A spark that looked something like triumph and something like love kindled the sapphire depths of his eyes. “Wouldn’t want to try,” he murmured, and his clasp on her hands changed tenor, softening, deepening, along with his voice and the thickening thud of her heartbeat. She so wanted to believe him, to take that final leap of trust. “I went ten years without you making my life more difficult and more of a delight. I don’t want that again. Ever.”
“How do you do that? How can you make this sound so easy?”
“It’s as simple as trusting our love and deciding you want to marry me again, for the right reasons this time.”
“The right reasons?”
Lifting their joined hands, he tapped her knuckles to his heart. “I love you, Kim. It doesn’t matter what Howard’s will does or doesn’t say, whether you choose to stay at Blackstone’s or not. Nothing will change the simple truth of my love. Your choice—do you want to marry me, love me, give me everything I could ever want?”
The lingering spectre of doubt shadowed her face and her eyes as she started to shake her head. He stopped her with the most effective move of all, leaning in to take her lips in a kiss more eloquent than any words.
“You, babe,” he said against her mouth. “You’re all I want, all I need, all I cherish.”
His next kiss started gentle, and was everything his words promised. Honest, direct and everything she could ever want in a kiss and in her man. Dizzy with the heady promise of a simple future, she leaned nearer and closed her eyes and he took the invitation to deepen the contact, to taste her capitulation on her lips and her tongue.
She could have gone on kissing him forever but a knock at the door interrupted and brought them crashing back to the present. Kimberley didn’t mind. She smiled into his eyes and said, “Yes, I will marry you, for the right reason. The simplest reason. I love you, Ric Perrini.”
He kissed her again to celebrate that moment and that admission, then he pulled her to her feet. “Are you ready for this?”
Kimberley nodded, the smile in her heart spreading to her lips. “Let’s go and see if you’ve made a very poor choice of bride.”
“I haven’t,” he said with absolute conviction. His hand tightened on hers, linking their fingers, sealing their bond of love. “That’s the simplest truth of all.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-1104-3
VOWS A VENGEFUL GROOM
Copyright © 2008 by Bronwyn Turner
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Vows & a Vengeful Groom Page 16