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Linnea, her grandmother, and the mothers stepped back to give them some space. The shutter on Danielle’s camera clicked away, capturing it all. Colleen was the one to speak up. “I think that’s our cue.” She took Leena by the arm. “Let’s go check on the boys, eh, girls?”
Chloe’s grandmother stopped to hug her son and quietly followed the others out of the room. Then they were alone. Father and daughter. They hadn’t really spoken since her visit after Thanksgiving, unless a brief phone call the day before counted.
She brought the bouquet up to her nose and closed her eyes, inhaling its delicate fragrance. Her father took her hand in his and Chloe looked up at him from beneath her lashes. “My little girl…” And his voice cracked. “…is all grown up.”
Clutching the flowers, she wound her arm around her father’s neck. “I love you, Daddy.”
“I love you too, sweetheart.”
She burrowed against him, the feeling comforting, warm, and familiar. The smell of his cologne. The stubble on his cheek. And as he held her there, she remembered dancing with him in the living room when she was five. He’d taught her the steps as she held onto his hands and stood on his feet. He’d hoist her up in the air and they’d spin in circles, both of them laughing, until neither one of them could breathe.
In an avalanche of emotion it hit her all at once. Her father had always loved her. Chloe resented his job, that it took him away from her, and maybe she mistakenly placed the blame on him that her mother wasn’t there in her life. Only then, in that very moment, did she unselfishly realize her mother left him, too. She left him with a three-month-old baby to raise on his own and she never looked back. He was only twenty-one years old, the same age that she was now.
“Want to sit for a minute?”
She nodded and her father led her to a settee in the corner of the room. Chloe gently put her flowers on the table beside it and sat down. He father came to sit beside her and he took both of her small hands in his large one.
He nervously cleared his throat. “I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that I understand all this, because I don’t.” She was about to protest, but he squeezed her hands and shushed her. “Let me finish. I’m your dad and…” His voice cracked again. “…and this is hard for me, you know?” She squeezed his hand in return.
“Giving you away. Knowing I’m not the man you look up to anymore…it’s been just you and me for so long, kiddo, so that makes it even harder.”
“You’re always going to be my dad and I’m always going to look up to you.” Chloe laid her head against his shoulder. “There isn’t anything that can ever change that.”
“I may not understand this…this three-of-you-getting-married thing. Jesse tried to explain it to me.”
“He did?” She lifted her head. “How?”
“Something about cake.” And she giggled. He shrugged with a grin. “I do believe they both love you, though.” Her father pulled her in closer against him. “They love you very much, and what more could a father want for his daughter than to see her happy and loved?”
Chloe could hear soft music coming from the conservatory. He kissed her cheek and with her hands in his, he stood. “Shall we?”
She nodded.
“The best day of my life was the day you were born, and every single day that’s come since.” She caught his tear with her finger. “Don’t you ever forget that I loved you first, and that I love you more than anything in this world, Chloe.”
“And I love you, Daddy.” She choked back a sob.
“No crying. You’ll ruin your pretty face and those women will have my head.” He chuckled. “Especially your grandmother.”
He was right about that and her almost-sob morphed into a giggle.
Her father, the man who loved her first, helped her up and handed her the bouquet of English roses from the men who loved her now. The men who would love her for the rest of her life.
On the other end of the hallway, away from the girls, Jesse paced the floor of the room he and the guys were in. It’s not that he was nervous. He wasn’t. It was finally happening and he was impatient. He couldn’t wait to go out there with Taylor and see Chloe walk down the aisle to them. To marry her. For the three of them to declare their love and commitment to one another in front of the people who mattered to them most.
Taylor was across the room surrounded by Brendan and the Venery boys. All of them in suits. Each with a glass of whiskey in their hand. Where was Danielle? Someone needed to get a picture of Bo with a shirt on—while he still had a shirt on. His cousins left the minibar and Dillon pushed a glass into his hand.
“You’re wearing out the floor, brother.”
“Yeah, man.” Kyan waggled his brows. “Save all that nervous energy for later.”
Jesse chuckled and shook his head. “I’m not nervous, asshole.”
“Looks like it to me.”
He swallowed the smooth amber liquor. It didn’t even burn going down his throat. “Trust me, I’m not.”
A flash of gold came into the room. He saw Linnea in her shimmering sequined dress out of the corner of his eye and she was headed straight for him. She swept past Kyan and Dillon and threw her arms around him. Then she reached up on her tiptoes as high as she could to kiss his cheek and whispered, “Just wait ’til you see her. She looks so beautiful, Jess.”
