“So, who else is here?”
I scan the cars lining their private drive. Other than Roman’s car there are a few I don’t recognize, probably workers or last minute caterers or staff or whatever. And then I find the one at the front. It’s a child’s game of what doesn’t belong, and my grandma’s early 2000 Buick stands out like a sore thumb.
A grin bursts forth and I laugh.
The one person in my family I adore to pieces. “Nana is here.”
“Nana? I get to meet her?”
Crazy and quirky, I’m pretty sure my mother despises every single thing about my grandmother and the simple way she grew up. As soon as she married my father, she renounced her poor upbringing, barely allowing visiting my grandmother’s home because she didn’t want to be reminded of the small house, not much larger than my own, she grew up in.
I’m pretty sure Nana loves the times she gets to visit my parents. She never lets my mother forget for a moment where she came from.
It makes my mother’s blood boil.
It makes me howl in laughter—privately of course.
Klaus has heard all of this woman’s crazy stories, but hasn’t met her since she doesn’t travel well.
“Come on.” I grab his hand, and for the first time in weeks, I’m excited to step back into my childhood home. “You’re going to love her.”
I’m almost bubbly with excitement, anticipating her antics. After Roman and I broke up, she called me, asked how I was doing and when I cried, she said, “Chin up, darlin’, you’ll find better. That boy got a stick shoved up so far where the sun don’t shine it’s amazing his eyes haven’t turned brown yet.”
On a day when I’d felt devastated, she made me laugh.
And she’s going to adore Klaus.
“Nana. This is the woman who puked up green beer on St. Patrick’s Day in your toilet and walked topless through Mardi Gras, right?”
“Yup.” I swear she tells at least one of these stories every time we see her just to make my mother’s face turn a beautiful eggplant shade. Best part, she was sixty when she did the topless strut.
I’m careful of my steps over the uneven, cobblestone drive, but there’s now a bounce in it.
With Klaus and Nana on my side this weekend, I’ll be lucky to be within choking distance to Roman or Julianna. They’ll provide the buffer I’ll need so I don’t return home on Sunday with a mugshot and a night spent in Charleston County Jail.
We’re almost to the gleaming white, and surely recently power-washed steps that lead to the pale yellow Antebellum home I used to love, when Klaus tugs on my hand. He stops abruptly, yanking me backward and somehow, pulling me to him at the same time.
“One more thing before we go in there,” he mutters. He takes our interlocked hands and curls his arm around his back, pressing me close to him. My head is tilted back, and I swear… that look in his eyes.
My heart leaps. For the last few minutes I’ve been able to forget my intense attraction to him, but it’s here now, a living, bubbling thing beneath the surface.
“What?”
“This.”
He kisses me without warning. Firm, warm lips press to mine, and he does not keep this kiss in any way friendly. Oh no.
Not Klaus. He wasn’t joking earlier.
If he’s working hard to sell that we’re in love, this kiss is a winner. Except we’re alone. So what he’s doing it for?
Who freaking cares?!
I kiss him back, curling my other hand over his shoulder and rolling to my toes so I’m closer. We’re almost superglued to each other, so close I can feel the patter of his heart beneath his light gray polo shirt.
He opens his mouth, and the tip of his tongue grazes mine sending sparks straight to the rocks beneath my sandals.
Oh dear sweet heaven and Jesus.
A throat clears and I freeze.
Worse, I know who that sound belongs to.
“Jillian.”
Klaus’s eyes open, looking down at me. I slide my hands to his hips to push him away but he moves slower, lingering on my lips, ending the kiss as if we don’t have an audience of one ex-fiancé behind me.
“You must be Roman.” He lifts his head minutely, his lips at my ears as he introduces himself to Roman for the first time. In one svelte move, Klaus brings me to his side so my arms have to wrap around his body.
“I am.” Roman steps toward us, holding out a hand for Klaus to shake. He does it reluctantly, and I’m pretty sure he squeezes too hard when I catch a small flinch in Roman’s tight expression. “Jillian. How are you?”
“Wonderful.” I squeeze Klaus harder and plaster on the fakest smile I’ve ever tried to wear. “And you?”
Roman, for all he’s lousy and miserable, definitely got the lion’s share of looks. Handsome and refined in the most richest way possible, he doesn’t hold a candle to many.
Fortunately, that heat spreading through me from kissing Klaus diminishes his shine.
He slides his hands to his hips and gives a lackadaisical shrug. “Can’t complain. You look well.”
As he says it, his gaze scans my body, lingering on legs I wish were fully covered. Klaus lets a loose rumble flow from his chest and adjusts me so I’m standing more behind him than next to him.
I ignore his comment and oily look. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here now.”
“What?”
He points his thumb toward the carriage house, a two-bedroom apartment above what used to be the guest quarter’s garage. It’s connected to my own home through a covered breezeway, making it easy for servants years ago to come and go while escaping the weather. At one point when I was a child, my nanny lived there. “Moved in a few weeks so Julianna can get settled in our new home. She didn’t want us living together before the big day.”
As he mentions Julianna, his voice flatlines.
I take a perverse thrill that there might be something wrong and quickly kick it to the curb, along with my anger.
My parents allowed him to move in?
So many questions pummel me. The first being, why didn’t he move in with his own parents? Their house is plenty large enough even if they lack a guest house for him.
“Okay.” I grit my teeth to keep away my arguments. Klaus’s hand at my side tightens like a warning. “We should go in. Say hello to Mom and Dad.”
“Careful.” He smirks. “Your mom’s in full party planning for the post-rehearsal dinner party. But I’m glad you came.”
What?
Behind Klaus’s back, my fingernails dig into the backs of his palm. If he feels my ire, he doesn’t show it.
I slap on what I hope is my best acting voice and press closer to Klaus’s body. “Why wouldn’t I? It’s my best friend’s wedding.”
At the mention of Julianna, his smile flattens and he rocks on his heels.
I step forward, forcing him to move backward or fall down the marble steps, not that that’d be the worst thing to happen.
One horrific greeting down, too many more to go.
6
Klaus
Goddamn, this woman is strong. I shouldn’t be surprised with how she works with her garden or chops her vegetables and I know Jillian goes to the gym, but as soon as we cross the threshold into her home—which is insanely old and beautiful and polished and glamorous—I wiggle my crushed fingers in her grip.