The Vow (Harlequin Everlasting Love #24)

I love you, darling.I love you, too.My life began the day I met you.Nick Marsden made a noise in his throat.The two besotted passengers he'd dropped off in Cran-brook, BC, had sounded like a pair of lovesick teenagers.During the flight from Mackenzie, Montana, on this cold January day, he'd caught snatches of conversation between the bride and groom headed for the Canadian Rockies. The newly married couple might be staying at a ski lodge, but it was obvious that any honeymoon suite would do.He grinned.Forget words. It was the physical part of lovemaking you could depend on. With two bodies coming alive to each other, there could be no mistake about what you were doing and feeling.Nick needed the scientifically proven, like the solid cushion of air beneath the plane's wings--a law of physics he could always count on to cradle him above the earth. Once on terra firma, another equally binding law of physics took over in the bedroom: one can't touch without being touched.Animate objects exerting force on each other.That was what he craved, what he received, from his wife, the only woman for him. Nick had made up his mind about Stefanie Larkin the moment he'd seen her long legs in one of those tiny skirts. Between that and her driving by his house after school, not much else had registered on the first day of his senior year at Clark High back in 1973.Once the teacher had assigned him a seat behind her, he'd fixated on the glistening dark hair that cascaded down the middle of her back. Then she'd turned around to check him out.Compared to her expensive everything, his cheap blue shirt had told its own story. So had her piercing green eyes that he'd assumed were judging him.Though her hello had been friendly--he'd give her that--his ever-ready defense mechanism had shifted into overdrive. Whatever he'd muttered provoked the desired response. She'd turned around again and ignored him from then on. That was good. Better to leave well enough alone. At seventeen, he'd recognized immediately that Stefanie Larkin was out of his social class.Luckily for him, she never knew it. Another smile broke out on his face.He still couldn't believe she hadn't given up on him. At first he'd tried to freeze her out. Cease and resist. But the more he refused to respond to her--the more he resisted even the slightest overture on her part, like the way she watched him during lunch--the more he ended up getting caught in his own trap. Pretty soon she was all he could think about. She'd become his obsession.But Nick had been a surly SOB back then. Her sweetness managed to bring out the worst in him because he didn't trust it to be real. Not at first. Odd how such a long-buried memory would surface on this frigid January afternoon. Because of the honeymooners, no doubt.He reached for his thermos, drinking the last of the hot coffee he'd replenished in Spokane, Washington, where he'd gone through customs. It had only taken twenty minutes.Tonight when he took her to bed...Anticipating the pleasure they gave each other, he glanced out the cockpit window of his four-seater, eager to get home early. The trip they'd returned from the day before yesterday had spoiled him.He already had plans to take her someplace exotic next year. His old friend, Todd, from their Montana Air National Guard days had been in the Maldives recently and couldn't stop talking about it."You wouldn't believe how beautiful those islands are, Nick. Some of them aren't even on the map--they're un-inhabited. You and Stefanie will have the place to yourselves. All you have to do is rent a boat and find your own paradise. I swear I'll never go anywhere else. At first Joanne was kind of nervous about playing Robinson Crusoe, but her tune changed when we got there."Todd's excitement had infected Nick.After trimming the plane to hold altitude, he made a few corrections, then cWinters, Rebecca is the author of 'The Vow (Harlequin Everlasting Love #24)', published 2008 under ISBN 9780373654260 and ISBN 037365426X.