Leap of Faith

Day Seventeen

I gave myself a little pep talk and rolled my shoulders back to relax myself before I headed out for TJ to see. Granted, he’d already seen me in the dress, but it was all the little details that he hadn’t seen that made him sit up and gawp at me with his mouth hanging open.

“Do I really look that bad?” I ask nervously when, after a minute had gone by, TJ still hadn’t said a word. “It’s the bracelet, isn’t it? I should take it off.”

“Don’t!” TJ shouts as he clambers to his feet. “Don’t touch anything.”

His eyes travel the length of my body and slowly make their way up the dress, to my wrist, to my neck line, to my earrings, to my hair and then finally come to a rest on my face. He scrutinizes every inch of me, and then smiles widely.

“Cate,” he breathes out my name. A shiver goes down my spine and my skin tingles. “You look… breathtaking.”

I blush furiously at his compliment. No one had ever said I looked breathtaking before, and hearing it come from TJ made my knees go weak. Not wanting TJ to see how embarrassed I was, I turned and started to gather my things to put in my clutch. I threw in my cell phone, my lip gloss and my cover up wand, and then turned back to TJ who was still staring at me.

“Are you ready?” I ask him.

“Yes,” he whispers with a nod of his head.

TJ looked amazing, I noticed as he walked me towards the car. He wore a navy suit with slim fit pants and a white shirt that was open at the collar. He didn’t wear a tie which for some reason I found comforting. TJ had obviously gone for comfort over formality and it helped me to relax and be at ease that he wasn’t taking this seriously.

When we stepped out of the door, I looked around expecting to see TJ’s SUV, but the familiar black Jeep wasn’t here. Instead, a sleek grey Mercedes coupe sat on the driveway. TJ offered me his arm and directed me to the passenger door, opened it and helped me get in. Once I was seated, he closed the door and rounded the hood.

“Whose car is this?” I asked as he started the engine and backed out of the driveway.

“Mine,” he says flatly. “My step-father bought it for me on my eighteenth birthday. No doubt it was my mom’s idea. I don’t like to drive it often because it’s a little ostentatious.”

“It’ll fit right in at The Grange,” I laugh as we start our way up to the exclusive hotel just outside Hastings. “So, just remember what I told you, ok?”

TJ frowns. “Which part? You gave me a lot of instructions.”

“Try to remember most of it,” I smile playfully. “But the biggest thing is to just ignore my nut-job family, and if you wind up meeting my grandparents, don’t believe a word of what they tell you.”

When my grandparents met Georgie for the first time, they told her every embarrassing little detail about my life. It went the same way when they met Adam, so I was more than a little nervous about TJ bumping in to them. If Grandma dares tell him about Mr. Higgledy, then I won’t be held responsible for my actions. My love affair with my childhood teddy bear was not for public consumption.