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“She’s perfect,” I agree.

Smithy smiles. “Then that’s all that matters.”

60

Alice

My hair won’t curl right. I’m bloated. I’ve developed a brand-new spot right under my nose that I’m too cross about to name, and my sandals feel tight.

As I reel this list of catastrophes off to Owen, complaining about my best friend getting married three days before my period, he just smiles, steps towards me, takes my face in his hands, and looks at me like I’m the most precious thing he’s ever seen.

“You look beautiful,” he says softly. “You are beautiful. And you’re mine.”

And suddenly none of it matters.

One week.

Owen and I have officially been together for only one week, and already I can’t imagine him not being here to say things like that to me.

I can’t imagine not meeting him in the garden at work or not feeling his hands in my hair. Can’t imagine going back to keeping our distance when this week, we’ve come dangerously close to christening the garden because we can’t seem to keep our hands off each other. Every text message, every phone call, every look from him sends a shiver of anticipation skittering through my body.

How could I go back to not having this?

How could I go back to feeling so alone?

Lori had been ecstatic when I’d told her Owen and I were officially an item, although I did confess my fears about him being on the emotional rebound and that his grief at losing Paul had pushed him into my arms.

But Lori had calmed me a little.

“He seems organised. A planner. Not the kind of guy to go off the rails and act on anything other than his true feelings,” she’d said on Sunday night.

“How would you know? You’ve never met him.”

“You told me he organises his salad into separate compartments. That doesn’t sound like a guy who makes rash decisions.”

“I suppose not,” I’d admitted.

But the doubt still lingers, and I don’t know when—or if—it’ll go away completely.

Because I know, standing here looking at Owen in his brown tweed suit, that I want this to be something. I want it to feel for him what it feels for me: like home, life, and…

Love.

“We do make a rather striking couple,” Owen says as he spins me gently round to face the long mirror in his bedroom.

My gold dress looks just as stunning as it did the day I first tried it on, maybe even more so standing next to Owen, who looks so outrageously hot I could quite easily forget the wedding altogether and keep him prisoner in his bedroom for the rest of eternity.

Unfortunately, duty calls.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asks, threading his fingers through mine.

“Depends,” I say. “If you’re thinking about whether there’s a McDonald’s en route and whether we have time to eat a bacon sandwich before the wedding, then yes.”

Owen eyes me suspiciously. “Seriously?” he asks. “That’s what you were thinking about?”

“No.” I laugh. “I was thinking about how good you look in your suit and then how much better you look out of it.”

“I thought as much.”