“It makes you awesome,” she said softly, smoothing a hand down the front of his shirt. “God, I love you. So this is the big secret? This kitchen and a private island?” At his nod, she gave an incredulous little laugh. “Why a private island?”
“Because you need a vacation from all of this. The wedding, the cookbook—everything has stressed you out so much that I worry about you. So when I saw the island come up for sale, I thought it’d be perfect for us to have our own private getaway.”
“But the house is private—”
“Ah, but if I sweep you off to a tropical island, you’ll have no choice but to relax and lounge about in skimpy clothing.”
Gretchen laughed again. “That is the most ridiculous and most wonderful thing I’ve ever heard.” She put her arms around his neck and pressed her breasts against his chest. “I can’t believe you kept all this from me and made me think the house had water damage. Do you know how long I’ve been freaking out over the drilling and hammering they’ve been doing?”
“I know. And you’ve been making yourself utterly crazy. You didn’t need more on your plate to worry about, and I know you. You’d have worried about the contractors hitting their deadlines and making everything the way you wanted it, so I decided to handle it.” His hands rubbed up and down her arms. “Besides, I worried me putting a kitchen up here would make you think I’m a stalker.”
“Not a stalker if I marry you,” Gretchen teased. “I don’t care if you’re needy. I love you and I need you, too.”
“You can’t keep making yourself insane with all this stuff, Gretchen. I’m a billionaire. I can buy my woman a kitchen if I want. I can buy her an island if I want. What’s the point of all this money if we can’t enjoy ourselves?”
The lump in her throat grew. He was really the best man ever. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. Always.”
“We need to be good, you and I. I don’t know what I’ll do if something happened to tear us apart.”
His scarred brow moved in a quasi-arch. “You mean like blackmail?”
Her hand rubbed up and down his front again. Heaven help her, she was a mess right now and she was getting all turned on. “I was going to marry you even if some bitch was trying to get between us. I said for better or for worse and I meant it. No matter what she had to say, I still wanted to be Mrs. Buchanan. There’s nothing so awful that would drive me away from you.”
“Gretchen,” he murmured, voice hoarse with emotion. “You’re everything to me. Do you understand that?”
She nodded. “I think I just got too caught up in the wedding and trying to make it amazing. I . . . might have let things get to my head.”
He caressed her neck and pulled her close for a quick kiss. Then said, “We could elope. Forget all this and bail out. Head to a JP and then to our island.”
“I’m going to forget you said any of that,” she whispered against his mouth. “Because I might have to kill you for thinking about abandoning the wedding we’ve set up at your house.”
“Fuck the wedding,” he murmured, and kissed her again. His tongue flicked against her lips, sending skitters of lust through her body. “Fuck the guests. Fuck the house. I’ll burn the thing to the damn ground if it’ll make you happy.”
Oh my god, when did arson become so damn sexy? “Can we put that in the wedding vows?”
“Absolutely.” He kissed her again, then bit down gently on her plump lower lip. “Go back to being my impulsive, heedless Gretchen. Let me be the planner, the worrier. You just be you. You’re perfect as you are.”
“All right,” she said shyly, feeling loved and special and so stupidly happy all at once.
“And if you try to plan anything of this magnitude again, I’m going to kidnap you to our island.”
Gretchen giggled. “Deal.”
***
“Okay, I think we’re good,” Daphne said as she moved away from Gretchen’s back. “Let me know what you think.”
Gretchen twisted, trying to get a look at her back in the mirror. An hour ago, the dress had been unable to close, the zipper and clasps unwilling to move over her mid-back. Now, as she peered in the mirror at the deep vee of the back of the dress, it looked perfect. “You’re a genius, Daph. What did you do?”
“I ripped open the dress and hot-glued an extra stretchy panel under each armpit to give you a bit more room.”
Audrey gasped. “You did what?”
“You wanted it to fit, right? It fucking fits.” Daphne smoothed a hand down Gretchen’s back. “No gaps in the zipper. It’s a trick I learned on the road. My costumes are always getting screwed up and they’re always making last-minute modifications with a glue gun. That’s how it works. And it’s not like she’s going to wear the dress again.”
“But still—”
“Nope, she’s right, Audrey. It looks great.” Gretchen admired her reflection again. “You even got the wrinkles out of the skirts. How’d you manage that?”
“Flat iron,” Daphne said proudly.
“It does look good,” Audrey admitted. “And you look gorgeous, Gretchen.”
She . . . felt gorgeous, too. Gretchen gazed at her reflection again. This morning’s nervous breakdown didn’t show. While Daphne had fixed her dress, she’d sat with Audrey and pressed chilled cucumber slices to her eyes to reduce the swelling. Hunter’s friend Cade Archer had shown up for the wedding at that point, and Brontë had remembered that his wife, Kylie, was a makeup artist. She’d even worked for Daphne in the past. Kylie had been happy to help fix Gretchen’s makeup, though she’d tsked at some of the products Gretchen had on hand. By the time Kylie was done, Gretchen had a laundry list of new products to buy to “help her skin” in the future.