Page 114 of Fireworks & Forehead Kisses

“You’remarried?!” Daphne emphasized in disbelief.

Zoe pointed accusatorily at Nadia. “Did you know about this?”

Nadia cringed as she lifted her hands from the table in mock surrender. “Yes.”

“She did, but I swore her to secrecy.”

I quickly caught the group up on how the entire sordid affair unfolded. Everything from soup to nuts, from our first meeting at the bar in the hotel to working for Mr. Stick Up His Ass, to finding out they were the same person, to the indecent proposal, to our secret ceremony, wedding night, ten-week marriage, and Christmas Day divorce/declaration of love.

Once I’d filled them in, both Daphne and Zoe just stared at me for several seconds, neither saying a word.

Finally, Daphne concluded, “Wow…that’s…romantic.”

Even though I was biased, I did tend to agree with her.

“It really, really is! Congratulations!” Zoe hugged me.

“I’m so happy for you!” Daphne got in on the hug, too.

When everyone sat back in their seats, Zoe took a breath. “And, since we’re sharing news, we were going to wait until after the new year, but…” She reached into her purse and then held up her hand. “I’m engaged.”

“Since when?” Nadia grabbed her hand and yanked it across the table to check out her ring.

“About a week before the movie premiere, when we went to New York, Miles proposed.”

“That was months ago! Why didn’t you tell us?!” Nadia demanded.

“It didn’t feel right to say anything before the premiere, and then I didn’t want to take any of the attention away from Daphne and Harlan’s big day. And then there was Christmas, so, we just decided it would be best to wait.”

“Congratulations!” Daphne lifted her glass in cheers. “To happily ever afters!”

I raised my glass and clinked it with my friends. As Daphne asked Zoe to fill her in on how Miles popped the question, I noticed beside me Nadia’s mood shift. Typically, Nadia was the boisterous, outgoing, funny one of the group. Right now, she looked like someone had just run over her dog.

“Are you okay?” I asked under my breath.

“Yeah, it’s just…I thought I was going to be married with kids by now.”

“Really?” I’d always thought Nadia enjoyed her single life. Out of our group, she was proudly the ‘Samantha.’ She loved dating. Never took any relationship seriously. I’d never heard her mention she wanted to settle down. “I thought you loved dating around.”

She sighed. “I just do that to bide my time.”

“Bide your time? Bide your time for what?”

“For him.” She downed her drink, which if I was counting correctly, was her seventh of the evening.

“Him? Who’s him?”

“Growing up, there was this guy, and we?—”

“Oh, they’re passing out champagne!” Zoe clapped as she stood and grabbed two flutes that were being passed out and handed them to Nadia and me. “The countdown is coming.”

We all slid out of our booth and joined the men at the pool table before walking out on the back deck as a group. I barely made it within arm’s length before Declan reached out and pulled me into him. He nuzzled his face into my neck as he tightened his grip around me. “Hello, wife.”

“Hello, husband.” A wide smile spread on my face. My cheeks hurt from how much I’d been smiling over the past week. Declan had stayed the entire week at my house. We’d gone over to have dinner with Stella, Fred, and Dorothy a couple of nights and babysat Mason and Luna once to give my sister and Hank a break. Besides that, we just stayed in and did newlywed things.

Declan wasn’t giving up the business, but he wasn’t going to run it the way his grandfather had. He wouldn’t be traveling six months out of the year anymore. And he was going to work remotely and only go into the city a few days every other week. He was also going to be promoting Hannah and several otheremployees to positions that would free up a lot more of his time, so he didn’t have seventy-hour work weeks.

Part of me was afraid that he was making too many changes too fast, but he assured me that he’d never been so happy. Stella said the same thing. She said that I brought the light back into his eyes, which she hadn’t seen since he was a little boy.

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