The Unexpected Wedding Gift. Catherine Spencer

I thought my marriage was over. But he’s had a change of heart. He wants us to patch things up and give it another go, and so do I.”

      Another semi-tearful sniffle gurgled down the line, followed by a man’s voice muttering in the background like a Rottweiler getting set to square off against a poodle. The irate husband putting in his two bits’ worth, no doubt!

      “There’s no use trying to talk me out of it,” she said hurriedly. “We’re finished, Ben.”

      Damn right, lady! The pity of it is that we ever got started.

      “I’m sorry if this hurts you.”

      “I’ll survive,” he said. And how! “Have a nice life, Marian. I hope things work out the way you want them to.”

      “Thanks,” she said. “Goodbye, Ben. And happy New Year.”

      CHAPTER ONE

      THE speeches were over, the ceremonial cutting of the cake done. During the lull in proceedings, waiters moved among the tables, refilling champagne flutes or, for those bored with Perrier Jouet, pouring two-hundred-dollar half bottles of ice wine as casually as if it were common tap water. On the dais at the far end of the ballroom, a ten-piece dance orchestra replaced the string quartet that had provided the dinner music.

      If he’d been asked, Ben would have settled for a less fancy wedding. In fact, all he’d have needed to make it perfect was Julia. But he hadn’t been asked. His new mother-in-law had taken charge, consulting him only when she absolutely had to, and even then not quite managing to control the grimace creeping over her patrician features at the thought of his becoming part of the family.

      “The man’s in bathrooms and kitchens, for pity’s sake!” he’d once overheard her exclaim to one of her golfing cronies. “Oh, Julia can protest all she likes that he’s president of his own company and there’s a mile-long waiting list of clients begging to have him design for their homes, but I hardly consider being able to build a few fancy cabinets a passport to society.”

      “I’d give my eyeteeth to have his team work on my kitchen,” the friend had replied. “Marjorie Ames brought him in to do hers and the value of her house shot up past the million-dollar mark as a result.”

      Unimpressed, Stephanie Montgomery had tossed her expensively permed head in contempt. “He’s still nothing more than a glorified plumber, as far as I’m concerned.”

      But Ben didn’t care what she thought of him. He had Julia; his love, his life, and now, at last and forever, his wife.

      Her left hand rested on the table beside him, soft and graceful, the broad gold wedding band he’d placed on her finger not three hours before anchored behind her diamond solitaire engagement ring. The realization, again, that out of all the men she could have had, she’d chosen him—him!—left his throat thick with emotion. He hadn’t known it was possible to love like this.

      He slewed a glance her way, wanting to capture again in his mind the image of her as she was on this, their wedding day. He’d known she’d be a beautiful bride, because she was a beautiful woman in every sense of the word. Still, the sweep of her dark hair caught up in the jeweled tiara holding her veil in place, and her profile backlit by the late July sunset mirrored on the tall open windows, stole his breath away. She looked magical, an angel, so lovely he couldn’t find the words to tell her how moved he was by the sight of her, or how incredibly lucky and blessed he felt to have been the one to win her heart.

      From his seat two places farther down the table, Jim, his best man, leaned back and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, pal, you’re drooling!” He smirked.

      Ben grinned back and mouthed a reply. “I’m allowed to. She’s my wife!”

      Over the band’s subdued intro, the emcee, an old friend of the bride’s family, hem-hemmed into the microphone and called on the groom to lead the bride in the first dance. Feeling as if his heart would burst with pride, Ben pushed back his chair and helped Julia to her feet.

      Looping the end of her train over her wrist, she took his hand, smiled up at him and followed him into the middle of the dance floor. He felt he should say something profound, something they’d both remember forty years from then. But the only words that came to mind were the mundane and clichéd, May I have this dance, Mrs. Carreras? And she deserved better than that; she deserved the best life had to offer. So he kept his mouth shut and contented himself by placing his right hand possessively in the small of her back and urging her close, the way only a husband had the right to do.

      Her silk crinoline billowed around them, disguising the fact that her hips nestled snugly against him and, thank God and whoever designed her wedding gown, hiding his body’s uncontrollable reaction to her nearness. He could well imagine her mother’s horror, if she’d known; her whispered outrage. He allowed himself to become aroused, Garry! Right there on the dance floor! He couldn’t even wait until they were in the honeymoon suite before letting his animal lust get the better of him. That pervert publicly humiliated us and embarrassed our daughter on the most important day in her life!

      Except Julia wasn’t embarrassed. She might have blushed a little when she realized the effect she was having on him, but that didn’t prevent her from snuggling up a little closer and lowering her lashes in blatant, seductive promise of the night to come.

      Blowing out a breath, Ben returned Mrs. Montgomery’s unblinking gaze. Like it or not, Stephanie, old dear, your lovely daughter’s my wife now and until death us do part! How we choose to conduct our relationship is no longer any of your business.

      “Do you recognize the song they’re playing?” Julia’s voice at his ear, her breath soft and sweet against the side of his neck, brought his attention back where it belonged.

      “‘If Ever I Should Leave You,”’ he said, bending his head so that his mouth grazed hers. From the sidelines, a dozen flashbulbs exploded as the photographers captured the moment. “Our special song. You must have chosen it.”

      “Yes. Mother would have preferred a classical waltz, but I put my foot down. I wanted something that would have particular meaning for us. I love you so much, Ben.”

      Emotion swept over him again, a tidal wave of such colossal proportion he hardly knew how to cope with it. They’d met during the intermission of a return engagement of Camelot, the previous February, and within minutes he’d decided she was the woman he was going to marry—a crazy idea, given that he wasn’t the impulsive kind and all he knew about her was her name, that she had beautiful, dark brown eyes and that she stood about five eight in her high heels.

      Still he hadn’t let that stop him from inviting her out to lunch the next day, though he’d shown up expecting that, away from the romance and drama of the musical, she’d turn out to be no more special than any other pretty, well-dressed woman-about-town. That she was just as appealing in the light of a cold, blustery winter’s day was a bonus, but it was her warmth, her intelligence and her lively interest in other people that ensnared him forever and made him determined to flatten every objection her parents threw up in their efforts to discourage the marriage.

      “I’ll prove myself to them,” he’d promised her.

      “Why?” she’d said. “I’m the one you’re marrying and you don’t have to prove a thing to me.”

      “I love you, too,” he murmured now, forcing the words past the knot in his throat and knowing they didn’t begin to convey the depth of his feelings for her. “There’s never been anyone like you, Julia. I want to give you the whole world.”

      “I don’t need the whole world. I only need you.” She slipped her hand up his shoulder and caressed the back of his neck in long, slow strokes. “Remember the words to our song, Ben. That’s exactly how I feel about you.”

      The impact of her touch sizzled clean down to the soles of his feet, with particularly graphic effect on his most susceptible quarters. Retaliating, he nuzzled her ear,