her tentative smile as she met his gaze through the film of her veil making his throat feel unusually tight. He cleared it discreetly and faced the front, straightening his shoulders and taking a breath as the priest began the ceremony in a solemn, authoritative tone.
‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered here…’
CHAPTER NINE
MIA stood very still as Bryn turned to lift her veil from her face at the priest’s command to kiss the bride. His dark gaze meshed with hers for an infinitesimal pause before he lowered his mouth to hers. A soft sigh escaped from her lips and disappeared into the warmth of his mouth as it covered hers in a lingering, passionate kiss that sent rivers of sensation through her body.
You’re not acting, a little voice inside her head began to taunt her but she refused to acknowledge it. Of course she was acting! That was what Bryn was paying her to do, to convince the world that she was in love with him when the very opposite was true.
She hated him.
No, you don’t. That same little voice was back and even more insistent this time.
‘I do.’
Mia hadn’t realised she had spoken the words out loud until she saw the quizzical look on Bryn’s face as he straightened from kissing her.
‘We’ve already said that bit,’ he whispered with a teasing little smile.
‘I—I know…I was just…’ She gave up in relief when the priest announced the signing of the register would take place before the bride and groom would exit the cathedral.
Once the register was signed and some photos taken, they made their way back down the aisle to the strains of Handel’s music, the congregation and interested bystanders swelling towards them as they stepped out into the warm summer sunshine.
The reception was held at the same hotel as the ball had been, the room beautifully and lavishly decorated, and the champagne flowing freely by the time they arrived from having the official photographs taken.
Speeches and toasts were made, the cake was cut and the bridal waltz performed, cameras still flashing madly until it was finally time for Bryn and Mia to leave.
Gina had a tussle over the bouquet with several other young women but she was victorious in the end, although the bouquet she held proudly aloft was suspiciously short of a few blooms.
The ever-present journalists pressed forward as Bryn helped Mia into his car, their microphones outstretched. ‘Where’s the honeymoon going to be, Mr Dwyer?’ one of them asked.
‘How long will you be away?’ another pushed in.
‘No comment,’ Bryn said and closed Mia’s door. He waved to everyone before he got in the driver’s seat and leaning across gave Mia a long, sensual kiss for the benefit of the cameras.
Mia was already feeling a bit light-headed from all the champagne she’d consumed and his kiss made her head spin even more. She sank against him, her senses reeling at the erotic message being communicated by his lips and tongue.
He lifted his head and, smiling once more for the Press, he gunned the engine and they were away, balloons and tin cans and streamers trailing in their wake, the shaving-foam message ‘Just Married’ scrawled all over the back window.
‘How are you holding up?’ Bryn asked the silent figure beside him a few minutes later.
She sent him a rueful sideways glance. ‘My face aches from smiling all the time.’
He gave a soft chuckle of laughter. ‘Yeah, so does mine.’ He glanced in the rear-view mirror at the bouncing cans and pulled over to the side of the road to remove them, placing them in a rubbish bin on the pavement before getting back in behind the wheel and easing the car into the traffic.
Mia stared down at the two rings on her left hand. It hardly seemed real that she was sitting next to a man she hadn’t even met in person a little over a month ago. And now she was going on a honeymoon with him to his private retreat in the Queensland Sunshine Coast town of Noosa.
‘Do you think the Press will follow us?’ she asked to fill the little silence.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ he answered. ‘I think now the wedding has come and gone their interest will die down. It has to. All they were really interested in was whether or not we were really getting married. No one thought I would ever do it.’
Mia gave her rings another twirl, not trusting herself to chance a glance his way. ‘Your great-aunt seemed to be very happy for you.’
‘Yes, she was.’ His eyes flicked to her briefly. ‘I guess I should thank you for playing the role so well. You must have acted the beautiful-bride part before. You were a natural.’
‘I’ve been to a lot of weddings,’ she said and then added in a self-deprecating tone, ‘besides, the priest tells you what to say. It’s hardly challenging. It’s like having an Autocue to prompt you.’
He smiled as he took the turn to the domestic terminal. ‘I guess the challenging bit is yet to come.’
Mia decided not to respond. She’d been steadily panicking about the bit to come all day and wondered how in the world she was going to negotiate her way through it.
Ever since she’d spoken with his great-aunt Mia had felt increasingly confused about her feelings towards him. She could still taste his kiss on her lips and it worried her that once they were alone she wouldn’t have the resolve to keep her growing attraction to him under control. He was hard enough to resist while she hated him. How much more tempting would he be if she started to like him?
But you do like him, the little voice in her head returned. She tried to block it but it kept on filling her head with nonsense.
You’re in love with him.
You want to spend the rest of your life with him.
You want to have his children.
She clutched at her bag with both hands, staring down at the rings on her finger that bound her to him.
It couldn’t possibly be true. How could she love a man who had destroyed her career with a few words he’d written, thinking nothing of it, as if it were a simple game of sport?
She was just falling under his sensual spell like every other silly woman who didn’t have a measure of self-control. She would just have to try harder to avoid becoming yet another of his conquests.
Falling in love with Bryn Dwyer was too dangerous.
Their relationship was temporary.
She had to remember that.
‘Come on, Mia.’ Bryn’s voice broke through her reverie as he opened her door a few minutes later. ‘Our plane leaves in forty minutes. We need to check in before the flight closes.’
The flight to Maroochydore took an hour and a half and Mia was glad that for most of it she had slept. She woke just as they were coming in to land, the lights of the coastal
