Barefoot by the Sea

“So what do we do?” someone asked, giving voice to the question on everyone’s mind.

Next to her, John’s body language had changed as he leaned forward, his torso tight, his jaw set. He must realize how important this weekend is, Tessa thought with a rush of affection.

Lacey sighed audibly. “She did tell me we could back out and maybe get rescheduled for next year, but this is the end of her tenure as president, so there’s no telling where the next board will want to go. So I guess we have to—”

“Have a wedding.” John pushed back and stood so fast his chair toppled.

Everyone in the room turned to him, and Tessa drew back an inch, that affection soaring now. He really, really cared about the resort.

“Suggestions are welcome,” Lacey said. “You have any ideas?”

“Yes.” A slow, broad smile broke over his face, turning it from merely handsome to unspeakably hot. And then he looked down at Tessa, expectantly. “I have a capital idea.”

A capital idea? The foreign-sounding phrase was the least of the things that sent a blast of heat through her. The warmth in his eyes, the certainty, the overwhelming sense that he meant…

No, no, no. That was her overactive imagination at work.

“A perfect solution,” he continued, kind of shaking his head like whatever idea had just occurred to him was too good to even be contained there.“It’s the answer to everything.”

The entire room stared at him, including Tessa.

Very, very slowly, he lowered himself, bypassing the toppled chair and landing right on—one knee.

The whole room drew in one loud, collective gasp, but not Tessa. Gasping would require breathing, which, right then, was physically impossible.

“You’ll marry me,” he said.

Not a question, not a joke, and not a fantasy.

“Are you out of your mind?” she whispered.

Someone squeaked—Zoe, no doubt—and a few people hooted and somebody else shouted “Say yes!” but mostly the room tilted so far off center Tessa thought her own chair might topple with her in it.

“You’ll marry me,” he repeated, still on one knee, as if those three words made any sense at all.

He took her hand and looked right into her eyes, his voice barely audible over the room noise and the thunder of blood in her ears. “You know it’s going to happen. It’s inevitable.”

Inevitable? “It is?” Her voice cracked again.

“What do you think I was going to ask you tonight?”

Her jaw dropped, but he pulled her right into him and kissed her, and the whole room, along with Tessa’s head, exploded.

Chapter Eighteen

Ian could taste the shock in her mouth. Shock and mint and raw confusion sparking in her open lips that didn’t exactly respond to his. Unless her response was to tense every muscle and use all her power to whip away. But he held her firmly and kissed her solidly until the noise in the room and the buzzing in his head abated.

The answer had been handed to him and he wanted a celebratory kiss.

Finally, he let her win and pop backwards, her mouth still hanging open in disbelief. “What the—”

“It’s for the resort,” he insisted in a whisper.

“No, I wo—”

He put his fingers on her lips, still warm and so soft. “Don’t say no.”

She blinked at him. “No.”

“No, you won’t consider it, or no, you give the idea a chance?”

“Are you nuts?”

He grinned. “Do I have to state the obvious? I’m nuts about you.”

Behind him, he was aware that Lacey had walked over to the table and he had no doubt the other two in Tessa’s entourage would be here in a moment. The question was, Would her friends be on his side, or the sane side?

He had to move fast. “Tessa, give me a chance.”

“A chance? You’re asking for…”

“You don’t mean a real wedding?” Lacey asked from behind him.

Tessa looked up at her, relief and gratitude on her face. “I’m sure he doesn’t.”

“Of course I…” He finally got up from his knee, taking the chair someone had righted for him, scrambling for the best strategy. “Don’t,” he finished.

For the first time in a minute, Tessa breathed.

Okay, let her think it was pretend. Until the very last possible second, then, somehow, as part of the act, he’d get her to sign the papers. Henry could pay off a justice of the peace and she wouldn’t even know she’d signed a real marriage certificate. Or…or…

Or nothing. He didn’t have another idea, but he’d think of one. All that mattered was that this cut so much precious time out of the process and he could be married in two weeks, meeting the Canadian board’s ridiculous time line.

“You mean like a re-enactment?” Zoe came in the other side.

“That’s not a bad idea.” Jocelyn flanked the left.

“What do you think?” Lacey asked Tessa.

“I don’t know.” She dragged the words out, searching his face. “I mean, it seems kind of…impulsive.”

“It’s a great solution,” he said quickly.

“A fake wedding.” Tessa’s words weren’t a question, and they were thick with disgust.

No, not fake.

Lacey dropped into a chair across the table. “I guess we don’t have to tell the AABC board that it’s fake. They want to see a wedding and we can re-create what we did for Gloria and Slade’s wedding last month. We still have a lot of the decorations, so everything will be real except—”

“Except it won’t be,” Tessa said flatly.

“Unless you want it to be,” Ian replied, his voice low, but the other women heard him.

“Awww,” Zoe said, balling her hands up under her chin. “So sweet.”

Tessa mowed her down with a look. “He’s kidding.”

Not exactly.

“We could do it,” Lacey said, getting a lot of nods and “Yeah”s from the staff. “Honestly, it wouldn’t be that hard.”

“But you have to run the kitchen,” Tessa said to John. “You can’t be the groom and the head chef. If we’re going to do a faux wedding, we should have someone who’s not so critical to the resort and restaurant.”

“Sure I can.” He shoved confidence into every word. “Marcus will back me up and I’ll organize and plan everything ahead of time. Lacey said we’ll add temporary staff and all I have to do is quick supervision. We can do it easily.”

“We need guests,” Tessa said, grabbing metaphorical bricks to build this wall and stop the train.

“Invite the whole town.”

“And cake.”

“New pastry chef, right, Lacey?”

“And…” She was running out of ideas. “A dress.”

“I thought you’d picked one out,” he replied.

That silenced all the questions and sent every eye directly to Tessa, who was still staring at him, her face bloodless and blank. “I was just…looking.”

He rescued her by taking her hand and laughing. “Don’t worry, Tess. It’ll be fun, and think of how important