Page 22 of One Pucking Heart

“I know, and it shouldn’t hurt, but sometimes it really does.” My eyes swell with emotion. I pull in air, willing my feelings on the matter to go away. There’s no changing my father, and it’s a waste of energy to worry about it.

“Hey.” Beckett takes hold of my shoulders and turns me around to face him. Leaning down, he kisses me.

Our lips move in unison, and our tongues dance, and once again—the panic threatening to rise leaves me.

I pull away from the kiss, pressing my lips to Beckett’s in a peck. “No one can see us in here. There’s no reason for the kiss.”

“Oh, right. My bad.” He smiles before leaning in and kissing my forehead. “Is there anything you want to take with you?” He looks around the room.

“No, it will all be mine soon enough.”

Beckett heads for the door. “So we should kiss again when we’re outside, yeah?” The corner of his mouth tilts up in a smirk.

I shake my head with a grin. “Would you just go?”

Beckett’s kisses are better than the best calming medications I could prescribe myself. They’re seriously addicting, and I might be in a bit over my head. I shouldn’t want his lips on mine. But I can’t deny that I do.

CHAPTER TWELVE

BECKETT

“Oh my gosh, where have you been? I’ve been trying to get ahold of you all day,” my sister, Iris, glares at the cheese she’s moving around on a five-foot-long charcuterie board. “I’m not sure why you’re having the birthday parties early. I barely had enough time to get everything, and we don’t even have a proper theme.”

She looks downright distraught, and I can’t help but laugh. My sister takes party planning seriously, and she’s very talented at it. In fact, despite being a board-certified lawyer, her full-time career is planning parties and events for the Crane organization.

“The theme is fun, Iris. It’s simple.” I plop a salami rose in my mouth, and her eyes bulge.

“Oops,” I say, my mouth full with the cold-cut flower she constructed. “I wasn’t supposed to eat that one, was I?”

If looks could kill. “Fun isn’t a theme, Beckett.”

I should’ve known she’d be annoyed. She lives for stuff like this. When I was ten, she threw me a DuckTales-themed birthday party. That particular TV show wasn’t super popular when my tenth birthday rolled around, but Iris and I had binged the series DVDs that my mother got us that summer and were obsessed. The kids at the party were more than confused as to why we’d drained our pool only to fill it with plastic gold coins, but to us, it was amazing. After watching that cartoon, I wanted to do nothing more than swim around in gold coins like Scrooge McDuck. I will say, it wasn’t as fun as the rich old duck made it seem. But the party was epic nonetheless.

“Sorry I wasn’t here earlier to help you set up. I had some things to take care of,” I state, leaving out the part about finalizing plans with my now live-in fake fiancée. Elena and I met with the team’s HR today to fill out the Consensual Relationship Agreement. Figured we should make sure our relationship was cleared with the team before we announced it at tonight’s party. Penelope Stellars, our head of PR, was in the HR office today, filling in for Mary who is on maternity leave. While I’m sure Penelope secretly adores me, she acts like she doesn’t. Her job is to make the team look good in the press. She likes to complain that she’s a glorified babysitter to grown men, and to be fair, I see her point. We don’t always make it easy on her. I can always read Penny’s face. If we mess up and get a little rowdy at a bar after a big win, everyone can tell she’s not happy. She wears her annoyance on her face for all to see. Yet today, when we signed the papers, I couldn’t read her. In truth, she might have been in shock.

“It’s okay. I had a couple of questions about possible themes I might have thrown together at the last minute but opted just to scratch it. The most important thing is that the food, drinks, and people in attendance are top-notch—and they are, so it will be fine.” She sighs. “I wanted it to be over the top with an epic theme so it’d be memorable. Cade and I are announcing our engagement tonight. I wanted it to be special.”

Oh crap.

“You’re announcing your engagement tonight?”

“Well, yeah. It’s the first time we’ll all be together since we got back from Hawaii. It’s the perfect time.”

My sister and best friend recently returned from their two-week trip to Hawaii, where he proposed. Of course they’d want to tell our friends tonight. It’s a perfect time to announce an engagement and the whole reason I wanted the party moved up so I could share the news about Elena and me.

Should I give Iris a heads-up?

“Where’s the other thing of gouda? I know I bought more than one.” Her voice is shrieky as she scurries around my parents’ kitchen like her ass is on fire.

Yeah… I think I’ll let it be a surprise.

On the upside, tonight will definitely be memorable. She’ll get her wish on that one.

Cade joins us in the kitchen and steps up beside Iris. “Hey, babe. Everything looks amazing,” he says before plopping a piece of cheese, one that had been the center of a cheese daisy she’d created, into his mouth.

“Thanks.” She smiles wide and leans into his side.

I stare at the cheese flower without a center and eye my sister, but her smile doesn’t fade. She’s in love.

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