“I love you.” He rumbled out the words, dark and delicious. “I love you so much. And I plan to spend the rest of the day showing you how much.”
He grabbed what was left of the sandy shopping and laced her fingers between his. Together they walked away from the beach, up through the meandering village houses, the little dog trotting contentedly behind. Maggie couldn’t wait to be alone with Alex at the cottage. Hop- along Layla was waiting for a cup of tea. Maggie crossed her fingers that her friend would get the hint and make herself scarce.
Alex had told her he loved her and now she was the one who hadn’t told him back. To get to the cottage they had to cross an iron bridge over a stream trickling down to the sea. Its green paint was rusty in places and somebody had attached a tiny lovelock to it, decorated with a bright-red nail color heart, a promise of forever love. Maggie stopped in her tracks. Her fingers interlaced with Alex’s, she turned to face him. For the first time giving love wasn’t a risk.
“Alex,” she said, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck. “I love you. You’re The One.”
The chapel by the sea was picture-perfect for the Christmas Eve wedding. There were more fishing nets and lobster pots than holy crosses, but that was fine by Maggie. Hollowed into the cliff, it had been a sanctuary since the fourteenth century. Maggie had loved it to bits since she was a child. The church was at the heart of the community, a place where people gathered in happy times and in sad. Villagers in centuries past went there to pray for the safe return of their loved ones. When someone was lost at sea it was the quiet place where they went to cry.
Never in her wildest imaginings could Maggie have predicted marrying her dream man in tiny Saint Elisabeth’s. Layla and her friends from the village had done a great decorating job. They’d twisted sprigs of mistletoe and holly into long green trails of ivy and dotted the church with pine cones, peppered in amongst the pebbles and seashells that were so much part of its charm. With enough candles to light a stately home, never mind a small chapel, and a tangle of fairy lights wrapped around the rafters, the place looked magical. Outside a fresh snowfall had turned the world white. It could not have been more perfect had it been a film set created in Hollywood.
Everyone Alex and Maggie cared about was there. Nick was exceptional as the best man and Layla an outstanding maid of honor. Cassandra shone in Parisian couture. Drake put in a super-polite appearance. Ella, no longer Nick’s plus one, but still a friend of the brothers, flew in for a few hours, taking a break from filming on location somewhere fab. Maggie’s mum turned up with her fiancé in tow. Delighted to be the mother of the bride, and thrilled that the happy couple were tying the knot on Christmas Eve, she was a tad disappointed that they’d declined to sell their wedding-photo opportunity to a glamorous magazine, but she was discreet enough not to make a fuss about it. Alex had traced Maggie’s Australian grandparents and invited them. They couldn’t make the wedding, but they’d promised to come the following summer to meet their granddaughter and the baby twins.
Maggie was every inch the stunning bride in a red-silk wedding dress. She’d been tempted to suggest that they put the wedding off until after the babies were born, but Layla had pointed out that if anyone was up to styling a still-comparatively-smallish bump it was Maggie. “After all,” she’d enthused, “You’re marrying the man you love, not trying to look like you belong in a bridal magazine.” Although, given the fantabulous outcome, she wouldn’t have looked out of place.
Layla had tried to insist that she wear a shade of purply pink that exactly matched her name, but Maggie was having none of it. In deep-forest green, a pretty contrast to Maggie, Layla, with her bright-red hair, looked fantastic. With superstitious leanings, she’d been a little bit concerned about the green, having heard somewhere that it was an unlucky color for weddings, but Maggie had been adamant that it was fine, and festive.
When Maggie arrived at the chapel and Alex turned to see her walk up the aisle, her heart was bursting with love.
“Do you Alexander Drake Wells take Magenta Sunrise Plumtree to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
Alex’s eyebrows shot up. “Sunrise?” he mouthed.
She nodded.
“Me by Magenta Sunrise is the name of your baby collection,” he whispered, halting the proceedings momentarily.
Things were moving full-steam ahead for Maggie. After the honeymoon, she’d be negotiating a deal with a big retailer. They were proposing to launch a new babywear range, offering her design input, and using her name to front the brand.
“It is.”
The young vicar raised his hand to his mouth and gave a discreet “Ahem”.
“It’s also my … um … full name.”
“I never knew that.”
Alex gazed at his beautiful bride.
“Well, now you do.”
“I do.”
Seizing the moment, and eager to complete his first wedding, the triumphant vicar pronounced them husband and wife. “You may kiss the bride.”
Alex banded one arm around Maggie’s waist, drew her to him tighter-than-tight, and placed a possessive kiss on her lips.
A cheer rang out in the candlelit harbor chapel.
“You forgot the rings.” It was an onlooker who drew it to everyone’s attention, one of the ladies from the WI who’d squeezed in at the back to watch the Plumtree girl marry Hot Vampire Guy.
The inexperienced vicar blushed so hard that his ears complemented the wedding dress. Everyone laughed. Nobody minded. Certainly not Alex and Maggie. They couldn’t have been any happier. Or any more in love. Alex took Maggie’s hand in his. Her neatly manicured nails shone with natural polish. Gently he slid the wedding ring into place.
They’d taken over the local Manor House Hotel for the holiday weekend and all the family had stayed. When the last drop of champagne had been drained and the bouquet thrown like a beach ball straight to Layla, Alex and Maggie said their goodnights. Wrapped in each other’s arms, moonlight streamed through the mullioned window of the bridal suite. Far below waves crashed onto rocks. Maggie stood on tiptoe and kissed her husband lovingly. He scooped her off her feet into his strong arms. He carried her across the room and tumbled her gently onto the four-poster bed.
“I love you, Mrs. Wells.”
Maggie brimmed with love and desire for her gorgeous husband. In the shadows, she reached out, ran her hands across his cheeks, down over his lightly stubbled jaw, and linked them at the back of his neck. The fingers of her right hand connected with the metal band on the ring finger of her left. A bubble of joy erupted inside her. She touched the soft, short hair at his nape and pulled him close, seeking out the mouth that he’d promised to her with a lifetime guarantee. Happiness filled her heart when he kissed her.
“You’re The One. The only one. Ever,” he murmured. He started oh-so-slowly to untie the crisscross laces in the back of her red-silk dress. She laughed softly. He loved her inside out. “You’re the color of my love.”
She didn’t believe it was humanly possible to be this happy.
If I am the color of your love, you are the color of my tomorrows.
The thought was lost in his kiss. He was the man she didn’t know she could have, the one to love forever. He enfolded her and she wrapped around him like a seam of soft rock melded with granite.
June