A Marriage of True Minds: A Sasha McCandless Novella (9 page)

Her father
cocked his head and examined the ornate hairpin that she’d hastily used to
secure her hair into an approximation of a chignon.

“Is that Mom’s
kanzashi
?”

“Yes.”

Her mother had
insisted she wear it, and she was more than happy to comply.

The bedraggled
waitstaff had gamely lit the tiki torches that were staked along the path
leading to the bower and plated the hundreds of cookies that the guests had
baked back in Pittsburgh and then transported to the resort.

Destination
wedding or no, there had to be a cookie table. Sasha glanced back at the rows
of dark wooden tables laden with tray after tray of tea cakes, biscotti,
chocolate brownies, heart-shaped sugar cookies, fruit-filled cookies, coconut
and lime cookies, and, front and center, Valentina’s own homemade ladylocks. It
looked like a bakery had exploded.

After pulling
together the display, the waiters had joined the rest of the wedding guests.
Given what everyone present had just lived through, she and Connelly had
invited the entire staff of the resort to attend the impromptu wedding. Extra
chairs had been set up in hasty rows. Her older nieces and nephews, some
wearing pajamas and clutching stuffed animals or blankets, looked around
wide-eyed.

It wasn’t the
wedding she’d envisioned, yet somehow it was better. Less storybook. More real.

Of course,
Bricker was still out there, somewhere, intent on revenge. But even that
couldn’t take away from what was about to happen. She was going to marry Leo
Connelly. And nothing—and no one—could stop her.

The music
paused, and Sasha knew Chris was about to start playing “Ode to Joy.”

“Game time,” she
whispered to her father.

He squeezed her
arm, and she pretended not to see the tears glistening in his green eyes, so
like her own.

The soft chords
floated on the air, and she stepped forward. Then she hesitated in confusion.
The music was wrong.

She glanced at
Chris but his head was bent over the keys.

“Come on,” her
dad whispered.

She started to
walk again, trying to recognize the song. The notes were light, lively, and
then they swelled like a wave. The music softened, and the tempo slowed.

Whatever the
song was, it was beautiful. Sasha felt her mouth bow into a smile.

The song buoyed
her along the path. She snuck a look over her shoulder at Aroostine and Hank.
At Daniel and Larry, their bravery and selflessness shining as brightly as the
stars. Her heart was full, threatening to explode.

This is really
it.

She glided
forward quickly, unhampered by the mermaid skirt. The slits she’d hastily
slashed in the delicate fabric parted with each step as she crossed the pebble
path to the bower and the man she loved.

Marisole hadn’t
had time to repair the gown—although she had doused Sasha liberally with soda
water in an effort to remove the bloodstains. Even
she
drew the line at
getting married while drenched in someone else’s blood.

She shook the
banditos
out of her mind and pinned her eyes on her groom, who stood waiting for her at
the end of the path under a bower lit with twinkling fairy lights.

And then, somehow,
suddenly, there she was, standing right in front of Connelly.

Her father shook
Connelly’s hand firmly, bracing his future son-in-law’s upper arm with his left
hand, almost in a half-hug.

“Don’t bother
trying to take care of her. Trust me, that’s impossible,” he advised. “Just
love her as best you can.”

Connelly nodded.
“Yes, sir.”

Sasha kissed her
father’s cheek and turned to Connelly with a slightly embarrassed eye roll.

“Hi,” she
managed around the lump that had suddenly materialized in her throat.

“Hi, yourself,
beautiful.”

Connelly stared
at her with a bemused smile.

He looked happy.
And tired. And banged up. A bruise traced his cheek, and his split lip had
swollen to twice its normal size. But there was a deep well of love shining in
his gray eyes. He was amazing, perfect,
hers
.

The music
stopped, and Father Alexander looked at the two of them, his eyes kind and
serious.

“Hang on a
second, okay, Father?” Sasha asked.

Before the
officiant could respond, Sasha turned to look at Chris sitting on the piano
bench.

“That was
beautiful,” she said in an emotion-soaked voice. “Did you write that?”

“I did. My gift
to the two of you.” He smiled.

“What do you
call it?”

Chris looked
over her shoulder to include Connelly in his answer. “Boundless Love.”

“Okay. We can
start now,” she said to Father Alexander.

“I thought you
might have changed your mind,” Connelly whispered, placing her hand on his
chest so she could feel his heart thumping wildly under his linen shirt.

“Never.”

The hammering of
his heart slowed under her palm as Father Alexander, a smudge of dirt bisecting
his brow, raised his hands, allowed a smile to blossom across his face, and
greeted their wedding guests.

Sasha ignored
every part of her aching body, the smell of blood drying on her now-trashed
gown, her raging headache, and her bone-deep exhaustion. She lost herself in
Connelly’s cashmere gray eyes.

“This has
certainly been an eventful evening,” Father Alexander began.

The assembled
group shared a soft, knowing laugh.

“But how
appropriate that Sasha and Leo have decided to end the night on a note of hope,
affirmation, and love.” He smiled broadly. “In fact, I’m reminded of
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, which begins ‘
Let me not to the marriage of true
minds admit impediments
.’ I’m not certain the Bard had in mind the sort of
impediments that this couple has faced tonight, but these events are a good
metaphor for the high highs and low lows that every married couple encounters
as they walk through life together. Shakespeare goes on, ‘
Love is not love
which alters when it alteration finds,or bends with the remover to remove: O
no! it is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.
’ I
think we can agree that the man and woman standing before us look on tempests
and are never shaken. May the strength they’ve found in dealing with the
extraordinary follow them through to much more mundane struggles during the
course of their marriage. And may the strength that their friends and families
displayed this evening hold them up during life’s ordinary challenges.”

Mundane
struggles and ordinary challenges sounded positively devine to Sasha.

She blinked away
tears.

First Bodhi and
then Hank stood and read by candlelight passages they’d chosen especially for
Sasha and Connelly.

She’d have to
ask them to give her copies of the readings, because the words, so carefully
selected, had rolled over her in waves of wisdom and meaning that somehow
couldn’t penetrate her brain, which was screaming
We’re getting married!
over and over, like the world’s most enthusiastic bridesmaid.

Apparently, the
readings were over, and she was supposed to be doing something because Father
Alexander was smiling at her indulgently.

“Before Sasha
and Leo exchange the vows they wrote, I’d like to ask them to share something
else with you and one another. I had asked each of them separately to find a
passage from literature, a scene from a movie or television show, or a musical
lyric that best encapsulates the feelings they each have for one another as
they start this adventure together.” He held up an envelope. “They gave me
their choices, but I didn’t share them. So, tonight, I’d like them to share
them with each other. Sasha?”

Sasha laughed
shakily, and her cheeks burned hot.

She turned to
her groom and spoke in a low voice, just loud enough for him to hear. “Well, my
choice is more Shakespeare. It’s a passage from
Romeo and Juliet
, it
goes like this, ‘
My bounty is as boundless as the sea
...”

She trailed off
and stared in disbelief as Connelly’s shoulders shook with barely suppressed
laughter.

Seriously?
He was
laughing
at her?

She tamped down
her rising irritation and continued.

But before she
could speak, Connelly huskily chimed in, “
My love as deep
.”

She stared at
him in confusion for a second.

Then they
finished the passage in unison, his voice weaving around hers, the two entwined
like ribbons. “
The more I give to thee, the more I have, for both are
infinite.
”

As the verse
ended, a goopy, idiotic grin spread across Sasha’s face.

Connelly winked
at her, and then his mouth quirked into the sexy, lopsided grin that made her
stomach do flips.

Father Alexander
laughed. “In all the years I’ve done this, no couple has ever selected the same
passage before tonight. Make of that what you will.”

Connelly
squeezed her hand softly.

They recited
their vows and exchanged their rings in a blur of joy and love, and suddenly
Father Alexander was pronouncing them husband and wife and urging them to kiss.

Husband and
wife.

Sasha blinked up
at Connelly, who seemed as surprised as she did that the wedding was over.

They were
married.

She stretched on
her toes and threw her arms around his neck. He leaned down and cupped her face
in his hands.

His kiss was
long and gentle and full of promise. In that moment, no one else existed on
that expanse of beach. It was just her, him, the crashing waves, the shimmering
stars, and their boundless love.

Then Chris
started to play “What a Wonderful World,” and the spell was broken.

“Now what?” she
teased.

He waggled an
eyebrow at her. “Think we can sneak away without anyone noticing?”

“Doubtful.”

“In that case, I
believe it’s time for cookies.”

THANK YOU

Thank you for reading
A Marriage of
True Minds
. I hope you enjoyed Sasha and Leo’s wedding, but, as you may
have guessed, married life will be anything but boring for them, what with
Jeffrey Bricker on the loose and bent on vengeance! I’m hard at work on the
next book in the series. I also have plans to give Aroostine and Bodhi each a
series to call their own. While I’m furiously writing, here are some more
suggestions to keep you busy:

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Melissa F. Miller is a commercial
litigator. She has practiced in the offices of international law firms in
Pittsburgh, PA and Washington, D.C. She and her husband now practice law
together in their two-person firm in South Central Pennsylvania, where they
live with their three young children. When not in court or on the playground,
Melissa writes crime fiction. Like Sasha McCandless, she drinks entirely too
much coffee; unlike Sasha, she cannot kill you with her bare hands.