Jessica Hart - Here Comes The Bride

“For months that man has been in agony waiting for you to leave the show so you two could be married.”

She shook her head. “If that’s true, then I’m the last person on the face of the earth to know it. Why didn’t he ever say anything to me?”

“He said it every time he took Carly in his arms. Couldn’t you feel it? When he kissed you at the altar, every woman on the set stopped breathing. Your lovely hat fell off and you didn’t even notice because you were too enthralled with that gorgeous new husband of yours.”

“He warned me the hat might get in his way when it came time to kiss me.” The brides in Greece wear garlands. That should have been a clue. “But honestly, Elaine, I thought it was all play-acting from beginning to end.”

“No man is that great an actor, Reese. Or woman. The way you responded to him, everyone on the show knew how you two felt about each other. Your great love affair has been the only topic of conversation on the set for the last year!”

“All this time everyone’s known how I’ve felt about him?”

“If you could see your eyes when you look at him…It’s something you can’t hide. What’s so wonderful is that he can’t see anyone else but you when he comes on the set. Like Phyllis said today, the love between you and Alex has been a beautiful thing to watch.”

“I still can’t believe it. He told me he’d been in love with another woman all of last year.”

“He was. That woman was you! You were his secret girlfriend-until you became his wife today!”

Good heavens.

“If this has come as a complete surprise to you, blame it on Lilian. From what I understand, he made a promise to her a long time ago. I don’t know the details. That’s something private between the two of them. I’m sure he’ll tell you when he’s ready. You didn’t fight with him tonight, did you?”

“No.” Her voice wobbled. “I asked him what kind of strange joke he was playing. That’s when he left.”

“So he’s still in agony…” Elaine’s voice trailed.

At this point, Reese needed answers only one man could give her.

“Elaine? I’ve got to hang up.”

“Call me when you get back from your honeymoon.”

Honeymoon…

Should you decide you want to be my wife, you know where I live.

ALEX stepped out of the shower and hitched a towel around his hips to shave. It had been forty-five minutes since he’d left Reese’s condo.

Obviously it was going to take more than one kiss from Prince Charming to bring Sleeping Beauty awake. He would give her another twenty minutes, then he wou-

The ringing of his cell phone was the most satisfying sound he’d heard in a long time.

He picked it up and checked the caller ID. R Bringhurst. After clicking on he said, “Reese?”

“Hi.” She sounded breathless.

“Hello yourself.”

“We…need to talk.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“Are you at your apartment?”

“Yes. Where are you?”

“In the foyer of your building.”

Alex sucked in his breath. “I’ll let you in.”

After ringing off, he pulled his robe from the hook of the bathroom door and shrugged into it. Then he walked down the hall to the living room. This day had been a long time in coming, but, as his grandfather had taught him, anything worth having meant you had to work hard for it. “Patience, my boy.”

For a full year, patience had been his mantra. Now if the gods were kind, it would pay off.

The knock on the door coincided with the thundering of his heart. He opened it immediately and there she stood, his raven-haired, blue-eyed beauty. Her fragrance filled the aperture.

She’d changed into a periwinkle-blue top with a kelly-green skirt. The dynamite combination brought out her coloring and the voluptuous mold of her body.

Her gaze studied him as if she were seeing him for the first time. In a way he supposed she was. Always before she’d thought of him as her costar.

Tonight she was finally seeing him as Alex Kieris, the flesh and blood man who had shown up on the set every weekday morning as she had. One moreover who wanted her with every fiber of his being.

“Come in.”

He stepped back, giving her the space she needed. Up to this point he’d done all the running. The rest was up to her now. In the next little while he would discover whether she couldn’t live without him either. If he’d misread the signs…

After shutting the door, he followed her alluring figure into his living room. His furnished apartment was half the size of Lilian’s. The man who’d lived here before had decorated it in a neo-contemporary style, but Alex found it sterile and lacking a woman’s touch. He couldn’t wait to vacate.

She swung around. It caused her hair to swish against her cheeks. “I called Elaine.”

Her admission came as no surprise. Since Lilian’s death, Reese had drawn closer to the other actress.

“You needed verification that we were legally married today?”

He watched the flush that broke out on her face. “She told me it was a real pastor who performed the ceremony.”

Alex cocked his head. “We’re married in the eyes of the law, but only if you want to be. If not, then I’ll give you an uncontested divorce. My intention wasn’t to cause you grief.

“The last thing I would want to do is force you to fight me in court because you didn’t know you were taking vows in front of a certified clergyman.”

She rubbed her arms, a gesture she only did when she was nervous or unsure of something. “Elaine found the whole thing very romantic.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I’m still in shock, Alex. What possessed you?”

“I’m surprised you would even ask that question. Surely it’s obvious I’m in love with you.”

In the still of the room, he could hear her shallow breathing. “Since when?”

“Since the day we met on the set and read our lines to get a feel for each other. It was love at first sight for Carly on Fabio’s part. I don’t know about you, but I’m afraid the same thing happened to me.”

The woman trembling in front of him remained silent. It could be an answer of sorts. He had yet to find out.

“If there’s any truth to what Soap Craze says about us being the magic couple, I owe it all to the fact that Reese Bringhurst sprang into my world full blown and I haven’t been the same since. Before I left Greece, if someone had told me an American television actress would be the woman who set me on fire, I would have scoffed at the mere idea.”

She shook her head. “You have a very strange way of showing your interest.”

“There was a reason for that.”

Reese stared at him with a baffled look in her eyes. “I’d like to hear it.”

“Would you like to sit down first?”

“No.”

He folded his arms. “After two weeks of working together, I approached your aunt about asking you out.”

“Why would you do that?” she demanded. “I’m my own person.”

“Probably because in Greece it’s the way to do things in polite society. If you were a Greek girl, my grandparents would have talked to your aunt first, or your parents, of course. It may be old-fashioned, but I was raised in a traditional home and it’s the nice way to do things.”

“I agree,” she admitted in a quiet voice.

“It didn’t surprise me when she told me she would rather I left you alone.”

Reese’s head flew back. “She didn’t!”

“Oh, yes, she did. But I wasn’t alarmed. It happens that way in Greece, too. You have to woo the parents, or, in your case, your aunt. So I began asking her to give me acting tips.”

The beautiful blue eyes fastened on him grew huge. “That’s the real reason why you came over to the condo all those times?”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “It was my main agenda. Not that I didn’t need all the acting help I could get. But you were the reason, and your aunt knew it.”

A gasp came out of Reese.

“Lilian was a wonderful woman, but very shrewd. She knew exactly what she was doing. It was a game we played. The longer we played it, the more I realized I was gaining ground with her and getting closer to my goal of taking you out.”

There was a long pause before she said, “My aunt liked you very much.”

“The feeling was mutual, believe me. Before she died, she told me she approved of me, but she made me promise her something.”

Reese clasped her hands. “I’m almost afraid to hear it.”

“In essence she told me she’d seen everything from her vantage point as an actress, and, on the whole, she worried that if both people in a marriage were actors, it was hard to make it work.

“I told her I had other aspirations in life and would only continue to play the part of Fabio until I’d made enough money to get me started in business. That reassured her. However, she was still concerned about you.”

“But she knew I wouldn’t stay with acting!”

He eyed Reese soberly. “She was dying, Reese. She feared her death might be too hard on you after losing your parents. She worried you would stay with acting because it was something you knew, something comfortable. Though I didn’t like to admit it, her fears made a great deal of sense to me.”

Again there was quiet before Reese asked in a tremulous voice, “What did she make you promise?”

“That I would do nothing about my feelings for you unless you left acting of your own free will. She wanted you to carve out your own destiny, whatever it was, without any influence from me.”

A hand went to her throat. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing.” Her eyes impaled him like lasers. “So if I hadn’t left the show-”

He shrugged his shoulders with unknowing elegance. “Then I wouldn’t have left either. It was my only way to have my cake without eating it, too. Tell me something, Reese. What made you decide not to renew your contract?”

She half turned away from him. “After Aunt Lilian died, my heart wasn’t in the show. She made it fun and exciting. It was something we could do together that brought us so close, but without her I realized it wasn’t for me. So I held on until I could leave without causing more upheaval than necessary.”

His jaw hardened. “Obviously you didn’t live for those moments when we could be on the set together. You weren’t like me, eager for the work day to start so I could hold you in my arms. Because of you I had a reason to get up in the mornings. The worst part of the day was having to get in my car and drive away from you. The weekends were a living hell for me.”

Reese swung back toward him. “They were for me, too!” she cried, hot faced. “You want to talk about pain? I knew I was in love with you after the first day of being with you on the set. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before.

“I told Aunt Lilian how I felt. She warned me it happened to every actress who was given a role opposite an attractive costar. A kind of in love with love thing. It would pass.

“But it didn’t pass, Alex. My love for you deepened. Talk about living for every day. Once you started coming to the condo, I prayed you would stay and talk to me, be with me. Alone. It never happened.”

“Now you know why,” he said in his deep voice.

“Because you never sought me out, I knew I had to leave the show. I couldn’t take loving you like I did, knowing I meant nothing to you. In fact I’d just decided to break my contract when Aunt Lilian suddenly took ill and died. After her funeral I realized I needed to stay on until renewal time came up. It wouldn’t have been fair to walk out.”

“I agree.”

“But these last few months…” She shook her head. “They’ve been a literal hell for me, too.”

Lines marred his handsome features. “When I heard you were leaving the show, I asked Stan to write some new lines for you so we could be married surrounded by all our friends. I wasn’t about to let you get away from me. Not after waiting an entire year for you.”

Her eyes filled with tears, making them shine like deep blue pools. “Elaine said she thought it was the most romantic thing she’d ever heard of in her whole life.”

His heart skittered all over the place. “What I’m concerned about is what you think. No one else matters. Do you want to stay married to me?”

She started moving toward him with a mysterious smile on her lips. He’d never seen that exact look on her face before.

“For how long?” she demanded.

“Into the afterlife and beyond.”

“Alex-”

He felt her arms go around his neck, felt her luscious mouth search avidly for his. Their legs tangled. Exquisite pleasure-pain shot through his body that this woman was really his at last.

“I love you, Reese. I’ll live wherever you want to live, support you in any way you wish. Give you all the children you want. You’re my life.”