Own the Eights Gets Married - Krista Sandor Page 0,64
her smile. How he’d missed locking up his gym and walking the few feet to her bookshop. In those few seconds, his breath would catch in his throat, knowing the minute he opened the door to the shop, she’d gift him the sweet, loving, slightly naughty expression reserved only for him.
All those little instances, taken one by one, could be seen as fleeting or insignificant. But together, they were everything.
If she’d take him back, he’d never take those perfectly mundane moments for granted again.
“Jordan,” she called.
He blinked, having zoned out, to find the group packed into the elevator.
He wove his way in to stand next to her—their bodies millimeters apart. She wrapped her arms around her body as the elevator started its ascent, then stopped on the second floor. The occupants trailed out, leaving only the two of them when he looked down and saw the sliver of dryer lint on her hoodie.
Without thinking, he rested his hand on her shoulder and plucked the fibers.
“What are you doing?” she asked with a startle.
He held up the freeloading material. “Taking the dryer lint off your jacket.”
She glanced at her shoulder and smoothed the now lint-free fabric. “I grabbed my hoodie out of the dryer before I came here.”
Okay, they were talking—it was about dryer lint, of all things, but it was better than nothing.
He held the lint to his nose. “It smells different.”
She watched him warily. “The store was out of lemon verbena dryer sheets, so I got lavender-scented instead.”
He took another whiff. “Smells nice.”
“I like the lemon verbena better,” she replied.
“Me too,” he agreed.
She gave him a placating smile.
God, help him! He had to stop sounding like such a douche canoe!
The elevator dinged their arrival, and the doors opened.
“After you,” he said, way too enthusiastically.
Why did every word out of his mouth sound as if he were auditioning to become a game show host?
He needed a plan—a plan free of asshattery and douche canoery.
Was douche canoery even a word?
Dammit! Focus!
What were the objectives?
Ester and Simon.
They’d check on the pair and make sure they were okay, and then…shit!
A large clock on the wall above the nurses’ station flashed the time. They had less than an hour before the Shakespeare Shuffle. Granted, he and Georgie had made sure the event would run like clockwork with or without them. But they needed to be there. CityBeat would be covering the event as well as the rest of the local media.
Thanks to the Denver Wedding Frau—a sentiment he never thought he’d feel—and her uncanny ability to take charge of every aspect of their wedding, besides going to his tux fitting, nobody had bothered him with anything wedding related while they were in their engagement purgatory.
But here’s the thing.
Everyone knew today was their wedding day—or, at least, that it was supposed to be their wedding day. There was a damn countdown clock on CityBeat’s homepage.
“Here’s Esther’s room, five-sixty-nine,” Georgie said, pointing to the placard.
Sixty-nine?
Was it a sign?
Sixty-nine was totally their thing—and not even in a dirty way. Okay, it absolutely was in a dirty way, but, when they’d first met and learned they’d be competing together back in the Battle of the Blogs, Bobby and Hector had told them they had a sixty-nine percent audience overlap between their blogs. At the time, it seemed ludicrous any of his now-debunked Marks Perfect Ten Mindset blog followers could find anything useful in Georgie’s Own the Eights posts.
She glanced over her shoulder at him, and he would have sworn he’d detected the hint of a grin pulling at the corners of her lips.
Was he imagining things now?
“Are you ready?” she asked, lowering her voice.
He nodded.
Georgie knocked gently, then opened the door. “It’s me. I mean, it’s us, Georgie and Jordan.”
He bristled. That didn’t bode well!
“Come in, come in,” came Esther’s raspy voice.
They entered the room to find her in bed.
“Thank you both for coming,” she said, then waved them over.
Georgie sat on the edge of the bed and hugged the woman. “How are you feeling?”
Esther adjusted the breathing tubes hooked around her ears. “Better. This unseasonably warm weather is playing havoc with my asthma, but I didn’t call you two here to talk about me.”
“Is Simon all right?” he asked, lowering himself to sit on the other side of the bed across from Georgie.
“Simon’s fine, but he doesn’t want to leave my side. I sent him out to get me some real coffee from the shop down the block. Even that was a struggle to persuade him to