“I knew that man was good from the moment I met him when he brought me a fridge,” Mum said softly, her eyes misting with tears. “It’s because of him that I know I can go away and leave you in good hands.”
Madison’s eyes had brimmed over with tears, too. “Shit, now he’s making me cry and it’s going to ruin my makeup.”
Velvet handed tissues out. “I’ll be having words with that man for making you all cry and wrecking my makeup job.”
Laughing, I said, “I feel like I should be the one crying, and yet, I’m the only one here without tears in my eyes.” I glanced at Roxie and winked. “Well, besides our resident non-crying, practical ballbreaker over here.”
She raised her brows back at me. “What can I say…me and romance have a long, hard relationship, and it takes a lot to crack through my heart.”
“Wait!” exclaimed Madison. “Did you say you’re going away?” she asked Mum.
“Yes, after the fire at the café, I’ve decided to travel for a few months. I’ve wanted to visit Italy for as long as I can remember, and I’m not getting any younger, so now’s as good a time as any. And with Harlow wanting to pursue her art, and our lease on the café almost up, it feels like the universe is speaking to me and telling me to go.” Her eyes lit up as she added, “I leave at the end of next week. But I’ll be back in time for the birth of my grandchild.”
“You better be!” I said, not being able to imagine getting through that without her.
“So, tell me, how are you getting to the church?” Roxie asked as she packed up her stuff.
“Oh, she’s not getting married in a church,” Madison said with a sly smile.
At Roxie’s enquiring look, I said, “I don’t know where I’m getting married. Scott kept that from me, but I do know that King is driving me there. He’ll be here soon to pick me and Cassie up.”
“King?” Velvet asked, clearly confused.
“Yeah, Scott asked him to stay for the wedding. They’ve got this whole bonding thing happening after King saved my life. I mean, it’s not like the bonding thing that girls experience, but I think it’s safe to say that for the rest of his life, if King asks Scott for help, it will be given, no questions asked. And I think that asking King to be involved in the wedding was Scott’s way of expressing what King’s actions meant to him.” I paused for a moment before adding, “Or I could be reading far too much into male thinking and none of that is true. Really, who knows what our men are thinking…”
Madison agreed with me. “Too true, but like I said, Scott has blown me away this week while we’ve been arranging this wedding. I’ve seen a side to him that I’ve never seen.”
“You and Scott organised the wedding?” Roxie said.
“He did most of it and just asked for my help on a few things,” Madison replied. “I think Wilder did a lot of running around for him, getting stuff for the reception sorted out.”
“King’s here,” Velvet announced, peering through the curtains in my lounge room.
Butterflies fluttered in my tummy. Not nervous butterflies, though. These were of the excited kind – the butterflies you felt when you couldn’t wait for something to happen.
A few moments later, King’s boots sounded on the front steps and then he knocked on the door. Cassie opened it and greeted him, and I didn’t miss the way his eyes lazily checked out her body. “Well, hello there,” he murmured.
Cassie shook her head. “You bikers just don’t give a fuck about subtlety, do you?”
He grinned and it had to be said, King had sexy covered. It wasn’t just the muscles he barely hid underneath jeans and a fitted black tee that screamed ‘hot biker dude’ that qualified him as sexy in my mind, it was more about the ease and confidence with which he moved, and the attitude he projected that even if shit was going down, he had it covered. And the effortless way he moved between the different emotions he felt – nothing seemed too hard for King. “Subtlety doesn’t warm a bed at night,” he said as he entered the house.
“It sure doesn’t,” Cassie agreed as she shut the door and followed him.
King’s gaze met mine and although he was a hard man, I saw some soft in him today. “Scott Cole is a lucky bastard,” he said, his eyes remaining steady on mine. I had to give him credit – he didn’t lower his gaze once. The man clearly had respect for his brother.
“Thank you,” I said with a smile.
He nodded once. “You ready, beautiful?”
“Almost,” Madison cut in. “We just have to finish taking care of her borrowed and her blue.”
King hit her with a frown. “Her borrowed and her blue? What the fuck is that?”
“He speaks my language,” Roxie said with her signature sarcasm.
“Wedding traditions,” Mum advised him and then said to Madison, “I took care of her something blue last night.”
This was news to me. “What is it?”
“I stitched the date of your first date with Scott and today’s date into your wedding dress. In blue.”
My eyes widened in surprise. “How did you know the date of our first date?”
“I asked him.” She watched me with the look of a proud mother – the kind of look that said, ‘You did so well, he even remembers dates’ , because to my mother, remembering the special moments meant everything to her.