Page 5 of Endless Love: Novella

And it was gone.

There was nothing left but cinders. “How the fuck did it all go up like that?” Dad’s question went unanswered, almost swallowed by the overlapping questions and pained groans coming from all around us.

Especially from Rose. “Oh my God,” she whimpered. I had never heard anyone sound so beaten. So destroyed. She had to turn away from the destruction, gripping my polo in her fists with her face pressed to my chest. “Oh my God. It’s all gone.”

It sure as hell looked that way from where we stood. This project brought us together, and now there was nothing left of it but burnt timber.

“We can rebuild,” I assured her, rubbing her back. “Nothing is lost forever. We’ll build it again.”

“How could this have happened?” she asked in a voice thick with tears.

“The dresses!” Aunt Evelyn’s heartbroken wail pierced the air while Aunt Pepper cried on Uncle Connor’s shoulder. “God, what if someone was in there?”

Her question made me look toward the twins, hugging each other and weeping. Magnus tried to comfort them, but he didn’t have much more luck than their fiancés did. “We’ll figure it out,” he offered while he exchanged a worried look with Dad, who comforted Mom as best he could.

“These things happen,” Dad murmured, but it was clear there was nothing to be said. The fact was, we were all shaken by what we saw in front of us.

“What the hell happened to the sprinkler system?” Olivia demanded, though there was no one around to provide an answer. It was a question I would’ve liked to have answered too.

For the time being, all I could do was try to comfort my wife, whose heartbroken sobs threatened to tear my heart from my chest. “What are we going to do?” she asked. “We lost everything inside. We lost the wedding dresses. What do we do now?”

If only I had an answer.

3

NOAH

The second my eyes opened the morning after the fire, I would’ve sworn I smelled smoke.

Two days until the so-calledWedding of the Decade,and the brides had nothing to wear. They had spent hours crying last night, with all of us gathered together in the great room to comfort them.

Amazing how quickly things had changed from the happy, almost hectic energy before dinner.

We had only fallen asleep after showering, where we washed our hair twice to get rid of the stench of smoke, then collapsed into bed. Sienna was too heartsick for anything else, and I couldn’t pretend the fire hadn’t shaken me, hearing the girls cry, not to mention our moms, mine included.

“Are you awake?” I barely heard Sienna’s sleepy mumble, half-muffled by the pillow she’d bunched up under her head. She had her back to me with a sheet loosely draped over her bare body. How many times had I seen her this way? And she never failed to make my dick stir.

“How did you know without looking?” I asked, running a finger down her back. So perfect, all mine.

“Your breathing changed.” She rolled over, her body half covering mine. Her thick, dark hair puddled on my chest while she sought my kiss. “You think I don’t have every part of you cataloged, Goldsmith?”

“You make me sound like a work project.” I kissed her forehead, nose, and fingertips once she finished running a hand down my cheek.

Her laughter was soft, sexy. “We’ve already done that, remember?” she whispered, sliding her leg over mine and conjuring up all kinds of ideas. “Look where it got us.”

“Are you complaining?” I took her left hand in mine, admiring the sparkling diamond ring that had taken me weeks to choose. There I was, the man at the head of a real estate empire, someone who regularly made multi-million-dollar decisions, unable to decide which ring my fiancée would like the best.

Ever the ballbuster, she replied, “Not yet.”

Her smirk faded fast, though, once she noticed the clock on the nightstand. “Damn. Aren’t you guys supposed to be on the yacht by nine? It’s quarter to eight. We’d better get moving.”

“I guess so.” Colton had chartered a yacht with the idea of the guys going fishing. I had to wonder whether anyone would feel like fishing after last night, but sitting around feeling shitty wouldn’t change anything. “And I guess you girls will…”

She wrinkled her nose. “Look for dresses and hope there’s something suitable. Yeah. Pretty much.” Rolling away, she added, “Wait a second. I almost forgot.”

I hated watching her do this, but it wouldn’t be much longer before we could tell everybody the good news. It didn’t seem right, making the announcement now, stealing focus from the people who mattered most this weekend.

She slid the platinum and diamond ring over her finger, reaching over me to nestle it snuggly in the velvet-lined box onthe nightstand. “I can’t wait to show everybody,” she murmured, smiled at the ring, then turned that smile on me.

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