Waiting for a Star to Fall by Kerry Clare

Author:Kerry Clare [Clare, Kerry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2020-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

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They took their relationship to the next level after that, which meant their colleagues knew, and when she accompanied him on trips, they stopped booking her a separate hotel room. It also meant that all conversations would end abruptly every time she walked into the lunchroom, however. But sometimes when other people were around, Derek held her hand, or else he’d rub her shoulders as he leaned over her desk to see what she was getting up to.

And there were whispers, rumors, posts on social media and shady political blogs, but Derek insisted that it didn’t freak him out. “If it gets out, it gets out,” he said. He was attempting the posture of a person who really was that cool, but Brooke had been the one to see him, a quivering mess kneeling on his office floor with the blinds shut. So even though he was almost convincing, she saw through it all the same, but the effort he put into the act, into trying to be strong, only made her love him even more, and she told him so. She admired the way he buried his fears for her, for them. That she mattered to him enough to do that, which should have been enough to convince Carly, Nicole, and everyone.

He didn’t tell his family, though. He said it would be too hard. “They’d be all over you then,” he told her. “And you don’t want that.” Even though he was so close to his family—they still took vacations together, and celebrated birthdays, and holidays. Derek’s official Christmas cards every year featured a photo of all of them, his parents, his sisters, his nephews, brothers-in-law, and his ninety-six-year-old grandma. They were a huge part of his life—his mom visited the office all the time and Brooke had been introduced to her on several occasions, although she’d never had reason to set Brooke apart from the gaggle of women in Derek’s employ.

His parents were old-fashioned, he said. His sisters hadn’t even lived with their husbands before they got married. Derek loved his mother, but she could be too much, and expectations were high after all these years of them waiting for Derek to bring someone special home. “I don’t want you to have to deal with all of that until you have to.”

But at least they were finally talking about a future. After the election, perhaps, they could make things official. Derek was nervous, because, he said, when he was serious about a relationship, he was serious. “I want to get married,” he said. “There’s no messing around.” And Brooke was still so young. “I want to make sure you’re ready too,” he told her. “It’s going to be for a lifetime when it happens, so we don’t need to rush to get there. And I don’t want you to miss anything before then.”

“The one thing I really don’t want to miss is you,” she told him. They were driving up north for the long weekend—he’d spent

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