Page 69 of Accidental Groom
Istare at myself in the mirror and pull the maroon fabric a little looser around my stomach, only for it to fall back exactly the way it had been before. Nothing helps. The bump’s not exactly big yet, not by any stretch, but it’sthere, and it’s rounder than it was a few days ago. It’s enough to catch attention in every single one of my dresses and make me want to hide.
Harry told me not to try to hide it. He told me I looked beautiful. But he says that a lot lately, and I can never tell if he genuinely means it or if he thinks those are the words he’s supposed to say. I press my hand to the swell below my ribs, my heart fluttering to think there’s something,someone, growing beneath my hand.
He’s not gone to one of these dinners in months, since before the wedding. It used to be a standing tradition, he’d said. Once a month, always at Joseph and Ann’s house — two people I’ve not met and apparently were too busy to come to the wedding. He said it was a way for him to be around people that he didn’t necessarily feel the need to be himself with, but could shut off his brain for a few hours without having to discuss money or work or politics.
But then the wedding happened, and there was the chaos that came with it. And me. And he stopped going.
So tonight, we’re going. Together.
I swipe a bit of lipstick over my lips just as a knock sounds downstairs. Heat creeps up my cheeks already, knowing exactly how he’s going to react to me dressed up like this without hiding my stomach, and it only grows as the door creaks open and I hear his feet padding up the stairs.
He steps in through the open door, stopping just a step inside, dressed in a nice button-up and slacks cut so pristinely I would climb him if it didn’t pose the risk of me falling and hurting our kid. His eyes drag over me slowly, not saying a word, but I canseethe way his pupils dilate and swallow half of the green of his eyes.
“Too much?” I ask.
He takes a step in, his hand running through his perfectly styled grays, his lips pursing as if he can’t think of the right words to say, studying me. “Elena,” he says.
I blink at him.
“You look so fucking sexy that I have half a mind to call up and cancel,” he says, completely deadpan, his gaze not wavering for a second. “You lookunreal.”
I snort, turning back to the mirror to fix my lipstick. “I lookpregnant.”
He steps behind me, watching me in the reflection. He brings his head down to my neck, his lips grazing against my skin, and places his hands on my waist. Slowly, deliberately, he slides one around to cradle the gentle curve of my stomach. “Exactly.”
My lips part as he presses a kiss to my neck, approval shining in his eyes in his reflection. But it’s not just that. It’s hunger, it’s warmth, it’spossession.
“Later,” he promises, his lips rising to the shell of my ear, “I’ll show you exactly how much I like seeing you like this.”
Heat curls low in my belly, and I grip the edge of the vanity, my flush deep enough that I can see it through my makeup. “Harry.”
He grins and presses another kiss into my skin, this one just above my ear. “Just saying.”
I close my eyes for a second, letting myself feel his affection, his hands on me, his breath on my scalp. But I go against what my body is already screaming for and gently, playfully, pull away, grinning at him. “We have togo.”
He smirks, slow and dangerous, the way he knows makes me forget how to breathe for half a second — but he steps back.
Out front, Grace is already waiting in a light purple dress, her auburn hair done up. Liam stands beside her, lanky and perpetually half-distracted by his phone. He offers me a nod that barely passes as a greeting before disappearing into the car, his half-tucked shirt unruly at the back. Harry exchanges a look with Grace, something passing between them in the same way I can look at Sarah and say everything without a single word, before he opens the door for her and me both.
————
Joseph and Ann’s house is a mansion in the classical sense — columns, hedges cut within an inch of their lives, white stone glowing under floodlights. It’s the kind of place that my parents would have dragged me to growing up for social events, the kind I would have been told tostraighten upbefore walking into, the kind where my mother would eye me like a hawk to make sure I wasn’t eating too much when I was hardly eating much at all.
It’s the kind I know too well.
The butler opens the door before we can knock, as if he’s been waiting there for an hour to do that exact thing. He takes my coat and Harry’s, hanging them in a closet by the door before moving on to Grace and Liam.
“Harry! Finally!”
A man with salt-and-pepper hair turns the corner, clad in a pressed navy blazer with gold cufflinks and matching slacks. He’s grinning, mustache twitching, as he steps up to Harry, pulling him into a hug that feels oddly earned. He looks like a man who inherited wealth but never learned the art of appearing modest about it.
“Joe,” Harry grins, clapping him on the shoulder as he’s released.
A woman with bleached blonde hair, maybe in her mid-fifties, trails behind him. “Glad you’ve finally reappeared,” she says, stepping into his space and wrapping her arms around his neck like it’s nothing. Her knee-length black dress rises just a hair as she embraces him, a plastic smile glued to her face, one I recognize far too well — it looks just like my mother's. “This must be Elena.”
“If you’d have let me get more than a single word in before jumping me, Ann, I’d have introduced her,” Harry chuckles, stepping back from her and resting his hand on the small of my back. “Elena, this is Ann and Joseph Clearwater. Ann and Joseph, Elena.”
Joseph reacts first, reaching out a hand to shake mine, his eyes locked solely on my face before flicking down to my stomach briefly. It’s the kind of look that people think I won’t notice, the one I’m used to for entirely different reasons. “Elena,” he grins.
