“Actually, It’s an Emma Paige property. I transferred it to your name the day I saw you teaching that boy how to hold a violin. I fell in love with you in that very moment. Something changed in me. All the anger I was holding, all the doubt I had vanished. And when you threw that violin at me in the back of the car? That was when I knew I was going to spend the rest of my life chasing you until you came back to me.”
I feel like the Grinch whose heart grew three sizes because mine is about to explode. I’m not going to lie. I’m scared. I am absolutely petrified that this is too good to be true. Frightened how tomorrow it could all fall apart. I could lose Alexander and I could lose myself.
But I’m not going to let the possible hurt keep me from experiencing happiness. Never again. I am going to live and I am going to love and I am going to burn.
“What about the school? Will the Juliette Academy have to close?” The sudden guilt at what his decision means to the future of the greatest school I’ve ever known his me hard.
“The school is fine. They gave it to me as a parting gift. Looks like no one on the board wants to be bothered with it. What do you say, wanna run a school with me?”
“I’d love nothing more.” And it’s the truth. It’s not the life I chose but it’s the one that I was meant to live. “Thank you for choosing us.”
“Thank you for choosing me.”
ALEXANDER
A glass of Glen in my hands and the sun on my back. Not a bad way to start your day.
Especially when it’s going to end with Emma Gutierrez in your bed.
My hands are wrapped around the hand of the only woman I have ever truly loved. And she looks radiant.
Her hair is down and loose like the first time I saw her. She asked if I had any special requests for our wedding day and this was it: to have her hair down.
I remember that day like it was yesterday. I had just sent Malory back to the mainland when Mateo, our deck hand, alerted me of Devon’s arrival. I was looking for him when I heard a song coming from the one room on the ship no one was allowed. My music room was my space for personal reflection. The one place I could be me, the real me.
When I heard music coming from that room, I was livid. Knuckles ready for a fight, I stormed in there to find out who could be so defiant. Imagine my surprise to find an angel.
Long blonde hair, sun-kissed skin, and a mouth so lush and plump, she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life.
I was Odysseus and she my siren, calling me in from the sea.
The light from the two-story glass windows poured in and cast a glow upon her as she swayed to the music. Her eyes were closed and as much as I wanted to see the soul behind them, I begged her with my breath not to. I knew when she opened them she’d see. She would see me. And she did.
The most mesmerizing pair of brown eyes looked back at me and I knew they would be able to look right through me and down deep into my dark soul.
She looked at the worst part of me and healed it. She saved me and I will spend the rest of my life proving to her I was worth saving.
“What are you thinking about?” Emma whispers into my ear, her hair blowing in the warm Mediterranean breeze. She looks exquisite in her white gown. Just over an hour ago, she walked toward me on the arm of her father. The sight of her brought me to tears.
Yes, I am man enough to admit I cried at the site of my bride walking down the aisle in a pair of white Sperry Top-Siders. Yes, my bride is wearing boat shoes and I wouldn’t have it any other way. While everyone was looking at her, as they should be, she was staring at me. With each step she took, she held my soul with every ounce of her being. And I gave it up freely.
Today she is mine. And I am hers.
It also helps that my wife looks gorgeous and way too sexy to be in the presence of God. She chose a form-fitting lace gown that hugs her gorgeous ass and narrows at her waist, the one I love to grab when she’s on top of me, riding me, loving me. I can’t wait to peel that dress off her tonight. Her supple breasts are about to pour out the top and it’s killing me not to bite down on them.
Yes, I am still a man. I can say those things about my wife.
My wife. Jesus Christ, she’s really mine. And she married me without the Asher name. She married me for me.