More Than Forever (Providence Series Book 2) (14 page)

Laughing at the memory of her “oooooeeeeeeeeee!” when we’d told her, I snuggled further into Luke. 

“You okay,
sayang
?” He was stroking one hand through my hair and the other hand was on my butt and pressing me into him. 

“
Sayang?
” I tried to lift my head, but he applied pressure and used the hand that had been running through my hair to press my head to his neck. 

“It means darling in Bahasa.” 

Relaxing back into him, I absorbed what he was saying. I loved this new name that he had for me because, when we got home, it meant that it was just ours. It also came from this time which, regardless of why it happened, had ended up being the most amazing and beautiful experience of my life to date, and it was all thanks to Luke. 

I’d been thinking about us since we arrived, and I knew that I had a lot of trust issues when it came to him and with good reason.  I also had beauty in my life after twenty-six years of having slim to none thanks to my parents, this now outweighed the prom and Kendal incidents. I hadn’t completely forgiven him, and I knew it would take a while for me to fully trust him, but I was in love with him and carrying his babies. He’d proven over the years that I meant something deep to him regardless and when we were together he treated me like the most precious thing in the world. I also knew how quickly he could have been taken away from me because of the accident or if he’d been the one to open the door to his house when it exploded. The thought of not having him in the world made it feel like I had a brick in my chest. Because of all of this, I was relaxed around him now and allowed myself to enjoy every moment like this and every other moment we were having together. I wanted to see where this would take us. 

“What are you thinking about?” He murmured into my hair. I loved it when he did that and it happened often because, he was just over a foot taller than me. 

“Us. The babies.” 

“Wanna explain that a little further,
sayang
? It doesn’t really give me much to go on.” His hand was gently and slowly moving up and down my back while I listened to his heartbeat and looked out onto the beach from my position on top of him. 

“I spoke to Guntur today,” I began. “I wanted to have some names ready for the babies just in case.” Leaning up so that I could look him in the eyes I continued. “I want them to have Indonesian names because of this moment that we’ve had together. It’s been the most beautiful time of my life, bar none, and I want names that mean something literally and emotionally.” 

Before I could tell him the names Guntur had given me, he grabbed the back of my head and pulled my mouth down onto his. I hadn’t been expecting it and gasped, giving his tongue access into my mouth. By the speed that he’d pulled my head down, I thought that it would be a hard, demanding kiss. Luke surprised me once again, though, and gave me another beautiful memory by making it a soft, but seriously hot, kiss. 

Dropping his head back onto the hammock, he grinned up at me. “What names have you got then, Angel?” 

“Did you know Guntur means thunder?” 

Luke’s brows shot up. “You…want to name our son…Guntur?” The way he asked, I knew he thought I’d lost it.  

“No, I just thought it was kickass when I found out.” 

Luke burst out laughing and my body shook with him as he did it and he tightened his arms around me. “Thank fuck, Isla.” He snorted into my neck, which I wasn’t so enamored with. “I thought I was gonna have to call an intervention! Don’t get me wrong, I really like the guy, but I’m not calling my son Guntur Montgomery!” He pulled back and looked back into my eyes, still smiling. “Now
sayang
, tell me what you’ve got.” 

“Okay, for boys there’s: Arya which means warrior, Budi which means wise one, Ismaya which also means wise, and Kali which means river.” Taking a deep breath, I continued. “For a girl: Karina which means beloved and pure, Yanti who is an Indonesian Goddess, and Dewi which also means Goddess.” 

I could see Luke mulling over the choices. He was so quiet for so long that I was beginning to worry that he hated all of them because honestly, I loved every single one. “I know they’re not traditional Luke, but these names
mean
something….” 

“Yanti or Dewi for a girl,” he cut me off. “You need to find a second possible name for a boy, though, because out of that list the only one I’m naming a son is Kali. If Thing Two turns out to be a boy, no way is he getting one of those names.” 

I thought back to some of the other options that Guntur had given me today. “What about Matius? It means gift of god.” 

Luke’s mouth pulled up into a big grin on his face as he gently pulled my face down to his. “We just named our babies!” 

Squealing, I went to get up to do a dance. Seeing them and knowing they were in there made it real, but naming them with names that meant something huge…now it was
real
. Just as I was pushing up, though, Luke’s arms tightened around me keeping me where I was. 

“Luke, let me up!” I tried to push up again, but he wasn’t budging. 

“Isla,” he called, and the tone of his voice cut through my excitement as I focused back on his face which was now serious. The last time I’d seen him look that serious, he was telling me that my car and his house had exploded so my stomach dropped. 

“What is it?” I whispered. “Jesus, please don’t tell me something else has happened.” 

“No, baby,” he gave me a squeeze and kissed my forehead softly. “It’s not that, but just so you know there has been a couple more attempted incidents at some sites, but they were caught before anyone could be injured.” His hands cupped my face and kept my eyes on his. “I’ve been in love with you since the day I met you. I can still tell you what you were wearing and I can also tell you a shit ton of memories from over the last twenty years. I know that I’ve given you two moments in that time to make you not trust me and that I’ve hurt you deeply, but I’m going to lay my heart on the line here and tell you that it’s
always
been you.” 

My breath caught in my throat as he paused and watched my reaction; then he continued and blew what was left of my control away. 

“Isla, I love you and our babies more than I love anything in this world. The moment I found out that you were pregnant, it took everything in me not to cry like a baby, no pun intended, in front of Baz and his guys on the plane. That moment gave me every dream that I’d had since I was old enough to understand what it was that I felt for you. I’m warning you now, I’m not letting you go. I want you to have my name and my ring on your finger soon, and most definitely before the babies get here.” He pulled his right hand away from my face and turned it around in front of my face so that I could see the most beautiful, yet simple, white gold band with a princess cut diamond on it. It took my breath away. “Isla Banks, will you marry me?” 

I couldn’t see his face because it was blurred through the tears that I couldn’t stop, these damn hormones, but I took a risk and lunged hoping that I’d get his mouth. Unfortunately, I got his nose and because my mouth had been open slightly it ended up inside it, which was pretty disgusting.  

Laughing, I moved my mouth down the way until I had his and whispered, “Yes!’ 

We may have some things to work through still, but I’d loved him for what felt like all of my life. Trust took time to build in every relationship. 

Pulling back, he grinned up at me. “Maya got a micro pig, I got my nose sucked. You owe me!”  

“You proposed to me, though! Why do I owe you anything?” 

“You sucked my nose,” he said laughing and bouncing me up and down again. Poor Thing One and Thing Two; could babies get motion sickness inside you? I needed to ask Siri the next time I had the iPad. 

“It was an accident,” I snapped. “And it was pretty disgusting; think about it from my point of view!” 

“You owe me!”  

Looking down at him, I played my trump card. “I’m carrying your babies, at least one son.” 

His eyes flashed as he looked up at me and quicker than I could register, he swung around off the hammock and was walking in the direction of the tall sliding glass doors of our bedroom. “You’re right, and I’m going to thank you and prove to you how grateful I am, right now!” 

Lying on the beach
the following day, I kept my eyes closed and listened to the sounds of the waves coming up onto the shore. Unfortunately, when you were carrying two Montgomery’s, the sound made you need to pee every five minutes and I’d been holding it for thirty so I was going to have to move soon. Aside from the bursting bladder, though, I was too comfortable and didn’t want to get up. 

All of a sudden I felt movement in my stomach and squealed. It was like a strong butterfly flutter.  

“Luke!” He was in the sea, but not too far away so he heard me yelling and moved quickly through the water and up the beach toward me. 

“What? Is it the babies? Fuck, where’s Guntur?” He was scanning the beach, but the point of Guntur and his men were that they were to blend in and not stand out, so Luke reached for the burner phone lying on my book. 

“Yes…no…yes! They moved!” I felt the feeling again and went to put my hand over it, but Luke beat me to it. 

He was crouched over me for a couple of minutes while we waited for it to happen again, and just as he started to reduce the pressure it happened. 

“Holy shit!” He whispered. I knew from pregnancy websites that you couldn’t normally feel a baby move from the outside until around twenty weeks, but when I’d looked up twins it had said that it was possible when they were in this position. It didn’t happen often, though. The fact that it had and that Luke had felt it made this moment one to never be forgotten. When I was little, every time something good happened or I had a memorable occasion, I would put them into a journal that I’d titled ‘Good Times’. Because my Dad was an asshole and my mom was self-centered, the only good that I’d had in my life was Gram and the Montgomery’s so the memories were all to do with them. Then I met my three best friends and I had moments with them too, but this was going into the top five moments; all of which involved the father of my little kickers who was smiling so wide that it had to hurt. He looked up at me with his hand still over the babies. I still had a notebook that I wrote them in, or I typed notes in the app on my phone. 

 “I want to get married now.” 

I was still so focused on the babies that for a minute I thought I’d heard him wrong. 

“What?” 

“Hear me out,” he leaned over me, putting his hands either side of my head. “I want to get married now, here! Before you say no, think about it. This place means something and knowing that I married you here, even though it’s just us, will make it even more beautiful.” 

He looked so serious and worried and it took me a couple seconds to digest what exactly he was saying to me.  

“Your mom will kill us!”  

“We’ll have another wedding, a huge one to make her happy, but I want us to get married here!” He said, moving his hand to the side of my neck and stroking his thumb across my jaw. Just that one touch grounded me. 

“Gram will kill us!” 

“She’ll get the same big event that Mom will!” 

Looking up at him while he stroked I realized something, I wanted this badly. It hadn’t occurred to me as a possibility, I mean we’d only been engaged for sixteen hours, but getting married here of all places? And our babies having names from here… Right here, right now, there wasn’t anyone possibly trying to kill us. I was starting to realize that Luke really was serious and that he loved
me
and not just because of the babies. This went a long way to healing the modicum of hurt and lack of trust that I had left in me. 

“Let’s do it!” 

“Are you serious?” His hand moved away and he leaned down so that our faces were millimeters away from each other. 

“I want to marry you here.” I grinned up at him and watched as an expression I’d never seen before crossed his face; it was soft and it was…peaceful. 

He closed the space between us and gently kissed me before rising up and blowing my world for the third time in twenty-four hours. “Every year, we’re coming back here to the place that made my life complete.” 

Reaching up and grabbing the back of his neck, I pulled him back down to me and kissed him, pouring everything that I had into it.  

With our lips still touching, I said the one thing that I hadn’t said to him since he’d come back into my life. “I love you! I fell in love with you when you threw mud in my face and put a worm in my spaghetti. I loved you when you shot me in the ass with a BB gun. And I loved you when we conceived these babies. I love you and our little kickers. Thank you for giving me all of this!” 

Unfortunately, at that moment, my bladder reminded me that I’d been holding it for forty-five minutes, and for ten of those I’d had Luke’s huge bear paw sized hand pressing down to feel the babies move. I needed to go to the bathroom stat or this moment was going to be ruined in the most humiliating way. 

“Honey,” I murmured.