The Chase (25 page)

“Love is the best and, really, the only reason to get married,” Tamara said firmly to her daughter. Then she glanced out the window at Evan. “I suspect Evan is very much in love with Kendall. She’s coming over here in a bit.”

“Really? In love?” Huh. That might explain the brooding Evan had been doing lately. He wasn’t much of a deep thinker or a melancholy guy, but lately he’d been moody. Elec had chalked it up to losing his sponsor.

“What were they like as a couple when they were together before?”

Elec shrugged, bouncing Hunter a little in the process. “I was like sixteen at the time. I didn’t pay attention. There was a lot of moony looks at each other, kissing, hours on the phone.” As Hunter continued to wiggle, Elec bent over and set her down. “You’re getting heavy, girl.”

“Then you should work out more” was her response before she scampered off into the dining room.

Elec looked at his wife. “You’re right. The things she says sometimes are appalling.”

Tamara grinned. “Told you. Well, I definitely think there’s some unfinished business there with Evan. You can see it on his face.”

Not entirely convinced, Elec watched his brother tuck his phone in his pocket, a hint of a smile on Evan’s lips. Elec thought back to the conversation they’d just had an hour ago on the patio where Evan had gone sarcastic on him as usual when Elec tried to talk about his career.

If that was love, he wasn’t sure it looked a whole lot different on Evan than not being in love did.

“I just think he’s had a few too many beers.”

Tamara snapped his stomach with the kitchen hand towel. “You’ll see. Trust my woman’s intuition on this.”

“I’d rather touch your woman’s intuition than trust it.”

“Don’t be dirty.” But she was already smiling and sidling up to him.

Elec kissed his wife. “Mmm. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

If his brother found something half as wonderful as what he had, Evan would be one lucky guy.

 

 

KENDALL
made it over to Tamara and Elec’s house in record time. She wasn’t sure what the urgency was, but she just needed to see Evan. She needed to see his smile and casual confidence. The comfortable way he reached for her.

Sitting at dinner with her family had made her realize that while they loved her and she loved them, she was the odd man out. They didn’t understand her dreams, her desire, her passion. They didn’t understand her.

Kendall was used to straddling two worlds, being forced to decide at parties like Suzanne and Ryder’s if she should align herself with the women, who were wives and mothers, or with the men, who were her coworkers. But she was tired of it. She wanted to belong somewhere, and her gut, her heart, kept telling her that place was with Evan.

Evan came out the front door and down the porch steps, smiling at her as she beeped her car locked. He was wearing khakis and a blue blazer and looking really damn sexy.

“Hey, I’m glad you texted me.” Evan leaned down and gave her a kiss that was so sweet, so perfect, it was like coming home.

Kendall suddenly realized what it was she wanted. What she had always wanted. “Evan.”

“Yeah?” He cocked his head a little. “Are you okay? You look beautiful, by the way.”

Instead of responding to any of his questions, Kendall just held his hands and looked into his eyes and blurted out what was swirling around in her head and heart. “Will you marry me?”

His eyes got huge. “What? Are you actually serious?”

“Yes, yes, I’m serious.” She had never been impulsive, and she spent all her time worrying and stressing and overthinking. She didn’t want to worry about her relationship anymore, she just wanted to enjoy it. Besides, she didn’t think this was really all that impulsive. Evan had been the man she’d wanted to marry ten years ago. Knowing that he had always supported her made her wish she’d been smart enough to let him put a ring on her finger all those years ago. “I love you. I don’t want to pretend I don’t. Remember that first night, at the bar, when we started talking? And I said if we hadn’t both been chicken, we would probably have never broken up? I don’t want to be a chicken this time around . . . I want to be with you.”

A grin split his face. “I want to be with you, too. I would absolutely love to marry you. I love you, too, Kendall. God, so much.”

“So we’re getting married?” She was strangely shocked he had agreed that easily. She had expected questions, concern, distrust at her out-of-the-blue decision. But that would have been her reaction, not his. Evan just went with his feelings, and she was grateful that he loved her enough to just take that leap with her.

“You asked. I said yes. So I’d say we’re getting married!” He picked her up and spun her around, making her laugh breathlessly. “Holy shit, I just wish I’d asked you first.”

All the stress she’d been feeling, the worry, the doubt, disappeared when he held her like that, solid and purposeful. She felt giddy, relieved. “This week was hard, you know? Wanting to be together and not being together. I thought about you all day, about how you understand me, how you love me, how I hate having to pretend we’re not dating and I just thought . . .”

Suddenly she really was crying. The tears that had threatened earlier came spewing out, and Kendall bit her lips, horrified. She wasn’t even sure why she was crying.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” Evan put his hand under her chin. “Love doesn’t have to be complicated. Life is, but not our love. I just want to be with you.”

“Carl is going to flip, isn’t he?” It had only been a couple of minutes, and she could already feel doubt creeping in. She wanted to smash it instantly. Evan was right. They were making it complicated, when it didn’t need to be.

He just grinned. “He said he didn’t want us dating. He didn’t say anything about getting married. I figure his whole problem is with presenting a sexual image, which being married tempers. It’s acceptable and romantic for a married couple to kiss or gaze hotly at each other.”

“True. And I’m looking forward to that.” The next party she went to, she was walking in with Evan at her side.

“And he was worried about us dating a few months, then having a tiff and breaking up.” Evan gave her a look so hot, yet so tender, Kendall literally forgot to breathe. “We’re not breaking up.”

“No,” she said in a breathy little voice she never would have recognized as her own. “We’re not.”

“Would you like to invite Kendall in,” a voice called from the front porch, “or are you just going to keep her in the driveway all night?”

Elec was standing on the front porch and Kendall fought a blush. Crying and blushing in one day. She clearly was in love. “Hi, Elec, how are you? Thanks for letting me stop by.”

“We’re glad to have you, if my brother will ever let you inside.”

“We’re getting married,” Evan told Elec, squeezing Kendall’s hand.

She hadn’t expected him to blurt it out like that, and when Elec’s eyes widened in surprise, the blush she’d beaten back emerged victorious. Here it came, the first of many people who would tell them they were nuts. She steeled her back for it.

But Elec just nodded. “Well, congratulations then. I wish you both much happiness.”

He sounded so calm, so matter-of-fact, that Kendall didn’t even know how to react. That was not what any of her family would have said. There would have been all sorts of opinions about rushing into something so impulsively, and truthfully they weren’t going to support her marriage to another driver, long engagement or not, because it would keep her firmly entrenched in a career they didn’t approve of.

Which made her phenomenally sad, but she refused to feel that right now.

Now there was just joy, that life had taken her full circle back to Evan.

“Thank you.”

Evan kept her hand snuggly in his and started up the steps of the front porch. Then he stopped suddenly. “Hey, let’s get married tonight.”

“Tonight? How would that be possible?” Kendall laughed, knowing it wouldn’t work, but a part of her was giddy and inflated with the intoxicating thought that she could be married by tomorrow.

“We’ll go to a chapel. I’m wearing this jacket already, and hell, you have on a white dress. It doesn’t get any more convenient than that.”

“But we’d need a license and it’s Easter.”

Elec paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Being a local celebrity has its benefits. I went to high school with a woman who works as a clerk at the courthouse and she’s a huge racing fan. If you’re serious.”

Kendall looked up at Evan, her heart suddenly kicking into overdrive. “Are we serious?”

“Oh, we’re serious. I already have a ring, remember?”

Which made her burst into tears.

Which sent Elec into the house faster than a cat after tuna.

“I’m sorry.” She sobbed and clung to Evan’s chest, not really sure why she was crying.

He rubbed her back, her hair, her arms. “It’s okay, baby, I get it. This has been a long time coming, huh?”

She nodded, peeling herself off of him, and contritely brushing at the tearstains she’d made on his white shirt. “A very long time.”

“Are you done?” he asked her with a grin.

“Shut up,” she said reflexively. “But, yes, I’m done.”

“Good, because I don’t want to go into the house and announce we’re getting married with you looking like someone just died.”

Kendall sniffled. The truth was, Evan always knew exactly how to make her feel better. He knew when to tease and when to be serious. He knew when to grin and when to take her into his arms. He just . . . knew.

Feeling like she might start bawling in earnest, Kendall took a deep breath and rubbed her hands down the front of her black-and-white wrap dress. “Is your family going to freak?”

“Yeah, but in a good way.”

Freaking out and good didn’t go together in Kendall’s book, but when they went into the house, hand in hand, she absolutely trusted him.

“Hey, everyone,” he said by way of greeting as they walked into a cozy yellow family room, the gas fireplace lit. “Kendall and I are getting married!”

There was a pause while all heads swiveled towards them, then the congrats started pouring in.

“Of course you are,” Tamara said, with a knowing smile and a kiss for each of them.

Evan’s mother wrapped Kendall in a big hug. “That’s wonderful, dear.” Then she murmured in her ear, “He’s been waiting a long time for you to come back around, you know.”

She hadn’t known that a month ago. But she did now. Maybe she had since that first night Tuesday had forced them to talk to each other in the wine bar. “I know. I guess I needed to be sure, and I wasn’t at eighteen.”

“There’s nothing wrong with caution.”

“So we have a wedding to plan?” Eve looked surprisingly gleeful at the prospect.

“No wedding. We’re getting married tonight,” Evan told her.

It was the second time in ten minutes they had brought his family to complete and total silence.

“Tonight?” his mother asked, her hand fingering the pearls around her neck, her expression bewildered. “Can you do that?”

Elec, who Kendall hadn’t even realized was missing, came into the room with his cell phone at his ear. “We can go pick up the license in half an hour. Kendall, we just need your birth certificate and a few other details like that. I found a chapel right here in Mooresville that will do a wedding at midnight for you.”

Tamara looked at her husband with naked adoration. “You’re a good, good man, do you know that?”

At the moment, Kendall wasn’t going to argue that point one bit. Elec had just made it possible for them to get married in five hours. At midnight. That seemed wildly romantic to her.

Elec just shrugged, then held up his finger and started talking into his phone. “That’s right. Evan Roscoe Monroe. R-o-s-c-o-e.”

“Your middle name is Roscoe?” Kendall grinned at Evan. “You never told me that. Geez, you think you know a guy . . .”

“It’s a family name.” He leaned in and kissed her. “No making fun,” he murmured. “And I don’t know your middle name either.”

“Carolina.” Which she had to admit was appalling in its own right, given she was born and raised in the Carolinas. But it still wasn’t Roscoe.

“Kendall Carolina Holbrook Monroe. Now that’s a good name.”

It was a good name. Kendall felt that feeling again, that weird inflating in her chest, like she was inhaling helium. Everyone else in the room receded and it was just her and Evan, her first and last love.

Until Tamara’s daughter Hunter squeezed in between them. “Does this make you my aunt Kendall?”

She blinked down at the little girl, who was wearing a jacked-up ponytail and an Elec Monroe T-shirt. “Yes, it does. I’m looking forward to spending time with you, Hunter.”

“Cool. Us girl drivers have to stick together.”

“Hunter’s got her heart set on the cup series,” Evan told her.

“I see. Yep, we definitely need to stick together.” Kendall reached down and did a fist bump with Hunter. “Right now I’m a little lonely in the girl’s clubhouse.”

“That sucks. I cheer you on, as long as you’re not ahead of Elec. Or Ty. Or Ryder. Or Evan.”

She grinned at the little girl. “So far I haven’t been, so no worries. And I appreciate you cheering me on.”

“You’re welcome.” Then Hunter seemed to lose interest in the conversation and went to retrieve the grape soda she was drinking.

Tamara said, “Thank God she didn’t ask you anything inappropriate. I was waiting for it. That was borderline rude, but I expected worse.”

“I’ll ask something inappropriate,” Eve said. “Are you pregnant?”

“Eve, come on,” Evan said. “Mind your own business.”

Kendall felt her stomach drop to the floor at the very thought of being pregnant. And she wasn’t sure if that was a good feeling or a bad feeling sending her gut plummeting. It didn’t occur to her to be offended at the personal nature of the question. She just shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”