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  “Which was?” Carol pressed.

  Maddie smiled, knowing her friends would be amused. “I went back to school.”

  “Queen Anne?”

  “Oh, no.” Maddie shook her head. “I was paying my own way, and I couldn’t afford a private college. I started out working days and taking night courses. It took me nearly five years to earn my master’s, but I did it, one course at a time.”

  “In mathematics,” Gretchen guessed.

  “In mathematics,” Maddie confirmed.

  “Oh, my,” Carol said, checking her wrist. “Look at the time.”

  “Good grief!” Maddie cried, leaping to her feet. “We’ve got less than an hour before the dinner. I’ve got to shower and feed the kids and…” She paused, knowing her friends were equally rushed. “I’ll see you there, right?”

  “Of course,” Gretchen promised. “And my husband. I’d like you to meet him.”

  “Me too,” Carol added. “With my husband. Let’s find a table and sit together?”

  Maddie and Gretchen both agreed.

  Together they rushed to the parking lot, chatting excitedly as they walked. Maddie smiled to herself. She was anxious for her friends to meet her husband, too. She’d almost given up on love when she met and married him a mere five years ago. That was when life had tossed her a second curveball, only this time she’d stepped up to bat and been ready to swing.

  Epilogue

  Japanese lanterns swayed gently in the breeze, their lights flickering, telegraphing secretly coded messages around the lush garden patio. Gretchen stepped away from the pre-dinner reception and stood in the doorway, then looked around, then sighed when she saw him. So this was where her husband had taken off to.

  The festive noise of the reunion faded as she stepped from the gaily lit hall to the peace and quiet of the flowering patio.

  “I thought I’d find you out here,” she said, moving to her husband’s side.

  Josh Morrow slipped his arm around her trim waist and smiled down at her, his eyes filled with love. No matter how many years they’d been married, Gretchen had never tired of seeing him smile. Her heart was full to overflowing with the love they shared. They would celebrate their thirteenth wedding anniversary this year, and it seemed like yesterday when he’d roared up to her family home, his Harley spewing dust and fumes. Two years he’d kept her waiting. Two years, and he’d actually expected to find her waiting.

  The irony was…she had been. She’d never been able to believe he wouldn’t be back.

  As long as she lived, Gretchen would never forget the day he came for her. Defiant as ever, he’d parked the Harley, rung the doorbell and nearly given her mother heart failure.

  She had been home visiting her parents. When she realized it was Josh at the door, she’d stepped outside. He’d looked at her and smiled, and she’d smiled back.

  “Do you still want to ride off into the sunset with me?” he’d asked.

  “That depends.” He’d kept her waiting all this time. She wasn’t about to make it easy for him.

  “Would a wedding band and life with a starving law student be inducement enough?”

  “Plenty. Oh, Josh, what took you so long?” Simultaneously laughing and crying, she’d hurled herself into his arms. He had locked his arms around her waist and swung her around. By that time both her parents had come out to the front porch, not knowing what to think. Josh had glanced at them, kissed her as if he’d dreamed of it every day for the two years they’d been apart, and then asked to speak privately with her father.

  Gretchen had paced outside the den until they were finished. When they appeared, she’d stepped to Josh’s side and grabbed hold of his hand. Then her father had grinned and announced that he felt Josh would make her a fine husband.

  He had. Thirteen years, and she hadn’t regretted a single day. They had three children, a beautiful home, a good life. The children—a twelve-year-old boy and twin ten-year-old girls—and her charity work kept her more than busy. Josh needed her, too. He’d recently been elected as a Supreme Court judge in Orange County, and his position on the bench was almost as demanding on her as it was him.

  “Where’d you go this afternoon?” he asked, sipping his drink.

  “To take a look around campus.”

  “The fountain?”

  How well he knew her. “I met up with some old friends.”

  “I don’t suppose you ran into Roger Lockheart?”

  “No.” She pressed her head to his shoulder. “Don’t tell me you’re worried about my seeing Roger again.”

  “Well, you once loved him.”

  “Oh, Josh, be serious. Roger was a rat. You couldn’t possibly believe I’d want anything to do with him.” She ran her hand over Josh’s back, never tiring of the special closeness they shared. “I will admit I’m curious about him. From what I understand, he’s here.”

  “I saw him,” Josh admitted.

  “You saw him?” She couldn’t believe he’d kept this information from her. “What’s he look like?”

  “Hah! So I was right!”

  “Josh.” She punched his arm playfully.

  “He looks fine. He introduced me to his friend, and—”

  “Friend? You mean he isn’t married?”

  “Three times, from what I understand.”

  “You’re joking!”

  He chuckled. “It’s the truth, I swear. He apparently didn’t join Daddy’s law firm, either, because he’s selling cars.”

  “Roger is selling cars. I love it!”

  Josh pulled her into his arms, his eyes dark and serious. “I love you. I don’t think I tell you that often enough. You’re in my blood, Gretch, in my heart, and so much a part of me I couldn’t make it one day without you.” He held her close for a moment. “I tried to live without you all those years ago and couldn’t. That was when I realized I had to make myself worthy of your faith in me. Every day of those two years we were apart I prayed you still loved me.”

  “Not a minute went by that I didn’t long for you.”

  He kissed her softly. “It looks like they’re ready to serve dinner.”

  “Great.” She slipped her arm around his waist. “Remember those old friends I mentioned? Well, I want you to meet them.”

  He grumbled something about preferring to have his wife to himself, but followed her inside.

  * * *

  Carol was sitting in the hotel suite talking on the phone when her husband wandered out of the bedroom, unsuccessfully attempting to fasten the top button of his dress shirt.

  He was a fine figure of a man. She loved him more than she’d thought it possible to love another human being.

  “Who are you talking to?” he asked.

  “Your mother,” she whispered, covering the mouthpiece. “OK, Mom, yes, I’ll wait.” She looked back at him. “The kids are giving her problems. Timmy and Adam are fighting over the laptop again. Erica refused to eat her vegetables, and Clark, Jr., has disappeared, but she thinks he’s hiding in the library. Your father’s searching for him now.” Her mother-in-law came back on the line, and Carol nodded, relieved. “They found Junior.”

  Clark sank into a chair. “Does she want us to come home?”

  “No, no. I asked her that myself and she insists we enjoy the reunion. She can always call Frieda if matters get out of hand.” The nanny had her own quarters, but was available any time Clark’s parents felt they needed help.

  She finished the conversation and hung up the phone. “It’s a good thing we don’t escape often.”

  Clark chuckled. “Every time we do manage to get away, you end up pregnant.”

  She climbed onto her husband’s lap and brushed his hands away from his throat. “I’ll do it,” she promised, and quickly secured the button. “Four children isn’t so many, is it?” she whispered, and nuzzled his neck, licking the skin with her tongue. She loved the taste and feel of him.

  “Carol—” his voice was low and full of suspicion “—I
know that tone.”

  “You do?” she asked, playing dumb.

  “You want another baby.”

  “Would it be so terrible?” she asked, her lips nibbling his ear.

  He shivered with awareness, and if he’d intended to remove her from his lap, he changed his mind.

  “I love being a mother, and you love getting me pregnant,” she reminded him. She’d always enjoyed children, and with Clark’s software company so profitable, there wasn’t any reason they couldn’t have as many kids as they liked.

  He sighed and rested his head against the back of the cushion. “I never could refuse you anything, you know that.”

  “That’s not the way I remember it,” she whispered, unbuttoning the very shirt she’d just spent time fastening. “You let me take off for Alaska without you.”

  “What brings that up?” he asked.

  “I met a couple of women from my old sorority at the fountain this afternoon.”

  “And they thought you were married to Eddie Shapiro.”

  “At first, but I was quick to tell them I fell head over heels in love with you. We agreed to meet for dinner later—you don’t mind, do you?” Gretchen and Maddie would be surprised and delighted when they saw she’d married Clark after all.

  “No…we can have dinner with whomever you want,” he whispered, and closed his eyes as she continued to kiss the underside of his jaw.

  “You were a big disappointment to my friends when I told them you let me leave for Alaska.”

  “But technically you didn’t make it there.”

  “No, but that’s beside the point.” She eased the open shirt from his shoulders.

  “I flew out to your parents’ house instead.”

  He’d arrived Christmas Eve, and his timing couldn’t have been better. “You were the best Christmas present I ever received.”

  “You could have married Eddie,” he reminded her.

  That was true. Two years into his pro career, Eddie Shapiro had torn a ligament in his knee that had ended his days on the football field. He’d called Carol from the hospital bed and asked her to marry him. It had given her great delight to inform him that not only was she married to Clark Rusbach, but she was eight months pregnant with their first child.

  “I wonder if he’ll come to the reunion.”

  “I doubt it,” Clark said, and reached for the zipper in the back of her dress.

  “Clark,” she teased, “we’ll be late for the dinner.”

  “So?”

  She couldn’t think of a single reason why it was so all-fired important that they be on time. She’d never been keen on eating her salad first, anyway. “I’d like another little boy this time,” she said, before directing her husband’s mouth to hers.

  He stood, lifting her with him and carrying her into the bedroom. “I’ll do my best,” he promised.

  * * *

  Maddie admitted to being nervous. Gretchen and Carol hadn’t recognized her earlier at the fountain, and she doubted that anyone else at the reunion would, either.

  Her husband placed his hand at the small of her back and steered her into the rented hall, festively decorated for the class reunion with banners and ribbons.

  “I don’t recognize anyone, do you?” she asked Brent.

  “Not a soul.” He glanced at her and chuckled. “You’re actually nervous. I can’t believe it. My wife, the woman who revolutionized the way mathematics is taught across the United States, is actually nervous.”

  “Brent, don’t tease.”

  “The woman who’s dined with the president.”

  “Brent!”

  “And the queen of England.”

  “Brent, don’t tell anyone about that, all right?”

  “You’d rather I told them you wore falsies?”

  “I did not.” He always knew how to rile her.

  “Yeah, but everyone would believe it.”

  Although she knew he was teasing, she glared at her husband. “Sometimes I wonder why I married you.”

  “You loved me.”

  “For fifteen long years, I’ve loved you.” But for ten of those years they’d had no contact with each other. Maddie had left Seattle almost immediately after they broke up. For several years she worked at a day job while attending night school to obtain her master’s degree. Her life was consumed with math. It was while she was working on her doctorate that she devised a new method of grasping basic mathematical concepts. Soon she was working with the Department of Education in Washington, D.C.

  Out of the blue one afternoon she ran into Brent Holliday on the White House lawn. He’d come to Washington to receive a hero’s award from the president, along with forty-nine other law-enforcement officers. She’d given him her phone number, though she really didn’t expect him to call. But he had.

  They met for dinner the next night, closed down the restaurant and then walked to the Lincoln Memorial. Along the way she’d finally told him the truth about the deal she’d made with John. They’d talked there until the sun rose, and by then Maddie knew she’d never stopped loving Brent. He felt the same way about her.

  They were married a month later, and she was pregnant almost immediately. Their second child was born the following year. Brent had recently become the assistant chief of police in Seattle. They were happy, exceptionally so, and very much in love.

  He reached for her hand and their fingers entwined. “There’s Gretchen now,” Maddie said, waving to her friend. “She married Josh.”

  “Josh Morrow?”

  “Do you remember him?”

  “Sure do. The class troublemaker. Wow. So Gretchen Wise married him.”

  “Hey, troublemakers can be tamed. You should know.”

  “Indeed I do. Did you tell her about John Theda ending up in prison for fraud?” John wasn’t due to be released for another ten years.

  “No.” She shook her head. “It’s all rather sad, don’t you think? I never wished him ill. Not really.”

  “But you were right—he ended up doing it to himself.”

  “Come on,” she said, “I want you to meet my friends.” She waved to Gretchen, who smiled and waved back.

  Maddie stood on tiptoe and scanned the crowd for Carol. She wondered what could be keeping her.

  * * * * *

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  ISBN: 9781459233140

  Copyright © 1997 by Debbie Macomber

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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  bie Macomber, Three Brides, No Groom