Page 7 of Needing Happily Ever After

Chapter Three

Things were moving quickly.Just the way Damon liked them. After all, the sooner they took care of the purchase of the property, the sooner things could go back to normal, whatever normal was. As much as he liked to expedite things, even Damon was surprised when the news of his very public proposal to Katie reached his father in a day’s time.

Just like his son, Anthony Banks didn’t like to waste time, and the invitation for drinks came almost immediately after that.

Damon would have preferred it to be his idea. Or, if he were being honest, Katie’s idea, considering she’d actually come up with it first, but he wasn’t about to say no to his dad on the principle of the fact that they hadn’t initiated the meeting, and he’d agreed to bring Katie by the next afternoon.

He’d rented a room at the Big Rock Inn, because neither he nor Katie had given the details of their engagement much thought until he’d arrived in town. And he didn’t want to be too much of an imposition. Besides, word on the street was that Katie’s big brother, Logan, was pretty pissed about the whole thing, so it probably wasn’t a good idea to spend too much time in close proximity with her family. At least not yet.

The day before, after making things official with Katie, they’d spent the rest of the afternoon together catching up. It was always so easy to be with her and even though there was this huge, big thing between them, it didn’t feel that way. It only felt…good. No matter where Damon had traveled, and how many great people he’d met along the way, he’d never met anyone quite like Katie. Definitely no one who got him the way she did. She’d always had the craziest knack for being able to cut through his bullshit and get to the real him. Even when they were kids and he’d been the new kid in class. Sure, he was only seven, in first grade, but still, he’d stood out from the rest of his classmates because instead of moving into town like everyone else, his dad had insisted on building a massive estate up on the hill, and putting a gate on it to keep everyone out. In a small town like Glacier Falls, it had set them apart—and not in a good way.

At least not for Damon.

The other kids hadn’t accepted him right away, calling him Ritchie Rich, and leaving him out of the games at recess. Looking back, it was all minor stuff, but for a little boy, it certainly hadn’t felt minor at the time. Sure, he probably could have handled it in a million different ways. But he’d chosen to act out. His target? The cutest little girl in class with the long, dark braids that always waved in his face when she walked past him at the coat hook.

It had started innocently enough, with him tugging on her hair every chance he got. And then, of course, he found more and more opportunities to pull her braids because of the response he got from it. Katie would shriek and glare at him. Sometimes she’d tell him to stop or call him rotten. Her response changed, but what didn’t change was the reaction he got from the other boys every time he picked on Katie. They’d laugh and elbow one another in the ribs, and when Damon started throwing erasers at the back of Katie’s head, too, the boys slowly started to include him in their games at recess. For a little bit, he’d been included. And it felt good. It didn’t take long for him to escalate his behavior with her and steal her cookie at recess break.

It had been the wrong thing to do.

Or the right thing, depending on your perspective.

As it turned out, Katie was a tough little girl, and she could put up with a lot. But the one thing she would not tolerate was the theft of her homemade, chocolate chip oatmeal cookie. She’d socked him squarely in the face. Damon had dropped the cookie, but not before crying out in pain. There’d been blood, tears, and ultimately a trip to the principal’s office. Damon had the very distinct memory of Katie sitting across from him in Mrs. Gervais’s office, slowly eating her homemade chocolate chip oatmeal cookie while he held a scratchy paper towel to his bloody nose and never once taking her eyes off him, the slightest victory smile on her face.

It was in that moment that they had become friends. Because as far as Damon had been concerned, anyone who would fight for a cookie was probably going to be a better friend than one who only wanted to hang out with him if he was mean.

After that, they’d been inseparable and their friendship only grew deeper as the years went on. When they were teenagers, they used to get teased about spending so much time together, and more than once they were mistaken for boyfriend and girlfriend. But they’d never so much as kissed. Not that the thought hadn’t crossed Damon’s mind more than once. After all, Katie was so pretty, and she made him laugh and…but it had never been worth the risk. Teenage relationships hardly ever lasted, and their friendship was way more important to him than a few months of making out.

Even so, it had killed him when his buddy Jeremy Davis asked her out, and she’d said yes. Katie was his and everyone knew it. Still, he had no claim on her, so he hadn’t said a word and had instead gone and found his own girlfriend—or six. He never did have the best track record of keeping a girlfriend for very long, a fact that hadn’t changed even when he got older, moved away, and went to school. It was a situation that only got worse once he sold his microchip designs, because it suddenly became that much harder to know whether a woman was interested in him because of him, or his money.

Maybe he was destined to be alone.

Damon opened his eyes to stare at the hotel room ceiling.

It was a depressing thought. But not a new one.

Not that there was any point in dwelling on it. Especially now, when he was back in Glacier Falls and supposed to be happily engaged. He checked the clock on the nightstand. There were still a few hours until he was supposed to meet up with Katie. With a sigh, he heaved himself off the bed. His laptop sat on the desk, but the last thing he wanted to do was look at his email. It wasn’t that he worked so much these days—he had more money than he’d ever need—but he liked to keep himself busy with a few little projects here and there. Maybe one day he’d find something he enjoyed as much as he’d enjoyed working on the microchip when he was in school.

Damon knew he’d gotten lucky with his design—that he still couldn’t talk about—and when all the top tech companies took notice and got into a bidding war over his design, it had been the best thing that had ever happened to him. At least that’s what he’d thought at the time. As it turned out, money didn’t fix everything and as much as he enjoyed traveling and having fun, more and more lately, he’d been thinking of trying something new. Maybe settling down and having a family one day…

Damon laughed at himself. First things first.

He needed to get ElkView.

But first, he needed to get out into the fresh air before he drove himself crazy. There was one thing that never failed to clear his head: a good, hard run.

“Mom! Seriously, I’m supposed to be studying.” Katie groaned and slapped her pen down in front of her. For the last fifteen minutes, her mother had been loudly slamming around the kitchen. Opening more drawers than necessary, slamming them with way more force than was required, and openly sighing and staring at her daughter. To say it was distracting would be a gross understatement. “Do I need to go to the library to get some peace? Because I will.”

Debbie Langdon placed a freshly baked muffin directly in front of Katie and right on top of her textbook and took a step back to lean against the counter.

“Really? You’re bribing me with a baked good?”

Her mom shrugged in an effort to pull off innocence. “Whatever works, Katie. I’m not trying to distract you.”

Katie shot her mom a look as she reached for the muffin. Blueberry, her favorite. Her mom was no fool.

“Okay, maybe I am trying to distract you, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have questions, Katie. And it’s definitely not unreasonable for me to want to discuss those with you.”

Katie sighed and tried not to let guilt wash over her. It probably wasn’t unreasonable at all for her mom to want to talk about the whole engagement thing, which was how she’d started to think about it. But it wasn’t really a good time. She needed to do well on her statistics exam the next day. She was in the homestretch at getting her degree. So close, she could almost taste it, but she just needed to get through one last exam.

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