They’d found her strappy white sandals, and an urgently called beautician had threaded white ribbons through her auburn hair and applied make-up. Just a little. ‘With that tan and that complexion you need to cover nothing. Oh, my dear, you look so beautiful.’
And she did. The Peta who stared back at herself from the long mirror in the bridal parlour seemed unrecognisable.
Then, at Peta’s insistence, the bridal team had turned their attention to Ruby because, ‘If I’m doing this, then so are you!’ Protesting but laughing, Ruby had allowed herself to be talked into a pale blue suit of the finest shantung. The sales-girls had found the dearest little hat and matching shoes; the beautician had decided there was time to give Ruby’s curls the most modish of cuts, and Ruby had ended up almost as dazed as Peta.
The team in the bridal parlour had arranged a car to bring them here-a white limousine!-they’d organised white orchids, and at the last minute they’d thrust champagne glasses into their hands and they’d poured champagne for themselves as the limousine departed towards their date with Marcus.
‘And I bet they put that on Marcus’s bill,’ Ruby whispered. They sipped their champagne; they looked at themselves in stunned awe-and then they did what any sane, mature women would have done in the same position.
They giggled.
On arrival, they’d learned that Marcus wasn’t there yet but Darrell was-Marcus’s sergeant. He’d done them proud as well, dressed in full military regalia, looking so gorgeous that Peta hardly noticed the scars on his burned face.
‘I’m real happy for you,’ Darrell told her. ‘Marcus deserves someone to make him happy. He was so damned good to me…’
He broke off, choked, and Peta knew how he felt.
She was pretty choked herself.
‘You’re sure he’ll come?’ she whispered to Ruby and Ruby gave a smile that said she was as nervous as Peta. The giggles had disappeared.
‘I surely hope so. Or you’re just going to have to marry Darrell.’
Great. Peta glanced nervously out the window at the street. There were a cluster of photographers in the doorway-obviously waiting for someone important. They’d been here when she arrived. They’d ignored Peta-there’d been three brides arrive since Peta had-but they were obviously intent on someone else.
‘This is crazy,’ Peta whispered. She looked down at her beautiful bouquet of white orchids and she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. ‘The whole thing… It’s a crazy dream. I can’t…’
But then she paused. A car she recognised pulled up out the front. Robert emerged, and then Marcus.
Marcus, looking impossibly handsome. Marcus in a dark suit with, for heaven’s sake, a tiny white orchid twisted in his lapel.
Her…husband?
It was all she could do not to turn and run. Run for her life. But Ruby was taking her arm and beaming as if she’d won the lottery, and Darrell was between Peta and the door and there was nothing to do but wait. Wait until he’d run the gamut of photographers.
Wait until he reached his bride.
The door opened and he saw her.
For a moment he thought he must be in the wrong place. He’d been expecting a bureaucrat’s office. An official behind the desk. Peta in some sort of more respectable outfit that Ruby had persuaded her to buy.
Instead…
Instead he had a bride.
He froze. For one awful moment he was transported back to the nightmare of his childhood. To the glitz and glitter of his mother’s dreadful weddings.
But the momentary impression was just that. Momentary. This was no nightmare. This was Peta. She’d been speaking to Ruby but she turned as he entered and she looked up at him.
She smiled.
Until this minute he’d thought that all white weddings were a nightmare. All his life he’d remembered the gaudy, tinselly creations his mother had worn and he’d felt ill.
But this was different. It had to be. Peta’s dress was simple but breathtakingly beautiful.
Peta was beautiful. Her smile widened. Her eyes locked with his.
And in that instant something inside Marcus that he’d hardly known existed shattered and evaporated as if it had never been. The thought that nothing or no one could ever move him.
He’d never thought any woman could be so lovely.
Maybe she wasn’t lovely in the way that the tabloids described loveliness, he thought, dazed. Her hair was still a mop of tousled curls-no amount of brushing could hide that. Her nose was snub and she had freckles from a lifetime in the sun. But her dress… Her dress clung to her perfect figure in a soft cloud of white silk. The white ribbons through her beautiful hair were more beautiful than any veil.
No. It wasn’t her dress. It wasn’t the bride thing. It was her eyes…her smile…the way she looked at him, half apologetic, half daring, wanting him to share this moment, wanting him to laugh, to smile, to simply share her pleasure.
She was smiling and smiling, and it was enough to make his heart lurch. Marcus Benson’s heart. Immutable. Untouchable.
She’d ditched her crutches and she looked…perfect.
No. How could she be perfect? Perfection was an illusion. It was crazy. Concentrate on something other than that smile.
Peta’s wasn’t the only smile. Ruby was there as well-a Ruby he hardly recognised, in a soft blue suit that made her look…well, softer somehow. As if that awful shell she’d built around her had somehow cracked.
Ruby had spoken of a man and a child in her past, but Ruby had worked for him for years and had said nothing before about her private life. How on earth had the advent of Peta into their lives allowed her to lift herself out of her past?
Because that was what had happened. Ruby was smiling from Marcus and back to Peta and the look she directed at Peta was one of pure pride.
And then there was Darrell. How had Darrell got to know about this? Darrell was normally a dour, middle-aged man to whom life had not been kind. His wife had left him during the agonies of skin grafts; he was still deeply traumatised by the events in the Gulf and the ex-serviceman had little to smile about. But now… Now Darrell was dressed in full military regalia and he, too, was smiling, as if this was a true wedding-a true happy ever after.
Which it wasn’t. The idea was ridiculous.
Totally ridiculous.
But Peta was still smiling at him and, as he walked towards her, she slipped her hand in his arm and held it as if he was already hers. It was a purely proprietorial gesture.
It should have made him run a mile.
But there were three people smiling at him-four, if you counted the man behind the desk. And outside was the press. The world was waiting to see if he could make this commitment.
It wasn’t a commitment, he told himself, and there was more than a trace of desperation in his inner monologue. It was a piece of paper. Nothing more.
He should hold himself stiffly. He shouldn’t smile. He should get this over with fast and move on.
But not to smile would be stupid. Maybe it’d even be cruel when everyone else was waiting.
He stared at Peta once more and it was too much. The corners of his mouth curved. His eyes lit. He smiled…
He smiled just for her.
He took her hand in his-firmly, with no hesitation in the world. And they turned to the man who was waiting to marry them. They made their vows.
Man and wife.
‘I now pronounce you man and wife…’
For two weeks?
