Chapter Thirteen
“Did you prepare your own vows?” Beckett asked, stone-faced as usual, but his raised brows were a clear indication that he still wasn’t on board with this sham of a wedding. His attention skated from Jesse to Ella, where they stood inside the white gazebo in the backyard at her parents’ ranch. The structure had been transformed into a luminous fairy-tale palace with hundreds of tiny white Christmas lights and flowers in varying shades of blush. The temperature had dropped significantly after dark, and if she weren’t such a hot mess on the inside, she’d be freezing in her sleeveless wedding gown.
Vows? Beckett was asking for . . . what? Am I going to faint?
Ella chanced a look at the crowd seated in white chairs outside the gazebo surrounded by portable heaters. Her parents were in the front row on the bride’s side. Jesse’s family in the front on the other side. Delighted whispers of aww and ooh floated through the air. Handkerchiefs were out, blotting tears.
And Ella could barely look at the man standing across from her, the man she was fake marrying, without Ana’s words coming to mind. Vows before God and family made it real.
People were going to think she was about to pull a “runaway bride” in a minute if she kept looking everywhere but at the groom.
She shot a nervous glance toward A.J., Chris, and Griffin, all handsome if not slightly uncomfortable in their suits, standing off to Jesse’s side. Then she peered over at Rory, Savanna, and Ana at her right. Vows? All eyes were on her, waiting for her to speak. What was I thinking? She was going to be sick.
Maybe it wasn’t too late? She could go into hiding instead. Let Jesse track down this Zoran-whatever-his-name-was. Forget the vows. Forget this whole fake wedding op. Forget Paris.
Ella’s hands felt like ice, and her body trembled as anxiety began to overwhelm her.
“I can go first.” Jesse’s deep voice rang out clear and confident.
Ella dragged in a breath and lifted her gaze to see his blue eyes pinned to her face.
He’d somehow managed to find time for a trim—the sides of his blond, nearly brown hair, were now neat and tight, and the top had been left slightly longer and gelled. He looked like a cover model for a Rochella magazine.
This isn’t real. No, not real.
Jesse reached out and took her trembling hands between his big, warm palms.
Oh, God. What would he say? How great of an actor was he? She supposed she was about to find out.
Jesse gently squeezed her hands. “I’ve always known you were the one, Ella Mae. There’s never been anyone but you,” he said slowly. “You were with me in Iraq even though you didn’t know it. I had your picture with me. Always. Yours was the first face I looked at when I woke and the last face I saw before going to sleep.”
Her stomach fluttered, and her chest grew tight as she listened to his performance. Why was he doing this to her? Why not just stick to the traditional vows?
Unless . . . he wasn’t acting?
The tears that threatened to spill from her eyes weren’t for show, that was for sure.
“You’ve always had my heart,” he continued, turning his attention to the engagement ring on her finger.
Jesse had passed it along to Rory to give to Ella an hour ago. He’d chosen the heart-shaped diamond when he bought their wedding bands, but for some reason hadn’t been able to present it to her himself.
Maybe because in the years since New York, her knee-jerk reaction when it came to that man was to push him away out of fear he’d just keep hurting her. Maybe he’d become as scared of rejection as she was, especially now that he’d shared his dark past?
“My heart has been with you whether I was overseas or at home,” Jesse went on, his voice full of emotion. “It’s always been with you. I’ve always loved you, and I always will. No matter what.” Those last three words made her heart ache. Was the “no matter what” his way of letting her know there’d always be some sort of roadblock preventing them from being together?
She’d quickly latched on to a thread of hope as he spoke his vows, but with those three little words, he’d crushed that hope beneath his boot.
“I, Jesse Edward McAdams, promise to protect and love you until death do us part.” She wasn’t sure if it was the surrounding lights shining on them that made his eyes look glossy or if this strong man was on the verge of tears.
Ella felt Beckett’s gaze on her, so she glanced at him for a moment before turning her attention toward Jesse.
This handsome, dangerous man standing there in his dashing tux, staring back at her, took her breath away. She was so incredibly in love with him that it physically hurt on a level she couldn’t explain, let alone comprehend.
“Ella,” Beckett prompted when she’d yet to open her mouth. The words were stuck somewhere in the hellish limbo she felt trapped in at the moment—the fine line between the truth of how she felt and the lie of what this moment was supposed to be. “I can tell you what to say if you need me to.”
“I can do this,” Ella whispered, her insides churning at the way Jesse watched her. “I mean, I have my own vows,” she clarified.
Jesse squeezed her hands again and gave her a slight nod. I’ve got you, he mouthed.
You have me now, but what about later? A few tears cut down her cheeks as her emotions nearly swallowed her whole. “I’m standing before the man I’ve loved from the moment I learned that feeling could extend beyond family.” This was too hard. She couldn’t say everything she truly felt without breaking down in front of everyone. She’d have to cut this short. “You’ve always had my heart. I gave it to you long ago. And no matter what, you’ll have it until the day I die.”
Jesse clenched his jaw as if the idea of her dying before him had him hanging on by a thread. But he’d also understood the meaning of her no matter what, too—she was sure of it.
Beckett resumed the ceremony, and she repeated the traditional vows as prompted, but everything up to the moment he told them to kiss was a blur.
“Kiss your wife,” someone called out to hoots of laughter among the guests when neither Jesse nor Ella made a move after Beckett proclaimed them husband and wife.
The one and only time they’d kissed had nearly destroyed her with its intensity. They’d need to take this one down several notches and definitely with no tongue. Hopefully, Jesse was on the same page as her.
Her “husband” slowly stepped forward, placed a firm hand on her back, and pulled her body flush to his. She told herself to breathe before she passed out from lack of oxygen when he tipped her chin up with his index finger and looked into her eyes. A silent thought seemed to pass between them . . . What did we just do?
Ella closed her eyes and waited for his kiss. The moment their lips touched, she arched her back and leaned into his embrace, unable to stop it from happening.
The kiss was slow and sensual, seeping into every fiber of her being and had her feeling far too much. She set her hands to his chest, willing herself to push a little to let him know to stop, that it was unbearable to kiss him any longer and not fall apart . . .
But instead, she found herself sliding her hands up the hard planes of muscle to cup the back of his neck, drawing him closer.