“Why?”
“I’d hate to start our marriage with divided loyalties.”
I shook my head, smiling despite myself. “I’m sure we’ll find more important things to fight about.”
“Probably. Although that is pretty important to me,” he said, but he still had that look in his eyes. That thoughtful, slightly distant look like he was turning something over in his mind.
“What is it?” I asked again.
He paused just long enough to make me curious. “There’s one place where I’ve always pictured getting married.”
I leaned one hip lightly against the edge of his desk. “Yeah? Where’s that?”
For a split second, my imagination ran away with me. Some tropical island. A private beach. Crystal-clear water, white sand, and a spontaneous elopement far away from contracts and expectations.
It would be insane considering all the work we had to do here in Chicago, but for just a moment, the image lingered anyway, the two of us disappearing to someplace warm and quiet. The kind of place we’d spoken about running away to.
Nate stood, moving around the desk toward me. He stopped a step away and I tilted my head up slightly to keep eye contact.
“I guess if we’re doing this, we might as well do it right,” he said. “Are yousureyou don’t want to tell me what you’ve always imagined first?”
“Nope.”
All I really wanted to know right now was what he had in mind, and then I had to figure out why the thought that he wanted to do it right had suddenly actually made me feel just a little twinge of excitement about having to do it at all.
CHAPTER 37
NATE
Two days later, after two sleepless nights hunched over my laptop with Kate beside me, we’d finally signed off on the last of the acquisition paperwork just after dawn this morning. I wasn’t sure either of us had even processed the fact that it was finally done.
We’d just sort of stopped when Will had told us to go home, and for once, I had actually listened. I’d slept maybe an hour. Kate probably hadn’t slept at all yet and now here we were. It felt like a fucking dream.
I pushed open a heavy service door and led her through the tunnel, out onto Wrigley Field. The sudden openness made the whole place feel bigger than it ever did during a game. Without the crowds and the noise, the stadium felt almost sacred.
The stands stretched up in quiet rows of empty seats around us, the massive scoreboard looming dark and still above center field. Even the lights seemed softer without thousands of people underneath them.
Kate slowed beside me as her heels sank slightly into the grass. “Okay. This is actually kind of amazing.”
I folded my arms, watching her turn in a slow circle. Her sweater shifted in the breeze and her curls moved freely aroundher shoulders, completely untamed for once. She’d given up on trying to make them behave more and more often since Saturday, and I’d been quietly grateful ever since.
Will cleared his throat from somewhere behind us. “Not to rush anyone, but this might be the strangest workday of my entire career.”
I glanced back at him, standing near the edge of the infield dirt with his hands in his pockets, looking deeply uncomfortable. Despite my exhaustion and our situation, I grinned. “What, witnessing an emergency wedding isn’t part of your job description? We should have HR look into that.”
Next to him, a lawyer flipped through a thin binder with professional indifference, his Cubs jersey stretched slightly over his stomach. He’d managed to get certified to be our officiant, but I’d only really cared about the location. The law firm we’d been a client of for ages arranged the rest.
Kate turned back to look at me, her eyes bright with disbelief and exhaustion. “This is the tackiest thing I’ve ever done.”
Will snorted and I didn’t even try to hide my smile. “You’re welcome.”
Her mouth twitched. “I mean, honestly. A shotgun wedding on a baseball field? What are we, secretly from Texas?”
“Unless you’ve got something to tell me, it’s not a shotgun wedding,” I said. “It’s strategic.”
“Strategic,” she repeated flatly. “Nowthat’sromantic.”
“Nothing says corporate synergy like lawful matrimony,” Will muttered.
