Chapter Eleven

“Dear friends and family, we’re so glad you could be with us here today to celebrate the love between Marcus and Nicola.”

As Mary Sullivan addressed the wedding guests, Mia worked to fight back the tears that were already starting to come. The problem was that just watching Nicola walk down the aisle had been enough to get her choked up, and when Marcus had been too impatient to stop himself from running down the aisle to steal his bride away from her father...well, could there be any more beautiful example of just how much he loved her?

Mia had never been a crier, not when she’d learned as a little girl that if she wanted her brothers to include her in their adventures, she’d better suck it up when she fell off stuff and got hurt. But she’d decided long ago that at family weddings, she was allowed to break her no-crying rule. They were always highly emotional experiences for her, and by the time the bride made her appearance and the vows were spoken, Mia was inevitably lost in emotion.

Today, it wasn’t the crying she objected to. It was letting any part of her guard down around Ford. Because being in a heightened emotional state was a terrible place to be with him sitting next to her.

She should be stone cold around him. Or she should remember to be angry so that she kept her walls up. Both of those reactions would have made sense.

Anything made sense right now but feeling like it was too much, too good, too right to be sitting this close to him.

No. She needed to stop focusing on Ford. Today was about Marcus and Nicola. If she couldn’t help but cry, c’est la vie. The important thing was that her tears wouldn’t have a single thing to do with the man who’d had the nerve to sneak into the barn and squeeze in next to her in the already crowded pew. Heck, by now, she felt like she was practically sitting on his lap...and she refused to admit to herself just how downright sexy that thought was.

Focus, Mia!

With laser precision, she trained her gaze on her cousin, knowing Marcus had never looked happier. She was so happy for him, especially considering how much of his own life he’d put on hold when her Uncle Jack had passed away and Marcus had taken over the reins of the family to help raise his seven younger brothers and sisters. Every single person in the barn could see the way he looked at his bride, like she was absolutely everything to him.

It was an expression she regularly saw on the faces of her cousins and her brother when they looked at the women they’d fallen for. But, she found herself thinking for the very first time, hadn’t she recently seen that look in a more personal way? But where?

Suddenly it hit her: It was exactly how Ford had looked when he first saw her walk into the tower on Friday morning!

Oh God...she couldn’t be right about this, had to be spinning out from one drink too many on Friday night with the girls, and not enough sleep, and a stressful work week, and all the emotion in the barn.

And yet, before she could stop herself, pure shock at the thought that it might be true had her turning to look directly at Ford for the first time since he’d slid in beside her.

Do you really feel that way about me?

As if he’d been able to read her mind, his dark eyes immediately held hers. The heat—and emotion—in them held her completely still while she could have sworn he answered back.

Always.

Somehow, Mia managed to drag her gaze away. She forced herself to keep breathing slowly and evenly until she got her heart rate back to normal. That had always been her problem with Ford: When she was this near to him, her brain went haywire, straight into crazy-town where rock stars who regularly hopped into multiple beds in a single night actually wanted to be with only one woman for the rest of their lives.

Sure, she knew her cousins Smith and Ryan were such big stars that they could have bed-hopped forever if they’d wanted to, rather than both being happily engaged to awesome women. Still, the worlds of movies and professional sports never seemed to be quite at the sinning level of rock stars. In point of fact, off the top of her head she could think of half a dozen rock-and-roll tell-alls that had been written by groupies detailing just how rampant nonexclusive sex was in the music business.

And no wonder sex fairly poured off the rock star sitting next to her, given how devastatingly sexy he was in his dark suit and tie, with the scruff he often wore on his chin freshly shaved, and a hat pulled down low over his slightly-too-long dark hair.

What woman wouldn’t throw herself at him? Once the wedding guests realized he was here, Mia wouldn’t be surprised if otherwise sane women started throwing their bras at him.

As if he knew she was cataloging each separate element of his sexiness factor, out of the corner of her eye she could see him grin. Clearly, he thought he was winning this round between them.

But Mia had already vowed not to let him win one more thing where she was concerned. Filled with renewed determination, she used every last ounce of focus to tune back in to what her Aunt Mary was saying.

Instead of speaking to the wedding guests, Mary extended one of her hands to Nicola. “As soon as I spoke with you that first night when you met my son, I knew that you were going to change his life in the most wonderful ways.” Mary then took Marcus’s hand, and the three of them held on to each other as she said, “Oh honey, I—” When she became too choked up to continue, Mary laughed softly through her tears and said, “I think it’s time for you and Nicola to say your vows now.”

Neither Marcus nor Nicola had even spoken yet, but Mia was already wiping away the tears spilling down her cheeks. She could feel Ford’s eyes on her, but she didn’t have a prayer of holding her emotions in for another second, even if she knew he was planning to prey on her weakness afterward.

Marcus and Nicola turned to face each other, both hands linked. There had to be more than three hundred wedding guests looking on, but Mia got the sense that her cousin and his bride were only aware of each other. Marcus lifted Nicola’s hands to his lips for a kiss before she began to speak.

“The night we met,” Nicola began in her melodic voice, one that easily carried throughout the barn due to all her years on stage, “your mother told me that you are one of the best men she’s ever known. And then she said I would be safe with you.” Nicola looked back at Mary. “Thank you for doing such a beautiful job raising the man I’m going to spend the rest of my life loving with all my heart and my soul.” Mary smiled through the tears that she was wiping away one after the other.

Nicola turned her gaze back to Marcus and said, in a voice that trembled with love and wonder, “All the greatest love songs in the world could never come close to expressing just how much I love you. And every day I promise to try to love you even more than I already do.”

Marcus threaded his hands into Nicola’s loose waves and dragged her in for a kiss that nearly set the old wood barn on fire. And thank God he did, because at least that gave Mia a few seconds to try to corral her freely flowing tears. She wasn’t the only one losing it, given all the sniffles and sighs from the people all around her.

Just then, Ford reached out to gently wipe away one of her tears. His hand lingered on her cheek a few beats too long, long enough for her to feel that the current between them was still super-strong, no matter how much she wished it were otherwise.

Right then, she wouldn’t have been able to bring herself to move his hand away, but for the first time, he didn’t push his luck. And when he took his hand from her skin, she felt the loss deep within.

Looking back up at the bride and groom, Mia saw they were standing so close that Nicola’s wedding dress had tangled all around Marcus’s legs. “The moment I set eyes on you,” Marcus said, his deep, resonant voice filling the barn, “I knew you were the one. And every moment since, I’ve fallen more in love with your intelligence, your talent, and most of all, your amazingly beautiful heart. I never truly understood what forever meant until you.”

This time Nicola was the one lifting her hands to his face, to bring him closer for another kiss. Mia had been to at least a dozen weddings by her late twenties—weddings that were fun and happy events, but where everyone was so careful to follow the rules. Only at her cousins’ weddings were those rule books tossed out the window. Love was the only thing that mattered, and the I do’s would happen in their own good time.

As Marcus and Nicola turned back to his mother so that she could finalize their vows and proclaim them husband and wife, Marcus grinned and said, “And thanks again, Mom, for saying exactly the right thing to Nicola on that night when she was wondering if she should be leaving the club with me.”

The guests swung back again from laughter to tears as, in a voice that rang with pride and love, Mary Sullivan finally declared, “I now pronounce you husband and wife. And,” she said with a wide smile, “you may now kiss the bride. Again.”

All of the wedding guests erupted into applause as Marcus and Nicola kissed yet again. As soon as the bride and groom had begun to make their way back down the aisle, with their groomsmen and bridesmaids following, Mia grabbed a fistful of Ford’s black suit and yanked him close enough to whisper, “We need to talk. Now.”