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The first dance was theirs.
They’d never danced together before.
But it soon became evident that he danced as skillfully as he made love. When that song ended and another began, the first in a long line of friends appeared.
A big man in a too-tight suit tapped on Cameron’s shoulder.
“Mr. Pope, my name is Browning. I have worked with your wife. Might I steal her away just for a moment?”
Cameron grinned. The look on Rusty’s face was worth losing her to the next dance.
“Yes, you may, but take good care. I want her back.”
Browning smiled. “The last time I saw this lady, she was being chased by a boatload of pirates. It does my heart good to see her so happy.”
Then he whisked her out of Cameron’s arms and began their dance.
“You look lovely, my dear, and it’s obvious you are happy. And may I say you have chosen quite a man. I know people who know him. When he served, he was hell on wheels in his own right. They talk about him and this dog when he was in country. They were quite a pair.”
Rusty laughed. “You mean Ghost? He came home with Cameron. He’s still doing his thing, too.”
Browning laughed. “Wonderful! Wonderful! I did not know this!”
Halfway around the floor, Jay Howard cut in, and then Dan Pickard, and then her old boss from DC. She danced with men who’d rescued her and men who’d been her backup.
She danced with men from the mountain while Cameron swept their ladies around the room.
She danced with her uncle, and teenage boys with the last name Glass, and young men who were part of the Cauleys, and got hugs and best wishes from all the women from the Pope family, and ate cake and drank champagne until she was giddy.
When it was time to throw her bouquet, the single women gathered. There was a moment when she would have sworn she heard her mother’s laughter, then she turned her back to the crowd and gave her bouquet a toss. But she threw it so high and so far that it overshot the women and came down within the men—straight into Michael Devon’s hands.
He blushed and then laughed and marched it through the crowd of people slapping him on the back in good-natured teasing and handed it to Liz. She took the bouquet with a curtsy.
Then Cameron walked out of the crowd as more music swelled.
It was a waltz, and he’d come to claim his bride.
He took her in his arms and whispered in her ear.
“The last dance is mine.”
Then he began turning her and dipping her in rhythm to the music, circling the floor with her, watching the light catch in her hair, and then disappear into the fiery depths.
As the music played on, more couples joined them.
Ray and Patricia. Liz and Michael. Louis and Rachel. Leslie with her father, Wade. John dancing with his Annie, and more couples joined them until it appeared as if the ballroom floor was spinning clockwise on its own.
And while no one was looking, Cameron danced his bride out of the ballroom all the way to the elevator and slipped her out of the hotel.
Night met them on the road up the mountain, pulling them farther, guiding them higher into the darkness, with music and memories still spinning in their heads.
The motion-detector lights came on as Cameron pulled beneath the carport.
Ghost began barking.
Cameron circled the car to help Rusty out, then walked with her to the door. The moment it swung inward, Ghost shot past them and out into the backyard to make his rounds.
“Tradition, darlin’,” Cameron said, then swept her up in his arms and carried her across the threshold and into the kitchen.
