Page 59 of Under Pressure
“I want to get married,” Blue repeated.
Jonah grabbed her hand and played with the ring he’d given her. “We are.” He laughed. “As soon as you pick a date.”
“How about tomorrow afternoon?” Before the hurricane hit pushing back the chance of getting married to weeks, or months maybe. It was crazy, but they could do it. They would have more than enough time to plan the kind of wedding she wanted and then her new life could really start and she could leave her past behind for good.
Jonah turned in his seat to face her. “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” she said. “We can do a cozy civil wedding and then hunker down for the honeymoon while the hurricane blows over.”
He lurched across the seat, slid his too-soft hand around the back of her neck, and kissed her. She ignored the guilt building in her gut and the significance of it. She didn’t want to think about that. Not now. “Darlin’, you’re making my dreams come true.” His blue eyes sparkled with excitement.
She forced a smile. “So we’re a go?”
“I’ve been waiting for you to set a date for months. This is perfect. Yeah, we’re a go,” he said and kissed her again. “What changed your mind? It wasn’t Sean, was it?” He let his hand slip from her hair.
Blue swallowed hard. “Yes, but not in the way you think.”
“What way am I thinking?” He sat back.
“I just realized that waiting for life to happen isn’t the way I want to live,” she said. “I want to marry you. I don’t want to wait anymore.” What could the purpose be in that? There wasn’t one. She had a man who loved her, one she loved. They got along well and had a lot of things in common. And Jonah would never leave her. Not ever. He was a safe choice. And frankly, she couldn’t hurt him either.
Jonah gave her that blinding smile of his. “Tomorrow it is.”
He kissed her once more.
* * *
Not even an hour after the Emergency Alert sounded and Diamond Cove was already a mass of activity. There were lines of cars down the street from the gas station, and the two grocery stores in town were packed with people carrying toilet paper under both arms.
Blue turned right off of Main Street onto Turks Lane and admired the cute houses designed from seven different floor plans, and painted a hundred different shades of blue and cream. Her dad’s was the second on the right—a little, two-bedroom bungalow in need of a paint job.
She parked in the driveway behind his Harley and hurried up to his door, letting herself inside. This was the moment she dreaded since telling Jonah she wanted to marry him ASAP. There was no getting around it though. She wanted her dad there, so he needed to know. Between the wedding and the hurricane, she was a ball of nerves—although she opted to blame the hurricane. This was her first after all—she should be a wreck. Right?
Dad sat at the table, reading a paper. He said his shop opened too early in the morning to read it before work, so he liked to read in the afternoon. Sun filtered through the shades, lighting his paper in a nice afternoon glow.
“Hey, bright eyes.” Dad glanced up at her and smiled. “How’s things?”
“I’ve been calling you for the last fifteen minutes,” she said, pulling up a chair next to his at the table. Her tone was tight and her neck ached. She rolled her head around trying to loosen it up and it cracked in about ten places.
Dad felt his pockets for his phone and came up empty. “I must have left it at work. What’s up, sugar pie?”
“There’s been a hurricane warning, it’ll be here in thirty-six hours,” she said.
He put his paper down.
“I pulled up a list of things to do to prepare. We’ll need to get working on it.” She stared down at her phone as she added, “Oh, and Jonah and I are getting married tomorrow,” she said. “Can you call Marshall Stroup? I’d like him to marry us.”
“Marshall?” Dad parroted, eyes wide.
“Yeah,” she said without looking up. “I think he once said that he’d gotten an online certificate so he could officiate at a cousin’s wedding. Using him will be a lot easier than trying to find a priest before a hurricane, and I would’ve invited him anyway.” Stroup had been their contact agent for years. She wouldn’t exactly call him a family friend under normal circumstances, but he was the closest they had.
Blue headed for the refrigerator, avoiding meeting Dad’s eyes, and grabbed herself a Cherry Pepsi from the fridge. He never touched the stuff but kept a supply for her visits. Consulting her phone she said, “We need to get your windows boarded up, and probably the shop too—though it has those big metal shutters.” Come to think of it, every building in Diamond Cove had shutters. Looked like they had long ago prepared for a hurricane. Probably wasn’t their first.
“Wait, hold up.” Dad followed her into the kitchen. “Go back to the part where you and Jonah are getting married.”
She nodded and opened her soda, taking a sip. “I just said there’s a hurricane coming, and that’s what you fixate on?” Shouldn’t the life-or-death situation take precedence? She was counting on it.
“There sure is a hurricane coming, Hurricane Bluebell St. James,” Dad said, placing his hands on his hips. “She blowsthrough, yanking people up by their roots, and spinning them around until they can’t tell which way’s up.”
