Reaching up, I put my hands over his. “I don’t want to go.”
He frowned. “What?”
“I thought being an actress was my big dream. But I never wanted to audition.” The corners of my mouth quirked. “There was a reason. Whatever my brain tried to tell me I wanted, my heart stubbornly knew it wanted something else entirely.”
He pulled me closer, running his hands over my face, my hair, my back. “What?”
I thought of my mother, and the life she’d lived. Hannah Maywood Lowe had never been famous or celebrated. People who didn’t know her would have thought her quite ordinary, in fact, not special at all. But she’d had a talent for loving people. Her whole life had been about taking care of her friends, her home, her community, and most of all, her family.
“You’re my dream,” I whispered. “You and our baby. I want to go home with you. Be with you. Raise our family.” I lifted my gaze to his. “I love you, Edward.”
He breathed in wonder, “You do?”
“I have just one question left to ask you,” I said, smiling through my tears. I took a deep breath. “Will you marry me?”
Edward staggered back. Then he gave a low shout.
“Will I?”
As he took me in his arms, his handsome face no longer looked thuggish or brooding or dark. Joy made him look like the boy he’d once been, like the man I’d always known he could be.
“I love you, Diana Maywood,” he whispered, cradling my cheek. “I’m going to love you for the rest of my life. Starting now....”
Pulling me against his body, he kissed me hard, until I was gasping with joy and need, clutching him to me.
“Um,” I heard the mechanic’s awkward mumble across the hangar, “you guys still know I’m here, right?”
* * *
We were married two weeks later in my mother’s rose garden. All the people we loved were there, Mrs. MacWhirter and the rest of our closest family and friends. Our wedding was nothing fancy, just a white cake, a simple dress and a minister. No twenty-carat diamond ring this time, either. Seriously, I was afraid I’d put my eye out with that thing. Instead, we gave each other plain gold bands in the double ring ceremony.
It helps to have friends in the entertainment business. A musician friend of mine played the guitar, and a photographer friend took pictures. Madison was my bridesmaid, and Howard walked me down the aisle. As I held a simple bouquet of my mother’s favorite roses, in her garden on that beautiful, bright California morning, it was almost as if she were there, too.
It was all perfect. The only guests were people we really loved. Rupert and Victoria sent their congratulations and a very nice blender.
After the ceremony, when we were officially husband and wife, we held an outdoor dinner reception beneath fairy lights. Howard and Madison openly wept, throwing rose petals as Edward and I roared off in a vintage car, before jetting off to Las Vegas for our honeymoon. We spent two lovely nights at the Hermitage, a luxurious casino resort owned by Nikos Stavrakis, a friend of Edward’s, happily married himself with six children.
Our luxurious, glamorous hotel suite overlooked all the lights of the Strip, which we mostly ignored because we were too busy discovering the joys of married sex. Holy cow. I had no idea how different it would be. How it feels to possess someone’s body when you also possess their heart and soul and name—and they have yours. There’s nothing in the world like it.
“I’m just sorry the honeymoon has to end,” I murmured as we left Las Vegas.
Edward looked at me. “Who says it does?”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re both unemployed now.” He lifted a dark eyebrow. “We can go anywhere you want. Rio. Tokyo. Venice. Istanbul. After all,” he gave a wicked grin, lifting a dark eyebrow as he said, “we do have a jet....”