Mail-Order Matty. Emilie Richards

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      She laughed lightly. “A woman who knew how to hold a few glasses of champagne wouldn’t have, either.”

      His smile broadened, a flash of emotional lightning that transformed him into someone more approachable. “Right, the champagne. Soon to become my favorite drink, since it’s brought you here.”

      Before she could respond, he took her elbow, as if to guide her through the crowd. “Did you get your luggage? You wouldn’t have had time for that, would you?”

      She had been fine—Or nearly fine—until that moment, coasting along on excitement and curiosity. But now she was blindsided by an attack of nerves. “Damon, we’re…uh…not heading right out, are we? I mean the plane—”

      “No. I had the good sense to book the last flight of the afternoon to George Town. We can’t take this any way that approaches normal, but I thought we could at least spend the afternoon getting to know each other before we go off to get married.”

      “But we can’t get married right away. There’s the license.”

      “That’s all a formality, but you’re right. You’ll still have a few days to decide once we’re there.”

      “And so will you.”

      He looked down at her from his six feet of solid masculinity. “I’m not going to change my mind. I know everything I need to know about you.”

      His words weren’t surprising. She knew he had checked her background with a thoroughness usually reserved for top-level security clearances. And she knew why.

      As Damon silently guided her through the crowds and toward baggage claim, she thought about everything that had transpired since she had awakened in horror on the morning after her birthday party to find that the letter Liza had penned to Damon was gone.

      She remembered how panic had seized her, and she had awakened her friends to demand that they tell her exactly what they had done with the letter. Felicity had been as horrified as she was, but Liza had been philosophical. “He’ll see it was done in good fun,” she’d said. “He’ll have a good laugh and toss it right out.”

      But Matty hadn’t been so easygoing about something that had, in its own excessive way, revealed too much of her heart. She had felt wounded and vulnerable, and she had sat down that night to write Damon a real letter apologizing and explaining. “It was my twenty-seventh birthday,” she’d written, “a time to look backward and forward. My friends and I were talking about what I wanted from life by the time I was thirty, then we started in on the first of too many bottles of champagne. I almost never drink, Damon. I shouldn’t have had so much that night. I’m afraid I acted like an idiot. Please forgive me, and if you remember me at all, please try not to include this with the rest of your memories.”

      She had wished him the best of luck, sealed the envelope and driven it right down to the post office. Writing the letter had helped a little. At least Damon would know the first one had been a prank and a mistake. She had hated the fact that he would probably think she was immature and featherbrained, with too much time on her hands, but she had realized there was nothing more she could do.

      His birthday card had arrived two weeks later, and his first telephone call a week after that. “I wasn’t advertising for a wife, and you weren’t really applying to be one,” he’d said, just minutes into the conversation. “But, Matty, I’m in a desperate situation here, and I don’t know where else to turn.”

      And then he had proceeded to outline his dilemma.

      “That looks like the right carousel up ahead.” Damon gestured to a baggage carousel that was slowly circulating, although by now there were only a few pieces left on it. “Point out which are yours when they come around and I’ll get them off.”

      Matty glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He was wearing dark slacks and an ivory dress shirt unbuttoned at the neck. His sports jacket was loose and casual, a natural open-weave fabric that seemed perfectly suited to tropical living.

      “Your hands seem to be full, Damon.”

      He looked down at the bouquet of carnations he had been choking since she’d first turned around to face him. Then he looked up at her and grinned. “They’re for you. I’d completely forgotten I had them.” He held them out.

      “They’re lovely.” Actually, they might have been lovely once, but the white paper stapled around them was crumpled now from fingers that had gripped it too tightly, and Matty suspected the stems were mangled.

      “I’m sorry,” he said. “Maybe I’m not as calm as I thought.”

      “I’m sure if there was a handbook on mail-order marriages that would be on the first page. I guess our palms are supposed to sweat and our hearts are supposed to beat double time.”

      “Is yours beating double time?”

      “Triple.” She heard her voice waver. She had talked herself into coming here with a bravado she hadn’t even known she possessed. She had marched in to her supervisor at Carrollton Community Hospital to give her resignation, and she hadn’t even considered the immediate promise of a pay raise if she would just rethink her decision. Without a backward glance she had rented her house to Liza and Felicity and said her goodbyes.

      And somewhere along that path she had used up all her stores of courage.

      Damon took her hand. The gesture so surprised her that she froze. She knew her eyes gave her away. She excelled at warm good cheer, at encouragement and empathy, but right now she needed someone to give all those things back to her.

      “Matty…” His voice was kind, even kinder than she remembered. “I’m not going to pressure you. I know I’m asking too much. Let’s just get to know each other today. One step at a time. Okay?”

      “Damon, look at you. There have to be a dozen women who would have said yes to marrying you, women you know well, women you’re attracted to. I’m nearly a stranger. Why me?”

      He had answered that question before, but he seemed to sense her need to watch his face as he explained once again. He linked his fingers with hers, and her heart skipped erratically.

      “Not a dozen. But I do know some women who might have said yes. None of them could offer what I really need. The only question is whether you need Heidi and me enough to take this step. Do you?”

      The answer was yes, of course. Perhaps there had been a thousand possibilities for her future, but somehow, after Damon reentered her life, she had only glimpsed two. She could continue at Carrollton Community taking care of other people’s beautiful babies, continue living in the house and town she had lived in all her life, continue wondering what the world was like outside that small frozen speck on the map. Or she could accept Damon’s astounding offer of marriage and motherhood and a new life on a distant tropical island.

      In the end the choice had been easy, because the second possibility had come attached to Damon Quinn, a man she had once loved with unrestrained passion. And this gift of Damon in her life once more, even under these strange and unromantic circumstances, had been too tempting to reject.

      “I’m here,” she said. She would not reveal more of her heart than that.

      He СКАЧАТЬ