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He growled her name, then pulled her back into his arms as if he’d never let her go.
CHAPTER TEN
THEY got married eight weeks later.
Some cameos of those eight weeks as she prepared for her wedding, Alex knew she would never forget.
Margaret Winston’s delight was one.
‘I knew you were the right one for him, Alex,’ she said joyfully when presented with the news. ‘I knew it right from the start!’
Alex blinked at her, but Max did more.
‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘I got the distinct feeling that when she turned up at the cocktail party looking so drop-dead gorgeous you might have had a hand in it, Margaret!’
‘I did. The minute I saw those legs and that lovely figure I decided to make the best of it. Actually Alex was a bit of a hindrance there,’ she admitted. ‘But what impressed me first was the way she stood up to you at that interview.’ She hugged Alex and kissed her warmly. ‘Of course, that’s how I handle Mr Goodwin myself—I wish!’ she added humorously.
‘Mr Goodwin’ looked slightly put out. ‘I’m not that hard to handle, am I?’
‘Yes,’ his fiancée and his principal private secretary chorused.
‘I’m not really,’ he said to Alex that evening.
He’d taken her to dinner at Sanctuary Cove and they were leaning on a railing watching the million-dollar boats in the marina.
Alex was wearing her cocktail-party outfit and while she didn’t know if she looked a million dollars, she felt it. And the diamond on her engagement finger sparkled with a mysterious blue fire beneath the overhead lights of the walkway.
She turned to him. ‘Hard to handle? I’ll tell you, in ten years I’ll either be worn to a shadow or blooming.’
He cupped her face and kissed her lightly. ‘You’re blooming now, Alex.’ He studied her. The lovely hair, her eyes, the figure he was little by little coming to know beneath Margaret’s inspired choice of clothes.
‘I feel as if I am,’ she told him and dropped her voice. ‘Thanks to you, Max.’
He was assaulted by a powerful urge to lean her back over his encircling arms and to kiss her witless. In deference to his back, and the good citizens of Sanctuary Cove, he resorted to humour instead. ‘Well, I can’t be so bad, then.’
‘You can be awful,’ she contradicted. ‘The trouble is you can also be awfully nice—Margaret would lay down her life for you. Should we go home?’
He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘That sounds like a rather pointed—suggestion.’
‘It is,’ she said gravely. ‘I’d like very much to be kissed but—in private.’
‘My thoughts, entirely, Miss Hill,’ he replied seriously, but he grinned then and kissed her, lightly, but all the same.
His sister Olivia provided another cameo, or rather his reaction to his sister Olivia.
He snapped his mobile shut after talking to her in the UK, and swore.
Alex, curled up in a basket chair on the lawn after a lazy Sunday-morning breakfast, looked a question at him.
‘She’s all set to fly out and take over. Considering the fact that not so long ago she told me I was mad not to be marrying Cathy, I find that incredible.’
‘Take over?’
‘The wedding. You don’t know my sister Olivia.’ He stared moodily out over the Broadwater.
‘I do. As a matter of fact I had the pleasure of her company at the dinner dance.’
‘Oh. I forgot. What did you think of her?’
