Jamison (Beautiful Mine #3) (24 page)

Running my fingers down his arm and tasting him awoke a wild stirring in me, and the only cure was him. “Let’s go back to our villa.”

We’d barely closed the door to our suite before Jamison’s hardness pressed into my hips and his hands hastily unzipped me out of my dress. I fumbled with his zipper until I could free his cock from the constraints of his dress pants. I palmed it and felt it throb in my hand, growing bigger with each passing second. He hoisted me up and I wrapped my legs around his hips as he carried me to the bed, his mouth kissing every exposed inch of me in the process.

Laying me gently on the bed, his hand cradling the back of my skull, his lips found mine in the dark. The heat of his body left mine as he sat up and tugged my panties down to my ankles before flinging them far across the room.

Jamison positioned himself between my thighs and wasted no time pressing himself into me, as if it was the only place he ever truly felt safe. And loved.

“I love you so much, Sophie,” he whispered between hungry kisses. It never mattered how long it’d been since we last made love; Jamison always hungered for me as if he were starving.

“I love you more,” I said, rolling my eyes into the back of my head as he pistoned in and out of me, making me hurt so good.

More than you could ever possibly know.

When we finished, I curled up into his arms like I always did and placed my hand on his chest as I watched it rise and fall in the dark.

“What time is it?” he asked.

I peeked over his shoulder toward the clock on the bedside table. “Just past midnight. Why?”

Jamison pulled his arm from beneath me and climbed out of bed. “Because there are certain things you shouldn’t do on other people’s wedding days.”

“Where are you going?”

His hand fished in the pocket of his dress pants, pulling out a tiny box.

“What’s this?”

“Sophie,” he said, lowering himself down on one knee, “I knew since before I met you that there was something special about you. And that night we met, I knew I’d never found a more perfect soul. You saved my life, Sophie. I was dead inside, and you revived me.”

My heart raced. We’d never discussed marriage and we barely talked about the future beyond superficial things like vacations and trips we wanted to take.

“Marry me, Sophie,” he said. It wasn’t a question. His forehead wrinkled as his ice blue eyes glowed in the darkness of our suite. “I love you so much. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to wake up with you every morning and fall asleep next to you every night. Marry me.”

My lips danced as a million different ways to say “yes” whirled around my mind, scattering my thoughts. None of them seemed to express my excitement half as much as I wanted them to, so I simply nodded over and over and over as I vaulted into his arms.

He hugged me tight as I breathed him in, pulling away moments later so he could slip the sparkling gem onto my finger. In the darkness of the room, that thing caught every last ounce of light we had and lit like fire.

“I’ve wasted so many years,” he said. “Life is short.”

“And precious.”

“I don’t want to waste another year,” he said. “You’ve shown me that life can be beautiful. This has been, hands down, the best year of my life. I want a lifetime of years just like this.”

He leaned in, kissing me hard.

“I never saw this coming, you know,” I whispered. “I’m still a little in shock. Excited, but shocked.”

“Someone once told me I’d do just about anything to put a smile on her face,” he said. “She was right.”

SOPHIE

One year later…

“Morning, Alessandria,” I said to Beacon Art Gallery’s new executive assistant as I hurried into work. In the previous year, business had been good, and Mia and I were unable to keep up with the demands and our production schedules. That was when we placed the ad online, and not long after that, Alessandria Ortiz came waltzing into our life. She was a breath of fresh air and a lifesaver all wrapped into one feisty little package.

“Hey, boss lady,” she quipped, standing up to hand me a steaming cup of coffee from my favorite place. Alessandria was worth her weight in gold, and she never failed to take care of us. “It’s decaf. Don’t worry.”

I threw her an appreciative wink as I massaged an ache in my lower back. Walking to work had been a breeze in my first trimester, but as my belly began to grow it was becoming more challenging to be on my feet all day.

“Today’s the day, right?” Mia said, breezing up from the back of the gallery. “You find out what you’re having.”

“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my swollen belly. Jamison said I was all belly, but I felt pregnant from head to toe. Several subtle kicks tickled my insides and brought a smile to my face.

“Any guesses, Mrs. Garner?” Alessandria asked.

“I dreamt it was a boy last night,” I said, sipping my decaf latte. “Jamison thinks girl.”

“It’s going to be a boy,” Mia said. “Trust me. I know these things. I’m never wrong. Ask my sisters and cousins.”

“Any names picked out?” Alessandria asked.

“Not really,” I said, scrunching my nose. “It’s hard naming babies.”

Mia shook her head and rolled her eyes in my direction. She’d been naming her future babies since she was a kid, and she’d been throwing suggestions at me left and right since the moment I told her we were expecting.

“Okay, well, I’m going to be back in the studio if you need me,” I said. “I need to get a little bit of work done before I leave for my appointment.”

Hours later, I met Jamison outside the hospital as we rushed to our appointment. In true doctor fashion, he was running late.

“Sorry,” he said, grabbing me by the hand and leading me inside. “Tried to get away as soon as I could.”

“I understand,” I said, brushing it off as I drank him in. In the summertime, Jamison shaved his face clean and kept his hair cut high and tight. His light blue eyes played off the mid-day sun just perfectly, and his face was kissed with a hint of a suntan from walking to work.

He’d been offered his job back at Mercy Grace and accepted it only after confirming Dr. Whitehorn had retired and Daphne had quit her job to run off with a doctor who had yet to find out he’d just married the devil incarnate. Though according to Jamison, Daphne’s husband wasn’t much of a saint either. They were both pompous assholes who deserved each other, he said. The second she married him, he bought out some practice in a little rinky dink town south of Tupelo, Mississippi and they high-tailed it out of the city. I laughed when I thought of how sorely she was going to stick out and how those sweet southerners were going to eat her alive for walking around their town like she was God’s gift.

Lying on the ultrasound table, I lifted my shirt, exposing the soft flesh of my bump and anticipating the sensation of warm, goopy gel to come.

“Are we finding out the sex today?” the sonographer asked.

“Yes,” we answered in unison, turning to each other and beaming.

She pressed the transducer into my lower abdomen, moving back and forth and gliding across my skin with the help of the gel. We watched intently with breaths suspended.

“Looks like we’ve got a little baby girl in there,” she said with a smile. She looked over at us. “She’s going to be a looker, I can tell you that right now.”

My eyes fixed on the screen as the technician took some screen grabs and typed cute little captions across them. She printed off a few and handed them to Jamison.

“You were right,” I said, looking over at Jamison as he admired the photos.

“I’m always right,” he teased, grinning ear to ear like a proud father.

“Looks like little Jules is going to have to share her princess throne,” I joked, referring to Evie and Jude’s daughter who had been born the previous fall. Jules was adorable, one of the sweetest, happiest babies I’d ever met. With thick dark hair and golden eyes, she was going to break a lot of hearts someday. “Mia thought for sure we were having a boy.”

Jamison softly took my hand as the technician finished our scan and entered final measurements into our file. Lifting it to his lips, he said, “Can’t wait to meet our little doll.”

We left the clinic, stopping outside before we both had to go our separate ways. Jamison palmed my belly, looking down and smiling.

“She’s going to be beautiful,” he said fondly. “Just like her mother.”

“I’ve been thinking,” I said. “I wanted to run something past you.”

“What’s that?”

“Would it be okay if we named her after my sisters? Maybe Elinor Rossilyn? We could call her Ella?”

His face softened and his eyes crinkled at the corners. “Of course. It’s perfect.”

Gia DeLuca is a modern day Carrie Bradshaw (if Carrie Bradshaw had three small children, two dogs, a sitcom-dad of a husband, and lived in the suburbs far, far away from the romantic city streets of Manhattan). A daydream believer, Gia is never without an idea in her heart or a song in her head. When she’s not busy tending to her littles, she can be found working on her next book. And when she’s not working, you just might find her curling up with a good book (or a really trashy reality show).

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