Take Me (Stark Trilogy 3.1)

As I hoped, my words bring a smile to his lips. But worry still lingers in his eyes, and I reach across the table to squeeze his hand. “Really,” I say firmly. “I’m fine. It’s like I told you—I want this wedding to be perfect, which is ironic considering that I’ve spent my whole life trying to escape from my mother’s plan to mold me into Perfectly Plastic Nikki.” I immediately regret mentioning my mother. After years of playing the good and dutiful daughter, I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that my mother is a raging bitch—one who also happens to despise my boyfriend. She made my childhood miserable, and while I am fully prepared to accept the responsibility for my cutting, there’s not a shrink in the world who wouldn’t agree that the causative threads of that particular vice lead back to Elizabeth Fairchild and her various quirks and neuroses.

“You’re not your mother,” Damien says firmly. “And there isn’t a bride in the world who doesn’t want her wedding to be everything she’s dreamed of.”

“And the groom?” I ask.

“The groom will be happy if the bride is. And so long as she says ‘I do.’ And when he can call her Mrs. Damien Stark. And once we get to the honeymoon.”

I’m laughing by the time he finishes. “Thank you.”

“For putting up with your wedding jitters?”

“For everything.”

He stands and refills my coffee before clearing the table. “Is there anything you need my help with today?”

“Nope.”

“We’re getting married on Saturday,” he says, as if this was news to me, but the words make my supposedly nonexistent jitters start jittering again. “If you need Sylvia’s help, just ask,” he adds, referring to his supremely efficient assistant.

I shake my head and flash him my picture-perfect smile. “Thanks, but I’m good. Everything is on track.”

“You’ve taken on a lot,” he says. “More than you had to.”

I tilt my head, but stay silent. This is a conversation we’ve had before, and I don’t intend to have it again.

We’d traveled across Europe for a month after he proposed, and while we were there, he’d suggested we simply do it. Get married on a mountaintop or on the sands of the Côte d’Azur. Return to the States as Mr. and Mrs. Damien Stark.

I’d said no.

I want nothing more than to be Damien’s wife, but the truth is that I also want the fairy-tale wedding. I want to be the princess in white walking down the aisle in my beautiful gown on my special day. I may not agree with my mother about much, but I remember the care that she and my sister put into Ashley’s wedding. I’d envied my sister a lot of things, not really understanding that she’d had her own demons to battle, and when she walked down the aisle on a pathway of rose petals, my eyes filled with tears and my one thought had been, Someday. Someday I will find the man who will be waiting for me at the end of that aisle with love in his eyes.

And it wasn’t just my own desire for the fantasy wedding that made me insist we wait. Like it or not, Damien is a public figure, and I knew that the press would be covering our wedding. It didn’t need to be the fanciest affair—in fact, I wanted it outside on the beach—but I did want it to be a beautiful celebration. And since I knew the paparazzi would be pulling out all the stops to get tacky pictures, I wanted a collection of portraits and candid shots that we controlled. Fabulous pictures that we could give to the legitimate press, outshining—I hoped—whatever ended up in the tabloids.

More than anything, though, I wanted the story and photographs to overshadow the horrible things printed just a few months ago, when Damien had been on trial for murder. I wanted to see the best day of our lives on those pages in sharp counterpoint to, and in triumph over, the worst days.

I have said all of this to Damien, and while I know he doesn’t fully agree with my reasons for needing this wedding, I also know he understands them.

As for me, I understand his fear that I’ve taken on too much. But this is my wedding we’re talking about. The nightmares are only my fears; they are not my reality. I can handle it; I can handle anything if the end result is walking down that aisle toward Damien.

“Everything is going great,” I say to reassure us both. “I’ve got it all under control. Really.”

“You found a photographer?”

“Are you kidding? Of course.” It is a lie. And that’s a risk, because Damien can read me better than anyone. I force myself not to hold my breath as I wait for him to ask me details—name, studio, credentials. Those are questions I can’t answer because the truth is, I haven’t found a photographer to replace the one Damien fired last week after we learned the man had made an under-the-table agreement to sell unapproved candid photos of the wedding and reception to TMZ.

And that’s not even our only problem. I found out yesterday that the lead singer for the band I’d lined up had decided to drop everything and move back home to Canada, which means we are now entirely without entertainment.

I need to get off my ass and find someone—and I need to do it fast. As Damien had so kindly reminded me, the wedding is just a few days away.

But, hey, it’s not like I’m feeling stressed or anything.

I frown, realizing that maybe there is a solid explanation for my nightmares, after all.

“What is it?” Damien asks, and I fear that despite all my efforts to keep these minor ripples in the wedding planning out of his hair, it’s about to get gnarly.

“Nothing,” I say. “Just thinking about my massive to-do list.”

I can tell by his expression that he doesn’t buy it. But I am a bride, and like most grooms, he knows innately that “handle with care” is standard operating procedure. “In case it escaped your notice, we have the cash to pay someone to help you. Use it if you need it.”

“What? Like a wedding planner?” I shake my head. “For one thing, the wedding’s too close for that. For another, as I keep telling you, I want to do this myself. I want it to reflect us, not the latest fad in weddings.”

“I get that,” he says, “but you’ve taken on a hell of a lot.”

“You’ve helped,” I respond.

He chuckles. “As much as you’ve let me.”

I lift a shoulder. “You have a universe to run.”

It’s a simple fact that I have more time than Damien. I’m juggling only one small business, which has exactly one employee—me. He’s running Stark International, which has about as many people as an emerging country. Maybe more. And, yes, I have been busy, but that’s partly because Damien didn’t want a long engagement. And since I didn’t think I could stand waiting, either, I was happy to agree.