The Dream Wedding
Page 25
“I would imagine all the time.”
“How did you beat Rory, Michael? He was a professional boxer, yet he never touched you and you knocked him out.”
“A couple of years ago, while I was teaching a contender for a karate championship to improve his focus and skill through lucid dreaming, I was teaching myself.”
“Your karate client won his championship, didn’t he?”
“Rather easily. He’d been winning it for weeks in his lucid dreams They are a great place for perfecting a skill.” But useless when it came to trying to forget you, Michael thought. “So how did your meeting go with Sheldon this morning?” he asked aloud.
“Let’s just say I won’t be exchanging Christmas cards with the Aytons next year. However, Sheldon’s agreed not to fight the annulment. And I’ve agreed to forget the fact that his mother tried to make me into a felon.”
Michael kept his voice even, formal. “I understand Lee Willix has asked you to join him in his Oregon architectural firm. Are you going to accept?”
She turned back to the view, a small frown on her forehead. “I told him I’d think about it. He wants me to come see him and his wife and their three-year-old daughter.”
So that was where she was going. To Oregon. Damn.
“Maybe, before I go, you could teach me to lucid-dream?”
She was giving him an opening. He knew it. He also knew he couldn’t take it. He couldn’t ask her to share a life that was less than it should be. He couldn’t take advantage of her feelings for him.
The cell phone in Michael’s pocket peeled away. He snapped it open—irritated, angry, unhappy.
Briana listened to the affirmative and negative grunts that comprised his side of the conversation. And all the while, her heart was sinking because she knew he wasn’t going to ask her to stay.
She had been very foolish to think he might, of course. She was going to walk away from this beautiful desert with one hell of a broken heart.
Michael finally flipped the phone closed. “That was Nate. We’ve unraveled the mystery of how you got from the Ayton estate to under my tree. Rory placed you in the Lexus of Laura’s uncle, Everett Thaw, by mistake.”
“That short, pudgy man you pointed out on the Pettits’ tape?”
“Yes. Everett had driven halfway home before he heard you make some sound from the back seat and finally realized that he had a sleeping stowaway. He panicked.”
“I don’t understand. Why would he panic?”
“Everett is not exactly what you’d call a clear thinker. He reads intrigue and Machiavellian motives into everything. He didn’t know what you were doing asleep in the back seat of his car. But whatever the reason, he knew he didn’t want to be involved. So he decided to drop you off at the institute and pretend ignorance.”
“How did he get in?”
“He says the guard left the door to the rotunda unlocked. It’s possible. Anyway, Everett carried you inside, laid you under the Christmas tree, and then drove away as fast as his Lexus would go.”
“He sounds like a charming man,” Briana said with a small chuckle. And then, because that message out of that silly fortune cookie kept repeating in her mind—Dreams can come true—she turned to face Michael for one last try.
“Still, however unintended, Everett Thaw did me a very big favor that night. He brought me to you.”
Michael couldn’t resist her smile, or the love pouring out of her eyes.
He reached for Briana, pulled her into his arms, said the precise words he had sworn he never would. “Please don’t go. Stay here. Marry me.”
Briana’s heart stumbled unsteadily as she grasped his shoulders, leaned back to see his face, her words no more than a breath. “Michael, what are you saying?”
“There are plenty of architectural firms in southern Nevada. We’re experiencing an incredible building boom. You can associate with a firm here, or start your own. My parents left me a million when they died. I’ve added several more to it. It’s all yours. Marry me, Briana.”
Briana’s heart had begun to race with happiness. But it just about stopped with his next words.
“Darling, I promise I’ll do my best to be the right kind of husband and father. And if it means giving up the institute and getting a regular job to be there for you and the kids, so be it I can’t let you go, Briana. I need you more than anything.”
“But you don’t want to be a father.”
“I want to be your husband. I understand how important children are to a woman. I won’t shortchange your needs.”
She looked into the deep, sincere blue of his eyes and knew he meant it, too. He was ready to sacrifice even his dreams for her. Tears came into her eyes as her heart filled with so much love that she found it hard to speak.
“Michael, do you remember when I told you that my two brothers died young, before I was even born?”
“Yes. And the tragedy was too hard for your father to face. I would face that if I had to, Briana. I would face anything for you. I swear.”
Yes, with all her heart she believed he would. And with all her heart, she knew she would never ask it of him.
“Michael, the reason my brothers died so young was because they were born with an inherited blood disorder. Their immune systems were unable to resist infection. Their short lives were pure hell. Male children in my family are the ones who become ill. Females are carriers. I’m a carrier, Michael. I’ve known it since I was twenty. I won’t bring a child into a world of agony. I never planned to have children.”
Michael stared into her lovely crystalline eyes, stunned by her words.
“But I will tell you this, Michael. If I wanted children, I would never marry you—no matter how much giving you up would break my heart. Because I could never let you give up the institute or your work in dreams. It’s what makes you who you are. It’s what makes you the man I love.”
All along Michael had firmly believed that he was falling for the one woman he must not. Now he knew he had fallen for the one woman made for him.
What astounded him most was that his dreams had known it from the first. It was ironic. He, who had preached for others to listen to their dreams, had failed to listen to his own. Until now. He gathered her close—very, very close.
“Briana, I love you. With everything I am, I love you.”
She sighed, at the incredible joy of his words, the feel of his arms.
“Yes, but will you still love me when my mousy brown roots start to show?”
She felt his chest quiver against hers as his amused puffs of air darted past her ears.
“Darling, you can go to a plastic surgeon and get your old features back, for all I care. All I ask is that you don’t go so far that I have to start calling you Brian.”
Briana chuckled delightedly. And then his mouth covered hers, molding it to his own.
Her lips parted willingly beneath the strong demand of his. The heat of his hands, the hardness of his body, his bold possession, all washed through her mind, telling her what her heart had known from the first time she found herself in Michael Sands’s arms, being awakened by his kiss.
That dreams did in fact come true.
eISBN 978-14592-6861-6
THE DREAM WEDDING
Copyright © 1997 by Mary Johnson
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited. 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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Table of Contents
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Excerpt
About the Author
Books by M.J. Rodgers
Dedication
Acknowledgment
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Copyright