Page 9 of The Rogue

He made it his mission to rock worlds. It was his version of being a better man.

He might not be able to offer forever, but he compensated for what he couldn’t offer with world shattering pleasure.

They finished dinner, and he walked Rue out to her truck. “I didn’t get a chance to show you all the stuff in the folders. I’m trying to choose flowers.”

“Oh. Did you want to come back to my place for a bit?”

“No,” she said. “It’s okay. I... Asher ended up getting delayed back at the base. So he isn’t going to be here for a couple more days. Would you help out?”

“Whatever you need.”

“Well, I need help choosing some things for the bouquet. Not the flowers—I had to have those grown over a year ago, but she thought that it was a good idea for me to hold off on ribbons and things until closer to the time, so now I have an array of things to look at. Just fine details. And then, I need to do my final dress fitting with Sue. I was kind of hoping you would come.”

“You want me at your dress fitting?”

“The final one. To make sure everything’s good to go. In case I lost weight or gained it, or whatever. Obviously most of this was done a year ago.”

“Obviously,” he said.

There was nothing obvious about that to him. But then, that was Rue. Always prepared. And he couldn’t imagine that she actually needed his input on anything. But, she did like to double-check a box, and so he knew it was important to her to make sure that everything was thoroughly managed.

“What time do you need to meet?”

“I need to go to the florist at nine.”

He grimaced.

“Is that okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I just won’t go out tonight.”

Because the truth was, he would do anything for Rue. She was on the path to her perfect life, and he wasn’t going to let anything mess that up.

Chapter Three

She didn’t know why she was so nervous. She really had every decision about the wedding made.

She’d made the decision to get married in February, on Valentine’s Day. It was a tightrope walk. Between touching a theme but also trying to not look like a whole craft store.

She had taken that very seriously.

The problem was, she was a little bit cheesy. Her parents hadn’t liked the holidays, and she did. Every single one of them. Christmas was an explosion of joy in her house. Halloween was haunted. Thanksgiving was turkey-ful and Valentine’s Day was red lights, red flowers and hearts.

So this was going to be pushing the line on taste, but she felt like she had it. Like she was tightrope walking it like a champ. But now she was worried she was going to see things together and think it looked like an event rental store had emptied its contents into an elementary school classroom party.

So she had to be sure.

It was who she was as a person. But she was still nervous that Justice wasn’t going to get to her house on time, and consequently they would not be able to get to Mapleton on time. Which was why she had toldhim that she needed to leave at nine, when she actually needed to leave at nine thirty. He rolled in at 8:59 on the dot. She scrambled out of the house and climbed into his passenger seat. “You’re early,” she said.

“I wasn’t going to be late. You have to get to an appointment.”

“You were late yesterday,” she accused.

“I know. I’m sorry. This is your wedding. I need to be more on top of it.”

“Don’t be this nice. It freaks me out.”

“Am I not nice generally?”

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