“Zoe, have you lost your mind?”
“Maybe,” Zoe confessed, then borrowed the minister’s mike and invited anyone who still wanted to come to the reception dinner in the hall across the parking lot to please come, but added they were on their own as far as the seating was concerned.
“That,” Erica said as everyone filed out of the church with baffled looks on their faces, “is the most courageous thing I’ve ever seen. I only have one question.”
“What’s that?” Zoe said miserably.
“Do we get to keep the bracelets?”
Zoe laughed and nodded, then gave her friend a hug. “Let’s go eat chicken Kiev and wedding cake.”
But Erica was looking past her shoulder. “Um, Zoe. Don’t look now, but the Aussie from first class is standing in the back of the church.”
19
ZOE’S HEAD JERKED UP. “What did you say?”
Erica pointed. “Aussie, back of church. I can’t make this stuff up.”
Zoe turned around and her heart vaulted to her throat. Colin was standing there dressed in a beautiful dark suit, staring at her. Her knees turned to rubber. She told herself to calm down. There could be lots of reasons for him to be in Atlanta. At this church. On her wedding day.
The church was almost empty now, except for a few strays—her mother, who was sitting in a pew, softly crying. Erica, of course. The minister, who seemed confounded to have lost his captive audience. And Lillian, in the back, who was watching Zoe and Colin closely. Zoe distantly remembered the woman’s comment on the plane about attending the wedding.
I wouldn’t miss it. Something tells me it’s going to be interesting.
How odd. It was as if she’d known…. No, that was impossible.
Zoe walked down the aisle on unsteady legs toward Colin and stopped a few feet away from him. “Hi.”
“Hello,” he said and glanced around the empty church. “Did I miss the ceremony?”
“No. There was no ceremony.”
He took a step closer. “That’s…interesting.”
She crossed her arms and lifted her chin. “How did your wedding go?”
“It didn’t. I never planned to marry Lauren.”
“But the ring box—”
“Held a pin I bought my mother for her birthday while I was in Atlanta.”
She took a step closer. “You don’t say?”
“I should’ve said so sooner, but I thought it was better to let you think what you wanted, to let you go.”
“So what are you doing here?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I was trying to think of a good excuse all the way here.”
She took a step closer. “And what’s the best one you came up with?”
He took a step toward her. “That I love you.”
She took a step toward him. “You waited until my wedding day to tell me you love me?”
He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. “We’re going to have to work on our timing.”
She looped her arms around his neck. “Okay.”
He kissed her long and hard, reawakening the nerve endings in her body that had slumbered ever since she left Sydney. He lifted his head. “Marry me.”
“Okay,” she murmured.
He blinked. “That’s it? You don’t want to see the ring first?”
She smiled. “You have a ring?”
From his jacket pocket he removed a gray ring box and opened it.
Zoe gasped. The red-centered opal was mounted in a platinum setting, surrounded by a circle of diamonds. “It’s…incredible.”
He caressed her cheek with his thumb. “You once promised me that one day when you’re an old woman with grandkids around your knees, that you would look at this stone and remember the wild week you had with me before you settled down.”
“And I will,” she whispered. “Except they’ll be our grandkids.”
Colin removed the ring and slid it onto her finger. “So you’ll still have me?”
“Yes,” she said, laughing.
“Don’t you mean green?” he murmured, nuzzling her ear.
She moaned, already looking forward to their wedding night. “Let’s get married now.”
He pulled back and laughed. “Now?”
“Why not? We have a dress and a minister and chicken Kiev. I’ll get Mother to scrape Kevin’s name off the wedding cake.” Zoe nodded to where her mother sat in the pew, her shoulders still shaking with sobs. “She’ll be ecstatic that I’m marrying someone today.”
“With an offer like that,” he said drily, “how can I refuse?”
“Humor me,” Zoe said, picking up the end of his tie. “I can’t wait another day to be legally bound to you.”
Colin grinned. “Well, when you put it that way…”
Epilogue
“CAN I GIVE THE ARTIST a ride to lunch?”
Zoe lifted her head from the opal necklace she was working on and smiled. “Only if you take it easy on the hills.”
“I promise.”
She moved awkwardly from behind the table, bringing herself and her big pregnant belly with her.
“You are beautiful, Mrs. Cannon,” he said, kissing her thoroughly.
Zoe smiled up at her gorgeous husband and thought her heart might burst open. “You’re lying, but this is what you get for getting me pregnant on our wedding night.”
He grinned. “What can I say? My sperm finds your eggs irresistible.”
“Speaking of eggs, I’m starving.”
“Let’s get you to the house.”
She followed him out, then turned and locked the door to the Benbullen Artisan Jewelry Studio. She loved this place he’d built for her, loved what she was doing, loved Colin, loved their unborn child.
She removed an envelope from her bag and ran her finger over the address—Dr. Michelle Alexander, Covington Women’s College. If she hadn’t received her letter when she did, she might not have had the nerve to meet Colin in the lavatory on the plane. The letter had set all those magical, life-changing events into motion.
“Can we drop this at the post?”
“Sure. What is it?”
“A thank-you letter I’ve been meaning to send. Maybe I’ll explain it one day.”
“Okay. Ready, love?”
A one-of-a-kind love. Zoe smiled and nodded, linking her arm with his.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-2392-3
IN A BIND
Copyright © 2008 by Stephanie Bond, Inc.
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www.eHarlequin.com
Three women. Three fantasies.
Years ago Gemma, Zoe and Violet all took the same
college sex-ed class, one they laughingly referred to as
Sex for Beginners. It was an easy credit—not something
they’d ever need in real life. Or so they thought…
Their professor had them each write a letter, outlining
their most private, most outrageous sexual fantasies.
They never dreamed their letters would be returned
to them when they least expected it. Or that their own
words would change their lives forever…
Don’t miss Stephanie Bond’s newest miniseries:
Sex for Beginners
WATCH AND LEARN
(October 2008)
IN A BIND
(November 2008)
NO PEEKING…
(December 2008)
Sex for Beginners
What you don’t know…might turn you on!
Dear Reader,
Have you ever run across an old childhood diary or a note you wrote in high school or college? It can be fun, and even revealing, to see what you were thinking when you were younger, what things were important to you.
The seniors at Women’s Covington College who took the Sexual Psyche class (dubbed by the students as “Sex for Beginners”) were given an assignment to write down their innermost sexual fantasies in the form of a letter to themselves. Their letter was to be cataloged with a code for anonymity and remain sealed for ten years, then mailed to them.
Violet Summerlin, uptight owner of a personal concierge business, receives her letter just before Christmas, her busiest time of year. Yet the naughty words she wrote give her pause—she hasn’t experienced exciting out-of-the-bedroom sex as she’d fantasized. So when her best client, a sexy extreme-sports junkie, invites her to Miami for a working vacation, she accepts—with adrenaline-pumping results!
I hope you enjoy No Peeking…, the third book in the SEX FOR BEGINNERS trilogy. Please tell your friends about the wonderful stories you find between the pages of Harlequin novels! And visit me at www.stephaniebond.com.