Hugh got out of his truck and lifted his hand in a wave. Beth did the same, and Hugh called, “I’m okay to park here?”
“Yes,” Beth called back to him.
“I’m not going to stay,” Trey said. “You’re busy with your family.” He faced her, and while his shirt and jeans were wet, he was still so handsome.
“That’s why you should stay,” she said. “If we’re to be married in only a few weeks.” She stepped toward him and reached for the buttons on his shirt. She touched one and then the other, waiting for him to take her into his arms. If he’d been engaged before, he surely understood a woman’s unspoken wants.
He finally put one hand on her hip and bent his head down. Beth ran her free hand up the side of his face, enjoying his clean-shaven face and the texture of his longer hair. “I only have one stipulation too,” she whispered, the crunching of Hugh’s footsteps over the gravel getting dangerously close.
“What is it now?” Trey asked.
“The first time you kiss me can’t be on our wedding day.”
Hugh started talking as he came up the steps, and Beth kept her eyes on Trey’s shocked ones as she backed up. She finally turned away when her brother arrived and embraced him. She laughed as he picked her right up off her feet.
“Who’s this?” he asked as he set her down. His bright eyes focused on Trey, and Beth decided they better go for the gold from the very beginning.
“Hugh, this is Trey Chappell. We’ve started seeing each other.” That was one hundred percent true, and neither of them could deny it.
“Well, I’ll be,” Hugh said, his smile a little too wide. It went well with his wide-eyed, shocked look. He stared at Beth for a moment and then back to Trey.
“Good to meet you,” Trey said, stepping forward as if Beth had introduced him to dozens of her friends and family members.
“Why you all wet?”
“I think this was meant for you,” Trey said. “I just got here ahead of you.”
Hugh’s eyes traveled down Trey’s body, and he started laughing. “I guess I owe you one then.”
Trey smiled, and Beth nearly fell down with how beautiful it made him. “I’d be careful going inside.”
“I’ll use the back door.” Hugh turned back to Beth, already mouthing words. She rolled her eyes instead of trying to read his lips, because she hated that. Even worse was when he started texting her while they were in a group. She hated that; if he had something to say, he should just say it.
“Uncle Hugh?”
The front door opened, and TJ came outside at a run, headed straight for his uncle.
Hugh laughed and picked TJ right up over his head. “Were you going to prank me? Were you? Grandpa’s here, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” their father said. “I’m here.” She watched as the three of them embraced, and Hugh followed them back inside, no buckets of water in sight. She looked at Trey, and he looked at her.
“Do you have an hour or two to spend with us here?” she asked. “It’s okay if you don’t. I’m really good at making up reasons why someone couldn’t stay.” She smiled, because that was totally true. “Or rather, reasons I can’t come to this, that, or the other.”
Trey approached and tucked her hair behind her ear. “I can stay for a while.”
“Great,” she said. “Because I need to introduce you to my father.”
“We’ve met a couple of times now,” Trey said, his eyebrows drawing down in confusion. “Once…before, and just now again. I shook his hand and everything.”
Of course he had. Trey wasn’t awkward the way she was. He might not know what to do in a situation, but he took it by the horns and wrestled it to the ground.
“I need to introduce you as my boyfriend,” she said. “Did you tell him that?”
“Now that—no.” He looked at her, slight awe in his expression. “Are you going to use that word?”
“What word? Boyfriend?”
“Yeah, that one,” he said.