Saying Yes To The Dress!

“Okay, this is a good spot.” He released her again and she came upright and treaded water. “Go toward shore. I’ve got you, I’m right with you.”

She was scared to go back into the waves. It was too much. She was exhausted. But she glanced at his face once more and found her own courage there.

“Get on your tummy, flat as a board, watch for the next wave and ride it in. Watch for those rocks on the side.”

She did as she was told. She knew she had no choice. She had to trust him completely. She felt the wave lift her up and drive her toward the shore at a stunning speed. And then it spit her out. She was lying in shallow water, but she could already feel the wave pulling at her, trying to drag her back in. She used what little strength she had left to scramble to her knees and crawl through the sugar pebbles of the sand.

Drew came and scooped her out of the water, lifted her to his chest and struggled out of the surf.

On the beach, above the foaming line of the ocean, he set her down on her back in the sun-warmed sand. For a moment she looked at the clear and endless blue of the sky. It was the very same sky it had been twenty minutes ago, but everything felt changed, some awareness sharp as glass within her. She rolled over onto her stomach and rested her head on her forearms. He flung himself onto the sand beside her, breathing hard.

“Did you just save my life?” she whispered. Her voice was hoarse. Her throat hurt from swallowing salt water. She felt drowsy and extraordinarily peaceful.

“You’ll want to make sure this beach is posted before guests start arriving,” he finally said, when he spoke.

“You didn’t answer the question,” she said, taking a peek at him over her folded arm. “Is that a habit with you?”

Drew didn’t answer. She looked at him, feeling as if she was drinking him in, as if she could never get enough of looking at him. It was probably natural to feel that way after someone had just saved your life, and she did not try to make herself stop.

She was in a state of altered awareness. She could see the water beading on his eyelashes, and the sun streaming through his wet hair. She could see through his soaked shirt where it was plastered to his body.

“Did you just save my life?” she asked again.

“I think you Michigan girls should stay away from the ocean.”

“Do you ever just answer a question, Drew Jordan? Did you save my life?”

He was silent again.

“You did,” she finally answered for him.

She could not believe the gratitude she felt. To be alive. It was as if the life force was zinging inside her, making her every cell quiver.

“You risked yourself for me. I’m nearly a complete stranger.”

“No, you’re not. Winning the headache competition, by the way.”

“By a country mile?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“That was incredibly heroic.” She was not going let him brush it off, though he was determined to.

“Don’t make it something it wasn’t. I’m nobody’s hero.”

Just like he had insisted earlier he was nobody’s prince.

“Well,” she insisted, “you’re mine.”

He snorted, that sexy, cynical sound he made that was all his own and she found, right now, lying here in the sand, alive, so aware of herself and him, that she liked that sound very much, despite herself.

“I’ve been around the ocean my whole life,” he told her grimly. “I grew up surfing some pretty rough water. I knew what I was doing. Unlike you. That was incredibly stupid.”

In her altered state, she was aware that he thought he could break the bond that had been cementing itself into place between them since the moment he had entered the water to rescue her.

“Life can change in a blink,” he said sternly. “It can be over in a blink.”

He was lecturing her. She suddenly needed him to know she could not let him brush it off like that. She needed him to know that the life force was flowing through her. She had an incredible sense of being alive.

“You were right,” she said, softly.

There was that snort again. “Of course I’m right. You don’t go climbing up on rocks when the surf is that high.”

“Not about that. I mean, okay, about that, too, but I wasn’t talking about that.”

“What were you talking about?”

“It wasn’t a heartbreak,” Becky said. “It was a romantic disappointment.”

“Huh?”

“That’s what I thought of when I went into the water. I thought my whole life would flash before my eyes, but instead I thought of Jerry.”

“Look, you’re obviously in shock and we need to—”

“He was my high school sweetheart. We’d been together since I was seventeen. I’d always assumed we were going to get married. Everybody in the whole town thought we would get married. They called us Salt and Pepper.”

“You know what? This will keep. I have to—”

“It won’t keep. It’s important. I have to say it before I forget it. Before this moment passes.”

“Oh, sheesh,” he said, his tone indicating he wanted nothing more than for this moment to pass.

“I wanted that. I wanted to be Salt and Pepper, forever. My parents had split up the year before. It was awful. My dad owned a hardware store. One of his clerks. And him.”

“Look, Becky, you are obviously rattled. You don’t have to tell me this.”

She could no more have stopped herself from telling him than she could have stopped those waves from pounding on the shore.

“They had a baby together. Suddenly, they were the family we had always been. That we were supposed to be. It was horrible, seeing them all over town, looking at each other. Pushing a baby carriage. I wanted it back. I wanted that feeling of being part of something back. Of belonging.”

“Aw, Becky,” he said softly. “That sucks. Really it does, but—”

But she had to tell all of it, was compelled to. “Jerry went away to school. My mom didn’t have the money for college, and it seemed my dad had new priorities.

“I could see what the community needed, so I started my event company.”

“Happily-Ever-After,” he said. “Even though you had plenty of evidence of the exact opposite.”

“It was way more successful than I had thought it could be. It was way more successful than Jerry thought it could be, too. The more successful I became, the less he liked me.”

“Okay. Well. Some guys are like that.”

“He broke up with me.”

“Yeah, sorry, but now is not the time—”

“This is the reason it’s important for me to say it right now. I understand something I didn’t understand before. I thought my heart was broken. It is a terrible thing to suffer the humiliation of being ditched in a small town. It was a double humiliation for me. First my dad, and then this. But out there in the water, I felt glad. I felt if I had married him, I would have missed something. Something essential.”

“Okay, um—”

“A grand passion.”

He said a word under his breath that they disapproved of in Moose Run, Michigan.

“Salt and pepper?” She did a pretty good imitation of his snort. “Why settle for boring old salt and pepper when the world is full of so many glorious flavors?”

“Look, I think you’ve had a pretty bad shake-up. I don’t have a clue what you are talking about, so—”

She knew she was making Drew Jordan wildly uncomfortable, but she didn’t care. She planned to make him more uncomfortable yet. She leaned toward him. He stopped talking and watched her warily.

She needed to know if the life force was as intense in him right now as it was in her. She needed to take advantage of this second chance to be alive, to really live.

She touched Drew’s back through the wetness of his shirt, and felt the sinewy strength there. The strength that had saved her.

She leaned closer yet. She touched her forehead to his, as if she could make him feel what was going on inside her, since words could not express it. He had a chance to move away from her. He did not. He was as caught in what was unfolding as she had been in the wave.

And then, she touched her lips to his, delicately, needing the connection to intensify.

His lips tasted of salt and strength and something more powerful and more timeless than the ocean. That desire that people had within them, not just to live, but to go on.

For a moment, Drew was clearly stunned to find her lips on his. But then, he seemed to get whatever she was trying to tell him, in this primal language that seemed the only thing that could express the celebration of all that lived within her.

His lips answered hers. His tongue chased the ridges of her teeth, and then probed, gently, ever so gently...

It was Becky’s turn to be stunned. It was everything she had hoped for. It was everything she had missed.

No, it was more than what she had hoped for, and more than what she could have ever imagined. A kiss was not simply a brushing of lips. No! It was a journey, it was a ride on pure energy, it was a connection, it was a discovery, it was an intertwining of the deepest parts of two people, of their souls.

Drew stopped kissing her with such abruptness that she felt forlorn, like a blanket had been jerked from her on a freezing night. He said Moose Run’s most disapproved-of word again.

She liked the way he said that word, all naughty and nasty.

He found his feet and leaped up, staring down at her. He raked a hand through his hair, and water droplets scattered off his crumpled hair, sparkling like diamonds in the tropical heat. His shirt, crusted in golden sand, was clinging to his chest.

“Geez,” he said. “What was that about?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. But I liked it.

“A girl like you does not kiss a guy like me!”

She could ask what he meant by a girl like her, but she already knew that he thought she was small town and naive and hopelessly out of her depth, and not just in the ocean, either. What she wanted to know was what the last half of that sentence meant.

“What do you mean a guy like you?” she asked. Her voice was husky from the salt and from something else. Desire. Desire was burning like a white-hot coal in her belly. It was brand-new, it was embarrassing and it was wonderful.

“Look, Becky, I’m the kind of guy your mother used to warn you about.”

Woo-hoo, she thought, but she didn’t dare say it. Instead, she said, “The kind who would jump in the water without a thought for his own safety to save someone else?”

“Not that kind!”

She could point out to him that he obviously was that kind, and that the facts spoke for themselves, but she probed the deeper part of what was going on.

“What kind of guy then?” she asked, gently curious.

“Self-centered. Commitment-phobic. Good-time Charlie. Confirmed bachelor. They write whole articles about guys like me in your bridal magazines. And not about how to catch me, either. How to give a guy like me a wide berth.”

“Just in case you didn’t listen to your mother’s warnings,” she clarified.

He glanced at her. She bit her lip and his gaze rested there, hot with memory, until he seemed to make himself look away.

“I wouldn’t have pictured you as any kind of expert about the content of bridal magazines,” she said.

“That is not the point!”

“It was just a kiss,” she pointed out mildly, “not a posting of the banns.”

“You’re in shock,” he said.

If she was, she hoped she could experience it again, and soon!

CHAPTER SIX

DREW LOOKED AT Becky English. Sprawled out, belly down in the sand, she looked like a drowned rat, her hair plastered to her head, her yellow shirt plastered to her lithe body, both her shirt and her white shorts transparent in their wetness. For a drowned rat, and for a girl from Moose Run, Michigan, she had on surprisingly sexy underwear.

She looked like a drowned rat, and she was a small-town girl, but she sure as hell did not kiss like either one of those things. There had been nothing sweet or shy about that kiss!

It had been hungry enough to devour him.

But, Drew told himself sternly, she was exceedingly vulnerable. She was obviously stunned from what had just happened to her out there at the mercy of the ocean. It was possible she had banged her head riding that final wave in. The blow might have removed the filter from her brain that let her know what was, and what wasn’t, appropriate.

But good grief, that kiss. He had to make sure nothing like that ever happened again! How was he going to be able to look at her without recalling the sweet, salty taste of her mouth? Without recalling the sweet welcome? Without recalling the flash of passion, the pull of which was at least as powerful as those waves?

“Becky,” he said sternly, “don’t make me your hero. I’ve been cast in that role before, and I stunk at it.”

Drew had been seventeen when he became a parent to his brother. He had a sense of having grown up too fast and with too heavy a load. He was not interested in getting himself back into a situation where he was responsible for someone else’s happiness and well-being. He didn’t feel the evidence showed he had been that good at it.

“It was just a kiss,” she said again, a bit too dreamily.

It wasn’t just a kiss. If it had been just a kiss he would feel nothing, the same as he always did when he had just a kiss. He wouldn’t be feeling this need to set her straight.

“When were you cast in that role before? How come you stank at it?” she asked softly. He noticed that, impossibly, the flower had survived in her hair. Its bright red petals were drooping sadly, kissing the tender flesh of her temple.

“This is not the time or the place,” he said curtly before, in this weakened moment, in this contrived atmosphere of closeness, he threw himself down beside her, and let her save him, the way he had just saved her.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, cold and clinical. “Any bumps or bruises? Did you hit your head?”

Thankfully, she was distracted, and considered his question with an almost comical furrowing of her brow.

“I don’t think I hit my head, but my leg hurts,” she decided. “I think I scraped it on a rock coming in.”

She rolled onto her back and then struggled to sit up. He peered over her shoulder. There was six inches of scrapes on the inside of her thigh, one of the marks looked quite deep and there was blood clumping in the sand that clung to it.

What was wrong with him? The first thing he should have done was check for injuries.

He stripped off his wet shirt and got down beside her. This was what was wrong with him. He was way too aware of her. The scent of the sea was clinging to her body, a body he was way too familiar with after having dragged her from the ocean and then accepted the invitation of her lips.

Becky was right. There was something exhilarating about snatching life back out of the jaws of death. That’s why he was so aware of her on every level, not thinking with his customary pragmatism.

He brushed the sand away from her wound. He should have known touching the inner thigh of a girl like Becky English was going to be nothing like a man might have expected.

“Ow,” she said, and her fingers dug into his shoulder and then lingered there. “Oh, my,” she breathed. “You did warn me what would happen if you took your shirt off.”

“I was kidding,” he said tersely.

“No, you weren’t. You were warning me off.”

“How’s that working for you, Drew?” he muttered to himself. He cleaned the sand away from her wound as best he could, then wrapped it in his soaked shirt.

She sighed with satisfaction like the geeky girl who had just gotten all the words right at the spelling bee. “Women adore you.”

“Not ones as smart as you,” he said. “Can you stand? We have to find a first aid kit. I think that’s just a superficial scrape, but it’s bleeding quite a lot and we need to get it looked after.”

He helped her to her feet, still way too aware, steeling himself against the silky resilience of her skin. She swayed against him. Her wet curves were pressed into him, and her chin was pressed sharply into his chest as she looked up at him with huge, unblinking eyes.

Had he thought, just an hour ago, her eyes were ordinary brown? They weren’t. They were like melted milk chocolate, deep and rich and inviting.

“You were right.” She giggled. “I’m swooning.”

“Let’s hope it’s not from blood loss. Can you walk?”

“Of course.”

She didn’t move.

He sighed and scooped her up, cradling her to his chest, one arm under her knees, the other across her back. She was lighter than he could have believed, and her softness pressed into him was making him way more vulnerable than the embraces of women he’d known who had far more in the curvy department.

“You’re very masterful,” she said, snuggling into him.

“In this day and age how can that be a good thing?”

“It’s a secret longing.”

He did not want to hear about her secret longings!

“If you don’t believe me, read—”

“Stop it,” he said grimly.

“I owe you my life.”

“I said stop it.”

“You are not the boss over me.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

He carried her back along the path. She was small and light and it took no effort at all. At the castle, he found the kitchen, an enormous room that looked like the kind of well-appointed facility one would expect to find in a five-star hotel.

“Have you got a first aid attendant here?” Drew asked one of the kitchen staff, who went and fetched the chef.

The chef showed him through to an office adjoining the kitchen, and Drew settled Becky in a chair. The chef sent in a young man with a first aid kit. He was slender and golden-skinned with dark, dark hair and almond-shaped eyes that matched.

“I am Tandu,” he said. “I am the medical man.” His accent made it sound as if he had said medicine man.

Relived that he could back off from more physical contact with the delectable Miss Becky, Drew motioned to where she sat.

Tandu set down his first aid kit and crouched down in front of her. He carefully unwrapped Drew’s wet shirt from her leg. He stared at Becky’s injury for a moment, scrambled to his feet, picked up the first aid kit and thrust it at Drew.

“I do not do blood.”

“What kind of first aid attendant doesn’t—?”

But Tandu had already fled.

Drew, even more aware of her now that he had nearly escaped, went and found a pan of warm water, and then cleaned and dressed her wound, steeling himself to be as professional as possible.

* * *

Becky stared down at the dark head of the man kneeling at her feet. He pressed a warm, wet cloth against the tender skin of her inner thigh, and she gasped at the sensation that jolted through her like an electric shock.

He glanced up at her, then looked back to his task quickly. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I will try to make this as painless as possible.”

Despite the fact his touch was incredibly tender—or maybe because of it—it was one of the most deliciously painful experiences of Becky’s life. He carefully cleaned the scrapes, dabbed an ointment on them and then wound clean gauze around her leg.

She could feel a quiver within her building. There was going to be an earthquake if he didn’t finish soon! She longed to reach out and touch his hair, to brush the salt and sand from it. She reached out.

A pan dropped in the kitchen, and she felt reality crashing back in around her. She snatched her hand back, just as Drew glanced up.

“Are you okay?”

“Sure,” she said shakily, but she really wasn’t. What she felt like was a girl who had been very drunk, and who had done all kinds of uninhibited and crazy things, and was now coming to her senses.

She had kissed Drew Jordan shamelessly. She had shared all her secrets with him. She had blabbered that he was masterful, as if she enjoyed such a thing! Now she had nearly touched his hair, as if they were lovers instead of near strangers!

Okay, his hand upon her thigh was obviously creating confusion in the more primal cortexes of her brain, but she had to pull herself together.

“There,” he said, rocking back on his heels and studying the bandage around her thigh, “I think—”

She didn’t let him finish. She shot to her feet, gazed down at her bandaged thigh instead of at him. “Yes, yes, perfect,” she said. She sounded like a German engineer approving a mechanical drawing. Her thigh was tingling unmercifully, and she was pretty sure it was from his touch and not from the injury.

“I have to get to work,” she said in a strangled voice.

He stood up. “You aren’t going to work. You’re going to rest for the afternoon.”

“But I can’t. I—”

“I’m telling you, you need to rest.”

She thought, again, of telling him he was masterful. Good grief, she could feel the blush rising up her cheeks. She had probably created a monster.

In him and in herself.

“Go to bed,” he said. Drew’s voice was as caressing as his hand had been, and just as seductive. “Just for what is left of the afternoon. You’ll be glad you did.”

You did not discuss bed with a man like this! And especially not after he had just performed intimate rituals on your thigh! Particularly not after you had noticed his voice was seduction itself, all deep and warm and caressing.

You did not discuss bed with a man like this once you had come to your senses. She opened her mouth to tell him she would decide for herself what needed to be done. It would not involve the word bed. But before she could speak, he did.

“I’ll go scout a spot for the wedding. Joe will be here in a while. By the time you wake up, we’ll have it all taken care of.”

All her resolve to take back the reins of her own life dissolved, instantly, like sugar into hot tea.

It felt as if she was going to start crying. When was the last time anything had been taken care of for her? After her father had left, her poor shattered mother had absconded on parenting. It felt as if Becky had been the one who looked after everything. Jerry had seemed to like her devoting herself to organizing his life. Even her career took advantage of the fact that Becky English was the one who looked after things, who tried valiantly to fix all and to achieve perfection. She took it all on...until the weight of it nearly crushed her.

Where had that thought come from? She loved her job. Putting together joyous and memorable occasions for others had soothed the pain of her father’s abandonment, and had, thankfully, been enough to fill her world ever since the defection of Jerry from her personal landscape.

Or had been enough until less than twenty-four hours ago, when Drew Jordan had showed up in her life and showed her there was still such a thing as a hero.

She turned and fled before she did something really foolish. Like kissing him again.

Becky found that as much as she would have liked to rebel against his advice, she had no choice but to take it. Clear of the kitchen, her limbs felt like jelly, heavy and nearly shaking with exhaustion and delayed reaction to all the unexpected adventures of the day. It took every bit of remaining energy she had to climb the stone staircase that led to the wing of the castle with her room in it.

She went into its cool sanctuary and peeled off her wet clothes. It felt like too much effort to even find something else to put on. She left the clothes in a heap and crept under the cool sheets of the welcoming bed. Within seconds she was fast asleep.

She dreamed that someone was knocking on her door, and when she went to answer it, Drew Jordan was on the other side of it, a smile of pure welcome on his face. He reached for her, he pulled her close, his mouth dropped over hers...

Becky started awake. She was not sure what time it was, though the light suggested early evening, which meant she had frittered away a whole precious afternoon sleeping.

She wanted to leap from bed, but her body would not let her. She felt, again, like the girl who had had too much to drink. She tested each of her limbs. It was official. Her whole body hurt. Her head hurt. Her mouth and throat felt raw and dry. But mostly, she felt deeply ashamed. She had lost control, and she hated that.