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Wes grabbed her by the hand. “We’re ahead of you because we’re going to win. Come on, love. Where to next?”
“Where else but the wedding chapel. It is tradition to end there.” She looked down at her dress and smiled. “It always ends at the place where two generations of love were cemented. Now say cheese!”
Summer handed Wes a bow tie that was tacked to the wall.
“Let me put this on so we can take the final picture,” she said, reaching up and securing the silk around his neck, while his own hand dangled from the zip tie. It brought her so close her scent enveloped him like the salty air, and damn she smelled good. Like hot summer nights and the romance section of a library.
Between fundraisers and formal corporate events, he knew how to tie a bow tie with one hand restrained behind his back, but he would rather pretend not to know so he could get her fingers on him. Interesting, since he never liked to admit that he couldn’t do something. But he couldn’t seem to get close enough.
“Your hand is in the way,” she said, trying to swat it away but finding it difficult since they were tied together.
“What do you suggest? Cutting off my wrist?”
“If it would help, then yes.” She looked up at him with a teasing smile. And thrift-store dress or not, she looked beautiful.
“I bet this isn’t how you imagined your wedding,” Wes said, looking around the cozy seaside church. Stained-glass windows portraying stories from the Bible spanned twenty feet up the wall from the wainscoting to the ceiling. The pews were few, but made of hand-crafted mahogany. And the A-frame roof made this neighborhood church feel warm and welcoming.
“Why do you say that?” Her hands moved with speed as she looped the silk around itself.
“Well, it’s so small. I imagined you’d want a big event, hundreds of people, to pay witness to Cupid’s big moment.”
“Actually, I want to get married here, where my parents and grandparents did. And I’d want a small beachside reception at the beach house with my family and closest friends.”
She was a never-ending surprise. Every woman he’d ever dated looked at weddings like a trophy in order to outdo their friend with the biggest event. On the other hand, this woman wanted to win a dollar-store trophy.
“What about you? I imagine you’d want the fanfare,” she said. “A loafer-required event.”
He chuckled and her delicate fingers brushed his Adam’s apple, which sent a jolt of electricity straight to his groin. “I never got close enough to plan the actual wedding, but my ex wanted the whole shebang.”
Still focused on the task, her gaze was on his tie, but he could sense her awareness of their proximity. “To me, love is the whole shebang. I don’t need to prove it to anyone except my partner.”
“And how would you prove it?” He wanted to know because he’d never had a role model for what healthy love looked like.
“Romance is the everyday nurturing of love.”
That made sense, since she was a born nurturer. Not that he was a guy who needed to be nurtured. In fact, he’d built his life around being self-sufficient, created a world where he needed no one. But coming from her, it sounded nice.
“How about you? You and your ex were engaged?”
“We were.” But then his company had been struggling, and then his dad had died and he’d been needed in the US, and his fiancée’s love apparently didn’t allow for being broke or different time zones.
And if that wasn’t a bucket of cold water on this situation. Wes was leaving. Maybe not next month, but the plan had always been to open the store in Ridgefield and Los Angeles and then go home and run the company from London. He had no business pursuing anything with this woman who’d already been burned before. He didn’t want to be the wash-and-repeat for her.
He’d already caused her enough problems. Problems that could tank her company. Problems that a week ago he didn’t give a shit about. But he did now that he knew more about the woman behind the bookstore war.
He was so lost in thought, in the reality of what his business could cost her, he didn’t realize that she was done with the tie and staring at him with concern. She gently tugged his hand. “Are you okay?”
He bent at the knees to get her in line of sight. “Actually, no. I wanted to say sorry.”
Confusion furrowed her brow. “For what?”
“For all the stress that’s waiting for you back home. I know that most of it comes from the fact that I decided to open up my bookstore next to yours,” he said quietly.
She took both of his hands. “You didn’t know.”
That shift behind his rib cage became more prominent.
“We should probably snap the picture,” she said, but neither of them moved. They were both too caught up in the moment of youthful freedom and warm summer days. The longer they stood there, the hotter the air between them grew.