Their flight on the Petronides jet was short. Her best friend from college was waiting at the airport.
She led Phoebe to one of the two limousines waiting on the tarmac. “No wonder you’ve been gaga over that guy for so long. He’s a total romantic.”
“What do you mean?” Phoebe asked with only partial attention as she noticed Spiros getting into the other car.
“Wait until you see.”
Her friend had not been overstating the case. Phoebe was taken to a castle in the hills of Southern Italy. The room she was led to could have belonged to royalty. And the wedding dress her friend helped her don was totally over-the-top gorgeous. By the time they made it down the grand staircase and to the beautiful chapel that smelled of roses and old wood Phoebe was in a state of shock. Her family was there, so was Spiros’s, but no one else except Phoebe’s friend was in attendance.
She stared at the priest, and then turned to Spiros. “You agreed to—”
He leaned down and kissed her. Right there, in front of all their family. When he lifted his head his eyes were suspiciously moist. “I agreed to a small wedding. But we will make vows we both mean—promises neither of us will break in this life.”
“But…”
“I love you, Phoebe. I always have. You thought I was angry with my brother because of family honor, but my fury was because his promise and subsequent agreement to the marriage plans kept me from you. I fought my love, I fought my need to beg him to give you up so I could have you. I lost on both counts. I was ready to do my begging the night of the betrothal dinner. Now that I have you, I will never let you go.”
Tears threatened her eyes, and her heart swelled to bursting. He meant every word. She could see it in his eyes. “Never?”
“Never.”
“I love you, Spiros. So much. I always have.”
“I know.”
She laughed through her happy tears, and then they said their vows.
Promises of love and commitment they both meant to the very depths of their souls.
Vows that would indeed last a lifetime.
BACK IN THE SPANIARD’S BED
Trish Morey
CHAPTER ONE
NOBODY walked out on Alejandro Rodriguez. Not business tycoons or CEOs or poker-faced politicians. And definitely not women. Leah Mitchell was just going to have to get that through her head.
He watched her working through the window of her small dressmaking shop from his vantage point across the narrow street, her head down, totally focused on the task at hand, her fingers nimble and quick as they worked the fabric through the machine.
He remembered those fingers, long and slender like the woman herself, and he remembered how they’d once worked their skilful magic on him…
He missed them.
He growled, low in his throat, a familiar thumping demand building below. Soon, he knew, soon he would feel her hands weave their magic upon him once again.
All of a sudden those same fingers stilled and she looked up, her eyes alert, searching the streetscape outside, the passing pedestrians and traffic, almost as if she’d sensed his presence. He smiled as he flipped the collar of his coat up against the unseasonable November cold. So she wasn’t over him? He’d suspected as much.
And he’d enjoy proving it to her.
He’d make her wish she’d never left him, make her beg for more.
And then he’d unceremoniously dump her.
The peak hour Sydney traffic was bumper to bumper along the narrow one-way street, but somehow Alejandro forged a path through, parting the sea of cars as if he had a God-given right, the tails of his long black coat swirling in his wake like the wings of a manta ray.
He was oblivious to the sound of car horns, oblivious to the calls from irate drivers to get off the road. Because right now his focus was on one thing and one thing only—Leah Mitchell, and how he was going to get her back into his bed.