Page 119 of Gracefully Yours

I moved to the mirror—to see a little pink kiss mark on my neck.

“What’s this for?”

“So that they know that you’remine.”

“Mmm. The wedding ring isn’t enough?”

She cracked a grin, interlacing our fingers together. “Nope. I don’t want anyone else getting any ideas.”

Turned out that I liked it when she was a little bit possessive, too.

And I was all too happy to drive her to get doughnuts, even though all I wanted was to pin her against the bed and show her how wild she drove me.

How much I adored her.

* * *

The room was filledwith tiny dancers, each dressed in a sparkling costume and sporting a neat, tight bun.

“So you’re Miss Charlotte’shusband?”They were inspecting me as if I was fresh meat. Maybe I was.

Still, I’d agreed to come with Char to her dance thing this weekend, and now was being relentlessly questioned by a group of girls who could be no older than ten.

“Yeah. She’s my wife.” It still made me smile to say that. Mywife.God, I liked it. “She’s Mrs. Bradford now.” Legally, too. All the paperwork had been done last month, and her brand new driver’s license had my name on it.

“We’re still gonna call her Miss Charlotte.” One of the little girls gave me a toothy grin.

I laughed. “Sure, kiddo.”

Charlotte came out into the hallway with one of her older dancers—a teenager who’d been having a meltdown over the days’ events. I’d learned from her a long time ago how stressful this kind of thing could be. The pressure to be perfect, to perform your part just perfectly—and even if they nailed everything, sometimes they still didn’t feel like they were enough. It was hard, but the way she was hugging the girl gave me hope.

Her eyes connected with mine, and she flashed a smile my way.

“Did she make your costumes, too?” I asked, looking at the rhinestone fabric.

The little girl—Gwen, I was pretty sure her name was—nodded. “Uh-huh. Miss Charlotte’s thebest.”

I leaned down conspiratorially. “I think so too.”

“Don’t you think she looks pretty today, Miss Charlotte’s husband?”

I laughed. I loved that my entire personality boiled down to my wife. “She looks beautiful.” But she always did.

Everyone broke out into giggles, before one girl—the little dark-haired dancer—looked around, and then whispered to me, “Are you two going to have a baby? Because when my mom remarried my step-dad, she had a new baby.” Charlotte eyed me, and all I could do was smile at my wife, who was walking this way, her gray eyes bright.

“And Miss Juily just had a baby, too!”

My heart clenched, thinking about a baby. The thing she wanted more than anything, that I only hoped I could give her. Sure, everything had started out with her thinking this was fake, but now—things were good. Better than good.

“We’ll see,” I said as she slid in beside me.

“Are you all interrogating my husband?” Charlotte asked, wrapping her arm around my waist.

“No!” they exclaimed quickly, dissolving into a fit of giggles.

“Autumn, your solo is coming up soon, so do you want to run it one more time with me? I’ll meet you in there in a minute.”

The little dirty-blonde girl nodded her head, heading back to their little changing room. The hallway suddenly felt a lot less crowded as the rest of the group departed, leaving just the two of us.

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