Just Once More Read Online Free

she looks?”
    “Not about what you and I think,” Finn said. “We love seeing them like that. You and I both know that. But they don’t, not unless we tell them.”
    “She knows,” Drew said again.
    “Does she?”
    Drew shrugged, kept up the rhythm. “What is this,” he growled, “marriage counseling, or a workout?”
    Finn shut up, and Drew switched to triceps again, lifted in silence for a minute.
    “So what…do you do?” he asked reluctantly. Jenna was having Finn’s fourth, after all. He’d know.
    “Make her feel beautiful,” Finn said, clearly having been waiting for Drew to ask. “Let her know you still think she is. Let her know you still…” He stopped. “Yeh. Well. Let her know. Show her.”
    “I show her,” Drew said shortly, leaning over and setting the heavy dumbbell back in the rack.
    “Well, mate,” Finn said, shoving his own weight into its spot, those damning two spaces to the right. “Show her more.”

“Nervous?” Liam glanced across at Kristen.
    “Oh, no,” she said automatically. “No, of course not. I’m fine.”
    He smiled a bit at that. “OK.”
    She laughed a little, wished it sounded more convincing, and scrubbed her hands over the lap of the blue paisley sundress that stretched over her taut belly. Her nervous habit, and he noticed that too.
    “You’ve met some of them before,” he reminded her. “Not too bad.”
    “But I haven’t talked to them much,” she said. “I only know Nate, really, and he’s not here yet. And Drew, of course.”
    “Ah…yeh,” Liam said. “So I’d say you’re good.”
    “What? The captain thing?” She still felt distracted. “That matters?”
    “Oh, yeh. It matters. And anyway, this’ll be easier. I promise. A beach day, and more of a chance to have a chat, when you’re not busy being the bride and all.”
    “Was I too…self-centered, you mean? At our wedding?”
    He let out a breath. “No. You were the bride. That’s the point, isn’t it.”
    “Sorry.” She smoothed a hand over her stomach again. For comfort, and for the pleasure of touching the place where her little girl lay, the ripple of movement along her skin that was a healthy baby getting more comfortable.
    “She’s dancing,” she told Liam, and he smiled again.
    “You know what?” she added impulsively. “However pretty she is or isn’t, I’m going to love her just the same.”
    “Well, of course you are,” he said with surprise.
    She barely heard him. “Because I’m sitting here thinking that I don’t look good, so nobody will like me. Well of
course
I don’t look good! I’m more than eight months pregnant! Why should I worry that nobody will want to talk to me because I’m not pretty? That isn’t all I am!”
    She was getting heated, even though she knew he wasn’t the one she had to convince. It was herself.
    “No,” he said calmly, pulling into the Papamoa Beach Reserve carpark, full of activity on this Sunday afternoon. “It isn’t. But you’re wrong, you know. You’re still pretty.”
    “Maybe to you.” She got out of the car, waited until he handed her her beach bag, leaving him to take the rest of it, to stick the beach umbrella under one arm and heft the chilly bin full of snacks. She’d have offered to carry something, but he’d just look at her with that pained resignation again and tell her no, so she didn’t bother.
    “To everybody,” he assured her, making light of his burdens as they moved down the path onto the long, broad expanse of sand. “Pregnant pretty, but pretty all the same. But you’re right. That’s not what matters. That’s not what all these fellas, and their partners, too, are going to care about. That’s not what matters, and thank God for that, or you couldn’t love me. And fortunately, you don’t just have a gorgeous face to offer—and a beautiful body too, pregnant or not. You have a beautiful soul as well.”

    A beautiful soul
, she repeated to herself as they approached the group.