Driving Stick (Bride of the Billionaire)
“Caleb Rawls was a good man. He was smart, charming…successful. I never expected to meet a man like him until our lives were suddenly thrust together one day. But when that happened, my life was never the same. I only knew him a short time, but that time was enough to change me forever. He taught me how to love, and he taught me how to value myself…”
I gaze out the window at Manhattan skyline, the lights of the city twinkling beneath the fading light.
“He gave his life to save mine, and that’s something I will be forever grateful for. I only wish that the man who stole my heart was still here to keep it.”
I watch as the last tangerine sliver of sun disappears over the horizon, bathing the sky in a sad violet.
“Is that it? No mention of my big dick or how well I eat your pussy?”
“It’s a eulogy!” I gasp, whirling around to face my husband, lounging in bed wearing nothing but a pair of
white Calvin Klein briefs. “Not your bio on PornHub!”
Caleb grins, and I race over from the window and do a swan dive into bed. He catches me with ease, lowers me to his lips and kisses me with the kind of love that makes me realize, every day I wake up, that I’m the luckiest woman in the world.
“So that’s what you would have said at my funeral?” He winks. “If I’d croaked on the garage floor that night?”
“Something like that.” I giggle as he sets me beside him, and I nuzzle up to his neck and take a deep breath of his scent.
“You’d say the other stuff to your ma though, right?”
“Ew, my ma?” I laugh. “She doesn’t want to hear about that stuff, and I don’t want to tell her either!”
“Well, she knows we have sex,” Caleb replies as he presses his hand against my belly. I’m four months now and just starting to show. That swan dive probably wasn’t a good idea, but I know it will be hard to get around soon and I just had to get another one in before I’m begging him to carry me upstairs to bed.
“Well, duh.” I laugh. “But she doesn’t need the deats.”
I poke Caleb in the side and throw my leg around his strong waist, close my eyes, and relish what is just another moment of happiness in the string of amazing moments that has become my life.
Caleb being shot was the most terrifying thing that ever happened. After he passed out, I managed to get my phone and call an ambulance. They rushed him to the hospital and into surgery and saved his life – barely.
“Another five minutes or so and he wouldn’t have made it,” the doctor told me. “He’s lucky to have you.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m lucky to have him.”
The cops arrested Brian and he’s in jail for life for robbery, breaking and entering, and of course, attempted murder. I still sort of feel like it’s my fault, because the morning Caleb met me upstate Brian had robbed him, and because Caleb was so preoccupied thinking about me, he forgot to revoke Brian’s house privileges, which is how he managed to get in that night.
He keeps telling me to stop blaming myself, and as hard as it is, I’m working on it.
Not only did Caleb pay off my father’s medical debts, he also paid off the money we owed on his house. Oh, and then he paid for the whole thing.
“You should keep it in the family,” he told us as my mom cried at the news. “Besides, I’d like a place upstate too when I want to get out of the city.”
He took me to the lake, and if things weren’t already magical enough, he proposed to me with the most beautiful ring I could imagine.
“Desiree, I knew since the moment I first saw you that you were the one for me,” he told me as my eyes welled up with tears. “Will you make me the luckiest man—”
I wasn’t even able to let him finish. “Yes!” I blurted out. I threw myself into his arms and cried for what had to have been several minutes before I could stand back and let him put the ring on my finger.
I moved in with him in the city, and four months ago found out I was pregnant. Caleb confessed he had never even thought about having a family, so I was surprised when he told me he wanted to make me a mother. I didn’t even hesitate.
“Does that mean you get to come in me more?” I’d asked him with a smile. He didn’t even answer. He just threw me on the bed and did just that.
Talk about a fairy tale. With Caleb as my husband, I obviously don’t have to work, but after joking with him so many times about wanting to write a romance novel based on our lives, Caleb actually convinced me to go ahead and do it. I’m about halfway through and keep going back and rereading and rewriting. I’m not even sure I’m going to finish it, but Caleb believes in me.
“You will,” he always tells me. “I’m sure of it.”
“What time is our flight tomorrow?” I ask my incredible husband. We’re taking a trip to Maine to see the foliage and drive up and down the coast. Caleb doesn’t answer. I feel him turn and look at me like I just said something stupid.