Chasing Love's Wings (30 page)

He smiles again then looks at Beau. “I think Beau can help you with that?”
 

“Ohmygod, you’re all in on this?”
 

The entire table erupts in applause and laughter. I look back at Tristan: His eyes
are pleading with me, begging me to say yes. I would’ve said yes anyway, but it is
fun to make him squirm. “Yes, Tristan, a thousand times yes.”
 

His lips are on me in a nanosecond and he is kissing me with gusto, and I giggle,
kissing him back, and again everyone erupts into clapping and hollering.
 

The rest of the night, I can’t keep my eyes off of Tristan; I keep thinking about
what he’s done and is doing. He planned this whole thing and I should’ve known better,
but I never expected this.
 

Christmas morning. Tristan is awake and looking at me when I finally open my eyes.
“Hi, beautiful.” I beat him to it.
 

“Hi beautiful yourself.” He laughs, kisses my forehead. “Merry Christmas.”

“Mmm, I like the sound of that. Merry Christmas, Tristan.”
 

“Come on, get up. You have a lot to do today, starting with...” He produces a long
black velvet box with a bow on it, and I smile.
 

“How long have you been awake?” I ask as I sit up.
 

He smiles. “Not long.” Something tells me he’s lying, but I don’t care. I take the
box from him, hold it between my fingers and lift the lid.
 

What’s inside takes my breath away. It’s a platinum band, a bracelet that has tiny
links that are hooked on either side of an infinity symbol. One of the curves has
the word
forever
spelled out. “Tristan, it’s beautiful,” I say as I try and remove it from the box.
He takes it from me and unhooks it from its resting place. I hold out my left wrist
and he clasps it. The platinum up against my sun-kissed skin is beautiful, and it
sparkles in the light of the bedroom. I place my left hand on his cheek, catching
the sparkle before I kiss him.
 

“There’s more,” he says. “Come on.” He crawls out of bed and I slow him just a second.
 

“I need a minute,” I say, and I go into the bathroom.
 

I feel really guilty that I wasn’t able to get all of his presents here. He will have
to wait until we get home and it breaks my heart. I try not to let it show when I
come back out of the bathroom, but he catches that something is wrong. “What’s the
matter?” he asks as he wraps his arm over my shoulder and leads me toward the door.
 

I pause. “Tristan, I—” I don’t quite know how to say this to him. “All of your presents
are at home in Phoenix. I didn’t know—”
 

“Shh. It’s okay. This is a Christmas about you. Not me.”
 

“That’s hardly fair,” I say, and he leads me to the door anyway. He opens it up, and
sitting in the living room of our penthouse suite is a Christmas tree, completely
decorated, and around the bottom is a massive pile of presents. But I also notice
that there are several presents wrapped in the paper I used back home. “How?”
 

“Beau. She found them in the condo and brought them with.”

“Oh, for hell. You guys are too much to take sometimes.” He laughs as I roll my eyes.
“Now at least I feel a little less guilty.”
 

“Good. Come on, sit down in your favorite chair.” He leads me to it and I sit down.
The chair isn’t as comfortable as it once was, and I think I have this growing bump
as an explanation for it. I can no longer pull my knees to my chin. Tristan laughed
when I realized I couldn’t do it anymore, but dang it, that’s my most comfortable
position. He reassured me that I’d be able to do it again...one day.
 

I watch as he rummages through the packages, but I can see that he’s extremely excited
about making this day about me and I take great comfort in that. He walks toward me
with a small box, similar to the one with my bracelet in it but a little bigger. He
hands it to me. “Go ahead, open it,” he says, and he sits on the edge of the coffee
table.

I smile and tear into the wrapping paper. There is a plain white box and I pull the
lid off. Sitting inside is a desk plaque.

Cameron ‘Cami’ Michaels

CEO

“What would you have done if I’d said no?” I laugh. He smirks his all-knowing grin.
I shake my head at him. “You are too much sometimes. And I love you like crazy for
it.” He kisses my forehead as he stands up and goes back to the tree. “Open one of
mine to you,” I say, and he shakes his head.
 

“You get to go first,” he says as he brings me another package. This one is bigger
and I can’t quite tell what it is. “You’re really hard to shop for, especially since
I know you buy the things you want. So this is a little something for me, too.”
 

I smirk at him — the only thing that could possibly be for him too is lingerie — but
like any kid on Christmas I tear into the package and open the lid of the box. Inside
are twelve barbells tucked into a card. I cock my head at the package and he explains.
“A couple of weeks ago, you said that putting ribbon in your back tugged more than
you were comfortable with. So I thought maybe if you had barbells to replace the hoops,
you wouldn’t feel so obligated to lace them. And I wouldn’t be worried about snagging
them so much.”
 

I smile up at him. “That’s a great idea. Thank you for thinking about it.” I never
thought about replacing the hoops, and I’m not sure I want to, but this might not
be a bad idea. At least right now.
 

“Lift the card,” he says, and I do.
 

Underneath is a bellybutton ring, but this one is different; it’s... “Stretchy?” I
ask him.
 

He nods. “I read online that if you’re pregnant with a bellybutton ring, one of two
things will happen, either it will close or there is a risk of it tearing. I didn’t
want to see either happen, so I found this. It is designed to stretch and give as
your belly expands.” I smile at his thoughtfulness, and I’m glad he’s thought about
it because I certainly haven’t. “There’s one more.”
 

“My nipples?”

He grins. “These, though, are for me.” I blush slightly and lift the card with the
bellybutton ring, and underneath are two circles that are inlayed with diamonds and
with barbells running through the centers. I smile. “You can wear them whenever you
want, but I’d like it if you wore them tomorrow.”
 

I blush a little and nod. “They’re beautiful, of course I will.”
 

Of all the things in the world he could get me for Christmas, he’s bought me a massive
amount of jewelry — but all with my own comfort in mind, and I can’t help but let
my heart be filled with warmth at his thoughtfulness.

FORTY-FOUR

Over the course of the morning, I open up another fourteen presents from him. Everything
from a beautiful Gucci dress to Jimmy Choos to a new swimming suit. And of course,
as I figured, lingerie was included, but I’ll keep that to myself.
 

The last present he brings over is one similar to the birthday present I gave him
and I scoff at him; we already have two houses, for crying out loud, but I dutifully
open the present. Sure enough, it is a locked tube, and I look at him. “Open it,”
he says, and he is bouncing up and down. I look inside and there are three sets of
blueprints. I get down on the floor and spread them out on the coffee table. The first
set has a picture of our house in California. I look up at him. “The house wasn’t
originally designed to accommodate a nursery on the main floor next to our suite.
So, I had them redesign the plans a little bit. We’re still maintaining the same structure,
just changing the layout a little.”
 

I flip to the first page. It is the ground level, and where our master suite was supposed
to be there are now three rooms: one labeled
Cami’s Office
; another labeled
Tristan’s Office
; and finally the last room, which is tucked into the back corner of the house. It
says
Nanny Quarters
. “Tristan, I—”
 

“Listen. I know that we haven’t talked about it yet. But I thought that the house
needed a redesign, just in case. I think — and obviously it is up for discussion later
— that we need to consider that option. If I am going to continue to act and produce
and things of that nature, I won’t always be able to be home. You will be in L.A.
or in Phoenix alone, and you will need to work too. The condo is already equipped
with a servant’s quarters, so I didn’t do much with that.”

“Okay, I’m open to a nanny discussion. Another day.” I smile at him then I turn the
page. Upstairs has been redesigned, taking two of the original bedrooms away and creating
a master suite while maintaining the other two rooms, one of which is right across
the hall from our room. “That’s a brilliant idea, Tristan. I love it.” He leans over
and kisses me.
 

“You can flip to the next set. The rest in that one are just some general design changes
that they sent along with my changes.” I flip to the next set. It says
Tarah
across it. “These are temporary designs, and they come from Beau.”
 

I flip the page, taking one quick look, then I look at him. “The bar?” He nods. “Blu
Phoenix?”
 

“That was Beau’s idea. She thought it would be fun to have our own little piece of
paradise in Phoenix.”

“I like it,” I say as I flip the page. The first page is the bar’s layout, which isn’t
a whole lot to get excited about, at least not yet. The bar itself has a wide open
space and floor plan. It was once a country bar, after all. He stops me from turning
the page, and he does it himself.
 

“This goes backwards. See — the blank layout, like the previous page.” He flips back
one of the pages in front of it. It is transparent, and I can see it; it almost becomes
three-dimensional. First comes the main bar. Off to the right of the door, behind
the bar, is a kitchen and office space. The bar spans the entire length of the east
wall of the building, and the kitchen and offices behind it do the same. He flips
the next page, and a stage appears along the back wall, along with an extension to
the building onto the back patio. A dressing/waiting room, then there is a doorway
that leads to the stage. Then, finally, the last page comes down, and appearing to
the left of the door is another small bar, tucked back out of sight of the doorway,
with a couple of bar-height tables in front and then lining the wall back toward the
stage. To the right of the door, there are a few more tables that lead to a larger
group of tables that surround a massive dance floor in front of the stage. “The stage
is big enough that we could host a good sized band, but the bar maintains that intimate
viewing experience.”
 

“It’s amazing, she’s done a wonderful job.” He turns back the transparent pages and
the blank one. Behind it is the layout of the back of the property. “The old arena?”
 

“Yup, she wants to turn it into an outside concert area, allowing for two more bars,
a few tables, more patrons and a bigger stage.”

“So, turning it into a small concert venue. Oh my God, that’s genius. I never even
considered that.”
 

He smiles at me, and it’s warm and inviting. “She’s done a wonderful job and she’s
excited to get started. I am sure sometime over the rest of our stay here, she will
badger you about it.” He laughs.
 

“Just how long are we staying?”
 

“As long as you want. Or January tenth. Which would give you enough time to get back
to Phoenix and get ready to start up at Bold.”
 

“Sounds great.” I stand up and kiss him.
 

“Oh, you’re not done yet.” He gives me a wicked grin.
 

“Dang it, Tristan, what else is there?” I laugh, and he pulls up the bar’s blueprints
to reveal another set of blueprints. “Ah hell, Tristan. We have two houses.”
 

He laughs harder. “We do, but we needed something else. But this isn’t your Christmas
gift, this is a wedding gift. For both of us.”
 

I look down and read the lettering across the top.
Michaels Vacation Home
. I turn the page and it’s an island. “You bought an island.”
 

He snorts. “No. I bought a plot on the island. About a three-hour boat ride from here.
We love to come here so much, but we spend so much money. When I weighed that against
buying and building, this came out ahead in the long run.”
 

I can’t help the tears that escape my eyes, and I turn the page. Laid out are three
domed buildings, all connected together by what appear to be suspended walkways. The
houses are on stilts, and I immediately see why. They are over the water, like the
place we stayed at in Bora Bora. But beyond that, on land, is another, larger house
— but it is not huge, by any means. I flip the page and it is the layout design of
the huts. They are small, but still two-bedroom with a sitting room. Then I come to
the house. It is a quaint little oceanfront house, typical of this part of the South
Pacific, and it is beautiful.
 

Three bedrooms, kitchen, dining room — the works. I flip the page again, and there
is a massive patio and pool, and it is simply stunning. “Tristan, I don’t know what
to say.”

“Thank you?”
 

“Thank you, thank you.” I smile and kiss him more than a few times. Then I remember
his own presents. “You have presents, too.” I say, and he scowls.

FORTY-FIVE

******

Tristan

******