she knew any woman would look good in what she was wearing. The dress and veil combined had cost a fortune, Nancy having insisted she have the very best. Personally she had thought the Gone With The Wind style gown, with its heavy beading, low-cut neck, flounced sleeves and huge layered skirt, far too elaborate for her own simpler tastes. But Nancy had been insistent.
‘It’s expected of my daughter-in-law to wear something extra-special,’ she had said in that haughty manner which could have been aggravating if one let it. But Ashleigh accepted the woman for what she was. A harmless snob. James had a bit of it in him too, but less offensively so.
Jake had been just the opposite, refusing to conform to his mother’s rather stiff social conventions, always going his own way. Not for him a short back and sides haircut. Or suits. Or liking classical music. Jake had been all long, wavy hair, way-out clothes and hard-rock bands. Only in his grades had he lived up to his parental expectations, being top of the school.
Irritation at how her mind kept drifting to Jake sent a scowl to her face.
‘Smile, Doc,’ the photographer from the local paper urged. ‘You’re going to be married, not massacred.’
Ashleigh stopped to throw a beaming smile the photographer’s way. ‘This better?’
‘Much!’
‘Come, Ashleigh,’ her father insisted, taking her elbow and shepherding her across the small expanse of lawn to where the imitation aisle of red carpet started and her attendants were waiting. ‘We’re late enough as it is.’
Her chief bridesmaid thought so too, it appeared. ‘Now that’s taking tradition a bit too far for my liking,’ Kate grumbled. ‘I was beginning to think you’d got cold feet and done a flit.’
‘Never,’ Ashleigh laughed.
‘Well, stranger things have happened. But all’s well that ends well. I’ll just give the nod for the music to start and the men to get ready. I think they’re all hiding behind the dais. Still nervous?’ she whispered while she straightened her friend’s veil.
‘Terrified,’ Ashleigh said truthfully, a lump gathering in her throat as all the guests stood up, blocking out any view of the three men walking round to stand at the base of the dais steps.
‘Good. Nothing like a nervous bride. Nerves make them look even more beautiful, though God knows I don’t know how anyone could look any more beautiful than you do today, dear friend. James is going to melt when he sees you.’
‘Will you two females stop gasbagging?’ the father of the bride interrupted peevishly.
‘Keep your shirt on, Dr O’Neil,’ Kate returned, not one to ever be hassled by a man, even a respected physician of fifty-five. Which could explain why, at thirty, she’d never been a bride herself. ‘We’ll be ready when we’re ready and not a moment before. Your father’s a right pain in the neck, do you know that, Ashleigh?’
‘Yes,’ came the sighing reply.
The organ started up.
Kate grinned. ‘Knock ‘em dead, love.’
‘You make this sound like the opening night of a show,’ Ashleigh returned in an exasperated voice.
Kate lifted expressive eyebrows, then laughed softly. ‘Well, it is, in a way, isn’t it?’
Heat zoomed into Ashleigh’s cheeks.
‘Aah,’ the other girl smiled. ‘That’s what I wanted to see. The bridal blush. She’s ready now, Dr O’Neil.’
As ready as I’ll ever be, Ashleigh thought with a nervous swallow.
The long walk up the red carpet on her father’s arm was a blur. The music played. Countless faces smiled at her. It felt almost as if she were in a dream. She was walking on clouds and everything seemed fuzzy around the edges of her field of vision.
Only one face stood out at her. Nancy’s, still looking a little tense, and oddly watchful, as though expecting Ashleigh to turn tail and run at any moment.
And then the men came into view...
First came James, looking tall and darkly handsome in a black tuxedo, his thick, wavy hair slicked back neatly from his well-shaped head. And next to him was...
Ashleigh faltered for a moment.
For the best man wasn’t Peter Reynolds, the new accountant at Hargraves Pty Ltd and James’s friend since college, but a perfect stranger!
Her father must have noticed at the same time. ‘Who the hell’s that standing next to James?’ he muttered under his breath to her.
‘I have no idea...’ The man was about thirty with rather messy blond hair, an interesting face and intelligent dark eyes. After a long second look Ashleigh knew she’d never seen him before in her life.
Her eyes skated down to the other groomsman. Stuart, her brother. He smiled back reassuringly, after which she swung her gaze back to James. Their eyes locked and for one crashing second Ashleigh literally did go weak at the knees. For James was looking at her as if she were a vision, an apparition that he could scarcely believe was real, as if he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.
All thought of mysterious best men fled, her breath catching at the undeniable love and passion encompassed within James’s intense stare. He’d never looked at her like that before, even when he’d said she was the only woman he’d ever loved, the only woman he could bear marrying. His stunningly smouldering gaze touched her heart, moved her soul. And her body.
Ashleigh was startled to find that suddenly the night ahead did not present itself as such an ordeal after all. Her eyes moved slowly over her husband-to-be and her heart began to race, her stomach tightening, a flood of sensual heat sweeping all over her skin.
The raw sexuality of her response shocked her. She hadn’t felt such arousal since...since...
Quite involuntarily one trembling hand left her bouquet to once again touch the locket.
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