Page 49 of Made For You
“Huh. What does it look like?” Molly added.
“Would you like to see?”
She and her sister nodded enthusiastically, and Talon reached into his pocket and pulled out the trio of rings. Two wedding bands and the obnoxiously large diamond ring. The twins’ eyes widened as they took it all in.
“You brought them?” I asked, surprised.
Talon leaned closer to me, his lips brushing against my ear as he whispered, “Figured no one would believe you would marry me without the evidence.”
I felt the rush of blood to my cheeks as I blushed. All eyes were on us as he pulled back and held the rings up between the two of us.
His eyebrows lifted in question, as if asking if he could slip the rings back onto my finger. My smile was his answer, and he gently placed the wedding band, then the diamond ring, onto my third finger.
“Wow, that’s some ring, son,” my dad said, and I suddenly remembered there were other people in the room with us. Anytime Talon touched me, I tended to forget we weren’t alone.
“It’s very big,” Eloise chimed in as she shoveled a forkful of the pie into her mouth.
Across from me, Autumn tilted her head to the side as she and Alex examined the ring perched on my finger. “Princesscut. About three or four carats?” she prompted, and Talon nodded. “It’s pretty, but not really Rory’s style. She’s more into antiques and classic cuts. But I guess you need something flashy.”
“She can always pick out something more suited for her.”
“Don’t you think you should have known what was more suited for her when you went ring shopping?” Alex was gripping my hand as she tried picking a fight with Talon. From the corner of my eye, I watched his fist clench under the table and his jaw tick in that way I loved.
I darted my gaze over to my mother, eyes wide as I silently begged her to steer the conversation in a different direction.
“That’s enough, Alex. Rory getting married in Miami is no different than you and Nate eloping without notice.”
“Sure it is. Nate and I have known each other for a year and met a year before that. I mean, Rory, did you even go to Miami for a teachers’ conference, or was it to traipse around on a quicky honeymoon?”
“Alexandra,” Dad scolded.
“That’s not what happened,” I defended.
The desserts I plated for myself and Talon remained untouched on the table, and as one of my favorite desserts, it left me miserable. I whispered to Talon to try some, and he reluctantly lifted his fork to gather a small bite. At the same time, I reached under the table after Alex finally relinquished her grasp on my fingers and clasped his hand with my own, securing it with my other hand around his wrist. I could feel his heart was racing.
I looked him over. His hair covered half of his face on either side, and I wondered if he was using it as a way to mask some of his emotions. He had it tucked behind his ears until Alex started her accusations.
Letting go of his wrist, I reached up and tucked the strands closest to me behind his ear again. When he turned to smile at me, I felt myself melt just a little more. A smiling Talon was lethal.
“Mom, do you want to hear how we met?”
“Oh, yes. How rude of me. I was so interested in learning about you, Talon, and your family that it completely slipped my mind to learn how y’all met. I’m sorry. You just remind me of someone. Please, dear, I want to hear all about your meet cute.”
“What’s a meet cute?” Eloise asked Mom just as I was about to speak. Instead, I answered her. “It’s when two people meet in a funny or unlikely way that sort of forces them together.”
“Oooh,” she said in a long exhale, absorbing the response.
“Now, Talon and I met in averyinteresting way,” I said to my niece but addressed the entire table. When he stepped out of my bedroom earlier with his hair loose around his shoulders, it didn’t take me long to figure out we had indeed met before, and not under the best circumstances. “A year ago, when I was attending the same conference, everything that could’ve gone wrong chose to do just that. Everything was delayed from my flight, right down to my ride to the hotel, since traffic was insane. On top of all that, I was going to miss registration, so I got out of the car and decided to hurry to the hotel on foot. Well, Miami is hot and humid, so by the time I got through the door, I was a sweaty, frizzy mess.
“After rushing to check in to the conference, it was time to check in to the hotel itself, and this guy bumped into me so hard that I fell on the floor. I was so shocked that I just laid there on the cold marble for a second, thankful I hadn’t hit my head.”
“What did you do?” Eloise asked, enraptured by the story.
“Well, I asked this person why they weren’t helping me up. And when they didn’t respond, I saw they were on the phone. I swear, he looked like he had been sleeping on the streets. He had a scraggly beard, torn clothes, and hair down past his shoulders. If he hadn’t smelled so good, I would have thought he lived under a bridge like those trolls you love to read about.”
Both of the twins giggled, and I straightened in the chair to find Talon looking at me curiously. I wondered if he was reliving the moment as I described it. Did he remember it differently, or at all?
“What happened next?” one of the twins prompted.
