Sparks Fly (13 page)

“And?” his mother prodded.

“And I’m going to start painting again.”

Joyce pumped her fist by her side, like a pro basketball player after swishing a three-pointer.

“Yes!”

Will grinned crookedly. “Glad to have your support, mom.”

Joyce pointed a finger at him. “Only if you have some other good news to tell me, young man.”

“First you need to tell me where she is.”

“She’s renting your cottage on the lake with an option to buy.”

“You can’t be serious?” Will couldn’t figure out why Angelina would have picked up, left California, and rented his house within a span of just a few days.

“But she, uh...” Joyce said, stopping to clear her throat. “She doesn’t exactly know that it’s your cottage, or that I was the person who leased it to her.” At Will’s confused look she added, “Her friend Krista arranged all the details with me directly.”

Standing in his grandparent’s summer home, where he had spent so many perfect summers as a kid, he was more excited and nervous about seeing Angelina than he ever had been about anything else, his whole life. He patted the box in his pocket and took a deep breath.

“Everything is going to be just fine, honey,” his mother said, and then, “Now get out of here.

You’ve done enough worrying and thinking already. It’s time to win over a very important woman.”

* * *

Taking off at a blazing clip down the beach, Will headed towards the Ferris wheel that was just barely poking up through the trees on the other side of the lake. He was sure he'd find her there, in the special place where his heart had always been.

Winding past the food booths and the roller coaster, he caught sight of her silky hair blowing in the breeze as she handed her ticket to the man running the Ferris wheel. Increasing his pace to a run, he pushed past the teenagers in line and handed the man a $20.

He barely slid in next to Angelina before the gate for her seat shut.

“Will?” She put a hand over her heart in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“Angelina. You're beautiful.” He brushed his hand over her cheek. “I’m sorry I let my work take me away from you. But that won’t ever happen again. I’m officially unemployed.”

“What do you mean?”

“I stepped down from my company this morning.”

“Are you joking?”

Will made a lightening quick move and managed to catch both of her cold hands between his warm ones. “I’ve never been more serious about anything in my whole life.”

Angelina closed her eyes and shook her head. “This can’t be happening.”

Will felt like a piece of him had just died. “I want to be with you. I thought you wanted to be with me too.”

“I do, but once I tell you my secret you’re going to hate me forever and then you won’t even have a company to go back to and then you’re going to hate me even more.”

Tucking his hand gently under her chin, he lifted her face to his. “Nothing you could say would ever make me hate you. I love you Angelina, don’t you know that?”

Whatever impact Will thought his words of love would have on Angelina, they weren’t the new explosion of tears that slipped down her cheeks and onto their hands. He had no idea what to say to her, sensing somehow that it would be wiser to wait for her to tell him about the horrible thing that was eating her up inside.

She looked at him, her beautiful hazel eyes full of emotion. “I’m pregnant.”

“Say that again?” He was unable to comprehend her words.

“I’m pregnant and I know you don’t want to have a baby and I’m not asking you to act like a father, but I’m going to keep it and love it, and I hope you know I don’t ever want any of your money.”

“We’re going to have a baby,” Will whispered reverently, gazing at Angelina with sincere love in his eyes.

“You’re not mad?”

“How could I be mad about the best news I’ve ever heard?”

“But Joyce said you had decided never to have...” she began, only to be cut off by an earth-shattering kiss.

Will captured Angelina’s mouth in his and drank his fill of her. When they came up for air, he said, “I love you Angelina and I want to marry you and have lots and lots of babies together.”

Angelina gaped at him, her mouth a tiny circle. “But what about your father?”

“It's taken me nearly thirty years to put that pain to rest. But with your love, I think I'm most of the way there.”

She was still staring at him like she could hardly believe what she was hearing, and he said,

“I’m not doing this right, am I?”

Still on the ride, he couldn't get down on one knee. But he didn't care. He needed to ask her now.

Right now.

“Angelina, will you marry me?”

Angelina was trying to catch her breath, which was impossible with everything spinning so fast.

“What are you going to do without your company?”

“You know we could probably discuss this later,” he said, grinning at Angelina, falling more in love with her every second that passed, “but to answer your question, I’m going to paint.”

Her eyes lit up for a moment, but then dimmed again. “I’m thrilled that you’re going to paint, but you can’t give up something you’re passionate about. I saw how reverently you held those circuit boards in your office.”

“You’re right. I did have a dream to build a company, and it was great for a long time, but –“

Angelina cut him off. “I love you with all of my heart, Will. If you need to me to be a corporate wife, I can do that. Please don’t give up your dream for me.”

Will rubbed his thumb over her lips. “You’re the reason I’m daring to dream again. I’d rather play around doing chip design on the side than sit in board rooms making executive decisions. But most of all, I’d rather take all that faith you have in me and try to paint again. Now it's your turn to promise me something.”

“Anything,” she whispered.

“I know how hard you work, honey, and how good you are at what you do. But I want you to promise me you’ll take care of yourself. That you'll let me take care of you. For our baby, but mostly for yourself.”

This time Angelina gave Will a loving kiss. “As soon as I found out I was pregnant I realized that I needed to do what I’d been telling my clients to do. I promise you, I’m going to figure out how to balance my work with the rest of my life. With you. With our baby.”

Will stole one more kiss. “Now that we've got all that figured out, I'd really like to hear your answer.”

Angelina looked deep into Will’s eyes. No matter how much she had tried to fight it, no matter how far she ran to escape it, she would love Will with all of her heart until the day she died.

“I love you, Will.”

“And?” Will prompted her, his heart pounding wildly in his chest.

“Yes. I would love to marry you.”

He finally remembered to pull the little box out of his pocket. “I almost forgot to give you this.”

Angelina didn’t want to leave his warm embrace, but the light blue box beckoned. Still safely ensconced in his arms, she took it from him and opened it up.

“Oh my god, Will,” she said, staring opened mouthed at the incredible ring he had bought for her.

“Do you like it?” he asked, hope ringing in his voice.

She looked at him and laughed. “It’s absolutely beautiful.”

He slipped the four-carat ruby, surrounded by six ½ carrot diamonds arranged on a simple gold band onto her left ring finger.

“A jewel of fire, for a woman whose fire outshines everything else.”

“Come here, my darling ex-tycoon,” she whispered as she pulled his head down towards hers,

“and you just might feel my flames licking at your skin.”

And with that, Will let his entire soul be consumed by the woman he loved.

After dealing with the media frenzy that resulted from Will’s resignation, new painting career, and whirlwind engagement, Will and Angelina considered eloping at City Hall. Instead they were married on the beach, in front of his summer cottage, which had become their permanent home.

Will’s ex-wife, Susan, was overjoyed by their nuptials, and if anyone at the wedding was surprised by how well she got along with both the bride and groom, they didn’t show it.

Angelina’s father held his new wife’s hand and watched his daughter with pride, overjoyed that she had finally found true love.

Joyce, who was normally very steady with her emotions, was constantly wiping back tears throughout the ceremony and reception on the beach.

And Krista did, indeed, look fabulous as the maid-of-honor.

~ THE END ~

More books by Lucy Kevin...

GABRIELLE

A love triangle about a good boy, a bad boy…and an ancient legacy that comes with its very own
curse.

Bonus material: This ebook contains 5 songs written by Gabrielle & Lucy Kevin. All songs
written for this book are available on:

YouTube
:
http://www.youtube.com/user/GabrielleLucyKevin

iTunes
:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/gabrielle-ep/id427761572

Please enjoy the following excerpt for GABRIELLE © 2011 Lucy Kevin...

You probably don't think they exist anymore. At least, not in America. But they do.

My grandmother was one. So was her mother.

And when I turn 18, evidently it’s my destiny to become one, too.

But last fall I hadn’t heard about
the curse
, I hadn’t met Dylan or Bradley...and I had no idea that I was about to make the most difficult choice of my life.

I was the last one at my high school to see him.

All afternoon I’d been sitting at a piano in a tiny practice room in my school’s basement, working on a song. Earlier, as I’d walked down the hall, I’d heard a plethora of sounds coming from the other practice rooms: the vibrant alto of a cello, a soprano trilling carefully up a scale, hard-driving percussion.

Ninety-nine other students were enrolled at the City School for the Arts. We had to do math and history like everyone else, but the school’s core focus was on creating. As a child, I’d learned to knit and cook and sing long before I knew how to multiply. Over the years, I’d been taught everything from painting to ballet to clothing construction to music, but songwriting was where my heart had always been.

Senior year had begun six weeks earlier and I needed to get working on the five songs that were going to be my application for the Berklee School of Music. With my current song as it stood, a few random—and by random, I mean bad—piano riffs and no lyrics whatsoever, I figured I had a great future going for me in data entry.

Usually, I loved those hours in the tiny composition rooms, hunkered down over a dusty piano, sweating out the notes, chasing that beautifully breathless feeling that would grip my lungs, squeeze them tight, and send my heart racing when my fingers found a great melody or I stumbled upon a great lyric. When I first started writing songs, and it was all so fresh—before I really had a clue about good or bad—there had been times when I could practically see the perfect combination of notes and beats and words line up in front of me, squeaking into my subconscious through the path of least resistance.

Realizing how hunched and tight my neck and shoulders were, I closed my eyes and worked to calm my breathing using the meditation techniques the school taught all of us. When I felt centered again, I put my fingers on the keyboard and tried to let the song ring through me. But the perfect notes and words seemed as elusive as they’d ever been.

I’d tried to start a hundred different songs over the past few weeks, but each one was more insipid than the next and the phrase
trying to drink from an empty well
was starting to make way too much sense to me.

The truth was, I’d made it to seventeen without ever crying into my pillow all night about a broken heart or sneaking off to throw up or cut myself like some girls in my class. In fact, the only real emotional pain that I had to mine—never knowing my father and losing my mother when I was a little girl—wasn’t anything anyone would want to hear a song about.

Which was good, because I didn’t ever plan on going near it.

The practice room walls felt like they were closing in on me. But I hated to give up. Maybe if I took a short break, something brilliant would come to me before I went home for dinner. Scooting off the piano bench, I locked the door, grabbed my iPod out of my bag, and stuck my earphones in.

I had one secret release: a small cache of classic heavy metal songs. Choosing a Metallica song, I put it on repeat and started picking out the chords on the keyboard. I’d never played a song like this before—my previous range being classical to stage to pop—and I was surprised by how good it felt to play into this kind of musical darkness. I might not have experienced monsters under my bed or any of the harsh untruths the singer was screaming about, but it was a huge rush to get to feel it vicariously.

The song took hold of me, playing me instead of me playing it, and I let loose on the piano, letting the chords crash through my fingers, up my arms. I screeched out the words in a way that would make my vocal coach weep, but I didn’t care. It felt so good to give in to anger and pain, even if they were someone else’s words and music, to let the raw fury in the song obliterate the empty spaces inside me. My eyes shut tight as the song played on repeat—again and again I rode the harsh wave.

And then, suddenly, I realized I wasn’t alone anymore. A stranger was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, staring at me.

My hands shaking, I yanked out my earphones just in time to hear him say, “Jesus. Who the hell are you?”

No one had ever heard me completely let go like that before and I felt as if he’d seen me naked.

Judging by his expression, I’d clearly shocked him. Horrified him with my caterwauling. I’d been trained in a myriad of professional techniques. But what he’d heard me do to the Metallica song was as far from trained as you could get.

And then I remembered the door. I had locked it.