Under My Skin (Stark International Trilogy 3)

I come down slowly, trembling, then curl up in his arms. “Is it this way for everybody?” I ask. “This intensity. This feeling that I’ll shrivel up if I can’t touch you?” I tilt my head up to look at him. “You know what I mean, right?”

“You know I do.”

“Is it because we’re a little bit lost, you and I?”

He kisses the top of my head. “Lost? Oh, no, sweetheart. Not anymore. We’re found.”

After a moment, he eases us both up off the bed so that we can get under the covers. After we’re settled again, he turns to get something off the bedside table. I recognize it immediately—it’s his grandmother’s ring. My ring. The one I’d left behind.

“You asked me to marry you once before. Now it’s my turn.”

He slides out of bed, and to my delight, drops to one knee as he holds out the ring. “Sylvia Brooks, will you marry me?”

I look at him, and cannot hide my smile.

Second chances. That seems to be the way it is with Jackson and me.

And there’s no way am I screwing this one up.

“Yes,” I say, and as I tug him back onto the bed and kiss him sweetly, only one thing goes through my head. Wife, I think.

And I really can’t wait.

epilogue

I stand on the main beach at Santa Cortez with Jackson beside me and the world that we have built rising up behind us, fresh and clean and so intertwined with the landscape that it is hard to believe that the buildings didn’t burst up with the formation of the island.

Everything is ready. The guest rooms are primped and polished and made up with fresh linens. The restaurants are stocked. The gift stores overflow with merchandise. The pools sparkle. Not a detail has been spared, and every magazine and newspaper and blog that has covered the resort has called it one of Stark Real Estate Development’s crowning achievements.

The guest list is already overflowing, and we are booked up for the next two years.

The official opening is over a month away, but already the island is bustling with administration, maintenance, and service staff. Most have moved permanently to their quarters on the island, but today there are about a dozen more people on the island who do not live here full-time.

They’ve come for our wedding.

The judge who stands before us has already read most of the vows, but I’ve barely heard a word. It’s hard to hear from up here where I’m floating above the earth.

But when he asks if we have the rings and Ronnie bounces and squeals, “I do! I do!” I know that it is real.

I take Jackson’s ring from the little pillow that she holds out to me, then gently slide it onto his finger, his eyes never leaving mine.

He does the same, and I swear that I can feel the shock of this moment, this new reality, settle through me as the ring encircles my finger, just as Jackson has encircled my life.

“You may kiss the bride,” the judge says, and Jackson wastes no time. He pulls me to him, leans me back, and kisses me thoroughly, all to the applause and catcalls of our small audience.

“Well, hello, wife,” Jackson says, when he rights me.

“Hello, husband,” I reply, then wrap my arms around him and sigh.

“We’ll leave you two alone soon,” Nikki promises as she and Damien approach. “But we have a little reception set up in the main restaurant.”

I glance at Jackson, who just shakes his head. We’d not intended a reception. Just a quick wedding squeezed in before my work life got crazy with the opening.

And, of course, a long weekend for a honeymoon.

The resort was designed so that a dozen bungalows on the north side of the island are actually for sale. And Nikki and Damien—now otherwise known as my sister- and brother-in-law—gave us one for a wedding gift.

“Just a little something for the happy couple,” Damien had said to Jackson, obviously trying to hold back a smile. “I figured if you designed it, then it must be to your taste.”

Jackson had laughed. And though I’d feared he’d turn down the gift as too extravagant, he’d only said, “Hell, yeah.”

Now, he bends down so that Ronnie—now officially Veronica Amelia Steele—can ride piggyback as he and I hold hands on our walk to the reception.

He’s barefoot in deference to the sand, but he’d told me that he wasn’t going to get married if he wasn’t wearing a suit. It’s black and perfectly tailored, the gloss of the fine material gleaming in the sun. His only nod to the casual nature of our wedding is the fact that he’s not wearing a tie. Instead, his collar is open, and when he turns to grin at me, wide and happy, I see the indentation at the base of his neck.