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“And our first kiss. Right, sweetie?” he asked, and when her mother tipped her head back, they shared a kiss right in front of God, country and their daughters.
Kayla groaned, and Brooklyn grimaced.
It was sweet...and ew.
She might be thirty, but when her parents went into PDA mode, she reverted to a twelve-year-old. No one wanted to see all...that. Primarily her. Shit, she still denied they’d actually had sex.
Still, with the story of their first date hammered into her head since she was little, she couldn’t be blamed for imagining her wedding happening in the same place. But as she’d told Patrick, that was a girl’s dream.
“Right, baby.” Her mother preened under his obvious affection and devotion, and Brooklyn would be a liar if she didn’t admit to a pang of envy...of loneliness.
While her parents might be a wee bit nauseating with their open displays—she’d caught him copping a feel of her mother’s breast in the kitchen last Thanksgiving—she couldn’t deny she’d wanted what they had once upon a time. Back before she realized any man she pledged her fidelity and future to would have to pass the gauntlet of her sister. More specifically, not spying her younger, skinnier, more fun, conventionally beautiful sister and falling in lust and love with her on sight. It’d occurred with her first and second boyfriends in high school. Happened with the man she’d been dating for six months in college. Transpired again four years ago when she met the man she’d been talking to online for five months in person for the first time. All had one thing in common. They’d taken one look at Kayla and decided they’d all dated the wrong Hayes sister.
And then there was her husband.
God.She broke off another piece of funnel cake and ate it, swallowing her unwanted resentment along with it.I definitely seem to have a type.
“You might want to slow down on that, Brooklyn,” Kayla said, frowning as her lips turned up. “As they say, a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.” Her gaze scanned down Brooklyn’s body, settling on the offending area—at least in her opinion, it seemed.
Instead of verbally replying to that unsubtle dig about her weight, Brooklyn popped another piece of the fried dough into her mouth, chewing slowly and deliberately. Screw her. She loved her wide hips. And her small breasts and big ass. And don’t get her started on her thick thighs. It’d taken years for her to appreciate all the curves she possessed, as well as refuse to allow other people’s ideals of beauty to define hers. It’d been a hard-won battle, but she adored every curve, dip and dimple of her size sixteen.
“A lifetime on the hips?” Patrick spoke for the first time since her parents and Kayla approached them. “Eat up, then.”
He reached over and broke off a piece of the treat and held it to her lips. And with shock shimmering through her, she parted them and allowed him to slip the dough inside. Only when a faint smirk rode his mouth did she break free of her paralysis and horror swelled inside her.
Horror and heat.
They tussled and tangled with one another, each vying for dominance.
Holy shit.
She blinked, jerking her too-enraptured regard away from him and back to her family, who stared at them with varying degrees of surprise and annoyance.
“It seems like you two have become...friendly—” Kayla bit off the word, sounding decidedlyunfriendly, her narrowed stare shifting from Brooklyn to Patrick, and then back to her “—in the time I’ve been gone.”
“Don’t be silly,” her mother scoffed. “They’re just friends, and don’t forget Patrick works for your sister. Although,” she continued, “I wish Brooklyn would listen to me and put as much effort into finding someone as she does into that business. A company can’t love her back or give her a family.”
“I’m standing right here,” Brooklyn said dryly.
Did her mother’s criticism sting? Yes. All her accomplishments with building a highly successful company that literally started in an efficiency apartment and now employed eleven people and operated out of a suite of offices right there on Main Street didn’t matter. Not when compared to a husband and children. None of those things she claimed to want, by the way. At least, not aloud. Her mother, God love her, dismissed Brooklyn’s achievements, her success, and reduced her to a womb.
“I have to respectfully beg to differ.” Patrick lifted his cup of hot chocolate for a sip, his quiet objection drawing three pairs of eyes his way. “A company isn’t comprised of brick and mortar. It’s the people who show up for work every day, nurturing a vision, and who are dedicated to its survival. In that way, it can love you in return. And those same people become a family of choice not blood.”
Silence seemed to throb in their small circle, temporarily dulling the laughter and chatter surrounding them under the tent.
Pressure shoved against Brooklyn’s ribs, and for a moment she couldn’t identify that immense, nearly suffocating, feeling. But the longer she stared at Patrick, the clearer it became, like a fog being swept out to sea by a mild but insistent wind.
Awe. Pure and simple.
He was defending her, having her back.
How...novel.
And hot. Damn, was it hot.
She wanted her husband.
Oh, she was so fucked.
