Saying Yes To The Dress!. Сорейя Лейн

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

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

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

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

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

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

      He was silent again.

      “You did,” she finally answered for him.

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

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

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

      “By a country mile?”

      “Oh, yeah.”

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

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

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

      “Well,” she insisted, “you’re mine.”

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

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

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

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

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

      “You were right,” she said, softly.

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

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

      “What were you talking about?”

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

      “Huh?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      “He broke up with me.”

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

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

      “Okay, um—”

      “A grand passion.”

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

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

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

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

      She needed to know if the life force was as intense in him right now as it was in her. She needed to take advantage of СКАЧАТЬ