Page 32 of The Perfect Heart

And then he was gone, his footsteps fading down the hallway, mixing with the sounds from the kitchen and the bar.

To say I was stunned was an understatement—my feet wouldn’t move, and my mind was still stuck on the kiss.

What the hell was that? What exactly had just happened? I wouldn’t have believed Nash had just kissed me, except I could still feel him on my lips, taste him on my tongue, feel his hands tangled in my hair pressed against my scalp.

I also had no idea he still felt that way after all this time, after I had failed to speak to him for five years. Yes, he’d been supportive. But supportive was one thing. His declaration had been another.

Had that kiss been a declaration of another kind? Who kissed someone just to let them know he supported her?

I finally managed to jolt myself forward, following Nash’s path like I was in some dream, still half believing that what had happened in the office was a dream.

The noise from the front of the house hit me like a wall of sound as I came out from the back, but it was still a blur to me—how could I possibly go about my night after that kiss?

Chapter 16

Halle

IT WAS STILL DIFFICULT to believe I was here—I wanted to pinch myself because part of me couldn’t believe it was real. Was the woman staring back in the mirror really me?

My hands smoothed down the white satin that followed my curves before flaring out, slipped over the lace accents, hand-sewn, before reaching up to brush the pearls at my throat and ears, each earring with a dot of a diamond to add to the richness.

From downstairs, I could hear strains of music and even the clinking of glasses which I knew were full of champagne so expensive it had been flown in for the event. Pale golden and full of tiny bubbles, it had gone straight to my head, part of why I had sought this upstairs room in the villa to get ready. Where a photographer had taken stylized photos of me, of my mom, of me with my mother-in-law, who’d fussed over me, and more specifically, the dress.

It had been her favorite pick. And Jack’s, of course.

Not that I didn’t like it, I was very quick to remind myself. I loved the dress. It cost much, much more than I could have ever dreamed of spending, more than my mother made in a year. Yes, it was more conservative than I would have picked for myself. But when Jack’s mother had gushed over it and Jack, who had bucked tradition and joined us for the appointment at the bridal boutique, had shown his appreciation, I had agreed to it.

It wasn’t really about me, anyway, was it? I wanted to look good for Jack, and it was more a party for friends and family, for us to celebrate our love and vows with everyone who had supported us.

The other reason I had sought the room was that I needed a moment to breathe. I’d barely had a moment to myself this entire wedding weekend, from the welcome dinner to golf on the course overlooking the ocean to luncheons with all of my in-laws’ friends, all CEOs and West Coast bluebloods, to the rehearsal dinner the night before where I’d had a little too much to drink to calm the nerves that had built until I’d barely been able to eat. My mother-in-law-to-be had woken me at dawn to begin preparations for the day, she and my wedding party, Jack’s sisters and friends, buzzing around me. I’d barely had a moment to spend with my own mother and hoped to grab a few hours with her before she left the next day, after the post-wedding brunch.

From my vantage point in one of the high rooms of the villa, I could see the Pacific stretching out to the horizon beyond the grassy prominence where we’d held the ceremony and on which the reception was now taking place. One that would no doubt go into the early hours of the morning—this was only the cocktail hour, and dinner was several hours away.

It was a landscape so different from the one in which I had grown up, soft and balmy, the palm trees and bougainvillea swaying in the breeze, the ocean sparkling sapphire, the sky brightly blue. It was nothing like the Washington coast, the one I had visited a handful of times on field trips or with friends, where the water was often gray, just like the sky was the majority of the year. Where the jagged peaks of the Olympics and Cascades towered over the lushly green landscape, so cold and went during the winter. From packed snow and frigid temperatures to this paradise.

And it was paradise. It was where I was happy, where I had met Jack, and we had fallen in love.

Barely graduated and living outside of my hometown for the first time, I’d had stars in my eyes and my head in the clouds when I’d moved to Los Angeles to start design school. Everything had been so wildly exciting. There were so many people, so much traffic, and so many things to do at all hours that it was overwhelming at times, but in a good way. I’d gone to brunch with new friends, tagged along to the beach, visited the famous Santa Monica pier, and walked the trails behind the Hollywood sign. I had dreamed of fashion, of opening my own design house to rival those I saw in boutique windows down Rodeo Drive, the ones I looked in but never, ever went inside.

And then I met Jack on the evening of my 20th birthday, out with friends at a club. Older than me, his sophistication and incredible smile had drawn my eye until I’d gathered enough courage to push through the crowd on the dance floor to his semi-private table to flirt with him.

I hadn’t expected that chance meeting to end with anything except a possible night together. But Jack had called me up the next day, and the rest was history. I had fallen hard and fast for the guy, a man in place of the boys I’d been dating here and back home. Sophisticated, wealthy, and several years older than me, he had represented everything I’d wished for back in Leavenworth when I was scrounging pennies to shop at the thrift store.

That was a thing of the past now. Jack had treated me well, surprising me with gifts and exotic vacations to places I had only seen on a map. He had taken me to those same boutiques where I had only window shopped, buying whatever delighted me. It had been a whirlwind nine months before we were engaged and another whirlwind as his mother marched me through the wedding planning process she expected—they were paying for the wedding, after all. The only thing my mother could afford was lunch at a diner after a ceremony at City Hall.

Now I was here, in a seaside villa worth millions, at my own wedding that had cost quite a bit by itself. Well, more than quite a bit. A lot more. I wasn’t sure of the final cost, but I also didn’t want to know—it would have been too much for me.

But how could I complain? I had everything I wanted, everything I could want. I had a man I loved, who loved me in return. I had this incredible wedding all for me, as Jack had said—he had done it all for me. It was always for me because he treated me like a princess.

Yes, I was young at only twenty-one, and yes, I had eventually dropped out of design school because Jack had become so overprotective, always wanting to know what I was doing and with whom. But why did I need design school? Jack gave me whatever I wanted. We lived in a house overlooking LA, for goodness’ sake, just like the houses in all those reality shows. I would never have to work. What more could I possibly want?

My life was so entirely different now than it had been in Leavenworth, and the disconnect between the two sometimes made me unsteady with its enormity. Two different lives, two different women, and I loved his version of myself. Even if she did feel a little isolated, especially from the life I had left back home in Washington.

This was the life I had always wanted.

I forced a smile onto the face of the woman in the mirror so she didn’t look quite so tired. I could sleep when the wedding weekend ended, and we were in our private beach house on our honeymoon. What else did I have to do?

“Halle?”