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

Becky could ask what Drew 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.”

“The kind who would jump in the water without a thought for his own safety to save someone else?”

“Not that kind!”

“What kind of guy, then?” she asked, gently curious. “Self-centered. Here for a good time. 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.”

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

“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!

The Wedding Planner’s Big Day

Cara Colter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CARA COLTER shares her life in beautiful British Columbia, Canada, with her husband, nine horses and one small Pomeranian with a large attitude. She loves to hear from readers, and you can learn more about her and contact her through Facebook.

To all those readers who have made the past thirty years such an incredible journey.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

“NO.”

A paper fluttered down on her temporary desk, slowly floating past Becky English’s sunburned nose. She looked up, and tried not to let her reaction to what she saw—or rather, whom she saw—show on her face.

The rich and utterly sexy timbre of the voice should have prepared her, but it hadn’t. The man was gorgeous. Bristling with bad humor, but gorgeous, nonetheless.

He stood at least six feet tall, and his casual dress, a dark green sports shirt and pressed sand-colored shorts, showed off a beautifully made male body. He had the rugged look of a man who spent a great deal of time out of doors. There was no sunburn on his perfectly shaped nose!

He had a deep chest, a flat stomach and the narrow hips of a gunslinger. His limbs, relaxed, were sleekly muscled and hinted at easy strength.

The stranger’s face was mesmerizing. His hair, dark brown and curling, touched the collar of his shirt. His eyes were as blue as the Caribbean Sea that Becky could just glimpse out the open patio door over the incredible broadness of his shoulder.

Unlike that sea, his eyes did not look warm and inviting. In fact, there was that hint of a gunslinger, again, something cool and formidable in his uncompromising gaze. The look in his eyes did not detract, not in the least, from the fact that his features were astoundingly perfect.

“And no,” he said.

Another piece of paper drifted down onto her desk, this one landing on the keyboard of her laptop.

“And to this one?” he said. “Especially no.”

And then a final sheet glided down, hit the lip of the desk, forcing her to grab it before it slid to the floor.

Becky stared at him, rather than the paper in her hand. A bead of sweat trickled down from his temple and followed the line of his face, slowly, slowly, slowly down to the slope of a perfect jaw, where he swiped at it impatiently.

It was hot here on the small, privately owned Caribbean island of Sainte Simone. Becky resisted a temptation to swipe at her own sweaty brow with the back of her arm.

She found her voice. “Excuse me? And you are?”

He raised an arrogant eyebrow at her, which made her rush to answer for him.

“You must be one of Allie’s Hollywood friends,” Becky decided.

It seemed to her that only people in Allie’s field of work, acting on the big screen, achieved the physical beauty and perfection of the man in front of her. Only they seemed to be able to carry off that rather unsettling I-own-the-earth confidence that mere mortals had no hope of achieving. Besides, it was more than evident how the camera would love the gorgeous planes of his face, the line of his nose, the fullness of his lips...

“Are you?” she asked.

This was exactly why she had needed a guest list, but no, Allie had been adamant about that. She was looking after the guest list herself, and she did not want a single soul—up to and including her event planner, apparently—knowing the names of all the famous people who would be attending her wedding.

The man before Becky actually snorted in disgust, which was no kind of answer. Snorted. How could that possibly sound sexy?

“Of course, you are very early,” Becky told him, trying for a stern note. Why was her heart beating like that, as if she had just run a sprint? “The wedding isn’t for two weeks.”

It was probably exactly what she should be expecting. People with too much money and too much time on their hands were just going to start showing up on Sainte Simone whenever they pleased.

“I’m Drew Jordan.”

She must have looked as blank as she felt.

“The head carpenter for this circus.”

Drew. Jordan. Of course! How could she not have registered that? She was actually expecting him. He was the brother of Joe, the groom.

Well, he might be the head carpenter, but she was the ringmaster, and she was going to have to establish that fact, and fast.

“Please do not refer to Allie Ambrosia’s wedding as a circus,” the ringmaster said sternly. Becky was under strict orders word of the wedding was not to get out. She was not even sure that was possible, with two hundred guests, but if it did get out, she did not want it being referred to as a circus by the hired help. The paparazzi would pounce on that little morsel of insider information just a little too gleefully.

There was that utterly sexy snort again.

“It is,” she continued, just as sternly, “going to be the event of the century.”

She was quoting the bride-to-be, Hollywood’s latest “it” girl, Allie Ambrosia. She tried not to show that she, Becky English, small-town nobody, was just a little intimidated that she had been chosen to pull off that event of the century.

She now remembered Allie warning her about this very man who stood in front of her.

Allie had said, My future brother-in-law is going to head up construction. He’s a bit of a stick-in-the-mud. He’s a few years older than Joe, but he acts, like, seventy-five. I find him quite cranky. He’s the bear-with-the-sore-bottom type. Which explains why he isn’t married.

So, this was the future brother-in-law, standing in front of Becky, looking nothing at all like a stick-in-the-mud, or like a seventy-five-year-old. The bear-with-the-sore-bottom part was debatable.

With all those facts in hand, why was the one that stood out the fact that Drew Jordan was not married? And why would Becky care about that, at all?

Becky had learned there was an unexpected perk of being a wedding planner. She had named her company, with a touch of whimsy and a whole lot of wistfulness, Happily-Ever-After. However, her career choice had quickly killed what shreds of her romantic illusions had remained after the bitter end to her long engagement. She would be the first to admit she’d had far too many fairy-tale fantasies way back when she had been very young and hopelessly naive.

Flustered—here was a man who made a woman want to believe, all over again, in happy endings—but certainly not wanting to show it, Becky picked up the last paper Drew Jordan had cast down in front of her, the especially no one.

It was her own handiwork that had been cast so dismissively in front of her. Her careful, if somewhat rudimentary, drawing had a big black X right through the whole thing.

“But this is the pavilion!” she said. “Where are we supposed to seat two hundred guests for dinner?”

“The location is fine.”

Was she supposed to thank him for that? Somehow words, even sarcastic ones, were lost to her. She sputtered ineffectually.

“You can still have dinner at the same place, on the front lawn in front of this monstrosity. Just no pavilion.”

“This monstrosity is a castle,” Becky said firmly. Okay, she, too, had thought when she had first stepped off the private plane that had whisked her here that the medieval stone structure looked strangely out of place amidst the palms and tropical flowers. But over the past few days, it had been growing on her. The thick walls kept it deliciously cool inside and every room she had peeked in had the luxurious feel of a five-star hotel.

Besides, the monstrosity was big enough to host two hundred guests for the weeklong extravaganza that Allie wanted for her wedding, and monstrosities like that were very hard, indeed, to find.

With the exception of an on-site carpenter, the island getaway came completely staffed with people who were accustomed to hosting remarkable events. The owner was record mogul Bart Lung, and many a musical extravaganza had been held here. The very famous fund-raising documentary We Are the Globe, with its huge cast of musical royalty, had been completely filmed and recorded here.

But apparently all those people had eaten in the very expansive castle dining room, which Allie had said with a sniff would not do. She had her heart set on alfresco for her wedding feast.

“Are you saying you can’t build me a pavilion?” Becky tried for an intimidating, you-can-be-replaced tone of voice.

“Not can’t. Won’t. You have two weeks to get ready for the circus, not two years.”

He was not the least intimidated by her, and she suspected it was not just because he was the groom’s brother. She suspected it would take a great deal to intimidate Drew Jordan. He had that don’t-mess-with-me look about his eyes, a set to his admittedly sexy mouth that said he was far more accustomed to giving orders than to taking them.

She debated asking him, again, not to call it a circus, but that went right along with not being able to intimidate him. Becky could tell by the stubborn set of his jaw that she might as well save her breath. She decided levelheaded reason would win the day.

“It’s a temporary structure,” she explained, the epitome of calm, “and it’s imperative. What if we get inclement weather that day?”

Drew tilted his head at her and studied her for long enough that it was disconcerting.

“What?” she demanded.

“I’m trying to figure out if you’re part of her Cinderella group or not.”

Becky lifted her chin. Okay, so she wasn’t Hollywood gorgeous like Allie was, and today—sweaty, casual and sporting a sunburned nose—might not be her best day ever, but why would it be debatable whether she was part of Allie’s Cinderella group or not?

She didn’t even know what that was. Why did she want to belong to it, or at least seem as if she could?

“What’s a Cinderella group?” she asked.

“Total disconnect from reality,” he said, nodding at the plan in her hand. “You can’t build a pavilion that seats two hundred on an island where supplies have to be barged in. Not in two weeks, probably not even in two years.”

“It’s temporary,” she protested. “It’s creating an illusion, like a movie set.”

“You’re not one of her group,” he decided firmly, even though Becky had just clearly demonstrated her expertise about movie sets.

“How do you know?”

“Imperative,” he said. “Inclement.” His lips twitched, and she was aware it was her use of the language that both amused him and told him she was not part of Allie’s regular set. Really? She should not be relieved that it was vocabulary and not her looks that had set her apart from Allie’s gang.

“Anyway, inclement weather—”

Was he making fun of her?

“—is highly unlikely. I Googled it.”

She glanced at her laptop screen, which was already open on Google.

“This side of this island gets three days of rain per year,” he told her. “In the last forty-two years of record-keeping, would you care to guess how often it has rained on the Big Day, June the third?”

The way he said Big Day was in no way preferable to circus.

Becky glared at him to make it look as if she was annoyed that he had beat her to the facts. She drew her computer to her, as if she had no intention of taking his word for it, as if she needed to check the details of the June third weather report herself.

Her fingers, acting entirely on their own volition, without any kind of approval from her mind, typed in D-r-e-w J-o-r-d-a-n.

CHAPTER TWO

DREW REGARDED BECKY ENGLISH thoughtfully. He had expected a high-powered and sophisticated West Coast event specialist. Instead, the woman before him, with her sunburned nose and pulled-back hair, barely looked as if she was legal age.

In fact, she looked like an athletic teenager getting ready to go to practice with the high school cheer squad. Since she so obviously was not the image of the professional woman he’d expected, his first impression had been that she must be a young Hollywood hanger-on, being rewarded for loyalty to Allie Ambrosia with a job she was probably not qualified to do.

But no, the woman in front of him had nothing of slick Hollywood about her. The vocabulary threw his initial assessment. The way she talked—with the earnestness of a student preparing for the Scripps National Spelling Bee—made him think that the bookworm geeky girl had been crossed with the high school cheerleader. Who would have expected that to be such an intriguing combination?

Becky’s hair was a sandy shade of brown that looked virgin, as if it had never been touched by dye or blond highlights. It looked as if she had spent about thirty seconds on it this morning, scraping it back from her face and capturing it in an elastic band. It was a rather nondescript shade of brown, yet so glossy with good health, Drew felt a startling desire to touch it.

Her eyes were plain old brown, without a drop of makeup around them to make them appear larger, or wider, or darker, or greener. Her skin was pale, which would have been considered unfashionable in the land of endless summer that he came from. Even after only a few days in the tropics, most of which he suspected had been spent inside, the tip of her nose and her cheeks were glowing pink, and she was showing signs of freckling. There was a bit of a sunburn on her slender shoulders.

Her teeth were a touch crooked, one of the front ones ever so slightly overlapping the other one. It was oddly endearing. He couldn’t help but notice, as men do, that she was as flat as a board.

Drew Jordan’s developments were mostly in Los Angeles. People there—especially people who could afford to buy in his subdivisions—were about the furthest thing from real that he could think of.

The women he dealt with had the tiny noses and fat lips, the fake tans and the unwrinkled foreheads. They had every shade of blond hair and the astonishingly inflated breast lines. Their eyes were widened into a look of surgically induced perpetual surprise and their teeth were so white you needed sunglasses on to protect you from smiles.

Drew was not sure when he had become used to it all, but suddenly it seemed very evident to him why he had. There was something about all that fakeness that was safe to a dyed-in-the-wool bachelor such as himself.

The cheerleader bookworm girl behind the desk radiated something that was oddly threatening. In a world that seemed to celebrate phony everything, she seemed as if she was 100 percent real.

She was wearing a plain white tank top, and if he leaned forward just a little bit he could see cutoff shorts. Peeking out from under the desk was a pair of sneakers with startling pink laces in them.

“How did you get mixed up with Allie?” he asked. “You do not look the way I would expect a high-profile Hollywood event planner to look.”

“How would you expect one to look?” she countered, insulted.

“Not, um, wholesome.”

She frowned.

“Take it as a compliment,” he suggested.

She looked uncertain about that, but marshaled herself.

“I’ve run a very successful event planning company for several years,” she said with a proud toss of her head.

“In Los Angeles,” he said with flat disbelief.

“Well, no, not exactly.”

He waited.

She looked flustered, which he enjoyed way more than he should have. She glared at him. “My company serves Moose Run and the surrounding areas.”

Was she kidding? It sounded like a name Hollywood would invent to conjure visions of a quaintly rural and charming America that hardly existed anymore. But, no, she had that cute and geeky earnestness about her.

Still, he had to ask. “Moose Run? Seriously?”

“Look it up on Google,” she snapped.

“Where is it? The mountains of Appalachia?”

“I said look it up on Google.”

But when he crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow at her, she caved.

“Michigan,” she said tersely. “It’s a farm community in Michigan. It has a population of about fourteen thousand. Of course, my company serves the surrounding areas, as well.”

“Ah. Of course.”

“Don’t say ah like that!”

“Like what?” he said, genuinely baffled.

“Like that explains everything.”

“It does. It explains everything about you.”

“It does not explain everything about me!” she said. “In fact, it says very little about me.”

There were little pink spots appearing on her cheeks, above the sunburned spots.

“Okay,” he said, and put up his hands in mock surrender. Really, he should have left it there. He should keep it all business, let her know what she could and couldn’t do construction wise with severe time restraints, and that was it. His job done.

But Drew was enjoying flustering her, and the little pink spots on her cheeks.

“How old are you?” he asked.

She folded her arms over her own chest—battle stations—and squinted at him. “That is an inappropriate question. How old are you?” she snapped back.

“I’m thirty-one,” he said easily. “I only asked because you look sixteen, but not even Allie would be ridiculous enough to hire a sixteen-year-old to put together this cir—event—would she?”

“I’m twenty-three and Allie is not ridiculous!”

“She isn’t?”

His brother’s future wife had managed to arrange her very busy schedule—she was shooting a movie in Spain—to grant Drew an audience, once, on a brief return to LA, shortly after Joe had phoned and told him with shy and breathless excitement he was getting married.

Drew had not been happy about the announcement. His brother was twenty-one. To date, Joe hadn’t made many major decisions without consulting Drew, though Drew had been opposed to the movie-set building and Joe had gone ahead anyway.

And look where that had led. Because, in a hushed tone of complete reverence, Joe had told Drew who he was marrying.

Drew’s unhappiness had deepened. He had shared it with Joe. His normally easygoing, amenable brother had yelled at him.

Quit trying to control me. Can’t you just be happy for me?

And then Joe, who was usually happy-go-lucky and sunny in nature, had hung up on him. Their conversations since then had been brief and clipped.

Drew had agreed to meet Joe here and help with a few construction projects for the wedding, but he had a secret agenda. He needed to spend time with his brother. Face-to-face time. If he managed to talk some sense into him, all the better.

“I don’t suppose Joe is here yet?” he asked Becky with elaborate casualness.

“No.” She consulted a thick agenda book. “I have him arriving tomorrow morning, first thing. And Allie arriving the day of the wedding.”

Perfect. If he could get Joe away from Allie’s influence, his mission—to stop the wedding, or at least reschedule it until cooler heads prevailed—seemed to have a better chance of succeeding.

Drew liked to think he could read people—the woman in front of him being a case in point. But he had come away from his meeting with Allie Ambrosia feeling a disconcerting sense of not being able to read her at all.

Where’s my brother? Drew had demanded.

Allie Ambrosia had blinked at him. No need to make it sound like a kidnapping.

Which, of course, was exactly what Drew had been feeling it was, and that Allie Ambrosia was solely responsible for the new Joe, who could hang up on his brother and then ignore all his attempts to get in touch with him.

“Allie Ambrosia is sensitive and brilliant and sweet.”

Drew watched Becky with interest as the blaze of color deepened over her sunburn. She was going to rise to defend someone she perceived as the underdog, and that told him almost as much about her as the fact that she hailed from Moose Run, Michigan.

Drew was just not sure who would think of Allie Ambrosia as the underdog. He may have been frustrated about his inability to read his future sister-in-law, but neither sensitive nor sweet would have made his short list of descriptive adjectives. Though they probably would have for Becky, even after such a short acquaintance.

Allie? Brilliant, maybe. Though if she was it had not shown in her vocabulary. Still, he’d been aware of the possibility of great cunning. She had seemed to Drew to be able to play whatever role she wanted, the real person, whoever and whatever that was, hidden behind eyes so astonishingly emerald he’d wondered if she enhanced the color with contact lenses.

He’d come away from Allie frustrated. He had agreed to build some things for the damn wedding, hoping, he supposed, that this seeming capitulation to his brother’s plans would open the door to communication between them and he could talk some sense into Joe.

He’d have his chance tomorrow. Today, he could unabashedly probe the secrets of the woman his brother had decided to marry.

“And you would know Allie is sensitive and brilliant and sweet, why?” he asked Becky, trying not to let on just how pleased he was to have found someone who actually seemed to know Allie.

“We went to school together.”

Better still. Someone who knew Allie before she’d caught her big break playing Peggy in a sleeper of a movie called Apple Mountain.

“Allie Ambrosia grew up in Moose Run, Michigan?” He prodded her along. “That is not in the official biography.”

He thought Becky was going to clam up, careful about saying anything about her boss and old school chum, but her need to defend won out.

“Her Moose Run memories may not be her fondest ones,” Becky offered, a bit reluctantly.

“I must say Allie has come a long way from Moose Run,” he said.

“How do you know? How well do you know Allie?”

“I admit I’m assuming, since I hardly know her at all,” Drew said. “This is what I know. She’s had a whirlwind relationship with my little brother, who is building a set on one of her movies. They’ve known each other weeks, not months. And suddenly they are getting married. It can’t last, and this is an awful lot of money and time and trouble to go to for something that can’t last.”

“You’re cynical,” she said, as if that was a bad thing.

“We can’t all come from Moose Run, Michigan.”

She squinted at him, not rising to defend herself, but staying focused on him, which made him very uncomfortable. “You are really upset that they are getting married.”

He wasn’t sure he liked that amount of perception. He didn’t say anything.

“Actually, I think you don’t like weddings, period.”

“What is this, a party trick? You can read my mind?” He intended it to sound funny, but he could hear a certain amount of defensiveness in his tone.

“So, it’s true then.”

“Big deal. Lots of men don’t like weddings.”

“Why is that?”

He frowned at her. He wanted to ferret out some facts about Allie, or talk about construction. He was comfortable talking about construction, even on an ill-conceived project like this. He was a problem solver. He was not comfortable discussing feelings, which an aversion to weddings came dangerously close to.

“They just don’t like them,” he said stubbornly. “Okay, I don’t like them.”

“I’m curious about who made you your brother’s keeper,” she said. “Shouldn’t your parents be talking to him about this?”

“Our parents are dead.”

When something softened in her face, he deliberately hardened himself against it.

“Oh,” Becky said quietly, “I’m so sorry. So you, as older brother, are concerned, and at the same time have volunteered to help out. That’s very sweet.”

“Let’s get something straight right now. There is nothing sweet about me.”

“So why did you agree to help at all?”

He shrugged. “Brothers help each other.”

Joe’s really upset by your reaction to our wedding, Allie had told him. If you agreed to head up the construction, he would see it was just an initial reaction of surprise and that of course you want what is best for your own brother.

Oh, he wanted what was best for Joe, all right. Something must have flashed across Drew’s face, because Becky’s brow lowered.

“Are you going to try to stop the wedding?” she asked suspiciously.

Had he telegraphed his intention to Allie, as well? “Joe’s all grown up, and capable of making up his own mind. But so am I. And it seems like a crazy, impulsive decision he’s made.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“You’d think he would have asked me what I thought,” Drew offered grimly.

A certain measure of pain escaped in that statement, and so he frowned at Becky, daring her to give him sympathy.

Thankfully, she did not even try. “Is this why I can’t have the pavilion? Are you trying to sabotage the whole thing?”

“No,” he said curtly. “I’ll do what I can to give my brother and his beloved a perfect day. If he comes to his senses before then—” He lifted a shoulder.

“If he changes his mind, that would be a great deal of time and money down the tubes,” Becky said.

Drew lifted his shoulder again. “I’m sure you would still get paid.”

“That’s hardly the point!”

“It’s the whole point of running a business.” He glanced at her and sighed. “Please don’t tell me you do it for love.”

Love.

Except for what he felt for his brother, his world was comfortably devoid of that pesky emotion. He was sorry he’d even mentioned the word in front of Becky English.

CHAPTER THREE

“SINCE YOU BROUGHT it up,” Becky said solemnly, “I got the impression from Allie that she and your brother are head over heels in love with one another.”

“Humph.” There was no question his brother was over the moon, way past the point where he could be counted on to make a rational decision. Allie was more difficult to interpret. Allie was an actress. She pretended for a living. It seemed to Drew his brother’s odds of getting hurt were pretty good.

“Joe could have done worse,” Becky said, quietly. “She’s a beautiful, successful woman.”

“Yeah, there’s that.”

“There’s that cynicism again.”

Cynical. Yes, that described Drew Jordan to an absolute T. And he liked being around people who were as hard-edged as him. Didn’t he?

“Look, my brother is twenty-one years old. That’s a little young to be making this kind of decision.”

“You know, despite your barely contained scorn for Moose Run, Michigan, it’s a traditional place where they love nothing more than a wedding. I’ve planned dozens of them.”

Drew had to bite his tongue to keep from crushing her with a sarcastic Dozens?

“I’ve been around this for a while,” she continued. “Take it from me. Age is no guarantee of whether a marriage is going to work out.”

“He’s known her about eight weeks, as far as I can tell!” He was confiding his doubts to a complete stranger, which was not like him. It was even more unlike him to be hoping this wet-behind-the-ears country girl from Moose Run, Michigan, might be able to shed some light on his brother’s mysterious, flawed decision-making process. This was why he liked being around people as not sweet as himself. There was no probing of the secrets of life.

“That doesn’t seem to reflect on how the marriage is going to work out, either.”

“Well, what does then?”

“When I figure it out, I’m going to bottle it and sell it,” she said. There was that earnestness again. “But I’ve planned the weddings of lots of young people who are still together. Young people have big dreams and lots of energy. You need that to buy your first house and have your first baby, and juggle three jobs and—”

“Baby?” Drew said, horrified. “Is she pregnant?” That would explain his brother’s rush to the altar of love.

“I don’t think so,” Becky said.

“But you don’t know for certain.”

“It’s none of my business. Or yours. But even if she is, lots of those kinds of marriages make it, too. I’ve planned weddings for people who have known each other for weeks, and weddings for people who have known each other for years. I planned one wedding for a couple who had lived together for sixteen years. They were getting a divorce six months later. But I’ve seen lots of marriages that work.”

“And how long has your business been running?”

“Two years,” she said.

For some reason, Drew was careful not to be quite as sarcastic as he wanted to be. “So, you’ve seen lots that work for two years. Two years is hardly a testament to a solid relationship.”

“You can tell,” she said stubbornly. “Some people are going to be in love forever.”

Her tone sounded faintly wistful. Something uncomfortable shivered along his spine. He had a feeling he was looking at one of those forever kinds of girls. The kind who were not safe to be around at all.

Though it would take more than a sweet girl from Moose Run to penetrate the armor around his hard heart. He felt impatient with himself for the direction of his thoughts. Wasn’t it proof that she was already penetrating something since they were having this discussion that had nothing to do with her unrealistic building plans?

Drew shook off the feeling and fixed Becky with a particularly hard look.

“Sheesh, maybe you are a member of the Cinderella club, after all.”

“Despite the fact I run a company called Happily-Ever-After—”

He closed his eyes. “That’s as bad as Moose Run.”

“It is a great name for an event planning company.”

“I think I’m getting a headache.”

“But despite my company name, I have long since given up on fairy tales.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her. “Uh-huh,” he said, loading those two syllables with doubt.

“I have!”

“Lady, even before I heard the name of your company, I could tell that you have ‘I’m waiting for my prince to come’ written all over you.”

“I do not.”

“You’ve had a heartbreak.”

“I haven’t,” she said. She was a terrible liar.

“Maybe it wasn’t quite a heartbreak. A romantic disappointment.”

“Now who is playing the mind reader?”

“Aha! I was right, then.”

She glared at him.

“You’ll get over it. And then you’ll be in the prince market all over again.”

“I won’t.”

“I’m not him, by the way.”

“Not who?”

“Your prince.”

“Of all the audacious, egotistical, ridiculous—”

“Just saying. I’m not anybody’s prince.”

“You know what? It is more than evident you could not be mistaken for Prince Charming even if you had a crown on your head and tights and golden slippers!”

Now that he’d established some boundaries, he felt he could tease her just a little. “Please tell me you don’t like men who wear tights.”

“What kind of man I like is none of your business!”

“Correct. It’s just that we will be working in close proximity. My shirt has been known to come off. It has been known to make women swoon.” He smiled.

He was enjoying this way more than he had a right to, but it was having the desired effect, putting up a nice big wall between them, and he hadn’t even had to barge in the construction material to do it.

“I’m not just getting a headache,” she said. “I’ve had one since you marched through my door.”

“Oh, great,” he said. “There’s nothing I like as much as a little competition. Let’s see who can give who a bigger headache.”

“The only way I could give you a bigger headache than the one you are giving me is if I smashed this lamp over your head.”

Her hand actually came to rest on a rather heavy-looking brass lamp on the corner of her desk. It was evident to him that she would have loved to do just that if she wasn’t such a prim-and-proper type.

“I’m bringing out the worst in you,” he said with satisfaction. She looked at her hand, resting on the lamp, and looked so appalled with herself that Drew did the thing he least wanted to do. He laughed.

* * *

Becky snatched her hand back from the brass lamp, annoyed with herself, miffed that she was providing amusement for the very cocky Mr. Drew Jordan. She was not the type who smashed people over the head with lamps. Previously, she had not even been the type who would have ever thought about such a thing. She had dealt with some of the world’s—or at least Michigan’s—worst Bridezillas, and never once had she laid hand to lamp. It was one of the things she prided herself in. She kept her cool.

But Drew Jordan had that look of a man who could turn a girl inside out before she even knew what had hit her. He could make a woman who trusted her cool suddenly aware that fingers of heat were licking away inside her, begging for release. And it was disturbing that he knew it!

He was laughing at her. It was super annoying that instead of being properly indignant, steeling herself against attractions that he was as aware of as she was, she could not help but notice how cute he was when he laughed—that sternness stripped from his face, an almost boyish mischievousness lurking underneath.

She frowned at her computer screen, pretending she was getting down to business and that she had called up the weather to double-check his facts. Instead, she learned her head of construction was also the head of a multimillion-dollar Los Angeles development company.

The bride’s future brother-in-law was not an out-of-work tradesman that Becky could threaten to fire. He ran a huge development company in California. No wonder he seemed to be impatient at being pressed into the service of his very famous soon-to-be sister-in-law.

No wonder he’d been professional enough to Google the weather. Becky wondered why she hadn’t thought of doing that. It was nearly the first thing she did for every event.

It was probably because she was being snowed under by Allie’s never-ending requests. Just now she was trying to find a way to honor Allie’s casually thrown-out email, received that morning, which requested freshly planted lavender tulips—picture attached—to line the outdoor aisle she would walk down toward her husband-to-be.

Google, that knowledge reservoir of all things, told Becky she could not have lavender tulips—or any kind of tulip for that matter—in the tropics in June.

What Google confirmed for her now was not the upcoming weather forecast or the impossibility of lavender tulips, but that Drew Jordan was used to million-dollar budgets.

Becky, on the other hand, had started shaking when she had opened the promised deposit check from Allie. Up until then, it had seemed to her that maybe she was being made the butt of a joke. But that check—made out to Happily-Ever-After—had been for more money than she had ever seen in her life.

With trembling fingers she had dialed the private cell number Allie had provided.

“Is this the budget?”

“No, silly, just the deposit.”

“What exactly is your budget?” Becky had asked. Her voice had been shaking as badly as her fingers.

“Limitless,” Allie had said casually. “And I fully intend to exceed it. You don’t think I’m going to be outdone by Roland Strump’s daughter, do you?”

“Allie, maybe you should hire whoever did the Strump wedding, I—”

“Nonsense. Have fun with it, for Pete’s sake. Haven’t you ever had fun? I hope you and Drew don’t manage to bring down the mood of the whole wedding. Sourpusses.”

Sourpuss? She was studious to be sure, but sour? Becky had put down the phone contemplating that. Had she ever had fun? Even at Happily-Ever-After, planning fun events for other people was very serious business, indeed.

Well, now she knew who Drew was. And Allie had been right when it came to him. He could definitely be a sourpuss! It was more worrying that he planned to take off his shirt. She had to get back to business.

“Mr. Jordan—”

“Drew is fine. And what should I call you?”

Barnum. “Becky is fine. We can’t just throw a bunch of tables out on the front lawn as if this were the church picnic.”

“We’re back to that headache.” His lips twitched. “I’m afraid my experience with church picnics has been limited.”

Yes, it was evident he was all devilish charm and dark seduction, while it was written all over her that that was what she came from: church picnics and 4-H clubs, a place where the Fourth of July fireworks were the event of the year.

She shifted her attention to the second no. “And we absolutely need some sort of dance floor. Have you ever tried to dance on grass? Or sand?”

“I’m afraid,” Drew said, “that falls outside of the realm of my experience, too. And you?”

“Oh, you know,” she said. “We like to dust up our heels after the church picnic.”

He nodded, as if that was more than evident to him and he had missed her sarcasm completely.

She focused on his third veto. She looked at her clumsy drawing of a small gazebo on the beach. She had envisioned Allie and Joe saying their vows under it, while their guests sat in beautiful lightweight chairs looking at them and the sea beyond them.

“And what’s your complaint with this one?”

“I’ll forgive you this oversight because of where you are from.”

“Oversight?”

“I wouldn’t really expect a girl from Michigan to have foreseen this. The wedding—” he managed to fill that single word with a great deal of contempt “—according to my notes, is supposed to take place at 4:00 p.m. on June third.”

“Correct.”

“If you Google the tide chart for that day, you’ll see that your gazebo would have water lapping up to the third stair. I’m not really given to omens, but I would probably see that as one.”

She was feeling very tired of Google, except in the context of learning about him. It seemed to her he was the kind of man who brought out the weakness in a woman, even one who had been made as cynical as she had been. Because she felt she could ogle him all day long. And he knew it, she reminded herself.

“So,” she said, a little more sharply than intended, “what do you suggest?”

“If we scratch the pavilion for two hundred—”

“I can get more people to help you.”

He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “I can probably build you a rudimentary gazebo at a different location.”

“What about the dance floor?”

“I’ll think about it.”

He said that as if he were the boss, not her. From what she had glimpsed about him on the internet he was very used to being in charge. And he obviously knew his stuff, and was good with details. He had spotted the weather and the tides, after all. Really, she should be grateful. What if her bride had marched down her tulip-lined aisle—or whatever the aisle ended up being lined with—to a wedding gazebo that was slowly being swallowed by water?

It bothered her to even think it, but Drew Jordan was right. That would have been a terrible omen.

Still, gratitude was not what Becky felt. Not at all.

“You are winning the headache contest by a country mile,” she told him.

“I’m no kind of expert on the country,” he said, without regret, “but I am competitive.”

“What did Allie tell you? Are you in charge of construction?”

“Absolutely.”

He said it too quickly and with that self-assured smile of a man way too used to having his own way, particularly with the opposite sex.

“I’m going to have to call Allie and see what that means,” Becky said, steeling herself against that smile. “I’m happy to leave construction to you, but I think I should have the final word on what we are putting up and where.”

“I’m okay with that. As long as it’s reasonable.”

“I’m sure we define that differently.”

He flashed his teeth at her again. “I’m sure we do.”

“Would it help you do your job if I brought more people on-site? Carpenters and such?”

“That’s a great idea, but I don’t work with strangers. Joe and I have worked together a lot. He’ll be here tomorrow.”

“That wouldn’t be very romantic, him building the stuff for his own wedding.”

“Or you could see it as him putting an investment and some effort into his own wedding.”

She sighed. “You want him here so you can try to bully him out of getting married.”

“I resent the implication I would bully him.”

But Becky was stunned to see doubt flash across those self-confident features. “He isn’t talking to you, is he?” Becky guessed softly.

She could tell Drew was not accustomed to this level of perception. He didn’t like it one little bit.

“I have one of my teams arriving soon. And Joe. I’m here a day early to do some initial assessments. What I need is for you to pick the site for the exchange of vows so that I can put together a plan. We don’t have as much time as you think.”

Which was truly frightening, because she did not think they had any time at all. Becky looked at her desk: flowers to be ordered, ceremony details to be finalized, accommodations to be organized, boat schedules, food, not just for the wedding feast, but for the week to follow, and enough staff to pull off pampering two hundred people.

“And don’t forget fireworks,” she added.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing,” she muttered. She did not want to be thinking of fireworks around a man like Drew Jordan. Her eyes drifted to his lips. If she were ever to kiss someone like that, it would be the proverbial fireworks. And he knew it, too. That was why he was smiling evilly at her!

Suddenly, it felt like nothing in the world would be better than to get outside away from this desk—and from him—and see this beautiful island. So far, she had mostly experienced it by looking out her office window. The sun would be going down soon. She could find a place to hold the wedding and watch the sun go down.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll find a new site. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve got it.”

“Let’s do it together. That might save us some grief.”

She was not sure that doing anything with him was going to save her some grief. She needed to get away from him...and the thoughts of fireworks he had caused.

CHAPTER FOUR

“I’D PREFER TO do it on my own,” Becky said, even though it seemed ungracious to say so. She felt a need to establish who was running the cir—show.

“But here’s the problem,” Drew said with annoying and elaborate patience.

“Yes?”

“You’ll pick a site on your own, and then I’ll go look at it and say no, and so then you’ll pick another site on your own, and I’ll go look at it and say no.”

She scowled at him. “You’re being unnecessarily negative.”

He shrugged. “I’m just making the point that we could, potentially, go on like that endlessly, and there is a bit of a time crunch here.”

“I think you just like using the word no,” she said grumpily.

“Yes,” he said, deadpan, as if he was not being deliberately argumentative now.

She should argue that she was quite capable of picking the site by herself and that she had no doubt her next selection would be fine, but her first choice was not exactly proof of that. And besides, then who would be the argumentative one?

“It’s too late today,” Drew decided. “Joe’s coming in on the first flight. Why don’t we pick him up and the three of us will pick a site that works for the gazebo?”

“Yes, that would be fine,” she said, aware her voice was snapping with ill grace. Really, it was an opportunity. Tomorrow morning she would not scrape her hair back into a careless ponytail. She would apply makeup to hide how her fair skin, fresh out of a Michigan winter, was already blotchy from the sun.

* * *

Should she wear her meet-the-potential-client suit, a cream-colored linen by a famous designer? That would certainly make a better impression than shorty-shorts and a sleeveless tank that could be mistaken for underwear!

But the following morning it was already hot, and there was no dry cleaner on the island to take a sweat-drenched dress to.

Aware she was putting way too much effort into her appearance, Becky donned white shorts and a sleeveless sun-yellow shirt. She put on makeup and left her hair down. And then she headed out of her room.

She met Drew on the staircase.

He looked unreasonably gorgeous!

“Good morning,” she said. She was stupidly pleased by how his eyes trailed to her hair and her faintly glossed lips.

He returned her greeting gruffly and then went down the stairs in front of her, taking them two at a time. But he stopped and held open the main door for her. They were hit by a wall of heat.

“It’s going to be even hotter in two weeks,” Drew told her, when he watched her pause and draw in her breath on the top stair of the castle.

“Must you be so negative?”

“Pragmatic,” he insisted. “Plus...”

“Don’t tell me. I already know. You looked it up. That’s how you know it will be even hotter in two weeks.”

He nodded, pleased with himself.

“Keep it up,” she warned him, “and you’ll have to present me with the prize. A king-size bottle of headache relief.”

They stood at the main door to the castle, huge half circles of granite forming a staircase down to a sparkling expanse of emerald lawn. The lawn was edged with a row of beautifully swaying palm trees, and beyond that was a crescent of powdery white sand beach.

“That beach looks so much less magical now that I know it’s going to be underwater at four o’clock on June the third.”

* * *

Drew glanced at Becky. She looked older and more sophisticated with her hair down and makeup on. She had gone from cute to attractive.

It occurred to Drew that Becky was the kind of woman who brought out things in a man that he would prefer to think he didn’t have. Around a woman like this a man could find himself wanting to protect himself—and her—from disappointments. That’s all he wanted for Joe, too, not to bully him but to protect him.

He’d hated that question, the one he hadn’t answered. Had he bullied his brother? He hoped not. But the sad truth was Joe had been seven when Drew, seventeen, was appointed his guardian. Drew had floundered, in way over his head, and he’d resorted to doing whatever needed to be done to get his little brother through childhood.

No wonder his brother was so hungry for love that he’d marry the first beautiful woman who blinked sideways at him.

Unless he could talk some sense into him. He cocked his head. He was pretty sure he could hear the plane coming.

“How hot is it supposed to be on June third?” she asked. He could hear the reluctance to even ask in her voice.

“You know that expression? Hotter than Hades—”

“Never mind. I get it. All the more reason that we really need the pavilion,” she said. “We’ll need protection from the sun. I planned to have the tables running this way, so everyone could just turn their heads and see the ocean as the sun is going down. The head table could be there, at the bottom of the stairs. Imagine the bride and groom coming down that staircase to join their guests.”

Her voice had become quite dreamy. Had she really tried to tell him she was not a romantic? He knew he’d pegged it. She’d had some kind of setback in the romance department, but inside her was still a giddy girl with unrealistic dreams about her prince coming. He had to make sure she knew that was not him.

“Well, I already told you, you can’t have that,” he said gruffly. He did not enjoy puncturing her dream as much as he wanted to. He did not enjoy being mean as much as he would have liked. He told himself it was for her own good.

He was good at doing things for other people’s own good. You could ask Joe, though his clumsy attempts at parenting were no doubt part of why his brother was running off half-cocked to get married.

“I’m sure we can figure out something,” Becky said of her pavilion dream.

“We? No, we can’t.”

This was better. They were going to talk about practicalities, as dream-puncturing as those could be!

The plane was circling now, and they moved toward the airstrip.

He continued, “What you’re talking about is an open, expansive structure with huge unsupported spans. You’d need an architect and an engineer.”

“I have a tent company I use at home,” Becky said sadly, “but they are booked nearly a year in advance. I’ve tried a few others. Same story. Plus, the planes that can land here aren’t big enough to carry that much canvas, and you have to book the supply barge. There’s only one with a flat enough bottom to dock here. An unlimited budget can’t get you what you might think.”

“Unlimited?” He heard the horror in his voice.

She ignored him. “Are you sure I’d need an architect and an engineer, even for something so temporary?”

He slid her a look. She looked quite deflated by all this.

“Especially for something so temporary,” he told her. “I’m sure the last thing Allie wants is to be making the news for the collapse of her wedding pavilion. I can almost see the headlines now. ‘Three dead, one hundred and eighty-seven injured, event planner and building contractor missing.’”

He heard her little gasp and glanced at her. She was blushing profusely.

“Not missing like that,” he said.

“Like what?” she choked.

“Like whatever thought is making you blush like that.”

“I’m not blushing. The sun has this effect on me.”

“Sheesh,” he said, as if she had not denied the blush at all. “It’s not as if I said that while catastrophe unfolded all around them, the event planner and the contractor went missing together.”

“I said I wasn’t blushing! I never would have thought about us together in any way.” Her blush deepened.

He watched her. “You aren’t quite the actress that your employer is.”

“I am not thinking of us together,” she insisted. Her voice was just a little shrill. He realized he quite enjoyed teasing her.

“No?” he said, silkily. “You and I seeking shelter under a palm frond while disaster unfolds all around us?”

Her eyes moved skittishly to his lips and then away. He took advantage of her looking away to study her lips in profile. They were plump little plums, ripe for picking. He was almost sorry he had started this. Almost.

“You’re right. You are not a prince. You are evil,” she decided, looking back at him. There was a bit of reluctant laughter lurking in her eyes.

He twirled an imaginary moustache. “Yes, I am. Just waiting for an innocent from Moose Run, Michigan, to cross my path so that in the event of a tropical storm, and a building collapse, I will still be entertained.”

A little smile tugged at the lips he had just noticed were quite luscious. He was playing a dangerous game.

“Seriously,” she said, and he had a feeling she was the type who did not indulge in lighthearted banter for long, “Allie doesn’t want any of this making the news. I’m sure she told you the whole wedding is top secret. She does not want helicopters buzzing her special day.”

Drew felt a bit cynical about that. Anyone who wanted a top secret wedding did not invite two hundred people to it. Still, he decided, now might not be the best time to tell Becky a helicopter buzzing might be the least of her worries. When he’d left the States yesterday, all the entertainment shows had been buzzing with the rumors of Allie’s engagement.

Was the famous actress using his brother—and everyone else, including small-town Becky English—to ensure Allie Ambrosia was front and center in the news just as her new movie was coming out?

Even though it went somewhat against his blunt nature, the thought that Becky might be being played made Drew soften his bad news a bit. “This close to the equator it’s fully dark by six o’clock. The chance of heatstroke for your two hundred guests should be minimized by that.”

They took a path through some dense vegetation. On the other side was the airstrip.

“Great,” she said testily, though she was obviously relieved they were going to discuss benign things like the weather. “Maybe I can create a kind of ‘room’ feeling if I circle the area with torches and dress up the tables with linens and candles and flowers and hope for the best.”

“Um, about the torches? And candles?” He squinted at the plane touching down on the runway.

“What?”

“According to Google, the trade winds seem to pick up in the late afternoon. And early evening. Without any kind of structure to protect from the wind, I think they’ll just blow out. Or worse.”

“So, first you tell me I can’t have a structure, and then you tell me all the problems I can expect because I don’t have a structure?”

He shrugged. “One thing does tend to lead to another.”

“If the wind is strong enough to blow out the candles, we could have other problems with it, too.”

“Oh, yeah, absolutely. Tablecloths flying off tables. Women’s dresses blowing up over their heads. Napkins catching fire. Flower arrangements being smashed. There’s really a whole lot of things people should think about before planning their wedding on a remote island in the tropics.”

Becky glared at him. “You know what? I barely know you and I hate you already.”

He nodded. “I have that effect on a lot of people.”

He watched the plane taxi toward them and grind to a halt in front of them.

“I’m sure you do,” she said snippily.

“Does this mean our date under the palm frond is off?”

“It was never on!”

“You should think about it—the building collapsed, the tablecloths on fire, women’s dresses blowing over their heads as they run shrieking...”

“Please stop.”

But he couldn’t. He could tell he very nearly had her where he wanted her. Why did he feel so driven to make little Miss Becky English angry? But also to make her laugh?

“And you and me under a palm frond, licking wedding cake off each other’s fingers.”

At first she looked appalled. But then a smile tickled her lips. And then she giggled. And then she was laughing. In a split second, every single thing about her seemed transformed. She went from plain to pretty.

Very pretty.

This was exactly what he had wanted: to glimpse what the cool Miss English would look like if she let go of control.

It was more dangerous than Drew had anticipated. It made him want to take it a step further, to make her laugh harder or to take those little lips underneath his and...

He reminded himself she was not the type of girl he usually invited out to play. Despite the fact she was being relied on to put on a very sophisticated event, there didn’t seem to be any sophistication about her.

He had already figured out there was a heartbreak in her past. That was the only reason a girl as apple pie as her claimed to be jaundiced about romance. He could tell it wasn’t just dealing with people’s wedding insanity that had made her want to be cynical, even as it was all too evident she was not. He had seen the truth in the dreamy look when she had started talking about how she wanted it all to go.

He could tell by looking at her exactly what she needed, and it wasn’t a job putting together other people’s fantasies.

It was a husband who adored her. And three children. And a little house where she could sew curtains for the windows and tuck bright annuals into the flower beds every year.

It was whatever the perfect life in Moose Run, Michigan, looked like.

Drew knew he could never give her those things. Never. He’d experienced too much loss and too much responsibility in his life.

Still, there was one thing a guy as jaundiced as him did not want or need. To be stuck on a deserted island with a female whose laughter could turn her from a plain old garden-variety girl next door into a goddess in the blink of an eye.

He turned from her quickly and watched as the door of the plane opened. The crew got off, opened the cargo hold and began unloading stuff beside the runway.

He frowned. No Joe.

He took his phone out of his pocket and stabbed in a text message. He pushed Send, but the island did not have great service in all places. The message to his brother did not go through.

Becky was searching his face, which he carefully schooled not to show his disappointment.

“I guess we’ll have to find that spot ourselves. Joe will probably come on the afternoon flight. Let’s see what we can find this way.”

Instead of following the lawn to where it dropped down to the beach, he followed it north to a line of palm trees. A nice wide trail dipped into them, and he took it.

“It’s like jungle in here,” she said.

“Think of the possibilities. Joe could swing down from a vine. In a loincloth. Allie could be waiting for him in a tree house, right here.”

“No, no and especially no,” she said.

He glanced behind him. She had stopped to look at a bright red hibiscus. She plucked it off and tucked it behind her ear.

“In the tropics,” he told her, “when you wear a flower behind your ear like that, it means you are available. You wouldn’t want the cook getting the wrong idea.”

She glared at him, plucked the flower out and put it behind her other ear.

“Now it means you’re married.”

“There’s no winning, is there?” she asked lightly.

No, there wasn’t. The flower looked very exotic in her hair. It made him very aware, again, of the enchantment of tropical islands. He turned quickly from her and made his way down the path.

After about five minutes in the deep shade of the jungle, they came out to another beach. It was exposed to the wind, which played in the petals of the flower above her ear, lifted her bangs from her face and pressed her shirt to her.

“Oh,” she called, “it’s beautiful.”

She had to shout because unlike the beach the castle overlooked, this one was not in a protected cove.

It was a beautiful beach. A surfer would probably love it, but it would have to be a good surfer. There were rocky outcrops stretching into the water that looked like they would be painful to hit and hard to avoid.

“It’s too loud,” he said over the crashing of the waves. “They’d be shouting their vows.”

He turned and went back into the shaded jungle. For some reason, he thought she would just follow him, and it took him a few minutes to realize he was alone.

He turned and looked. The delectable Miss Becky English was nowhere to be seen. He went back along the path, annoyed. Hadn’t he made it perfectly clear they had time constraints?

When he got back out to the beach, his heart went into his throat. She had climbed up onto one of the rocky outcrops. She was standing there, bright as the sun in that yellow shirt, as a wave smashed on the rock just beneath her. Her hands were held out and her face lifted to the spray of white foam it created. With the flower in her hair, she looked more like a goddess than ever, performing some ritual to the sea.

Did she know nothing of the ocean? Of course she didn’t. They had already established that. That, coming from Moose Run, there were things she could not know about.

“Get down from there,” he shouted. “Becky, get down right now.”

He could see the second wave building, bigger than the first that had hit the rock. The waves would come in sets. And the last wave in the set would be the biggest.

The wind swallowed his voice, though she turned and looked at him. She smiled and waved. He could see the surf rising behind her alarmingly. The second wave hit the rock. She turned away from him, and hugged herself in delight as the spray fell like thick mist all around her.

“Get away from there,” he shouted. She turned and gave him a puzzled look. He started to run.

Becky had her back to the third wave when it hit. It hit the backs of her legs. Drew saw her mouth form a surprised O, and then her arms were flailing as she tried to regain her balance. The wave began pulling back, with at least as much force as it had come in with. It yanked her off the rock as if she were a rag doll.

CHAPTER FIVE

BECKY FELT THE shocked helplessness as her feet were jerked out from under her and she was swept off the rock. The water closed over her head and filled her mouth and nose. She popped back up like a cork, but her swimming skills were rudimentary, and she was not sure they would have helped her against the fury of the sea. She was being pulled out into what seemed to be an endless abyss. She tried frantically to swim back in toward shore. In seconds she was as exhausted as she had ever been.

I’m going to drown, she thought, stunned, choking on water and fear. How had this happened? One moment life had seemed so pleasant and beautiful and then...it was over.

Her life was going to be over. She waited, helplessly, for it to flash before her eyes. Instead, she found herself thinking that Drew had been right. It hadn’t been a heartbreak. It had been a romantic disappointment. Ridiculous to think that right now, but on the other hand, right now seemed as good a time as any to be acutely and sadly aware of things she had missed.

“Hey!” His voice carried over the crashing of the sea. “Hang on.”

Becky caught a glimpse of the rock she had fallen off. Drew was up there. And then she went under the water again.

When she surfaced, Drew was in the water, slashing through the roll of the waves toward her. “Don’t panic,” he called over the roar of the water pounding the rock outcropping.

She wanted to tell him it was too late for that. She was already panicked.

“Tread,” he yelled. “Don’t try to swim. Not yet. Look at my face. Nowhere else. Look at me.”

Her eyes fastened on his face. There was strength and calm in his features, as if he did this every day. He was close to her now.

“I’m going to come to you,” he shouted, “but you have to be calm first. If you panic, you will kill us both.”

It seemed his words, and the utter strength and determination in his face, poured a honey of calm over her, despite the fact she was still bobbing like a cork in a ravaged sea. He seemed to see or sense the moment she stopped panicking, and he moved in close.

She nearly sobbed with relief when Drew reached out and touched her, then folded his arms around her and pulled her in tight to him. He was strong in the water—she suspected, abstractly, he was strong everywhere in his life—and she rested into his embrace, surrendering to his warmth. She could feel the power of him in his arms and where she was pressed into the wet slickness of his chest.

“Just let it carry you,” he said. “Don’t fight it anymore”

It seemed as if he could be talking about way more than water. It could be a message about life.

It seemed the water carried them out forever, but eventually it dumped them in a calmer place, just beyond where the waves began to crest. Becky could feel the water lose its grip on her, even as he refused to.

She never took her eyes off his face. Her mind seemed to grow calmer and calmer, even amused. If this was the last thing she would see, it told her, that wasn’t so bad.

“Okay,” he said, “can you swim?”

“Dog paddle.” The water was not cold, but her voice was shaking.

“That will do. Swim that way. Do your best. I’ve got you if you get tired.” He released her.

That way was not directly to the shore. He was asking her to swim parallel to the shore instead of in. But she tried to do as he asked. She was soon floundering, so tired she could not lift her arms.

“Roll over on your back,” he said, and she did so willingly. His hand cupped her chin and she was being pulled through the water. He was an enormously strong swimmer.

“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.

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