“Oh, yeah, this afternoon,” he said. He was blushing. You didn’t talk about stuff like that with your sister. “We have the license,” he heard himself saying, as if he had to excuse his afternoon excursion to her.
“You do?”
“Yeah. We’ll just, ah, slip away one weekend and quietly tie the knot. You know, just the two of us.”
He wasn’t prepared for the look of devastation on his sister’s face.
“You mean without family? Without me?”
He realized he should tell her the truth, right now, right this minute. But he could hear laughter drifting up from the campfire. And Jonas was suddenly aware he wasn’t quite sure what the truth was.
He heard a loud popping sounds.
“Somebody is setting off fireworks,” she said.
“I hope it doesn’t wake the boys.”
“It won’t.”
They walked back out of the lodge. Down at the edge of the lake, the fireworks were starting. He found Krissy. Someone had given her a blanket, and she opened it up, inviting him to sit on the bench beside her.
A firework exploded in the sky above them, and she leaned into him.
“This one’s called Bite Your Tushy,” he told her.
“Fireworks have names?” she said skeptically.
“They do.”
“You’re making that up.”
“Nope. And this one is called Chasing Booty.”
“Are you serious?”
As the fireworks went off, he named them for her—One Bad Mother, Hot Dog, Loyal to None—loving her giggle at the crazy, slightly off-color names, her sighs of awe as the night sky lit up and reflected in the lake.
It seemed there was so much that he wanted her to know, so much that he wanted to show her, so much that she knew and that she could show him.
A lifetime wouldn’t be nearly long enough, he thought, and his lips found the top of her head and kissed it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“WHAT’S GOING ON down there?” Krissy asked Jonas the next morning. They were sitting out on the small deck of their cabin, sipping coffee, the dog at their feet. Krissy was not sure she had ever felt like this: such a sense of belonging, of happiness, a pure contentment.
The perfection of the morning was marred only by the staccato pounding of a hammer.
“My uncle Fred is a minister. He holds a church service the Sunday of the reunion. He appears to be building something.”
“Are we going?” she asked. “To the church service?”
“Huh? Why wouldn’t we? Everybody goes.”
“I’ve never been a churchgoer, but I’m pretty sure the devout would regard what has been going on between us as a sin.”
“You know the guy leading ‘Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall’ last night? After having consumed at least that many? That’s Uncle Fred.”
“And he’s a minister?”
“Yeah. So you know what they say about stones. Not that what has been going on between us feels anything like a sin.” He smiled at her with bone-melting wickedness. “Feels more like heaven to me.”
“Fred, the leader of drinking songs, is also a minister?”
“Welcome to that crazy, convoluted thing called family.”
She laughed, but then grew serious. If what had been going on between them didn’t feel like a sin—and it certainly didn’t—something else did.
“That’s how I feel, Jonas. I feel welcomed to your family. I don’t know how we’re going to tell them it has all been a charade.”
“Has it felt like a charade to you, Krissy?” he asked quietly.
“No,” she said. “It hasn’t.”
“Not to me, either,” he said, his voice a low growl that tickled along her spine like his touch. “I think we should see where this could go.”
She stared at him. She could feel tears pricking her eyes. “Me, too,” she whispered.
He reached out and put the back of his hand against her cheek. He leaned into her, but something below them crashed, and was followed by some pretty liberal cussing.
“Is that your uncle Fred?”
“None other,” he said drily. “What the heck are they doing down there? They’re building something. That’s strange. What would they need to build for a service?”
Krissy got up with her coffee and stood at the deck railing. She craned her neck. “It’s an arbor,” she said.
“Really? That’s—
“Good morning, lovebirds.”
It was Theresa coming up the steps to their cabin. “Jonas, I’ve had the best idea!”
“Oh-oh,” he said, raising an eyebrow at his sister. “Why are you making me nervous?”
“I couldn’t even sleep last night, thinking about what you told me. That you and Krissy are just going to go and get married by yourselves somewhere. It doesn’t make sense. It’s something we all want to celebrate with you. Why not do it here?”
Krissy sneaked a look at Jonas.
He looked utterly gobsmacked. His eyes met hers. He looked away. They had agreed they were going to see where this was going, but he was not prepared for this. How could he be?
“Krissy, what do you think?” Theresa asked. She was so excited. “He’d never forget your anniversary. It would fall on the reunion weekend and his birthday!”
“You mean have a wedding?” Krissy asked, not sure she could be hearing right. “At next year’s reunion?”
“No! Right now!”
Krissy’s heart was nearly pounding out of her chest. She dared not even look at Jonas, afraid her heart would be broken in two by his reaction to his sister’s crazy suggestion.
“Look, I know you mean well, Theresa, but Krissy doesn’t even have a dress. You don’t just get married in your shorts. Do you?”
Krissy shot him a look. All the things he could have said, and he was worried she didn’t have a dress?
“I have a dress,” Theresa whispered.
“Nobody has an extra wedding dress just lying around,” Jonas said. “Look, you’re ambushing us, and—”
“Ambushing you? You said you were going to do it anyway. You said you had the license. I bet you even have a wedding band, don’t you? I mean, probably not with you, but—”
“I have it with me,” he said.
Krissy felt her eyes go wide. He did?
“I haven’t taken it out of my pocket since I bought it,” he confessed, his voice low.
There was something in his voice—uncertain and pained—that Krissy heard. He’d been
