âI promised Iâd marry her, Jock. Sheâs carrying our baby. Backing out wasnât an option.â
Ian, in decisive mode, usually turned Sophieâs legs to Jell-O and her mind to mush, but just now her brand-new groom sounded like a man whoâd looked the executioner in the eye and gone under a blunt blade.
Heâd lied to convince her to marry him.
She was nearly sick right there on the floor. As she slammed her hand over her mouth, Ian and Jock came around the corner. Unlike most of his overly buff colleagues, Ian was lean and long, agile andâright nowâfurious.
As if sheâd lied to him. As if sheâd married him under false pretenses.
âWhat are you doing?â Shock made his voice too harsh to recognize.
Swallowing, she said, âHiding behind a marble column, listening to you end our twenty-minute marriage.â
Dear Reader,
Welcome back to Bardillâs Ridge, Tennessee, and to the Calvert family, whom you met in Septemberâs The Secret Father. Are you ready to meet Sophie and her new husband, Ian?
Sophieâs not so sure sheâs ready for Ian. She marries him because she believes they both want to create a family for their unborn child, but seconds after the wedding she hears him telling his best friend he had to marry her because she was carrying his child.
She confronts him. He admits âforeverâ sounds impossible to a bodyguard whoâs never been home long enough to own a pet, but heâs determined to try. Heâs so determined he follows Sophie to Tennessee, where he uses her family against her. They remind her how unhappy she was because of her own parentsâ divorce, and Ian convinces her he cares enough to make their marriage real. But can she see forever now that heâs broken her trust?
Iâd love to hear what you think. You can reach me at [email protected]. Come back to Bardillâs Ridge in March when Sophieâs cousin Molly Calvert falls in love with a man who couldnât be more wrong for her.
Best wishes,
Anna
ICE TAPPED AT THE stained-glass windows like a million small fingers begging to come in as Ian Ridley fought an unfamiliar compulsion to run. On an unseasonably frigid Tuesday night in April, on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., he waited at the altar with his best man and a minister he hardly knew.
He licked his lips. They dried again immediately, despite the damp that seeped from the cold stone floor into his shoes and slowly climbed his body. This wedding was all wrong, a church even Sophie didnât know and a minister whoâd agreed to perform their hasty ceremony because the bride-to-be was pregnant.
Ian could have asked the minister heâd guarded a few years ago to marry them, but heâd been ashamed to admit heâd gotten Sophie pregnant. In a world where he made life-or-death decisions every working day, he hated to lose a friendâs respect.
His whole life had been an effort to prove he was tough enough, good enough. Even smart enough.
A professional bodyguard, heâd once been barely able to protect himself. As an eight-year-old, heâd been bullied at boarding school, where his parents had sent him to free up their time. Strength was a front heâd willed into existence the first time one of the older, bigger boys, had shoved his head in a toilet.
Sophie knew nothing of his past. They didnât know each other well enough to commit to a regular dinner date, much less marriage.
Take their ceremony. Heâd wanted to stand before a justice of the peace. Sheâd wanted the wedding to âfeel real.â One of her friends had suggested this church, and Ian had gone along with the idea. A formal service in unfamiliar surroundings, performed by a minister whoâd be grateful they were doing the right thing.
Heâd asked Jock, his colleague on several jobs, to be his best man. Sophie had planned to have a maid of honor, but sheâd uninvited her friend at the last minute as if she, too, was ashamed of their quick wedding. Ashamed she was marrying him?
Shame was no way to start a marriage, even if marrying Sophie Calvert was the worst mistake heâd made with her yet.
From the moment heâd first seen her, heâd wanted her, pure and simple. Maybe not so pure. Heâd wanted her, knowing he was the wrong man for her. She believed in big, protective families like hers. He knew no such animal.
His folks had not only kept him away at boarding school, theyâd lived a life quite separate from his. For him family meant Christmas break or brief summer holidays. Not every-day-in-the-same-house contact.
Heâd wanted a different kind of family for himself. Heâd even been engaged once. That womanâwhoâd wisely jilted himâwas now the wife of an insurance salesman in Reading, Pennsylvania, and, last Ian heard, the proud mother of three. After sheâd suggested he eat his engagement ring, heâd stopped pretending to be a man who could stay home long enough to own a cat.