Page 46 of Rescuing Dr. Marian (Made Marian Legacy #1)

TOMMY – SEVERAL MONTHS LATER

“Relax, it’s not about you,” I said for the millionth time.

Foster yanked at the collar of his shirt. “This thing is choking me. Pretty sure that’s about me,” he said.

“The wedding is over. Take the tie off if you want. No one cares.” I glanced around the vineyard lodge.

The familiar wood-beamed walls and large stacked stone fireplace made the perfect backdrop for my cousin Mattie’s wedding in Napa.

She and her new spouse stood in the open doorway leading out to the terrace, accepting well-wishes from their guests as they filtered through the lobby out to the wedding reception.

“Everyone’s eyes are on the happy couple anyway. ”

“Forgive me if the last wedding I attended was my boyfriend’s,” he muttered, eyes darting around. It was only because I knew him so well that I assumed he was making sure Tilly, Granny, and Irene were not within striking distance.

“Huh. I didn’t realize your boyfriend was married. Weird. ”

He shot me a look. “You know what I mean. That was the last time I was surrounded by this many Marians. It’s a lot.”

He wasn’t wrong. Last night at the rehearsal dinner in the barrel room, my cousins, aunts, and uncles had all given Foster the third degree, peppering him with questions about search and rescue, his old sheriff job, and what it was like to “turn a guy gay.”

“We’ve heard about it from gay lore, but we’ve never seen it in real life,” my cousin Rosie had teased.

Foster had looked right at her with a straight face and said, “I have a magical?—”

“Okay!” I’d cried, slapping a hand over his mouth.

He’d laughed and pulled my hand away, not without kissing my palm first, and finished, “—way with men. Baby, what did you think I was gonna say?”

They’d all loved him. He’d charmed the pants off them, as usual, which meant his insecurity today made no sense.

“What’s gotten into you?”

Foster grabbed two champagne glasses off a passing server’s tray and handed one to me before taking a healthy swallow from the other. “Nothing. Well, other than you getting into me this morning in the shower. That what you mean?”

“Definitely not. You’ve been acting strange all day.”

I suddenly realized what it could be and pulled him over to the edge of the room for a little privacy.

“Are you feeling pressure to get married?” I asked, trying not to laugh at the idea. “Is being at a wedding with me making you squirrelly because you think everyone’s going to put you on the spot about us ? Baby, we’ve only been together for four months. Nobody’s thinking about that right now.”

His eyes pierced me with the same intensity he always seemed to get when he told me he loved me, like it was the most serious declaration he’d ever make for the entirety of this life and all the lives that came after it.

My throat thickened with emotion. Fuck , I loved him.

“Thomas Marian, you will be marrying me when we’re ready to take that step. It’s not a question of if but when . And, listen, I’m not in a hurry. You know that. But if you think for one minute the idea of marrying you would make me squirrelly, you haven’t been paying attention.”

My heart tripped into its usual rapid pace whenever Foster got like this. “Not if but when, huh?”

He grabbed my tie and yanked me in for a bruising kiss. “That’s right. Notice I didn’t ask your opinion.”

A laugh bubbled up. “Duly noted. But for the record, I concur.”

“Mpfh.”

“So then why are you acting weird? It’s not about…

” I glanced at the couple exchanging longing glances in the corner and lowered my voice.

“It’s not about the Robyn thing, is it? Because I swear, until two days ago, I had no idea the best man had even met her when he was in Legacy last month, let alone hooked up with her and invited her to the wedding as his plus?—”

“Of course not. You know I like Robyn a lot.” Foster winked. “And I like her even better now that she’s not swinging her ponytail in my boyfriend’s direction. ”

I rolled my eyes. “Then I’m officially out of ideas as to why you— oof .”

He pulled me over to one of the nearby leather sofas and sat, yanking me down practically on top of him. His arm immediately came around me, holding me close, and his lips brushed my ear.

It took me a minute to realize he was preparing to tell me a secret, not seducing me at a family wedding.

Damn.

“I saw something I shouldn’t have, and now I don’t know what to do about it.”

“Continue.”

The warm breath of his huff tickled the skin on my neck, but I tried to stay focused.

“Okay, I was sitting next to Tilly last night at the rehearsal dinner?—”

“I remember. She swapped out my place card with her own,” I grumbled. “And claimed it was to ‘thank Commander Quadzilla for the lovely bottle of Macallan he sent me.’”

“Right. But apparently, she was in the middle of a scheme with her fellow evil-doers. She needed to sit next to Alex so she could steal his phone when he went to the buffet.”

I snorted. “Babe, Tilly’s gonna Tilly. She once stole my phone to put herself on my Amazon Prime account, but then she loaded a two-hundred-dollar gift card on it to cover the fees.

Don’t ask me why. She said it had something to do with governmental spy agencies, but I honestly think she was just being lazy. ”

He gave me a meaningful look. “She was in the Flint app. ”

I blinked at him. “I don’t know that one.”

Foster’s warm bark of laughter surprised me. “Jesus fuck. Sometimes I forget you’re a little baby bisexual with literally zero experience in the gay world.”

“I beg your pardon.” I poked a finger between his ribs and lateral thorax—jackpot tickle territory, medically speaking. “You weren’t complaining about my lack of gay experience in the shower this morning.”

He grabbed my hand to stop my assault. “It’s a gay hookup app.

Flint . Was started by a group of firefighters in California, actually, during the Granite Hollow fires a few years ago.

Anyway, doesn’t matter. I just remember hearing about it at the time because I was called in to help find a missing kid. ”

“Did you find the kid?” I asked, already knowing from hearing many of his SAR stories that he had good ones and horrible ones.

“Safe and sound, asleep at a friend’s house,” Foster confirmed. “But back to Flint. Tilly used Alex’s profile—or, hell, maybe she made him a profile, I don’t know—and started conversations with people.” He looked around and lowered his voice. “ Sex conversations.”

I bit my lip to keep from howling with laughter. “Okay? Why are you so upset about this? Do you want to tattle on my great-great-aunt? Or do you maybe want to leave it alone and let Alex reap the benefit of a little old lady’s sexual fantasies?”

We both stopped and winced at the notion before Foster’s body was wracked with a shudder. “I’d rather forget the entire thing. ”

“Sounds like a plan, big guy. Let’s go get some food.” I started to move off his lap, but he held me tighter.

“Not so fast. I didn’t tell you the intriguing part yet.”

I gaped at him. “Tilly pretending to sext a stranger as my cousin Alex isn’t the intriguing part?”

He glanced around before brushing my ear with his lips again.

“Sheriff, those lips are doing things to me,” I breathed.

“They’re going to do things to you later if we can find a moment alone,” he promised.

“Continue.” I was hoping he’d continue the lips more than the story, but I was out of luck.

“I think the guy she was messaging was Chief Kincaid.”

I whipped my head around so fast I nearly knocked noses with him. “No!”

Foster looked smug as shit as he nodded. “Yes. Pretty sure, anyway.”

“Alex hates the chief! They’re mortal enemies.”

He shifted me on his lap until I was straddling the man.

It might have been a little embarrassing if we hadn’t been at a wedding with a thousand horny young queer people…

and if I hadn’t been one of them who seriously didn’t give a fuck as long as I was pressed against my favorite person in the world.

“I know,” he said. “But it reminded me of something Tilly told me last summer.”

He closed his eyes as if he needed to replay the tape of his memories to get it right. “She said something about how she’s been managing Marian men since before I was born…”

I nodded. “That tracks. ”

Foster opened his eyes and met mine. “Then she nodded at Alex and the chief, who were arguing as usual, and said, ‘ Case in point. ’ Don’t you find that fishy? The woman is up to something. She’s meddling again.”

“She’s a meddler. Meddling is what she does.”

Foster’s face suddenly split into a bright grin. “You know what? She meddled in our relationship, and we turned out just fine. Maybe I’m overthinking this.”

I leaned in and kissed his impossibly beautiful lips.

Lips that sang funny, made-up songs to Chickie about how good dogs don’t chase bad rabbits.

Lips that tasted every terrible dish I tried to cook for us.

Lips that murmured sweet reassurances to me in the middle of the night when I woke up from a bad dream.

And lips that had told my parents three days ago in secret that he wanted to propose to me during the holidays.

“I’m not asking you for permission. I’m giving you the courtesy of advanced notice,” he’d said, according to Ella, who’d overheard it and hadn’t been able to keep her trap shut. “Because he’s already mine, and nothing you could say will change that.”

“I love you,” I said, the scope of what I felt for him stealing my breath away.

His grin softened. “Promise?”

I nodded emphatically. “Forever.”

“Mmm, that’s a good promise,” he murmured against my lips. “Say it again.”

So I did. And a year later, I said it again in front of a crowd of our friends and family.

While we stood on a South Carolina beach with bare feet in the sand… and Foster wearing a suspiciously familiar T-shirt.