolled my eyes—“and said that he’d have to check his calendar. I accepted his bullshit sympathies and said my only regret was that my mom and grandma weren’t alive to see her become the next Mrs. Wilder, and how they would have thought Catherine was the perfect woman to be the next head of the Wilder family and estate.”