Page 86 of From Best Friend to Bride
If I gave into them now, I wondered if I’d be able to stop at just one kiss.
Would that be enough to satiate this itchy feeling inside me?
Three weeks. It’d only been three weeks, and I already understood what Granny had told us from the very beginning—that our relationship would be irrevocably changed by this decision to get married.
We were together more than ever before. There was no escape from each other’s presence. Even when she was working late and slept in her bedroom next door, it didn’t matter.
My bed—no, my entire room—was filled with her.
Her hairbands on the bedside table. Her brush on the floor in front of the mirror. Her socks tucked in random places I couldn’t begin to fathom. Her towel was slung over the radiator under the window. Her hair was on my pillow.
Her scent, her very being, seemed as though it was woven into the fabric of my bedroom.
It was the same wherever I went. I spoke about her more often than ever before. Every staff member I passed always askedabout her, their gazes swinging between pity for Nana’s situation and happiness that they were both doing okay.
Happiness that Delilah was well.
If I wasn’t answering their questions, I was seeing something that belonged to her. Her mug on the kitchen island with a lipstick or Chapstick mark smeared around the rim, depending on the day. Her jumper hanging from the back of a chair or her shoes haphazardly left half-inserted into the shoe rack.
All it took was one look and she’d say, “Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m doing it,” and I would laugh.
I didn’t care. Neither did anyone else—even the staff only straightened up her things but left them in near enough the exact same place. She’d insisted upon it. Said it was pure laziness after working a closing shift, and she would tidy it the next morning.
She’d not missed a day. She’d kept her promise wholeheartedly.
The people in this house truly saw her as the lady of the estate. I wouldn’t say it out loud, but I was starting to wonder if I did, too.
Because she fit here.
But was that just a comfort thing? Deli had always been a part of my life. It really was no lie when I told her we were family. We always had been, and nothing was going to change that.
Nobodycould change that.
All right, so it might make my life a little difficult in the future when I had to admit to a future partner that my ex-wife was my best friend and considered part of my family, but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.
If such a bridge was ever built.
Relationships were more work than they were worth.
I sighed and looked into my cup of tea. Deli’s flushed face when I’d pressed my finger to her lips crossed my mind, and I pinched the bridge of my nose while closing my eyes as if that would make it go away.
Granny’s evil chuckle sounded through the room, and I forced my eyes open. She tugged on the fridge door, rummaged around the bottom shelf, and spirited something under her cardigan.
If I knew her—and I did—that something was in a small glass bottle and quite the afternoon pick-me-up.
“Oh, dear,” she said, closing the door while cradling her ill-gotten gains close to her body. She cast a knowing gaze over me with her sharp eyes before saying, “I didn’t think I’d get to say, ‘I told you so’ quite this soon, darling.”
Another sigh escaped me, and I gave her the flattest look I could muster. “There’s nothing to say that about, Granny.”
“No? Oh, my bad, then.” She shuffled towards the door with her thirty-seven-point-five percent contraband. “I’ll save it for a future date.”
“You do that,” I said dryly. “Before I tell Mum you’re making off with her vodka.”
“Vodka? What vodka?” Granny blinked at me innocently.
“That won’t be what I’ll say when Mum asks me if you don’t leave me alone.”
“Hooey. And here I thought we were done with the teenage attitude.” She huffed, tightening her cardigan around herself. “Maybe I—”
