Step together. Step.

  It’s time, Courtney. Look up.

  Step together. Step.

  For God’s sake, Courtney Jane! You wanted this. You chose this. Now, have courage and look up, God damn it!

  Nearly halfway down the aisle, I raise my chin, but only enough to see the Presbyterian minister’s cream-colored robe embroidered with gold crosses. Peripherally, to his left, I can see the form of a man.

  I’ll be the one in the penguin suit.

  “It’s not too late!” my aunt sobs softly, squeezing the blood from my hand.

  In defiance of her words, I lift my head all the way.

  My lips pop open.

  My breath catches.

  My heart stops.

  OH. MY. GOD.

  Josh.

  JOSH?

  Josh is here. WHY is Josh here?

  My feet freeze, and I blink at him.

  What’s happening? What the hell is going on? Why is Josh standing where my future husband should be standing?

  “W-what is th-this?” I whisper, feeling light-headed. “What’s h-happening?”

  My bouquet slips from my fingers, and I’m dimly aware of it hitting the floor.

  “Breathe, Court,” he says, taking a step toward me.

  But I can’t.

  “J-Josh…?” I sputter.

  “Breathe,” he orders, holding out his hand to me. “Come stand next to me. It’s okay, baby.”

  But it’s not. It’s definitely not okay.

  I try to take a step, or even a breath, but my lungs are so squished and my heart is racing so fast, I can’t. Panicking, I try to inhale again, but it feels like my throat is closing. I try to speak, to explain that I can’t breathe, but the room starts spinning.

  I wobble. I start to fall. And then—

  Blackness.

  CHAPTER 14

  Josh

  Of all the scenarios I imagined, Courtney fainting into my arms before even reaching the altar wasn’t among them. But the weight of her body in my arms feels like a sweet relief after these weeks apart. I lift her easily into the cradle of my arms and glance up at the minister.

  “Where can we…?”

  “Oh, aye! Right! Back here.”

  He leads the way to a small room behind the altar that I assume is his office, and I sit down in a comfortable leather chair, still holding my fiancée close. Truth? I have no intention of letting her go. Ever.

  Melissa clears her throat. “Eh, Mr. Fitzgibbons, perhaps we should give the young people a moment?”

  “Yes. Aye, of course. Right.”

  She ushers the clergyman back into the church, and I’m grateful for a moment alone with my bride—until I realize there’s still someone in the room with us.

  An older lady wearing a smart peach-colored suit approaches from the doorway and looks me over. “You’re C, I suppose?”

  I nod, offering her a hand from my chair. “Charles Joshua Dalton.”

  She shakes it from where she’s standing across from me. “Based on my niece’s reaction to seeing you, I hardly need to ask, but just to be sure…do you two already know each other?”

  “We dated in New York.”

  “I see.” She raises an eyebrow. “How’d you rig this?”

  “Hard work,” I answer.

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s a pain in the ass, but she’s mine. Or…I want her to be. Mine.”

  “Okay.” Her lips twitch like she wants to smile but won’t give herself the pleasure…yet. “I’m Lucy Salinger. Her aunt.”

  “I figured.”

  “Between you and me?” She places a hand on my shoulder and releases a weary sigh, that small smile-to-be gaining ground. “I’m so very, very glad it’s you, Charles Joshua Dalton.”

  Then she turns around, leaves the room, and closes the door behind her.

  Alone for the first time since our epic kiss on the sidewalk of New York, I look down at the woman curled up on my lap and feel my heart swell with something altogether deeper than affection, something I honestly don’t believe I’ve ever felt before.

  Courtney. My Courtney. My fiancée.

  “I crossed an ocean for you,” I murmur, leaning down to press my lips to her forehead. And then, because the words from my favorite e.e. cummings poem suddenly spring to mind, I add, “You are the light by which my spirit is born. You are the sun, the moon, and all my stars.”

  “Sun…and moon,” she murmurs, her chest heaving as she breathes deeply, no doubt making up for before when she couldn’t catch her breath.

  “You’re okay,” I say. “You’re safe, baby.”

  “I thought…I thought I saw…” she whispers, “Josh.”

  “You did,” I tell her. “It’s me. I’m here.”

  “How?” Her eyes flutter open, and she looks up at me in a daze. “How are you here? How are you…C?”

  “Charles Joshua Dalton,” I say.

  “Charles,” she murmurs.

  She looks like an angel. She looks like a woman I’d rather marry than lose. She looks like someone I’d chase halfway around the world because I couldn’t imagine my life without her.

  I nod, caressing her cheek with the back of my hand. “I missed you.”

  For a second, she smiles, but it disappears as she scrunches up her face, frowning at me. “I don’t understand. I asked if you could offer me forever, and you said no.”

  “I guess I was wrong.”

  Her blue eyes shine as she grins at me. “You were…?”

  “Wrong,” I say, leaning down to press my lips briefly, fleetingly, to hers.

  Her eyes reopen slowly after our kiss. “So, I’m not crazy? Or unreasonable? Or stubborn?”

  I chuckle at her. “Nope. You’re still all of those things.”

  “So, what are you doing here?” she demands, trying to sit up.

  I push gently against her lower back to give her a hand. “Marrying you, apparently.”

  “I was expertly arranged,” she informs me.

  “That’s right.”

  “Not to you.” She sits up straight on my lap and crosses her arms over her chest.

  “Really? Because I’m CJD-underscore-NY, and I’m here, Court. I’m him. I’m the guy.”

  The luckiest guy in the world.

  “How’d you arrange that, exactly?”

  “I told the so-called experts exactly what I wanted, and they matched me with you.”

  Her eyes scan my face. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “When?”

  “After we kissed.”

  “You went home that night and filled out an application?” She snorts. “After telling me that you weren’t interested?”

  “We went from a first kiss to you proposing in sixty seconds!” I say. “You put me on the spot, Court. I needed some time to get my head around it. I mean, give a guy a minute to consider how he wants to spend the rest of his life, huh?”

  “So when exactly did you decide you wanted to do this?”

  “The following weekend.”

  She stares at me hard, then braces her hand on the back of the chair and stands up. Taking a moment to smooth out her skirt, her face is hurt and angry when she finally looks up at me.

  “I had a plan—”

  “I know.”

  “—and you weren’t a part of it, Josh.”

  “Guess again,” I say calmly, but inside, my stomach is in knots. She’s not going to try to back out of this now, is she? Not after all of this? Not after she promised to marry me? I stand up slowly, looking down at her from my full height. “You filled out an application and I filled out an application. I never mentioned your name; I just said what I wanted. And they matched us. Your experts.”

  “Is this a…joke to you?” she asks, her voice catching on the word joke.

  “Sure,” I say, shoving my hands in my pockets. “I gave up my apartment, might lose my job, and used my pathetic savings to sign up for your stupid service, fly over here, and live in a hostel for two weeks while waiting to get married at your whim.” Out of nowhere, I laugh, but it’s a dry and bitter sound. “Yeah, you’re right. That’s pretty funny.”

  Her face has softened as I speak, and instead of being shaded with hurt, it’s glowing with wonder as she stares at me.

  “You gave up everything for me.”

  I don’t answer. I just hold her gaze so she can see the truth there herself.

  “Why?” she asks.

  Her eyes are so solemn, so steady, I feel something inside of my heart give way. I exhale a shaky breath and tell her the truth.

  “Well…because I like you, Courtney Jane Salinger. I more-than-like you. I more-than-like you enough to…” I want to reach for her, but I sense we need to say these words to each other first. “I wasn’t ready to let you go. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “But…marriage?”

  “It was good enough for my parents,” I say. “And yours, for that matter. Maybe we’ll make it too.”

  “You said you weren’t ready.”

  “Is anyone, ever?” I ask her. “Are you?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, reaching up to swipe away a runaway tear. “I hope so.”

  “Me too.” As she lowers her hand, I steal it, pressing it to my lips to swallow her tears. “Let’s find out together.”

  A smile starts at the corners of her mouth, then slides higher and higher, growing in radiance and beauty until it takes over her entire beloved face.

  “Are you sure?” she whispers.

  No, but…

  Still holding her hand, I lean forward and press my lips to hers. “I am.”

  ***

  An hour later, we’re back at the Gretna Hall Hotel having dinner with Lucy and Melissa, but we’re not Courtney Salinger and Josh Dalton anymore.

  We’re Courtney and Josh Dalton.

  As unbelievable as it seems, we’re married.

  Married.

  The very concept I found so appalling the first time Courtney mentioned it at Tidewaters so many weeks ago.

  Or did I?

  There may be a fair bit of revisionist history going on in my head, but I have started to question whether Courtney’s idea was somehow—deep in the recesses of my heart—more appealing than I want to admit. I mean, there’s no question that my attraction to her, which was always quietly extant, ramped up exponentially from the moment she shared her crazy idea with me. The single-minded purity of her commitment to something so outlandish made me want to join her for the journey, made me want to be the man who went home with the prize, made me change the course of my entire life…just to be with her.

  Speaking of being with her, I’m eager to get through this dinner and have my wife all to myself.

  I squeeze her hand under the table as her Aunt Lucy raises her glass to toast us.

  “Almost forty years ago,” she begins, “I came to this very hotel for a wedding supper with my husband, Roland. We’d met each other at Oxford three months before and realized that our strong feelings for one another prohibited the mere concept of separation. On the night we married, I was supposed to be boarding a plane for New York. I spent that night here, in the Wakefield Suite, instead. We had no children, but we did have twenty very happy years together. He was, and he remains, the one true love of my life.” She sniffles delicately before continuing, “At the time, it didn’t matter that he was considerably older than I or that he was a viscount and I a commoner—and an American, to boot. It didn’t matter that he was a professor and I a student. It didn’t matter that neither of our families approved the match, and it didn’t matter that he didn’t want more children. None of it mattered because we loved each other. We needed to be together. We couldn’t be apart.” She pauses for a moment, tilting her head to the side. “I watched my niece’s face today as she spoke her vows, and I truly believe that my Courtney Jane and her Charles Joshua have that sort of connection to one another. The kind that won’t let you let go. At any rate, darlings, that’s my hope for you, because you’re going to need it.” She lifts her champagne flute, smiling at her niece with a face shining with love. “May you love as I loved. With your whole hearts and minds, bodies and souls. May you never know a moment without its comfort or an instant away from its grasp. May it warm you on the coldest nights and light your path on the darkest days. And may that love outlast the shift of your feet upon this earth and follow you both into forever.” Through tears she adds, “To the happy couple.”

  Melissa stands up beside her, raising her glass in one hand and squeezing Lucy around the shoulders with her other. “To the happy couple.”

  Beside me, Courtney sobs softly, springing up to round the table and hug her aunt. Because they’re all standing up, I stand too, smiling at Aunt Lucy, who watches me over Courtney’s shoulder.

  “Thank you,” I say, lifting my own glass to toast her.

  Love her, she mouths, patting Courtney’s back before letting her go.

  Love her.

  It’s a simple enough request, and as Sammy pointed out, giving up my entire life in New York to follow Courtney to London speaks volumes as to my feelings, but I’m not ready to say that I love her yet. To fall in love with her? Yes. I smile back at Lucy, hoping that good intentions are enough for now.

  “Josh,” says Melissa, looking up from her phone, “all of your things have been moved from your room to Courtney’s suite.” She smiles at us. “This has been such a lovely celebration. But now, if you’ll forgive me, I must get back to London.”

  “Of course,” says Courtney. “Thank you for all you’ve done.”

  “Thank you for being such an easy client.” Melissa looks back and forth between us, then settles on Courtney. “Your travel documents are waiting in your room. Tomorrow morning, a car will take you to the airport in Carlisle, where a helicopter will be waiting to fly you up to Inverness. From there, it’s a short ride to your lodgings.”

  I step around the table to shake Melissa’s hand. “You’ve been terrific.”

  “It was my pleasure.” She nods briskly at us before leaning down to pick up her purse. “Best of luck.” And then she’s off.

  We three are left behind to watch her go, and for a moment I wonder how long Courtney and I need to stay before we can be alone. Luckily, Aunt Lucy, about whom I’m fonder by the second, turns to us with a coy grin.

  “I’m so tired,” she says, faking a yawn. “Would you two mind terribly if I retired? I think I’ll take off these shoes and get my old body into bed.”

  Yep. I’m a big fan of Aunt Lucy’s.

  “Are you sure, Aunt Lucy?” asks Courtney, taking her aunt’s hands in hers. “We could stay for one more drink if you like.”

  “No, darling,” she says, leaning forward to kiss her niece’s cheek. “I’ll say good-night now.” She lets go of Courtney and turns to me. “Give your Aunt Lucy a kiss.”

  I lean down and kiss her soft cheek. “Thank you for being here.”

  “Thank you for being here,” she responds with a bit of sass. “I’ll say good-bye in the morning before you go.”

  When Lucy is out of view, Courtney turns to face me. “Well.”

  “Well.”

  She glances down at the table, then back up at me. “Is there anything else you want?”

  Um. Yeah. There’s definitely something I want.

  “You mean to eat?”

  “Or—or to, um, to drink?” she asks, clearing her throat.

  Her eyes dart around the restaurant, landing on the bar behind me for a second before sliding back to my face.

  “No, Court,” I say, stepping closer to her. “I don’t want a drink.”

  Her tongue darts out to lick her lips. “Okay. Um, well, we could…”

  I lean forward so that my lips graze her ear when I speak. “All I want…is to be alone…with my wife.”

  She exhales shakily against my cheek, then takes another breath that makes the tips of her breasts, covered in satin and lace, brush against my chest. I can feel them, beaded and firm, and it makes my nostrils flare with want. As my breath catches, she gulps softly.

  “I want that too,” she whispers, her lips against my skin making me want those same lips pressed against every other part of my body.

  Reduced to a caveman about to have his way with the woman of his dreams, I take her hand and pull her out of the restaurant, every cell in my body aching for her, my blood coursing in hot, heavy streams to my cock, which throbs with its own heartbeat, hungry to have her.

  We pause at the lift, with Courtney facing me, our chests touching with every breath. When the doors open, we step inside, our breathing synchronized to short, shallow bursts of longing as we travel one floor higher to her suite.

  In the hallway outside of our room, I don’t ask for her permission—I sweep her up into my arms so that I cross the threshold holding her.

  My bride.

  My wife.

  My woman.

  CHAPTER 15

  Courtney

  As the door closes behind us, Josh continues through the living room into the bedroom, where he gently lowers me to the ground. My feet hit the carpet, but his arms are still around me, his chest pushing into mine with every breath he takes, his eyes dark and focused on mine.

  There is this enormous part of me that feels like we should talk. There is so much to ask and to tell, so much to say, so much to find out. But another part of me says that there’s no rush. After all, the miracle of us, of now, is that we have time.

  “What are you thinking?” he asks, his voice low and gruff.

  “That we have plenty of time,” I answer.

  His shoulders slump just a touch.

  “Oh!” I say. “But that doesn’t mean I need time. I mean, I don’t need time. Or more time. I mean, I’m ready. Not that I have to—or we have to—I mean, I’m—”

  “Nervous.”

  A short burst of laughter slips from my lips. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because…” I feel breathless and I have no idea why I’m whispering. “I want…um…”

  “Me?” he asks. “Do you want me?”

  I nod. “I do.”

  “I’m yours,” he answers, leaning forward to press his forehead to mine.