Page 18 of Kidnapped By the Boss
Now they got together for coffee and Scrabble every week like a couple of weirdos. She was also helping him learn Russian because I simply didn’t have the patience.
“Huh,” I said. “I don’t know what that’s about. Have you seen him?”
“Oh!” She set down the bagel she was smearing cream cheese onto, dusted her hands off, and reached into her pocket. “He said to give you this if you asked.”
She pulled out a little note card folded in half with “Congratulations” scrawled across the front in beautiful cursive and wedding bells behind it. I opened it up and there was a message inside.
To my beautiful bride,
I’ve come around to the idea of the Minimoon you suggested and have started planning right away. When you get this, come out to the pool house. See you soon and love you dearly.
Vincent
I couldn’t help but smile at it. Vincent was the kind of guy one would consider ‘rough around the edges.’ He had to be convinced to take me out on our first date, and our relationship had been marked by relationship blunders as a result of him not knowing how to act accordingly in a relationship. He’d never cheated on me or anything like that, but even Mario knew how far a bouquet of flowers could go, and it wasn’t until he shared the news with his best friend that Vincent knew to bring me flowers occasionally, especially when he slipped up with his mouth. This note, however, was surprisingly romantic.
Someone had to help him.
I flashed my mom the notecard. “Was this you? Did you help him with this?”
“No. I swear, I had nothing to do with this. He just asked me to come over and give you that note when you asked,” she replied, and she seemed sincere. “If I were you, I’d stop worrying about who may have helped him, if anyone, and just enjoy whatever he has planned. You’re very lucky to have someone to do nice things for you.”
Hearing the emotion in my mom’s voice made me a little sad. She never got to experience true love, so in a way, she was probably living vicariously through me. “You’re right. I’m gonna head out there. Where’s Sascha now?”
“Kari is with him now. Vincent told me to just be available to watch him in the evenings after Kari goes home,” she replied. “Katya,go. I’m not going to let anything happen to your home, or to my grandson. Go. Enjoy your husband.”
“Thanks mommy,” I replied.
I quickly walked around the kitchen island and gave her a kiss on the cheek, then I made my way out through the sliding glass doors that opened up to the back yard. Behind our house, we had a huge Olympic-sized pool, a hot tub, and then a pool house with a smaller pool beside it with a waterfall for a more romantic, intimate experience. The pool house had lots of windows, but right now they had the curtains totally pulled, which was rare.
Making my way around the pool, I walked back to the pool house and went to open the door, but noticed that it was locked. That was also weird, but I assumed Vincent was behind it all, so I knocked on the door and waited.
Not long after I knocked did I hear some rustling on the other side of the door. After a few minutes, the door opened, but only enough so that Vincent could slip out. He was dressed in a suit that wasalmostsexier than his wedding suit. It was perfectly tailored to him, appearing to be an Italian cut—Vincent’s favorite—in a deep navy, almost black. He was holding a bouquet of beautiful, multicolored tulips, which he presented to me with a look of pride on his face.
“Good morning, Mrs. Costello.”
I’m certain I was beaming at him, because he looked so good and this was easily the most romantic thing he’d ever done. “Good morning.” I took the flowers from him and took a sniff before asking, “What’s all this?”
“The beginning of our Minimoon.” He leaned down and gave me a kiss, rubbing my cheek as he leaned away. “You look beautiful.”
I was looking down at my attire, a very simple jeans and t-shirt with a pair of my favorite riding boots. “I’m just dressed for the day.”
“You are,” he said, “and you look beautiful.”
“Are you being coached?” I asked, leaning around to see if he had an earpiece in. “Who helped you? Devrick? I don’t think it was Mario.”
“No one helped me,” he said. “I just thought of all the things I would want to do on our honeymoon and I planned a mini version. Minimoon.”
That description made me feel like he was probably telling the truth—it was so uniquely Vincent.
“To start, I want to make sure that you have a beautiful hotel room.”
“At our house?”
He nodded. “Exactly.”
It was here that he turned around and valiantly threw open the doors to the pool house and then stood aside, and I let out a shocked gasp.
Somehow in the time between when we went to bed last night and this morning, Vincent had transformed our fairly basic pool house into a stunning beach cabana room. It had a gorgeous, four poster bed with sheer white canopy hanging down the back and sides, and parted beautifully in the front, giving me a view of the rose petals sprinkled across pale pink bed sheets. They trailed to the edge of the bed, and then picked up in a path leading to the door. There were tealights sprinkled everywhere, lit and giving the room a beautiful glow. On one side, there was a table with an umbrella hanging over it and some adorable tropical drinks, and he’d even taken the effort to buy a white noise machine to fill the room with the sound of gentle waves rolling.
“Vince…”
“It gets better.” He took my hand. “Come with me.”
He led me through the door that connected the pool house to the smaller, side pool and the beauty continued out there. He’d somehow managed to get actual palm trees imported, and instead of the stone that was usually there, there was instead a beautiful bed of white sand. A smaller cabana with two lounge beds was under another overhang out here, and to the right, there was a table set up with a bottle icing next to it, and two covered plates with silverware on either side. There was a white tablecloth whipping in the wind, and in the very center of the table was a vase with a single sunflower.
“I’m speechless.” I looked at him. “This is incredible.”
“One day,” he said. “I know we have a lot to be worried about, but we’re postponing ourentirehoneymoon for this, so I’m asking you for one day, uninterrupted, so that I can show you all the things I have planned for our minimoon. Do you think you can do that? Don’t think about anything else, but me,” he took my hands and kissed them, “and us.”
There were actual butterflies fluttering in my stomach, but I tried to ignore them as I nodded at him. “I’d love nothing more.”