Read Online Here Comes the Bride by Gayle Kasper - Free Book Online Page A

couldn’t begin to compare with the look of surprise shining in Fiona’s eyes when they’d reached their destination. It had been an expression he would remember long after she’d gone back to Boston, an expression he would cherish.
    “Go on,” he said. “Look around.”
    Fiona released his arm and went to peer into a locked glass case, full of artifacts andtreasures from a bygone era. “The inhabitants lived well,” she said.
    “The gold they mined around here made people millionaires overnight,” Nick replied, and leaned in next to her to see what it was that had caught her eye.
    “Then just like that, their wealth was gone again,” she said sadly, remembering what she’d learned in history class years before.
    She was looking at bits and pieces of people’s lives, at dreams gone bust. In a twinkling. It made her want to reach out and hold on to life with both hands and never let go.
    It was a feeling she often got when she acquired a prized antique for her shop, but it struck her even more strongly out here in the desert. Perhaps because she felt she was losing her father.
    Perhaps because of Nick, a man she’d be walking away from in a few short days, a man she’d probably only see again occasionally when the two families met at Christmas or Thanksgiving.
    Nick saw something flit across Fiona’s face and wondered what she was thinking about, but then her eyes brightened again as she moved on to a display of old dishes. He watched as she fingered a goblet, traced the gilt edge on a fancy plate.
    He picked up a dusty purple bottle of dubiousvalue and held it up to the light, wondering what anyone saw in all this junk.
    What Fiona saw in it.
    Shards of light filtered through the bottle, fanning out in prisms of purplish hues. Kinda pretty, he thought, but then so were sunsets.
    So was sunlight shining through Fiona’s fiery hair.
    He set the bottle down with an unceremonious thunk. If anyone had told him a few short days ago that he’d be wandering through an antique store and musing about sunsets and a woman with tempting red hair that he’d only just met, he’d have laughed.
    Raucously.
    Still, the alluring sight of her bending over to touch a filigree trinket propelled him across the room. He slid in next to her and fitted his hand to the curve of her firm derriere just below her waist. The flowery fragrance of her special perfume sent him into a spiral of desire. Unadulterated want.
    He’d never known another woman who could turn him on with just a look, a smile, a twist of her body, the way Fiona could. She glanced up then, her green eyes wide and expectant, and straightened to her full height. His hand slipped to a less intimate position at her waist.
    She still held the trinket in her hand, a gilt bauble with old gemstones set in it—gemstonesas glittery as the lights shining in her eyes at that moment.
    “What do you have there?” he asked, hoping his voice didn’t betray the turmoil inside him.
    “Oh, Nick, it’s a lady’s jewelry box. Old, delicate, tiny. I thought it was brass when I first saw it, but it’s gold.” Her hand touched it reverently.
    The piece was ornate, a remnant of better times, when gold ran like a river through this desert, Nick thought. And he wanted Fiona to have it. Because she admired it. Because it brought a smile to her lips just gazing at it. And her smile was something he couldn’t seem to get enough of lately.
    She whirled around in a sweeping gesture. “I’d like to buy all this and ship it back to my shop. Each antique is so unusual, at least compared with what I find in New England. It would sell well.”
    “Including the jewelry box?”
    She fingered a curlicue on the top of it. “This I wouldn’t sell.” She set it down gingerly.
    While she was busy trying to figure out how an old miner’s sluice worked, Nick slipped the clerk the money for the tiny jewelry box and hoped Fiona didn’t return for another glance at it and find it