Page 80 of Sweet as Sin (Bad Habit 1)
I studied his face, my heart racing. The future was rushing at me, enormous and beautiful. “Grace is going to have an absolute fit.”
Into his eyes came a mischievous light, though his expression remained serious. “Almost worth it to say ‘yes’ just to see that, isn’t it?”
“One more thing.”
“What’s that?”
I swallowed. “You haven’t said you love me yet.”
“Oh.” He considered it. “That’s true.”
I waited. “So?”
Very seriously, he said, “You love me.”
“Nico!”
He tried to look innocent, and failed miserably. “What? You said, ‘You haven’t said you love me yet.’ So I did. Are you gonna be this difficult to please as my wife?”
Hearing him say “wife” recalled the tears to my eyes. “You’re a jerk,” I whispered, not meaning it.
All the teasing left Nico’s eyes, his face, his voice. He gently cupped my face in his hands, staring up at me in a sort of wonder, as if the sun were shining right out of my head.
“What I am is yours. All yours, body and soul. And I can’t live without you. I don’t want to spend a single minute from this moment on without you. I sleep better with you. I feel better with you. Everything seems brighter when you’re around. I can’t imagine a future without you in it, and if that’s not me tellin’ you ‘I love you,’ I don’t know what would be.”
Overloaded with emotion, I burst into a fresh onslaught of tears.
Nico sighed. He lowered my head to his chest and let me sob against it, combing his fingers through my hair. “Woman, you’re a damn handful.”
I cried even harder, and let the man I loved hold me until I was all cried out.
We agreed not to tell anyone about our engagement until an appropriate amount of time after Avery’s funeral had passed. However, our opinions varied greatly about the correct definition of how long was appropriate. Nico thought a few days or weeks. I thought a few months, maybe even a year. For the time being, we agreed to disagree.
I was having a hard time processing everything. Part of me was convinced I was lying in a coma somewhere, dreaming up the whole thing. Another part of me was blissfully happy.
And another part, a darker part, was terrified. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I knew fairy tales were just that: tales. Made-up stories. How could I—Kat Reid, regular girl, sometime fuckup and full-time cynic—be in love with, and engaged to, the force of nature that was Nico Jameson Nyx?
An unanswerable question. The more pressing issue at hand was Avery’s funeral.
Four days after her death, the memorial was held at Hollywood Forever, a sprawling cemetery adjacent to Paramount Studios, where some of the most famous legends in the entertainment industry were buried. When Nico and I pulled up in the Escalade driven by Barney, security was tighter than tight. Staff was denying to callers that there was a service for Avery Kane, even though it had been reported in all the papers. Police cars were parked in a line in front of the entrance, blocking the public from the grounds. Even the flower delivery vans were being searched. A large white tent had been erected over the burial site so the helicopters couldn’t get photos of the grave, or of anyone who attended.
Goddamn helicopters. Just the sound of whirring could now make me jump a foot in the air.
Nico had insisted the funeral be family only. Which meant it was him, Barney, me, and Michael, Avery and Nico’s brother, who’d flown in from San Francisco that morning.
The minute I laid eyes on him, I knew he was trouble.
The family resemblance was striking. He had Nico’s height and coloring, the same square superhero’s jaw. But where Nico had an indefinable glow about him, a compelling ease in his own skin, Michael was all hard angles and edges. Whippet thin and full of nervous energy, with sharp, darting eyes, he carried himself like someone who’d just robbed a bank.
I found him unnerving. He seemed to take an even stronger dislike to me. When Nico introduced us, Michael stared at me with such unconcealed hostility, my breath caught in my throat. But as soon as Nico turned to look at him, Michael’s expression went blank.
“Nice to meet you, Kat. Nico’s told me a lot about you. Sorry we had to meet under these circumstances.”
When he turned and walked stiffly away, going to speak to the sad-eyed priest across the tent who would preside over the service, I squeezed Nico’s hand.
“He doesn’t like me.”
