You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes.
—Song of Solomon 4:9
Their eyes met as soon as she stepped off the small plane, and Jack had to force himself not to run to her. How could a whole year have passed without Eliza near him, without her in his arms?
Jack had on white khaki pants and a white short-sleeve button-down. Five days ago he was nearly killed in Honduras, but that was behind him now. Somehow he had finished his last mission with breath in his lungs.
And now he was here. Ready to start the rest of his life.
There was a yellow line on the ground, one he couldn’t cross. He watched her take her bag from the cart and then turn to him. She must’ve found his note because the look of her made his heart skip a beat.
Her white sundress fluttered in the breeze.
She also wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, as if she still had to be careful about who saw her and what danger that might put her in. There was no danger now, but the hat worked. It made her look like the true princess she was. Like royalty from a faraway land.
Then, in a way he would remember as long as he lived, she came to him. She didn’t look around or seem aware of the other people deplaning. Her eyes were on his alone. And finally she was in his arms.
He removed her hat and dropped it to the ground. Then he kissed her like he’d wanted to since they’d said goodbye in Cancún. The years and danger and missions were behind them. From this day forward it would be him and Eliza. Nothing could tear him away from her.
She looked into his eyes. “Every day I missed you, Jack.”
“You’re so beautiful.” And all he could think was that she was here, in his arms. He wasn’t dreaming. Once more he kissed her. “Don’t ever leave me again, Eliza. Promise.”
She laughed, the sort of unguarded laugh he wanted to spend the rest of his life listening to. “I promise.”
They collected her things and walked to his rented BMW, then he drove south down the peninsula. Jack had worked out a deal with the owner of a private resort. Four bungalows and a luxury suite all on the most beautiful strip of sand he’d ever seen. He pulled into the parking lot and cut the engine.
“I have a surprise for you.”
“I see that.” She stared out the window at the stretch of shoreline ahead of her. “I’ve always wanted to walk this beach. Did you know that?”
“I did.” He smiled. That wasn’t the surprise. “We’ll get your things later. Come on.”
He opened her door and led her to a path lined with lit lanterns and Mason jars of white flowers. His heart pounded and his breathing was shallow. He’d worked on this surprise longer than she knew. He turned to her. “I love you, Eliza.” He brushed a lock of hair from her cheek. “Lizzie James. I’ll always love you.”
“I love you, too.” A bit of laughter lifted her lips. “What am I supposed to call you now?”
“Jonathan Ryder.” He winked at her. “But you can call me Jack. It’ll be my nickname. It’s sort of grown on me.”
“Me, too.” She put her hand alongside his face. “The candles… the flowers? How did you do this?”
“I had help.” He took her hand in his and they walked down the path and out onto the sand, where four people sat in white wooden folding chairs, two on each side of a white cloth runner. They faced the water and a white gazebo.
Jack smiled. Just like he had arranged.
“What… Jack, what is this?” She looked at him. “Who are they?”
He hugged her. “It’s okay. Just some friends of mine.”
They took off their shoes and walked barefoot in the sand.
Then from one side of the aisle, a woman stood. She had long brown hair and the same face as Eliza’s. A second later, the young man next to the woman also stood, and when he turned Eliza gasped.
She held on to Jack so she wouldn’t fall to the ground. “Mama? Daniel?”
Jack felt his eyes well up. He waited until Eliza’s mother reached her, then he stepped back. The love of his life had longed for this moment since she was a small child. He couldn’t believe God was letting him watch it play out.
“Lizzie! My baby girl, you’re alive!” Her mother wrapped Eliza in her arms and both of them held on to each other. The way the children of soldiers hold on when their parents return from war. “I can’t believe it. After all this time. My precious girl.”
“They told me… you drowned.” Eliza clung to her mother and then turned to the young man. “Daniel. My brother.” She took hold of him. “Is it really you?”
Jack watched from a few feet away. This was the greatest gift he could ever give her. And it had almost not happened.
Her brother put his arm around Eliza’s shoulders. “Lizzie.” Tears streamed down his face. “I’ve missed you every day. Father told us you had drowned, too.” He held her close, like no time had passed. Then the three of them formed a circle and held each other for a long time.
Daniel stepped back first. “Jack found us. He sent an agent to Lancaster.” He touched Eliza’s face. “I never stopped believing you were really alive. You were out there somewhere, looking for us.”
“Jack?” Eliza still had one arm around her mother and the other around her brother. “How did you…? When…?”
He could watch Eliza with her family for the rest of the afternoon, but he tried to find his voice. “It was your great-grandfather, Lizzie.” He looked from her to her mother and brother. “He believed you were all alive. After talking with him, I couldn’t let the idea go.”
He could tell her later how he hadn’t gotten word that her mother and brother were found until three days ago, when he returned home from Honduras. CJ, his undercover agent friend, was working a drug ring in eastern Pennsylvania when he got a tip on her family.
Jack hadn’t been sure it was them until he flew there and met with the pair himself. He needed only one look at Susan James to know without a doubt. This was Eliza’s mother. She looked like a carbon copy of Eliza, a little older, darker hair. But the same blue eyes, same smile.
And since then he had come to learn something else about the woman. She and Eliza had the same heart. Her brother was twenty-one, and Jack could see the resemblance in him, too. So he had flown her family here for the moment that was about to happen.
As they reached the aisle, an older man stood and took his place near the gazebo. He wore a suit and he nodded at Jack.
“That’s the pastor,” Jack whispered near her ear. “The woman is his wife.”
“I can’t believe this.” Eliza looked like she could barely feel the sand beneath her feet.
Her mom hugged her again and stared at her. Like all she wanted was to stare at Eliza as long as she could. Finally she stepped back. Tears still shone on her face. “I have something for you.” She walked to a bag behind the folding chairs and returned with a simple bouquet of white stars, a flower native to Belize. “I think you might need this.”
“True.” Jack kissed Eliza’s cheek and then he left her and walked down the aisle. He took his place next to the pastor. Everything was moving in slow motion, like the dream he’d imagined every day since he last saw her.
Eliza took the flowers, and kissed her mother’s cheek. The two held hands for a long moment and then Susan James went back to sit in the front row, across the aisle from the pastor’s wife.
Jack couldn’t stop smiling at the look on Eliza’s face. His note asking her to wear white today had to have given away the fact that a wedding was coming. But this… Jack blinked back tears. This was greater than anything he could’ve imagined.
Daniel stood beside her and held out his arm. “May I walk you down the aisle, Lizzie?”
“Yes!” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Yes, Daniel, you may walk me down the aisle.” She was clearly trying not to cry, trying to soak in every moment. Jack could tell.
The aisle wasn’t long or glamorous, but until his final breath Jack would remember the way Lizzie James looked walking toward him, clinging to the brother she thought she’d lost forever. Even then she had eyes for Jack alone. And he realized they were no longer on a private stretch of Belizean beach.
They were on holy ground.
THE SWEET SCENT of the flowers in her hand made her certain she wasn’t dreaming. But nothing else about the moment seemed real. Her mother and brother were alive! And they were here, with her, beside her!
God had brought them back to her. And He’d brought her back to Jack. All in one beautiful day. She had no idea how he’d found a pastor here on the Placencia Peninsula, but that didn’t matter. The man looked kind and he had a Bible in his hands.
She reached the end of the aisle, and Daniel put his hands on her shoulders. “I love you, Lizzie.”
“I love you, Daniel.” She hugged him for a long while, and then he sat down beside their mother.
Eliza looked at the woman. She hadn’t changed. Her hair, her face. Just like the images Eliza had imagined every time she looked out at the ocean. Their eyes held for a long moment, and then Eliza turned to Jack.
“I’m Pastor Joseph.” The man smiled. “Looks like we’ve got much to celebrate today.”
You have no idea, she wanted to say. But she only nodded. Somewhere in heaven, she hoped Jack’s parents and Shane had a front-row spot. Because if God could do this, He could do that, too.
The pastor continued. “I understand you two haven’t seen each other for a year’s time.” He shook his head. “I’m sure you don’t have vows prepared. But do you both intend to—”
Eliza raised her hand.
“Yes, Ms. James.” Pastor Joseph looked confused.
“I have vows.” She smiled at Jack and gave a small shrug of her shoulders. “I had all year to memorize them.”
Jack chuckled. “Me, too.”
The pastor nodded. He looked a little dazed. Surely he’d never done a wedding like this one. “Okay then. Lizzie… Jonathan. Marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman, a covenant ordained by God. Are you two prepared to enter into that covenant now?”
She met Jack’s eyes. They both nodded and said, “Yes… we are.”
“Very well.” Pastor Joseph looked at Daniel. “Do you and your mother approve of this union?”
Eliza’s brother reached for their mother’s hand as he nodded. “We do.”
“Lizzie, you may join your groom.”
“Thank you.” Eliza loved the old pastor. He seemed determined to keep the sense of reverence and propriety even when the wedding wouldn’t take more than five minutes. As if he could tell something very special was happening in his presence.
Never mind that she had only her sundress and bare feet. Eliza might as well have been wearing a gown fit for a queen. And this sandy spot of beach might as well have been a cathedral. She handed her bouquet to her mother and walked to the spot in front of Jack. He took her hands in his.
“Jonathan.” The pastor nodded at Jack. “You may go first.”
For a long time Jack only looked at her, like he was trying to memorize her face, her eyes, everything about this moment. “I, Jonathan Jack Ryder, I ask you, Lizzie James, to be my lawfully wedded wife. When all the world is falling down around us, I will hold you up. And when you can’t see through to tomorrow, I will help you believe.”
He searched her eyes. “I promise to stand by you and pray for you, love you and lead you to God. Again and again and again. And when life gets loud, I’ll remind you that even in the beginning when it was you and me against the world, we were never alone. Because God ordained you for me… and me for you.” He blinked back tears. “I love you with my very life, Lizzie.”
She took her time before speaking. The beauty of his words, his feelings for her needed a moment all their own. Finally she drew a slow breath, her eyes never leaving his. “I, Lizzie Susan James, choose you, Jonathan Jack Ryder, to be my lawfully wedded husband. I will look to you when I can’t find my way, and I will lift you up, if ever you forget the hero you are.”
Tears tried to come, but Eliza refused them. Steady me, God. She was too happy to cry. “I will stand by you whatever life holds, and I will believe that every day together with you is not only a gift from God… but a miracle. I will feel your touch when I’m alone and remember your voice when I’m afraid.”
She grinned at him. “I noticed something when we were working together. When you breathed in, I felt life.” She paused. “And so it shall be forever and ever. Because you will always be a part of me. And I will always be a part of you. Undivided. Forever on this side of heaven… and that side.” She squeezed his hands. “I love you with every heartbeat. I always will.”
Pastor Joseph raised his brow. “I believe those might have been the most beautiful vows I have ever heard.” He gave a single nod. “I will ask the questions, then.” He looked at Jack. “Do you, Jonathan Ryder, take Lizzie Susan James, to be your wife, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish until death do you part?”
Jack looked to the center of her heart. “I do.”
The pastor smiled. “And do you, Lizzie Susan James, take Jonathan Jack Ryder, to be your husband, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish until death do you part?”
“Yes!” She had never been so happy in all her life. “I do.”
“Very well… will you two be exchanging rings?”
Eliza hadn’t even remembered the rings.
“Yes.” Jack grinned at her. “We have rings.” He pulled them from his pants pocket and handed his to Lizzie.
“You bought rings?”
“The week after I said goodbye to you in Cancún.” Tears glistened in his eyes, but his smile kept them from falling. “I’ve carried them with me ever since.”
Her ring held a stunning center diamond, as pure and brilliant and bright as their future. It glistened in the Belizean sun with small diamonds on either side of the larger one. Jack slipped it onto her finger… and it fit her perfectly. Like the two of them.
Next she put a simple gold band on his ring finger. “Jack,” she whispered, “the rings are beautiful.” She leaned closer and put her hand to the necklace he had given her on the beach in Mexico. The one she had worn every day since. “You kept your promise. You waited for me.”
“Every day, Lizzie. Every day.” He looked like he’d forgotten anyone else was there.
A chuckle came from the pastor. “I have a feeling this one’s going to last.” He looked from Jack to Eliza and back again. “By the power of the government of Belize, it is my privilege to pronounce you husband and wife.” He smiled. “Jonathan, you may kiss your bride.”
Jack worked his hands into her hair. Then he drew her into his arms. His kiss took her breath and she felt like she might float away. Because this wasn’t pretend. It wasn’t a mission or an act or part of a job they had to do.
It was forever.
Jack stepped back and smiled at her. “I can’t believe it.”
“Me, either.” Eliza kissed him this time, and a chorus of soft laughter came from the front row. She barely noticed. She was Jack’s wife now, and truly nothing but death could ever separate them.
When it was over, when she had Jack on one side and her mother and brother on the other, Eliza realized she had no idea where they were going to live or what life looked like moving forward. But it didn’t matter.
God had given her everything she ever needed. Right here.
In this single moment.