Loving Storm (Ashes & Embers 5)

As I stare at my little notepad, my cell phone beeps with a text message:

STORM: Have fun today dress shopping. NO stressing. You’re beautiful. I love you. Can’t wait for you to be my wife. xo

Pent-up stress seeps out of me in a cleansing sigh as I type back a reply:

ME: I love you, too. You’re going to be the best husband. xo

Storm has some sort of sixth sense when it comes to what I’m feeling. I can’t even count how many times he sent me a text or called me at exactly the right moment, even when he’s traveling thousands of miles away.

As usual, I’m ten minutes late meeting Amy for lunch. I park my car in the first empty spot I find on the busy street and rush inside the café, searching for her among the small bistro tables, but I don’t see her anywhere.

“Evie? Hello?” A girl sitting at a table by the window grabs my arm as I head back toward the front of the café, and I stare down at her in momentary confusion.

“Amy?” I take a seat in the chair across from her. “Oh my God, I didn’t even recognize you! When did you dye your hair brown?”

Her hand lifts to finger the ends of her glossy hair. “It’s auburn, not brown. And how could you not recognize my face? What kind of best friend are you?” she teases, opening her menu.

“It makes you look completely different. It’s gorgeous.” Amy’s a natural blonde and totally owns it with her sassy “blondes-have-more-fun” attitude, but the darker color has softened her features, making her look even more beautiful and natural.

“Now that I’m single—yet again—I thought a change would be good,” she explains. “Blonde me attracts dickheads, mommy’s boys, cheaters, assholes, and commitment-phobes. Maybe auburn me will attract an actual nice guy for once. It worked for you.”

The hamburgers on the menu are screaming my name, with their side of crispy fries. No! I can’t! I shift my eyes over to the salad section before I reply to her comment. “I hate to debunk your theory, but have you forgotten the twelve years I spent with Michael? My hair color didn’t thwart his assholicness.”

She closes her menu and puts it to the side. I’ll be so jealous if she orders a hamburger while I get a strawberry and walnut spring-mix salad. “He doesn’t count, Evie. He was a pre-existing condition from high school. As a beautiful adult woman, you landed yourself an amazing man.”

I don’t think my hair had anything to do with my landing Storm, as she so nicely put it, but I’m not going to even try to set her straight. If she needs to believe hair color will help her find love, so be it. Most of us spent at least the first seven years of our lives believing an old man in a red suit cruises around in a sled with flying reindeer, handing out presents, and that hasn’t hurt anyone. Faith in hair color seems pretty harmless.

“What are you getting?” she asks.

“The strawberry salad.”

“Ooh,” she coos. “The poppy seed dressing is amazing with that. I’m getting a cheeseburger. With chili cheese fries.”

Damn it!

“Are you excited? I know you’re nervous because that’s just you. But are you finally getting excited about the wedding?”

“I’ve been excited about it since he proposed. I just wanted to take things slow.”

“If you took it any slower, you’d be going back in time.” She grabs a roll from the wicker basket at the center of our table and pulls off a small piece. “If a guy proposed to me, I’d be sprinting to the altar.”

The waitress arrives and I’m tempted to order the burger, at the last minute, but I stick to my guns and get the salad. I’m determined to lose ten pounds for the wedding. I want to look as perfect in my gown as I can for Storm - and in lingerie on our wedding night.

Even though I stopped searching Storm on the internet a long time ago, the pictures I saw of him with various models with perfect bodies are forever burned in my brain. He’s assured me a million times that he only fooled around with a handful of those women and the rest of it was just posing for the camera to stir up attention, but it still amplifies my insecurities.

“Evie? Are you listening to me?”

Shaking my head, I refocus on Amy’s face. “I’m sorry, I was thinking.”

“I said I think it would be pretty if me and the other bridesmaids wore red dresses. Red is really festive and it will match your flowers, and it’s sexy. I look great in red.”

“You do,” I agree. “That’s a great idea.”

She beams. “I’m not going to let Storm’s mother think of all the ideas. I’m your best friend. I know you better than anyone.”

Ah. So it begins.

I make a mental note to ask Storm if he’s open to eloping.

Wedding gowns are magical yet evil things. They look so pretty on the hanger, but once you try to get your body into that stunning form-fitting mermaid-style dress, you’ll be wondering how your perception of width got so warped; especially your own width. And those gorgeous, flowing ball-gown-style dresses will make you feel itty-bitty buried under those layers of poof that just added at least fifty pounds of fabric to your body.

“You’re way too short to wear something that poofy,” Amy advises as she sips champagne and sits in a velvet armchair in a corner of the boutique dressing room. “You look like a cupcake.”

Asia tries not to laugh from her chair in the other corner.

“I’m going to wear heels,” I protest.

“I wouldn’t. You’ll break your neck trying to dance.”

I throw Amy an exasperated look. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Just being honest. We all know you’re clumsy.”

“I can put flats on when we dance. Lots of brides do that.”

Asia nods, coming to my defense. “That’s a great idea. I can make them match the dress.”

After I try on five gowns, Asia stands, looks me up and down, and pulls a gown from one of the racks. It’s somewhere between mermaid and cupcake, and it fits me almost like it was made for me. It’s perfect.

“I can add the white faux fur trim, make a matching shawl, add a little bit of glitter for sparkle, and you’ll be a beautiful winter bride,” Asia says as she types all the details and my measurements onto her iPad.

I turn around and around in front of the mirrors, falling more in love with the dress as I picture it with Asia’s customizations. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve dreamed of this: the beautiful dress, the man of my dreams, a home of our own.

“You look like a princess,” Amy says as she snaps pictures to send to Aria. “I’m not sending these to Storm, by the way. He can’t see it until you walk down the aisle.”

Good. I don’t want anything jinxing our wedding.

Chapter Five

“Dude, your house is so close to mine you don’t even have to call me. Just yell and I’ll hear ya.” Talon looks out our kitchen window in the direction of his own house before giving Storm a friendly punch in the arm.

“Who are you kidding? You can’t hear shit,” Storm jokes.

Asia and I shake our heads. “Storm, that’s not funny,” I say. Brothers or not, it’s not okay to joke about Talon’s deafness in one ear.

“Yeah it is,” Storm says.

Talon shrugs and grins lightheartedly. “Trust me, Ev, I’m used to his abuse.”

“It’s not abuse, it’s tough love,” Storm replies.

“We should get going.” Asia leans her head against Talon’s chest, and I smile when he puts his arms around her. It always warms my heart to see how similar the brothers are. Talon and his wife, Asia, are the cutest couple, and we’re excited to live in their neighborhood and spend more time with them. “I’m sure Storm and Evelyn are exhausted from moving and want to finally relax in their new house.”

Storm winks at me from across the kitchen. “We’re going to christen every room when you guys leave.”

My insides flutter. This house has a lot of rooms to christen: four bedrooms, six bathrooms, two offices, a kitchen, a formal dining room,

a living room, and a great room, plus a finished basement with a guest suite. The house seems huge now, but we both want two kids someday and Storm wants room for his family to be able to stay for visits, like they all do at Gram’s house. I honestly couldn’t be happier about that.

“Call me if you need any more help unpacking tomorrow. I’ll be home all day,” Asia says as we walk them to the front door. “And as soon as you’re settled, we want you guys to come over for dinner.”

“We’d love to.”

After they leave, Storm leans against the front door and smiles at me. “Alone at last in our home sweet home.”

Home. I love the sound of that. “I think we’re going to be really happy here.”

“Damn right we’re gonna be happy here.” He cups his hand behind my neck and pulls my lips to his. “Let’s go to bed, baby. Tomorrow we’ll test out all the rooms.”

“That sounds perfect to me.”