Her heart did a leap in her chest as she found his familiar face. She squared her shoulders, deliberately remembering the glorious, life-affirming buzz she’d experienced as she danced her heart out. Reminding herself of those handful of moments when she’d been saucy and bold and invincible.
The past was the past. She was better than it, and so was Leo. And more than anything, she wanted a future with him.
Heart pumping madly, she pushed her way through the crowd toward him. He forged his own path. They met halfway, just as the music came up for the next couple.
“That was fantastic. If you guys don’t win it’ll be an international incident,” Leo said, leaning close and shouting to be heard.
He was smiling, one hand reaching out to draw her closer. Such a natural, instinctive gesture of possession. So full of affection and comfort and familiarity. It gave her the final push she needed.
Screwing up all her courage, she looked him in the eye. “I love you,” she yelled over the music.
His fingers tightened around her waist, but he didn’t look away. “Good,” he said.
For a moment she wasn’t sure she’d heard properly. “Good? Is that all you have to say?” It wasn’t quite what she’d hoped to hear.
“I could say more, but I don’t want to offend anyone’s delicate sensibilities.” He grinned then, a joyous, boyish grin, and pulled her closer, ducking his head so that his mouth was right next to her ear. “I could say that you have made me realize that I have a long way to go before I can even hope to be as good a person as you are. I could say that when I’m with you I feel as though I’m home. I could say that lying skin to skin with you last night was the most erotic, essential act of my life.”
Heat rolled through her, followed by a wave of love that made the backs of her eyes prickle with imminent tears. He touched his lips against the soft skin beneath her ear, and she felt the whisper of his breath against her cheek as he spoke again.
“I could say all those things, but right now I’ll settle for saying I love you, too, Rachel Macintosh. More than I have ever imagined I could love anyone or anything.”
She threw her arms around him, not caring where they were or who was watching. She pressed her face into his neck and drew in great gulps of air full of his scent.
He was hers. He loved her. He was hers.
His hand landed on the nape of her neck, large and warm, and for a moment they simply held each other. Then the music came to an end and she reluctantly let him go. His eyes were suspiciously damp when she met them, and her mouth curled into a tremulous smile.
“You’re not crying, are you, tough guy?”
“Firemen don’t cry,” he said.
He kissed her then, in front of everyone, and she didn’t care, because she was exactly where she needed to be—in the arms of the man she loved.
EPILOGUE
OLIVIA MILLER STOOD on the top step of Hollymeade, squinting against the glare of the sun off the snow. Her feet were starting to turn into ice blocks, but no way was she going inside. Not until Eric came home.
She’d been waiting for this day for over a year, surviving on Skype calls and letters and emails, dread creeping over her every time the phone rang too late or too early.
But they’d made it. Eric had landed, he was safe, and he’d done his last tour of duty in Afghanistan. He was all hers, at long last.
She heard the sound of a car engine and her heart skipped a beat. She stood on her tiptoes and craned her neck to try to do the impossible and see around the bend in the driveway. She’d wanted to meet him at the airport—had, in fact, been there at the crack of dawn this morning—but a last-minute snafu with his flight had meant he’d been hugely delayed. She’d left after four hours, convinced he wouldn’t be home until tomorrow. He’d called just as she’d reached Hollymeade. She’d wanted to turn the car back around, but he’d insisted she stay put and that he’d find his own way home.
Stubborn man. Stubborn, brave, beautiful, kind, sexy...
Her chin started to tremble and she sucked in a deep breath of cold air. She would not ruin this homecoming by greeting him with puffy panda eyes. There would be plenty of time to cry all over him when he was here with his arms around her.
The sound of the car engine grew louder. She started down the steps, dizzy with excitement.
She had so many things to tell him. Like the fact that the house on the lake they’d always loved was suddenly on the market, the asking price well within their careful budget. And the fact that her mother had given her the most incredible gift twelve months after her passing, returning her cousins to her. Ella, Jo and Rachel, her childhood soul sisters...
She still couldn’t quite believe that they would soon be here, and that they were about to spend the next few days finishing the quilt that her mother had started more than a year ago and charged Jo, Ella and Rachel with finishing.
So like her mother, to still be looking out for her, even though she was no longer here to do so in person. Her mother had understood that Olivia had always regretted the distance that had grown between her and her cousins, and she’d found the perfect way to bring them together again—a quilt. A quilt to hang on the wall of her and Eric’s new home. A quilt that would forever symbolize her mother’s love and the ties of friendship and family.
A car appeared around the bend in the driveway. She stopped on the bottom step, both hands pressed to her chest. Waiting.
The car stopped, and the door opened. And there he was, tall and broad and handsome in his uniform. Tanned from the harsh Middle Eastern sun, and lean from a year of hard work.
She broke into a run, heedless of the ice and snow-slicked ground.
“Careful, Liv,” he called out, but he was laughing, his arms already open to catch her.
She launched herself when she was still a few feet away, hitting him so hard he staggered back a step. But his arms closed around her, big and strong, and she clung to him, the tears she’d been holding back suddenly choking her.
“Liv. Liv,” he said, his voice rough. He was crying, too, but she was sure he wouldn’t be ashamed of his tears, because while he was big and tough, he was also tender. Her poet-soldier.
Her Eric.
They pressed their cheeks together so hard it hurt, and then they kissed and she tasted his tears and her own.
“I love you. I love you so much,” she said.
“I love you, too, Liv. To the moon and back.”
They both laughed then, and took a moment to draw back and wipe away some tears and simply look at each other. There were new lines around his eyes, lines Skype hadn’t revealed to her, and it was a little startling how blue his irises were against his tan.
“You cut your hair,” he said, lifting a hand to touch a strand of her newly cropped blond hair.
“It was getting too long.”
“It looks good.”
“You look good. Good enough to eat.”
He laughed, his eyes darkening, his expression becoming distinctly wolfish. He flicked a glance toward the house as he pulled her in for another kiss.
“There’s no one home, right? It’s just us until everyone else gets here?”
She grimaced apologetically. A year was a long time, after all. “My cousins are coming this afternoon. I didn’t get a chance to tell you about it. They’ll be here any minute now. But they’ll probably want to rest up after their flights. Well, Ella and Rachel will, anyway.”
“They’d better.”
He kissed her then, the old magic burning between them. Without saying a word, they started for the house, leaving his luggage in the car. They could collect it later.
Afterward.
And hopefully her cousins would be late. Really late.
They made it inside before he pinned her against
the wall and started unzipping her coat. She fumbled at the buttons on the front of his uniform, drunk with the lovely familiar-strangeness of it all. Oh, she remembered this. How good it was between them...
He was just sliding her jacket off her shoulders, his mouth still locked with hers, when they heard the distinct sound of a truck engine, followed by the thunk of doors opening and closing. He groaned against her mouth, breaking their kiss to rest his forehead against hers.
“I’ll make it up to you. Over the next fifty years,” she whispered.
“I’m going to hold you to that.”
He kissed her one last time, then tugged her jacket up her arms. She watched as he carefully zipped her back up, her heart swelling with affection and love and adoration.
“Okay. You’re decent,” he said.
“I love you, Eric Grant.”
“And I love you, Olivia Miller.”
Together they opened the door, and there they all were, standing at the bottom of the steps—Jo and Rachel and Ella.
It hit her suddenly that this was going to be a very special few weeks—a wedding, a celebration and a reunion. And all at Christmas.
It was the best present she’d ever had. Heart brimming, she went to greet her cousins.
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781460321850
THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING QUILT
Copyright © 2013 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
LET IT SNOW
Copyright © 2013 by Emilie Richards McGee
YOU BETTER WATCH OUT
Copyright © 2013 by Janice Kay Johnson
NINE LADIES DANCING
Copyright © 2013 by Small Cow Productions Pty Ltd
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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The Christmas Wedding Quilt: Let It SnowYou Better Watch OutNine Ladies Dancing Page 27
