Forever His Bride (14 page)

“I am.” Except with him. Something about him made her feel like that insecure fat girl she’d once been.

“You don’t see yourself the way I see you,” Josh said. “You’re beautiful.” He turned her in his arms, so she could finally see what he’d been working on at the counter.

“Oh…” She laughed. “You did this?”

“Pop and Mama helped. They gave me the recipe and watched so that I didn’t screw it up.” He grinned with pride. “But I decorated it entirely on my own.”

She reached up and swiped a finger across the frosting on his jaw. “I can see that.”

And she could see that he loved her—in the cake he’d decorated for her, molded and frosted in her curvy image. Red hair fell in waves over creamy white shoulders, big breasts and rounded hips. A laugh bubbled out from between her lips. “You made me an X-rated cake.”

“It’s you.”

“I can see that.” Was the man talented at everything he did?

“That’s how I see you.”

“It really is beautiful,” she acknowledged. “Are you sure you’re not a sculptor instead of a surgeon?”

“I’m a man in love. I love you, Brenna Kelly. I’ll love you forever,” he promised. “Now let’s have some cake.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to mess it up. It’s too…perfect.”

“There’s always room for cake,” he reminded her. “So go ahead. Mess it up. And any time you forget how beautiful you are, I can make you another.”

“No. All I have to do is look into your eyes.” And she could see herself as he saw her.

He expelled a ragged breath. “You believe me. You finally believe that I love you.”

She nodded. “I’m stubborn. Not stupid.”

“Stop being stubborn and have some cake.”

She stepped closer to the table, admiring every curvy line of the cake. “It’s…” She noted something glittering in the belly button of the cake version of Brenna. “What’s that? I don’t have a belly button ring.” She turned toward him, lifting her eyebrow once again as she asked, “Do you want me to get one?”

“Take it out,” he advised her.

Brenna reached for the glittering stone and pulled out a diamond ring. “Josh!”

“I decided to go ahead and pick it out myself,” he said. “I figured, since I’d bought the house you wanted, and you and I like the same colors, that we probably have similar taste.”

She would have absolutely picked the oval diamond with the platinum band for herself. Tears stung her eyes at its sparkling beauty.

“Will you let me put
this
ring on your finger?” he asked.

She nodded and held out her hand. After licking off the band, he slid the ring onto her finger. And she sighed. “It fits.”

“Perfectly. Just like us.”

“I love you,” she said as emotion overflowed her full heart.

Josh tapped the diamond on her hand. “So you’ll marry me.”

“Yes.”

He looked at her with suspicion. “Are you marrying me just to get your hands on my house?”

“Nope.”

He tilted his jaw, studying her. “Because you want to mother my sons?”

She smiled. “Nope. I’m marrying you because I want my hands on you. Every night for the rest of our lives. I love you so much, Joshua Towers.”

“Not nearly as much as I love you,” he said, kissing her lips, then her shoulder. Then kissing wasn’t enough, and they made love right there in the bakery kitchen.

As she straightened her clothes, Josh swiped a smear of frosting from her cheek. “Mmmm…you’re right. There is always room for cake.”

She slapped at his chest. “You’re bad.” No, he was good.
Very good
. And she was one lucky woman.

He pulled her close, hugging her to his chest. “So how long will it take you to plan another wedding?”

Brenna smiled.

“What?”

“We may have to wait our turn. Abby and Clayton are getting married,” she shared.

Josh grinned. “And Nick and Colleen.”

“Really?”

“He asked me to be his best man,” Josh said, beaming with pride.

“Then there’s Molly.”

Brenna sighed. She was worried about her best friend. Neither she nor Eric had seemed too hopeful about their future—alone or together.

“She’ll find the man she’s meant to marry,” Josh assured her.

Brenna nodded. “She already did.”

In the second grade, Eric had proposed to her. Maybe Molly would finally hold him to that promise just as Brenna intended to hold Josh to his, to love her forever.

Josh closed his hand over Brenna’s, and together they sliced through the first layer of cake. Their wedding cake: five frosted tiers, on the top of which stood a proud plastic groom in his tuxedo with his molded dark hair and his bright smile. Next to him, their plastic hands joined, stood his redheaded bride. Josh grinned, pleased the groom no longer stood alone. Then he redirected his attention, and his heart swelled with pride and love as he gazed down at his beautiful bride.

Brenna handed him a slice, then lifted the piece she held to his lips. He lifted his slice, teasing her lips with the frosted sweetness. Together, they bit into the cake.

While the wedding party and rest of the guests, pretty much the entire town of Cloverville, cheered and called out for them to smash it into each other’s face, they only smiled at each other. Then Josh leaned forward and kissed the frosting off Brenna’s mouth. Breathless, he pulled away and nuzzled her neck, whispering into her ear, “I’d like the cake better if it was of you.”

He’d only had to sculpt that one in her image. She hadn’t needed any reminders of how beautiful she was or of how much he loved her.

“Don’t let Pop hear you,” his bride warned him.

He nodded, seeing as how Pop had his knife, deftly slicing up the rest of the cake, which Mama, using a little silver spatula, was placing on small plates.

“Where are the candles?” Buzz asked.

TJ bumped his shoulder against his twin’s, jostling him dangerously close to the table. “It’s not a birthday cake, stupid.”

Josh’s bride crouched near her new stepsons. “You can make a wish if you want to,” she told Buzz.

“Me, too?” TJ asked.

“You can both make a wish.” She’d always known, instinctively, how to handle his competitive boys.

“Did
you
make a wish?” Buzz asked her.

She smiled down at the twins, her green eyes shining with love. “I already have everything I want.”

Buzz closed his eyes, puckered his lips and blew out a breath as if he were blowing out candles. TJ elbowed him but then copied his brother’s actions.

“What did you wish for?” Josh asked his sons, hoping that, like him and Brenna, his boys had everything they wanted. He knew they had everything they needed.

The boys exchanged one of
their
glances, then TJ answered for them both. “We wished for a little sister.”

“What?” Josh asked, stunned. “A sister?”

“Yeah,” Buzz agreed, gesturing toward the flower girl, Lara Hamilton-McClintock. “Girls aren’t so bad. When we were getting our pictures taken in the park, Lara sat on TJ and made him eat a worm.”

Yet the little blond girl hadn’t even a smudge on the white dress she’d worn for so many weddings while his boys’ rented tuxedoes were grass-stained and fraying at the knees and hems.

Instead of parental outrage, amusement bubbled up inside Josh, and he laughed, then winked at Lara. “She looks so sweet,” he murmured to Brenna.

“But she’s tough.”

“Like you. Sweet and strong.” He grinned. “I think I’m with the boys. I’d love to have a daughter—one who looks just like her mama with red hair and green eyes.”

Brenna laughed as the boys ran off with the slices of cake they’d snagged from the table the minute Pop had cut them. “You all have no idea what you’re getting into. She could be bossy and stubborn,” she warned him of their “daughter.”

“I hope so,” Josh said, “then she’ll really be like her mama.”

She rubbed a hand over the satin and lace covering the slight swell of her stomach. She would have never believed she could be as happy as she was on this day—her wedding day. “I guess we’ll find out in about five and a half months.”

Josh’s jaw dropped. “We’re having a baby?”

She nodded. “I think I got pregnant that day at the bakery.”

“You didn’t tell me,” he accused her.

“I was saving it for your wedding present.”

His blue eyes sparkling with happiness, he brushed a stray curl back from her face. “I didn’t need a present. All I need is you.”

“Me, too, but we have so much more,” she mused as she watched her sons run in circles around the cake table, the guests and the members of the wedding party, who were clad again in black tuxedoes and red dresses.

Josh took her hand and led her to the middle of the dance floor of the American Legion Hall, which had been decorated with red and white fairy lights. It looked as beautiful as that first night she had danced with this man, who was now
her
groom.

They danced the first dance alone, Brenna melting into the strong arms of her husband. For the next song, the rest of the wedding party filed out to join them. The best man danced with a brown-haired bridesmaid. Colleen stared up at her husband, her eyes brimming with love, while Nick, handsome face soft with adoration, stared down at his wife.

Clayton McClintock danced with the two females in his life. Lara, whom he had officially adopted, balanced on one arm while his other encircled his beautiful wife. Abby looked up at him, her eyes alight with a mischievous glint, as she absently stroked her free hand over the swell of her belly beneath her red gown. She and Brenna were due about the same time, but because she was so petite she showed more. She’d even been showing in her wedding dress over a month ago, but she hadn’t cared what the town or anyone else thought. She had never been happier.

Like Brenna herself. She slid her fingers into the soft, dark hair brushing Josh’s nape. “I love you…”

“And I love you, wife.” He kissed her lips as the music ended. Before they could walk off the dance floor, Brenna’s matron of honor caught them.

“Time to throw the garter and the bouquet,” Molly said, her brown eyes shining as she obviously enjoyed bossing around Brenna for a change. “But I don’t know who’s left to catch it…”

Even Mrs. McClintock was finally remarried, to their old English teacher.

“I know,” Brenna said as she searched the crowd of wedding guests for a distinctive, wide-brimmed hat bedecked with flowers. Mrs. Hild, the long-widowed town busybody, held onto Nick’s dad’s arm. The charming old guy, who’d also been widowed a long time ago, guided her off the dance floor.

Molly clapped her hands together. “Of course. The McClintocks’ matchmaking ways have rubbed off on you.”

Brenna squeezed her best friend’s hand. “They’ve done more than that. They’ve given me more happiness than I ever thought possible.”

Josh, standing yet at her side, hugged them both—the bride who’d jilted him, and the one who would never leave him. And who would love him just as deeply and eternally as he loved her.