Page 69 of Just For Her

“You’re mocking me, but I can take it.”

“I should hope so.” Kiersten stood as if her impressive height could intimidate Kayla. “Because if you insist on being a part of this family, I will be relentless with you. It’s my duty. To be fair, I don’t like you very much, Ms. Smith.”

“The sentiment is mutual.”

“Good, good. We’re on the same page.” Such a fake smile had never struck Kayla before, yet there it was, boring down upon her like an eagle preparing to swoop toward its kill. “Excuse me. We must vacate this room, as an important announcement is about to be made downstairs.”

While still reeling from Kiersten’s offer, Kayla showed herself out, immediately on the hunt for Tove.I should tell her, right?She had a right to know that Kiersten had offered a hundred thousand dollars for Kayla to go back to Portland and never speak to Tove again.No more quiet nights in her house. No more weekend getaways.She spotted Tove laughing at a stranger’s joke.No more of that kind and beautiful smile.

It was true. Kayla was in love with a woman, something she never thought possible.

The thought struck her in the middle of the crowded living room, where people surged one way or another, squealing in surprise to see someone they knew, or harumphing because a certain person would not acknowledge them. Kayla was in their way. She didn’t care.

Because Tove had spotted her and now came her way. Kayla had to decide what was most important to her – before the engagement of Elias and Isabella was formally announced.

What is most important… to me?It was coming right at her in the form of a fifty-year-old woman, who might as well have been seventeen with such light of first love in her eyes.

“Where’ve you been?” Tove lightly asked, one arm around Kayla’s and attempting to lure her toward the credenza.

Kayla almost bumped her bare knee against the corner. “I got caught up talking to someone. You know how I am. Fast to make friends around…” She stopped. Tove hadn’t heard her, because Thomas stopped by to ask if either of them knew what to do about his wife, who continued to mope at the dining table.

Kayla didn’t know what she was doing. She took Tove’s hand to regain her attention and looked into that lined but beautiful face with only one confession in her heart.

“I love you,” she said. “Let’s get married.”

Tove was instantly distracted by that declaration. Thomas had heard it as well, and he almost took a step back into a third cousin who attempted to scoot by in the front hallway.

“What?” Tove said.

Kayla had to commit, even as the reality of what she said hit her harder than Thomas’s car. “I love you, Tove Fredriksson, and I want to marry you as soon as possible.”

“Wow,” Thomas said under his breath. “So much for my problems.”

Tove gathered her bearings long enough to grab her cousin by the front of her shirt. While Aunt Kiersten clapped her hands and asked for everyone to gather around, Tove said to Thomas, “Distract them before they remember we exist.”

“But…!”

Tove pushed Kayla toward the kitchen while everyone else crammed toward the dining and living rooms. Aunt Kiersten stepped on the bricks separating the fireplace from the carpet. Beside her were Elias and Isabella, the happy couple prepared to make their big announcement. Knowing smiles and happy looks crowned half of the relatives in the room, but Tove cornered Kayla in the kitchen, out of ear’s reach of everyone else.

“Did you say what I think you said?” she asked Kayla.

Did I? I barely know.It was all happening so fast. From realizing that Kiersten was on the warpath to purge the impurities from her family, to thinking aboutmoney,her original goal when she first seduced this woman watching her with hopeful eyes.She loves me. I can’t say something that I don’t mean.In the end, Kayla had too much dignity to completely lie to Tove.

So, the truth it was.

“I mean it,” she gasped. “I want to marry you. Let’s elope. Right now.”

Not so far behind them, Kiersten launched into a rehearsed spiel about the long line of romances that had beguiled the Fredriksson family since Hans first met a tough but lovely Swede “fresh off the wagon,” and through their oldest son Gustav, who had grown the empire with five children who knew how to “work the forests.” Kayla heard every word, but she saw two things: Tove’s incredulous hope, and Thomas grabbing his wife by the hand and pulling her through the crowd of Fredrikssons.

“Marriage? Elope?” Tove, completely unaware of the scene about to unfold behind her, clasped her hands on Kayla’s shoulders. “Are you serious? Because I hope you are serious.”

Kayla pushed herself into Tove’s embrace, the heat of her chest as welcoming as the thundering of her own heart. “Yes. I want to be with you, Tove. Tell your family to piss off, and let’s get hitched. Or whatever.”

Tove clung to her. Kiersten was cut off mid-sentence by Thomas, who loudly proclaimed, “Before you guys get to these lovebirds, my wife Polly and I want to announce that… we’re pregnant! How about that!”

The Fredriksson Kerfuffle, as Kayla later came to think of it, drowned out any other sound in the house. While Kiersten shrieked at her nephew and Gretchen nearly fainted to see one son upstage the other, murmurs erupted in the dining and living rooms, leaving Tove and Kayla in their segregated world that shut everyone else out with righteous impunity.

Kayla cherished one thing more than any other – at that moment, she really was happy.

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