Page 461 of A Matter of Time

He put his hands on my hips and pulled me down on top of him, easing me into his lap. “Okay, so maybe he left out the hot part, but he did say you were brave and that he felt like you would have protected him with your life. He was really impressed, Jory, he said it over and over.”

I straddled his hips, pushing against him as he pulled my sleep shirt off over my head and tossed it at the chair beside the fireplace.

“You did an amazing job with everything, you know. I don’t think I told you enough, but you were really something the way you figured things out. I think I might talk to you when I can’t solve something. Maybe you can help me with my cases.”

“Don’t patronize me,” I grumbled, even though I was loving the way his fingers were tracing over my spine.

“I’m being serious,” he told me, staring into my eyes. “But we gotta talk about this later.”

“Why?”

“’Cause right now I can’t think.”

And just that statement and the way he was looking at me heated me right up. When he lifted me, stripped off my sweats, then pinned me under him on the couch, his lips on my neck, his skin against mine, his hands sliding all over me, I wondered how I had ever thought of living without him. I wondered what I would have done if he had given up on me and gone away, as I’d told him to so many times.

“I was never gonna give up,” he told me.

“What?”

“You just asked what you would have done if I’d given up.”

“I guess I was thinking out loud.”

His smile was gentle as he eased me forward. “Baby, I was never going to give up on you. You belong to me. You’re mine.”

And the possessive declaration was something I loved to hear.

“Lemme tell you again.”

I didn’t argue.

TWENTY-FIVE

For Michael, I had been patient. For Beverly, I was tolerant. For the sake of peace, in the spirit of getting along, I had remained calm, kept a smile plastered on my face and bitten my tongue. But now I was free. The gloves were off because the mid-December wedding was over. The bride and groom had retired alone to their lavish penthouse suite upstairs, while most of the guests were still enjoying the open bar that would be serving until midnight. Because the bridal party was supposed to be there in the morning to have brunch with the newlyweds before they left on their honeymoon, Sam and I had a room at the hotel. I had watched the wedding from my seat beside his mother, but Sam had been a groomsman. It was this honor/burden that had started the whole mess.

Beverly Stiles, Michael Kage’s fiancée and now his wife, had nine bridesmaids in her wedding. They had all been wearing dresses with diamond-cut backs that flowed in long lines of voluminous black fabric to the floor. What came to mind when you saw them was movies from the 1940s where the women were all elegance and glamour. It was like a fashion show instead of a wedding, and when Amanda Rinehart had walked down the aisle ahead of her best friend, the bride, there had been gasps.

She was a stunning woman, tall and graceful and oozing confidence that you could feel. Think Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Mask of Zorro. With her jet-black hair pulled up into a French twist, her sapphire eyes and flawless, creamy skin, no one could take their eyes off her. She looked like a model, but I knew she had just been made partner at the law firm where she worked in Manhattan. And she could cook too. She was, Beverly said, a triple threat. She had beauty and brains and made her grandmother’s Italian meatballs from scratch. Any man in their right mind would want her.

The bride had confessed to me before the first day of the four-day wedding juggernaut that she was worried about Michael falling for her best friend, as had every man she’d ever dated. I told Beverly that Michael Kage loved her and her alone. She did not need to worry. Turned out I was half right. Michael had made no bigger a fool of himself over Amanda Rinehart than any of the other men. Only Sam had remained polite and unaffected, which, from what Beverly reported back to me, she wasn’t used to. I didn’t like that she cared one way or another about my husband. I was annoyed.

When Beverly came to me the morning of the bachelor and bachelorette parties and asked if I could help her get the wedding programs reprinted, I asked her what was wrong. I had designed and printed them over a month ago, so the last-minute panic had me confused. It turned out that there was nothing wrong with what I’d done; the change had only to do with Amanda. She was insisting on walking with Sam.

“I’m sorry, what?” Dylan needed clarification again. We were at our office later that same day, and I had told her twice, but she was still looking at me like she didn’t believe me.

“Beverly wants the programs reprinted, because Amanda says the best man is too short to walk her down the aisle,” I said for the third time.

She did the thing where her eyebrows scrunched up in the middle. “Let me get this straight. The maid of honor is stepping down as maid of honor two days before the wedding because she doesn’t want to be taller than the best man?”

“Correct.”

“And the bride is gonna let the princess have her way?”

“Apparently.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No.”