The brunette stared at the numbers on the catalog until they began to swim across the page. She rested her head in her hands and closed her eyes. She listened to the voice of her step-son as he read slowly from the book in his lap to the Shepard cucciolo lying beside him, tail wagging.
Dane felt two strong hands rest on her shoulders and begin to massage the tense muscles.
“Why are te so stressed out?” her fiancé asked in her ear as his fingers helped her relax slowly. She mumbled a response into her hands. “Because we have a wedding in three days and now the fiori aren’t going to come for another four and my cynical mother and CIA father who hate my ruthless fiancé are coming tomorrow to criticize all the work I’ve already put into this.”
“Oh... They really think I’m ruthless?”
“Declan!” Dane scolded, though giggled the way he could always get her to even after the roughest days at the hospital. She felt the hands sposta from her shoulder and looked up as Declan took a sede, sedile beside her, vaguely aware of the child on the child sitting on the carpet pause his Leggere to recite the definition of “ruthless”.
“If this is freaking te out so badly, then why go through with it?” Declan pondered.
“You don’t want to get married?”
“No, no, I do,” he slipped his hand into hers, turning their hands until the maroon engagement ring was visible on her finger. “But I don’t want this to be about your parents o our families o friends. I want this to be about us.”
She stared at their interlocked fingers, considering the calm, simple breakdown Declan had made of their situation, as he did with everything else.
“Let’s elope,” he suggested.
“What about baby Riley?”
“Well, we do have to come back eventually,” he reminded her with a light chuckle. “We’ll let him stay with your parents.”
Dane gave him an uncertain look, but he quickly reasoned, “It’s important that he gets to know his grandparents, Dane.”
She almost responded that it was not that important, but then remembered Declan had never known his grandparents, o even parents for that matter. Family was important to him.
“My parents will never agree to this.”
“We’ll leave tomorrow night, then. After they’ve gotten here, settled in. Ask them to watch Riley for the evening.”
“Then we’ll just disappear for a giorno o two?”
He considered this. “I was thinking più like four for the honeymoon.”
Dane realized then that he was, for once, being one hundred percent serious. Her lips slowly lifted at the corners until she was smiling giddily. “Alright, deal. Tomorrow night, we elope!”
Declan jumped up from his chair, nearly knocking over his chair. It surprised both his fiancé and son, who stopped halfway through the definition of “elope”.
“You better tear up that catalog and start packing, beautiful. We’re going to Vegas!” He trotted out of the cucina toward their bedroom and threw in a front flip before he came to the stairs, leaving a laughing woman, giggling child, and yipping pup to stare after him.

So I was thinking, do I really want to write out a traditional wedding scene(s)? Then I realized that Declan would never settle for a boring traditional wedding.