ANNIE lay in the spa, looking out through the trees to the view of cliffs and gullies. The water bubbled around her, relaxing tired muscles and warming her body. It had been a long month, recuperating and getting Henry better. Then there’d been so much red tape to be sorted and often cut through. But they’d managed and yesterday Rowena Drake had married Alex Attwood, though it was Annie Talbot—no, Annie Attwood—who lay in the spa, waiting for her husband of a little over twenty-four hours to join her.
‘OK?’ he asked, as he dropped his robe and slid into the water, settling beside her and putting his arm around her shoulders.
‘OK doesn’t come near it, Alex,’ she said, resting her head against his shoulder and nuzzling a kiss into his neck. ‘OK isn’t on the same continent as the way I’m feeling.’
‘So tell me,’ he suggested.
Annie shook her head, but because he’d come to know her so well he persisted.
‘Come on—we’re talkers, you and I. We tell each other things. That’s the rule!’
‘Your rule—and you just made it up.’
‘I did,’ Alex said smugly, ‘but we’re newlyweds, we can make up whatever rules we like for our marriage. I’ve thought of another one. Twenty kisses before breakfast—every day for the rest of our lives.’
Annie laughed.
‘The way we kiss, it’d be dinnertime before we ate.’
She turned to kiss him to prove her point, and it was a long time before either of them spoke.
But one thing she’d learned about Alex was his persistence so, although his voice showed a fair degree of breathlessness from the kiss, he repeated his earlier demand.
‘Tell me!’
Annie watched the tops of the trees that grew in the gully beneath the cabin sway in the breeze and saw the way the patterns of sky changed as the leaves moved.
‘I feel new—reborn. I know that sounds silly, but I can’t help feeling Annie Attwood is such a different person from the other people I’ve been.’
She turned and looked into the serious grey eyes of the man she loved.
‘I have no fear, Alex. None at all. I was lying here in the spa, testing out all the bits of my body, and, no, there’s no sign of it anywhere. And it’s not just because Dennis is dead, but because of you. You’ve offered me a whole new life, and the thought of the two of us being together, of what we can do, the fun we can have, the joy we can share—it’s blotted out the past completely.’
‘No shadows?’ Alex asked, tracing his thumb across her cheek, stroking the freckles he seemed so fascinated by.
‘Not a one,’ she assured him, and kissed him again to prove it.
Alex held her close. It had taken a while to get his Annie to the cabin in the mountains, but they’d finally made it. Made it in the most glorious way—in celebration of their marriage. And now Annie was truly his, in every way.
He drew her closer, feeling the softness of her body against his, feeling love in such overwhelming abundance he knew it would keep them both safe for ever.
‘I love you, Annie Attwood,’ he whispered, and kissed her once again, thinking how wide an arc they’d travelled since the first kiss they’d shared.