Free Here Comes the Bride by Gayle Kasper

want, restore them to their original beauty, whether wood or pewter or brass, and still keep shop hours.”
    “What do you do with your spare time?” He wondered what filled it, who filled it.
    “What spare time? I trek around the countryside on Sundays and Mondays. At night I polish and stain. Tuesdays through Saturdays I’m busy with customers, if I’m lucky.”
    He took her hand and turned it over, looking for calluses. A few had tried to mar the softness of her palms. He traced the edge of one gently with his fingertip, then lifted her hand and kissed the spot.
    Her hand softened under the press of his lips, and when he glanced up into her face, he saw her eyes had dilated perceptibly. A small smile curved at her mouth and the pink blush on her cheeks turned a pretty rose.
    He was glad he could affect her like that. “Why don’t you take on a partner?”
    It took her a moment to speak, as if she needed to gather her wits. Or maybe hervoice. “A partner?” There was a slight trembling to her words. “My shop’s small and struggling. There’s hardly enough income for one person. Maybe in another year or two I could hire an assistant, at least part-time.”
    “You love your work, don’t you?” He didn’t release her hand, just stroked it absently, tracing the tinge of a faint blue vein under her alabaster skin.
    Her voice trembled again. “I must be boring you.”
    “Not at all. I want to hear more. What you do for fun, what you do for … love.”
    Her eyes widened, then narrowed slyly. “If that’s your unsubtle way of asking if there’s a man in my life, there isn’t one at present.”
    That was what he was asking—and the answer pleased him enormously. He couldn’t stop the smile that revealed his pleasure.
    “There was someone once,” she continued. “Someone I thought I knew, then found out I didn’t. Fortunately before I married him.”
    “Is that why you believe in being cautious?”
    She withdrew her hand from his and dropped it into her lap, her gaze lowered. He much preferred to feel her looking at him, caressing his face in that way she was unaware of.
    She nodded. “I thought love could happenovernight, but … it doesn’t. At least if it does, it doesn’t last.”
    “That’s why you want your father to wait rather than jump into a marriage with Auntie?”
    Her eyes raised. They were solemn and wide. And sad.
    “What happened, Fiona? With this man you thought you knew?” Nick hated the bastard. Would string him up by some tender part of his anatomy if he could. For what he’d done to her.
    Fiona drew in a ragged breath. She hadn’t thought about Adam in a long time, hadn’t wanted to, yet she supposed Nick was right, her experience with Adam had made her cautious. It was why she didn’t believe in love at first sight, not for her father and Winnie, and certainly not for herself.
    Love at first sight was merely lust in disguise, the purely physical attraction she felt for Nick being a prime example. Still, she’d never felt anything this strong, this overwhelming, this powerful with Adam. With any man. And she wasn’t sure how to gird herself against it.
    “It was a long time ago, Nick. I was very young. It doesn’t matter now, anyway.”
    “Are you sure, Fiona?”
    “I’m sure.”
    She didn’t want to tell Nick what a littlefool she’d been, that she’d misread Adam so completely, so stupidly. That she hadn’t recognized sooner that the man didn’t have a faithful bone in his body, that he’d come on to some of her friends, that he’d even had a reckless affair with one of them.
    It had been painful for her when she’d learned of his betrayal, but now it was merely embarrassing. She’d refused to suffer that pain for long, had refused to waste the emotion on a man who wasn’t worth her time or energy.
    But she knew Nick was right, the lesson she’d learned affected her today, colored her world, her belief system.
    She didn’t want Nick’s sympathy,