Reese grinned. “Didn’t forget. Couldn’t have even if I wanted to.”
“Atticus?” Brantley chuckled. The kid had made it his mission to irritate the shit out of Reese. The most interesting were the times Atticus blatantly flirted with Brantley. If ever there were something that would make the strong, even-keeled Reese Tavoularis break, it would be Atticus’s incessant flirting.
But Brantley knew the kid was harmless. The flirting never happened when Reese wasn’t around, which was how Brantley had realized Atticus’s intention was to get a rise out of Reese. No doubt, Atticus found it amusing. It kinda was. Plus, it didn’t hurt to know the man Brantley loved was capable of jealousy.
“One hour,” Brantley echoed Reese. “Then the store.”
Reese shifted his ear protection down and walked away. Brantley took a moment to admire him before he picked up the SIG he’d brought and headed to his assigned lane.
Two hours later, as Brantley was driving home from the grocery store, he glanced over to see Reese looking at his phone.
“I thought we weren’t working today.”
Reese looked up, his expression confused. “What?”
Brantley lifted his eyebrows and nodded at Reese’s phone. “Something’s got your attention. What is it?”
Reese exhaled and put his phone down. “Nothin’. I was goin’ through the checklist JJ sent.”
The wedding checklist, or what JJ had dubbed theBreese List. Personally, he hated that. She’d also referred to it as her You-Do-It-Or-Die List.
He grinned. “What’s on it for next week?”
“They sent the invitations out last week, so she’s startin’ to collect the RSVPs.”
“Her job, not ours,” Brantley noted.
“The rings are picked out,” Reese said, “so that one’s checked off.”
“So we’re ahead of the game.”
Brantley was glad they were. Considering JJ, Cindy, and Iris were planning the wedding, they’d required far more input from Brantley than he’d thought he would have to give. Evidently,planningdid not entail picking out what the invitations looked like or sampling the food that would be served in order to create the menu. Or getting a stomachache from all the damn cake they’d had to taste. Brantley wanted simple, but from what he could tell, they were designing a three-ring circus.
However, Reese didn’t seem to mind the effort going into the wedding, so Brantley was dealing with it. If it made Reese happy to review the guest list and pick out venues, more power to him. Like Brantley kept telling people, as long as he and Reese were at the altar while Pastor Bob was doing his thing, he didn’t give a shit.
Reese glanced his way. “Do you want to write our own vows?”
The tone of Reese’s voice told him he was worried about Brantley’s response. Logic told him he had a fifty-fifty chance of guessing the right way to answer. Unfortunately, his track record of trying to predict what Reese was thinking wasn’t great, so he opted for the simple answer.
“What’syourpreference? Because honest to God, I don’t care. As long as you promise to spend the rest of your life with me, we can recite Shel Silverstein poems for all I care.”
“Shel Silverstein?”
Brantley glanced over. “Yeah. You know.Where the Sidewalk Ends.”
“Oh, I know who he is,” Reese said. “I just didn’t think you did.”
“What? I read.”
“You do, sure. But I’ve never seen you read poetry.”
Reese was right. He didn’t. When he had time, his preference leaned toward non-fiction. Mostly military-related.
Brantley shrugged. “When I was a kid, I did.”
Reese was quiet for a moment. Brantley didn’t attempt to fill the void. There was something on Reese’s mind—something not related to Shel Silverstein—and with time, he would get it out.
They were pulling into the driveway when Reese cleared his throat. “When you were a kid, did you ever think about what your weddin’ day would be like?”
