A Silken Thread - Brenda Jackson [3]
If anyone had told him that falling in love with a woman would be this way, he would not have believed them. But he was convinced he had fallen in love with Erica the moment he’d seen her that day on the beach, and somehow he had known she was different from the other women he’d dated.
He had been a man comfortable with being single. A man who enjoyed dating when it suited him, with no plans to settle down anytime soon. However, after spending time with Erica that summer, he had known in a short period that she was a forever kind of girl. But the thought hadn’t scared him off like it really should have. Instead, the more he’d gotten to know her, the more he’d wanted to become her forever kind of man.
Sighing deeply, he took another swallow of beer and glanced around his future wife’s eat-in kitchen. It was large, spacious and it suited her since she enjoyed cooking. So did he. That was one of the first things they discovered they had in common.
The walls were painted a pale yellow and her appliances, all white, actually made the room appear larger. His stainless steel kitchen back in Dallas, although it might look more modern, seemed depressingly sterile compared to hers. And then there was that huge picture on the wall, the one of Myrtle Beach beneath a sunny South Carolina sky. It was nice to look at while sitting at the kitchen table, especially during a frosty Ohio winter. Even better, it was a drawing of the exact place they’d met that summer. Right down to the actual pier. When he’d seen it in a gallery in Texas, of all places, he couldn’t miss the chance to get it for her. For them.
He sat down at the table to wait for Erica to come home. If he remembered correctly, Ryder’s was twenty minutes away on the other side of town, and although he’d warned Erica not to rush, he knew that she would anyway. That meant she would be arriving in ten minutes or so.
He glanced around the kitchen again, and from where he sat he had a good view of her dining room and living room. His condo back in Dallas wasn’t nearly as large. It was the perfect bachelor pad, but they had decided that they would move into a bigger place after they married, one closer to the office.
They had also decided to keep this condo so they would have a place to stay whenever they returned to Hattersville to visit her parents. Of course there were plenty of guest rooms in her parents’ monstrosity of a house, which could easily be considered a mansion. But he appreciated Erica’s intuitiveness in knowing he’d be uncomfortable spending even one night under Karen Sanders’s roof. It was no big secret that he wasn’t exactly her choice for a son-in-law.
Erica’s mother was definitely nothing like his mother. Rita Lawson had to be one of the sweetest and most down-to-earth women to walk this earth. She had raised him after his father died of an aneurysm when Brian was fifteen. Putting him through college and law school hadn’t been easy, but she had done it without any complaints. For that he was exceedingly grateful. And now he was proud that she was doing something she’d always wanted to do. She’d always loved the outdoors and was now a landscape architect for a major corporation. Her job entailed a lot of traveling, which was something she’d always dreamed of. Just last week she had returned from Beijing. It had been her first trip to China and he couldn’t help but recall how excited she was when she’d shared the experience with him.
She had officially met Erica months ago and had immediately fallen in love with the woman who was to be her future daughter-in-law. He took another sip of his beer wishing Erica’s mother had been that accepting of him.
He tried not to let the thought bother him, but every once in a while he couldn’t help but dwell on it. Didn’t the woman know that the time