Page 145 of Spicy Ever After
“Touch me one more time, Pooparazzi, and mine’ll be the last button you push?—”
Hattie’s mom squawks her name in horror, but the shrieks of laughter and deep-voiced Ohs! of the rest of the bridal party nearly drown her out.
Even the photographer is laughing, which is a good thing. His sense of humor might just save his life.
Because I’m laughing too. Damn, my girl is funny.
At the wedding ceremony—and when we first arrived at this freakin’ estate for the reception—all I could think about was how I do not fit in here. Not with this crowd. Not with their money.
But the next thing I knew, all I had time and space for was Hattie. How crazy beautiful she looks tonight. How dancing with her was the most fun I’ve had in years.
How every time I’m with her is the best damn time.
How crazy I am about her.
Lucky for him, the photographer is quick with the cake-cutting pictures, and Hattie heads back to me with two plates.
“Mom tried to skimp on mine, but Margaret wouldn’t have it,” she says, handing me a plate with an impressive wedge of cake on it. “Here. It’s maple hazelnut.”
One bite and my knees go weak. “Oh, man?—”
“Mmm hmm,” Hattie hums around a bite. “When we went to the cake tasting, Mom wanted Margaret to pick the cardamom vanilla, but Merrick and I talked her out of it.”
“Good call,” I mutter around a mouthful. This may be the best cake I’ve ever tasted.
Hattie looks over her shoulder to her mom who is passing the cake knife to a server. Then she clamps a hand around my wrist.
“C'mon. While she’s distracted,” she hiss whispers, and then we’re escaping to the big Victorian house.
Inside, a buffet lines the wall of the long dining room.
Hattie thrusts her cake plate at me. “Hold this. We need provisions.”
Then she picks up a dinner plate and piles it with fresh fruit, bacon-wrapped shrimp, meatball kabobs, cubed cheeses and crackers, and two slabs of grilled zucchini. She leads me into the kitchen and grabs two potato rolls from a basket.
“This way,” she says, guiding me through waist-coated staffers to a door that opens onto a quiet back porch. But she doesn’t stop there.
The porch spills onto a lantern-it pool area, the pool flanked by lounge chairs and a standalone hot tub.
But we don’t stop here either.
Hattie marches past the pool, onto the lawn, and heads for a softly lit, low-roofed little hut that’s a good hundred yards from the main house.
When we reach the door, Hattie carefully sets the two dinner rolls on top of her loaded plate and punches in a four-digit code on the door’s keypad lock. A beep and a creak, and we’re inside a one-room cottage.
A one-room cottage with an exposed copper tub in one corner, a water closet on the other and two bathrobes hanging from hooks on the wall between them. On the opposite side of the cottage is a tiny kitchenette with a bar sink, a mini fridge, a Keurig, and a microwave in the corner.
And right in the middle of the room is a plush, queen-sized bed.
Hattie closes the door behind us and engages the lock.
“This is my room for the night,” she announces, slightly out of breath, color high on her cheeks. “I mean—o-our room.”
I like the sound of it so much, I have to repeat it. “Our room.” My chest swells, my smile too. “That has a nice ring to it.”
Hattie visibly swallows and shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “I-It does?”
My girl—who just danced like she was spring-loaded, threatened the life of a photographer, charged into a fancy reception and raided the buffet—is suddenly nervous that she’s brought me to her room.
