“It’s like she’s reaching out from Texas and twisting the knife. Like there is no pleasure in her life unless she’s screwing with me.”

I stalk around the bedroom, trying to get my head together. I feel cold and angry and out of control. Whatever pleasure I’d felt when Damien and Evan presented me with my wedding dress has been swept away. It’s as if this wedding will never truly be my own. And now I either have to endure a wedding with my mother’s stamp upon it, or I have to spend my wedding day sorting out this mess.

“Dammit,” I howl.

“It will be okay,” Damien says, pulling me into his arms.

“I know it’ll be okay. It’s not like we’re talking about curing cancer. But that’s not the point. She just went and turned the whole thing around on me.”

“And at the end of the day, we’ll still be married,” he says reasonably.

I am in too bitchy a mood to listen to reason, but it’s still there. Inescapable and true and hanging in the air between us.

I stalk around the room a bit more, while Damien eyes me with trepidation, as if I’m a bomb about to go off.

Smart man.

Finally, the bubbling anger cools, leaving calm calculation.

I feel the prickle of an idea, and slowly it grows. After a few more laps around the room, I stop in front of Damien.

“I can fix this,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“I can howl and complain that she fucked up my wedding. Or I can turn it around on its ear, flip my mother the bird, and say that she didn’t fuck up my wedding, she did me a favor.”

“Did she?”

My smile is slow. “Yes. And I’ll tell you why.” I grab the collar of Damien’s shirt, pull him toward me, once again feeling light and free. I kiss him hard. “I can tell you,” I repeat, and then flash a smile full of wicked intentions, “but you’re going to have to make me.”

Chapter Nine

I stand on the third-floor balcony looking out at the calm Pacific. It is a beautiful evening, perfect for an outdoor wedding.

It is almost sunset. Just about time for the ceremony to begin.

Damien is beside me, his arm around my waist. The expanse of his property, lush green fading to pale sand, spreads out before us.

Usually, the beach is empty this time of day. Right now, however, it is dotted with white tents and glowing lanterns. Guests mingle, indistinguishable from this distance, and I hear the soft strains of Frank Sinatra drifting up to us. Beyond the line of tents, the paparazzi are camped out, ready to pounce.

I can’t help but smile at the thought that we’re pulling something over on those vultures.

Beyond them, the Pacific glows a warm purple tinged with orange from the swiftly setting sun.

Soon, I think. Soon I will be Mrs. Damien Stark.

“You’re sure this is what you want?” Damien asks as the air fills with the thrum of his helicopter. It swoops down in front of us to settle gently on the helipad.

I take one more look at the panorama spread out before me. “I’m sure,” I say, raising my voice to be heard over the rotors.

Below us, Gregory and Tony are loading suitcases into the bird.

I rise up on my toes and kiss Damien, hard and fast and deep. I pull away, breathless, and smile at the irony—it took a shove from my mother to drive home something I should have realized all along.

I press my palm to Damien’s chest, wanting to feel the beat of his heart beneath my hand. “It’s not the walk down the aisle that matters—it’s the man waiting for me when I get there. You said it yourself, it’s the only wedding I’ll ever have, and this is the way I want it.” No stress, no drama, no paparazzi. No polite chitchat, no worries about music or food or flowers or unexpected relatives showing up out of the blue. Just Damien and those two little words— I do .

“And all the work you’ve put into the reception?” he asks, even though we talked about this last night—about how I’d been working so hard for perfection that I lost sight of what Damien already knew—that so long as we end up as man and wife, “perfect” is a given.

Still, I indulge him by answering again. I understand he needs to be certain that I am sure I want to do this.

“The party’s important, too,” I say. “And they’ll have a great one.” I nod toward the beach. “Trust me. Jamie has it under control. If anyone knows how to make sure a crowd has a good time at a party, it’s my best friend.” I smile more broadly. “I asked Ryan to help her. They’ll party through the night, and anyone who has a mind to can watch us get married in the morning. And Evelyn promised to spin the crap out of it for the press.”

Damien’s smile is as wide as my own. “I love you, Ms. Fairchild,” he says.

“You won’t be able to say that much longer. Soon it’ll be Mrs. Stark.”

He takes my hand and tugs me toward the stairs. “Then let’s go,” he says. “The sooner, the better.”

We hurry hand in hand down the stairs, then sprint for the helicopter, heads down, laughing. Damien helps me aboard, and once we’re strapped in, he signals the pilot and the bird takes off.

So, with the guests waving goodbye from the beach and the paparazzi snapping wildly, we elope into the sunset, leaving our wedding guests to eat our food, drink our champagne, and dance into the night.

Damien and I stand on a beach beside a foaming sea that is shifting away from the gray of night into a cacophony of colors with the rising sun. That was something else I’d realized: I couldn’t get married at sunset. I had to have a sunrise wedding.

I am wearing my wedding dress and the necklace that Damien gave me, and when I saw the look in Damien’s eyes as I walked the short distance down the aisle to him, I knew that whatever trouble it took to rescue the dress was worth it. I feel like a princess. Hell, I feel like a bride. And in Damien’s eyes, I feel beautiful.

I am not wearing shoes, and I curl my toes into the sand, feeling wild and decadent and free. There is no stress, there are no worries. There is simply this wedding and the man beside me, and that is all that I need.

In front of us, a Mexican official is performing the ceremony in broken, heavily accented English. I am pretty sure I have never heard anything more beautiful.

“Do you take this man?” he asks, and I say the words that have been in my heart from the moment I first met Damien. “I do.”

“I do,” says Damien in turn. He is facing me as he speaks, and I can see the depth of emotion in his dual-colored eyes. Mine, he mouths, and I nod. It is true. I am his, and always will be.