Needing Happily Ever After - Elena Aitken Page 0,19

do this. I’ll go all in. You know I’d do anything for you.”

“And that’s why I love you.” He squeezed her hands. He had no right to ask her such a thing. No right at all. He was being selfish and he knew it, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from saying, “Thank you, Katie. It is important to me. So much.”

She nodded and her lips curved up into a tiny, brave smile. “It’s nothing.”

But it was everything, and they both knew it.

“I promise that just as soon as it makes sense, we’ll have the whole thing annulled and it will be like it never happened.” He couldn’t be sure, but Damon was almost positive something flickered across her face when he said that. “And I’ll make it worth your while, too.”

She laughed and pulled her hands away from his. He felt the loss at once. “Like you’ll pay me to marry you? Seriously, Damon. Come on.”

“No.” He waved his hand. “Not like pay you pay you.” He shook his head and told her what he’d been thinking ever since she mentioned the idea to his father. “More like, I’ll invest in you. Get you the startup capital you need to start the business you’ve been wanting. I think it sounds like a great idea and—”

“You’d do that?”

It was his turn to laugh. “Are you serious, Katie? After what you’re doing for me? This is nothing.” He reached for her hand again and held it gently as he looked directly in her eyes. “Katie,” he said softly. “I’d do anything for you.”

She looked at him as if she were trying to figure him out. A moment later, her face split into the biggest smile he’d ever seen. “This is amazing, Damon. Thank you. I have so many ideas I don’t even know where to start. Thank you so much. I’m so happy, I could just kiss you right now.”

“Well, why don’t you then?”

The smile on her face slipped a little. “What?”

He shrugged, trying to come off casual when he felt anything but. “Why don’t you kiss me then? After all, we are getting married.”

Katie examined him for a minute and just when he thought she might actually lean across the seat and do just that, she burst out into laughter. “Nice try, buddy. That’s a good one.”

He laughed along with her before driving the rest of the way down the mountain to get his things and check out of the hotel. But for Damon, that’s where the joke ended because even though Katie was trying to blow off their earlier kiss as all part of the act, he couldn’t shake the feeling that for him, it had been anything but.

Chapter Five

Faith Turner was exhausted. Her sister Hope had only been gone a few days, on the ultimate honeymoon trip with her new husband, Levi, leaving her to run Ever After Ranch. A wedding planning company that Faith couldn’t be less qualified to run. Particularly because where her twin sister was a hopeless romantic, Faith was the exact opposite. She didn’t believe in love, or happily ever after, or any of the bullshit pomp and circumstance that went along with the farce that was an actual wedding.

Not that Hope had cared when she asked Faith to move back to Glacier Falls to help her out when she was first diagnosed with cancer. She’d needed her sister, and that’s exactly why Faith was there. For her sister. And that was it.

That was also the reason that she put up with Logan Langdon, who’d also been pressed into service to be her assistant—or general handyman, the title he preferred. And it was the only reason, because everything else about the man made her crazy and always had.

“Faith!” She shook her head as, right on cue, he called out her name from across the barn. “Are you in here?”

Of course she was. She practically lived in the barn these days. Her sister had restored and refurbished the building into a beautiful rustic facility that had become an increasingly popular destination for brides who wanted a mountain wedding experience. They were booked up for most of the summer with weddings. At least, Faith felt like it was most of the summer. Thankfully, her sister had taken pity on her before she’d left her in charge and hadn’t filled the schedule as full as she might have in a normal year.

Faith didn’t even have a second to answer Logan’s call, even if she’d wanted to,