“But I thought you liked the wet puffy shirt look.”
“I do, but you’re getting me wet!”
Another shout of laughter goes up around the deck and a devilish look comes over Tolly’s face. Hoisting me up again, he turns and jumps back into the pool.
It’s a damn good thing I’m wearing a bathing suit. Still, I sputter at him, blinking away the water in my eyes.
“That’s it! I’m calling off the wedding,” I joke, twisting to get away from him.
“Too bad, love. It’s going to be a pretty amazing party,” he says, putting on that posh accent.
“Okay, fine. I’ll marry you, but I’ll be getting you back.”
He grins and pulls me in for a kiss until the partygoers start whistling again.
“Looking forward to it. For the rest of my life.”
* * *
Tolly
“I don’t know if I ever told you how surprised I was the first time you brought me here,” Gael says, as we’re wrapped up in one another on the double lounger, the beach a stone’s throw away.
“Really?” I ask, kissing his temple as we watch the stars begin to appear in the night sky above us, outshining the palm trees wrapped in Christmas lights.
The wedding ceremony today was simple and beautiful. We’d kept the double wedding with Erik and Ant a surprise, and the guests’ reactions were a combination of shock, laughter, and tears. The cousins were beautiful, of course, and Erik and I had exchanged a look like we both knew that we were the luckiest two men on the entire planet.
We danced for hours, the music a mix of Quelbe, reggaeton, corridos, early 2000s pop, and Christmas carols.
“Yeah. The guys would talk about your Caribbean estate, and I guess I was imagining some bohemian version of the estate outside of Manchester. Big and imposing, taking up half the landmass of your little island.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Oh, darling. That’s never been my style.”
“I know that now, of course. Coming here after that awful trip to England reminded me of the first time you took me to your cabin at the ranch. It’s gorgeous, clearly high-end, but built to be a part of the landscape instead of overwhelming it.”
“That’s a good description of my general style. I don’t think there’s anything more beautiful than nature, and trying to impose my own architecture over that seems perfectly ridiculous.”
“Like this house,” he says, gesturing to my—our—home. “It’s beautiful, and I love the massive sliding glass doors that let in the ocean air and sunshine. But it’s not that much bigger than your cabin. Hell, some of your staff’s homes are bigger.”
“We built the homes to suit the size of the family.”
“But people who are as rich as you always build these massive mansions. And yeah, architecture or whatever, but you could build a large home that encompass the natural beauty around you.”
“What am I going to do with a large home? That was the question I’ve always had for my friends with these massive mansions. I know a guy who has a fifty-bedroom mansion. Fifty. He and his wife have a daughter. Singular. What the hell is he doing with the other forty-five rooms?”
“Bragging,” Gael says, kissing my jaw.
I hold him tighter. “I’ve seen too much bragging. To use one’s largess to show other people how rich you are is embarrassing in the extreme. At least I would be humiliated to act like that. Meanwhile, Erik’s and Charlie’s portfolios are similar to mine, and their homes are not grand, either.”
“True. They’re beautifully made, and wonderfully livable, but they’re not a flex.”
“Exactly. When you’ve grabbed a Kind Bar out of your own backpack to feed a child who was on the razor’s edge of starving to death, massive displays of wealth seem so immoral in comparison,” I say, running my hand through his hair.
“And that’s why I love you, Mr. Hernandez,” he says, leaning into the affection with a goofy grin.
I fit his back up against my chest as I wrap my legs around his. “Tolly Hernandez has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”
“Yes…”
