A Boy Worth Choosing (The Worthy Series Book 2) (18 page)

“I feel like I could lose you at any moment.” He breathes before he plunges in for another soul searching kiss. His hands slip to the flesh of my back and their heat ignites my senses, sparking every nerve ending in my body, including the nerves around my incision site. I can’t help the involuntary wince that follows. “Oh, baby. I’m so sorry.”

I pull my lips away and fall against his shoulder, fighting tears. Tears of frustration, tears of physical pain. Tears that I’m tired of crying.

“Are you sure this is all worth it, Jessie?” His voice is barely a whisper as he lays his head against mine.

Still fighting the pain, all I can do is nod against his shoulder. His arms wrap safely around me, snuggling me against him.

“Then yes. This is what I want too.”

Chapter Twenty

~Stephen~

“That sounds great. We can be there around ten tomorrow morning…Okay. Thank you again….Okay. We’ll see you in the morning then. Thanks. Bye.” Jessie hangs up with the caterer only to text Daphne and then dial the alterations seamstress.

We’ve been on the road for almost forty five minutes and she’s been making phone calls non-stop. With the wedding only a little over a week away, she’s right to be checking in and making sure all last minute details are hammered out, but at the rate that she’s going, I’m really concerned that she’s over doing it. And every time I try to ask her to slow down, she gets frustrated with me, telling me she doesn’t have the time or the energy to slow down. I even tried to offer to take a few things off her plate, but she insists that she be the one to make sure everything is in order.

I think it’s a defense mechanism though. I think she thinks that if she focuses solely on the wedding and work that she won’t have to really worry about the fact that her body has decided to go AWOL on her. But I know her, the more she tries to ignore it, the worse it could come back to hurt her. And her strong willed, stubborn side just makes her that much more relentless.

She hangs up from the seamstress’s call and turns to me.

“The tuxes are ready. Can you or Grady pick them up by Wednesday?” she asks without looking at me.

“Of course.” I reach over and grab her hand and bring it to my lips. She relaxes for just a second and I see a crack in the armor. She feels it too and tenses back up, pulling her hand back.

“So tell me about this building we’re going to look at,” I say, hoping to distract her from her nuptial to-do list.

She closes her planner and slides it back into her purse, and then sits back in her seat, readjusting her seat belt so she can pull one leg up underneath her.

“It’s a small warehouse along the outskirts of Columbia. The property actually has a bit of land to it. I’m hoping it has some decent landscaping to it so we could set up outdoor sessions.”

“So are you guys officially going with Columbia then?”

“I think so. It opens up a ton of opportunities for us with the university being so close. We can have more interns, and the potential for building our clientele base is more lucrative than in Lawrence. I know it’s a further drive, but Daphne and I both think it’s the better business decision. Not to mention that Isaiah and Shelby have already fallen in love with the area.”

“And it’s like your third home.” I see her smile in my peripheral.

She doesn’t say anything, but leans her head back to rest. After a moment or two I see her eyes slide shut and I relax a bit too, comforted that she’s taking a moment to just slow down. However we barely get another five minutes of peace and quiet before her phone starts ringing again.

“Let it go to voicemail.”

“I can’t. It’s the bakery and they close in ten minutes.” She picks it up and answers. “Hello?”

I can’t help it, but between the ER and all the visits back and forth to Dr. Graham’s office, I fear that if she keeps up this outrageous tempo, she won’t make it to the wedding. Call me selfish, but I have been waiting a long time for this woman. I’m willing to do anything to make sure that she’s healthy and ready to become my wife.

She hangs up the phone and I hold my hand out.

“What?”

“I would like to see your phone for a second please.”

“Stephen. I need this in case someone calls about the wedding.”

“Jessie. It’s after hours now. For once, someone can wait on the bride to call them back. We have another hour before we get there, and I’d like you to spend it relaxing, or talking to me.”

She reluctantly hands it to me. I silence it and put it in my pocket so she’s not tempted. She doesn’t speak to me for several minutes and when I look over at her, I see she’s none too happy.

“Baby, please don’t be mad.” I reach for her hand and lace my fingers with hers.

“I’m not,” she spits out.

“Well your voice clearly doesn’t agree with you.”

“I just want everything to be perfect. With everything that has been going on, I need
something
to go right.” Her voice breaks and there goes that crack in my heart again.

“Jess, I’m sure it will be perfect. We could be getting married in burlap sacks in a mud puddle and it would be perfect for me.”

“You’re such a boy.” She giggles. It feels like forever since I’ve heard that sound and it does things to my insides that make me thankful we’re in a moving car and not on a private couch somewhere.

“You need to do that more often,” I tell her, brushing my lips across her knuckles.

“What?”

“Giggle. It’s been awhile since I’ve heard it. I miss it.” And what it does to me.

“Oh.” She pulls her hand back to her lap and focuses her eyes there.

“Hey. Come back to me.” I contemplate pulling over so we can have this conversation face to face. When I hear her sniffle, I do. Once I’ve put the car in park and turned on my hazard lights, I turn to her. I reach over and wipe away a tear on her cheek and cup her face.

“I don’t feel like I have much to laugh at anymore. Everything about my life right now demands so much from me that I can’t find joy in anything. It’s all work.” She sniffs and wipes the other side of her face before looking up at me. “The wedding. My job, which I know is supposed to be work, but I used to love it and now I just find it so taxing. Then spending time with you is a task in itself since we’ve had to make arrangements not to be alone. Then add on taking medication at the same time for so many days and then having to go in to have a highly uncomfortable ultrasound done every so often. I don’t feel human, I feel like a machine.”

From my perspective she’s had this overwhelming load of responsibilities, and I knew they had to be taking a physical toll on her. But I hadn’t stopped to really understand the emotional aspect of it all.

“How can I help relieve some of this extra stress?” I ask, wanting so badly to take it all off her plate. But she shakes her head.

“I just need to get through the next couple of weeks. Once the wedding is over and we are able to spend our free time alone, just the two of us, everything will be better. I know it. I just need to get through the next couple of weeks.”

“Would a vacation help?” I joke, but judging by the way her eyes nearly explode out of her head, I realize too late that I’ve added something to her already overloaded plate.

“OH NO! The honeymoon! I totally haven’t even thought about preparing for that.” She leans down to pull her phone out of her purse before realizing I still have it. “I need my phone back please.”

“Are you going to call someone?” I ask.

“I need to talk to Daphne about arranging my sessions while we’re gone.”

“She’s not at the office. You can talk to her about it tomorrow.”

“But I’ll forget by tomorrow.”

“Then write it down in the handy little planner I got you.”

She rolls her eyes at me, pulls out her bag, and digs through her day planner and makes a note in it. She puts everything back in her purse and sits it back in the floorboard. She looks back up at me with borderline annoyance on her face and I can’t help but find her amusing. I reach across the car and pull her to meet me half way so that I can kiss her beautiful lips. I pull back just enough so our foreheads are touching.

“I’m putting in our vows that I will promise to irritate you just so that you’ll give me that look again.” She giggles and everything in me wants to kiss her again. So I do. “And I promise to do all sorts of fun things to you just to make you giggle.”

My smirk makes her giggle again and feel like I could tear my beloved car apart trying to meet the desires in my gut she inspires.

“You should leave that last part out. I don’t want our parents to have heart problems in front of all those people.” She full out laughs now and I decide that I better get us back on the road before I decide to make good use of the small back seat.

***

“So, first impressions?” I ask Jessie as we pull up to the building. One glance at her face tells me that this may have been a waste of gas. The last hour has been full of giggles and joking around with a much livelier looking Jessie though, so I am not counting it a total loss.

“Let’s see if the building holds any potential.” I love my little optimist.

We get out of the car and walk around the side of the building to look at the “additional land” that was listed to be a part of the property. Concrete jungle may be more appropriate. The whole length of the building is nestled up to an asphalt parking lot that was once patched with tar, but now sports random sprouts of grass and several large potholes. The painted lines that once outlined where cars should park are so faded that some spots could hold multiple cars. The curb has crumbled in many spots, leaving the surface scattered with gravel. The whole plot would either need to be excavated or resurfaced, either way, it’s virtually unusable as is.

“Well you could always market it as industrial chic,” I suggest and manage to get a playful smile out of her. She swats at my chest but I catch her hand and pull her in.  We stand holding each other in our own little world when I hear an throat clear behind us.

A short, older woman in a too tight pencil skirt and too tight hair bun looks narrowly over her half-moon glasses at us with pursed lips.

“You must be Mary,” Jessie says, laying the politeness on thick. She reaches her hand out to shake the woman’s hand with a blinding smile but gets a very serious look of sternness from the old bat.

“Miss Jenkins, yes. You must be Miss St. James. And you are?” She turns to me with pointy black eyes and a face full of contempt. Oh, this is going to be fun.

“Mr. Cahill. I’m Miss St. James’s fiancé and legal counsel.” I extend my hand and lay on the charm. She shakes my hand, but narrows her eyes suspiciously at me. I have to press my lips together to avoid laughing.

“Hmm. Well, shall we?” She extends her hand out to the side of her, indicating we should go ahead of her. So I bow my head and offer my elbow to escort Jessie into the building. I hear Jessie suppress a giggle and I can’t help the mischievous grin that grows across my face.

“It definitely has that old factory feel,” Jessie comments as we ascend the deteriorating concrete steps. We have to step aside to let Miss Mary Jenkins unlock the door.

“Oh yes. The building was built in the early nineteen hundreds. It was an old tactile factory until the Great Depression sent it under in the late twenties. Then in the fifties, it because a canned good factory until the early nineties and has been home to many failed business ventures in the last twenty years.” Miss Jenkins’s snooty nose sniffs in the stale air and decides not to close the door behind us.

I already used the term industrial chic to describe the outside and it appears that whoever had used the building prior had liked the idea enough to bring it inside. The exterior walls have been left the bare brick while half walls have been constructed to divide the space up and painted a hard steel color. The lighting has been updated to new age tract lights that hang from the tall ceiling. It looks like the windows that line the ceiling were recently updated too. But the outdated windows now hung from tracts bolted into the brick walls as a part of the industrial décor.

Based on the set up, I’d almost guess that the most recent business could have been a tattoo parlor. I could just imagine that’s what Miss Mary Jenkins thought was a “failed business venture”. But if I had to guess, there’s a butterfly hidden somewhere on that uptight old broad. The thought sends unwanted shivers down my spine.

“So is the whole building set up like this?” Jessie asks. I can already see her mind trying to calculate what it would cost to remodel the inside for offices and a secluded studio area.

“Yes. I’m afraid it is.” Disdain drips from Miss Jenkins’s voice and this time I don’t blame her. The asking price is already at the top of the girls’ budget, so there really isn’t much room for remodeling costs.

“And the listing price isn’t really negotiable?” I ask.

“I’m afraid not. The previous owner needs to cover the remainder of the loan to avoid a foreclosure.”

“I see.” I hear the disappointment in Jess’s voice, but I know that won’t stop her. And I’m correct. “Well, I won’t waste your or my time in pretending to be interested here. I understand you have a couple of other properties listed that you thought we’d be interested in?”

Miss Jenkins lays out a couple of papers on of the half wall and starts talking properties with Jessie. I continue to look around, but find myself feeling guilty. The minute Jess said that she wasn’t interested in this property, I was happy.

Had she fallen in love with this building, then she would be on the phone with Daphne as soon as we were in the car. Then it would be non-stop planning for setting up the new studio. Instead she’s left to keep looking, which I know is frustrating for her. But the reality is she needs to be slowing down, not adding to the list of tasks that have her going ninety miles an hour.  And for that I am relieved.

“Stephen, do we have time to run across town to look at one more place before we head back?” I turn around to find an eager faced Jessie and I feel that sense of relief escape me.