Have Gown, Need Groom Read Free Page B

folktale.”
    Still unconvinced, Hannah remembered the dream kiss and knew in her heart she couldn’t hurt Seth by marrying him if she really didn’t love him. Her mother’s parting words rose to haunt her. I only married you, Wiley, because I was pregnant. A real marriage needs more…
    Her parents had married because of her. Hannah definitely wasn’t pregnant, but had she agreed to marry Seth for the wrong reasons? For security, not real love. “Go tell Seth to come here.”
    “But it’s bad luck for him to see you before the ceremony,” Alison argued.
    “I don’t care. I have to talk to him.”
    Mimi nodded and rushed out while Alison fanned Hannah’s face to calm her. Seconds later, Seth bobbed his sandy-blond head in, his expression perplexed.
    His face fairly faded in front of her eyes, the shapely square jaw and chiseled face of the man from her dreams invading his space like a surreal sci-fi movie— Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
    Like a flash of heat lightning, the vision disappeared and Hannah gaped at Seth, wondering why he fell vaguely short of her erotic fantasy. A woman’s toes should curl and her blood should boil when the man of her dreams kissed her, right? A woman should burn at a man’s touch. Maybe that passion was what her mother had been missing with her dad. She couldn’t marry Seth and repeat her mother’s mistake. She had to know now.
    “What is it, Hannah? Did you forget something?” Seth asked.
    Hannah framed Seth’s face with her hands and kissed him fervently on the mouth. Her toes would curl, her blood would sizzle, the passion would come, the hunger would surge. Magic would happen just like she’d dreamed when she was a little girl.
    She kissed him harder.
    Burn, baby, burn.
    But her toes didn’t curl. Didn’t even twitch.
    Her blood didn’t boil. Didn’t even bubble.
    Darn.
    At best, she was lukewarm.
    The startled gasp that erupted from Seth’s throat when she finally ended the kiss didn’t sound like hunger or passion or even surprise. And her bright-red lip-prints streaked his mouth.
    “I—I have to know something, Seth,” she whispered, near panic. “Do you have a birthmark on your b-behind?”
    Seth stumbled backwards, his eyes dilating. “What?”
    “A little quarter-moon?” She pointed to his left hip. “Up here, on your left cheek?”
    Seth’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, steam practically oozing from his ears. “No. What’s come over you, Hannah? You’re acting odd.”
    An overwhelming sense of panic hit her. “Seth, tell me why you want to marry me.”
    His eyebrows narrowed. “What?”
    “Please, just tell me. Why do you want to marry me?”
    He ran a hand through his hair, spiking the ends. “We talked about this before. We make a good match, Hannah. We work well together. Have the same goals. We’re both doctors.”
    “What about passion?” Hannah asked, desperate for something to cling to.
    His face flushed. “I…I thought we decided sex could wait. That passion wasn’t really important.”
    No, but love was.
    “Seth, do you love me?”
    He chewed the inside of his cheek. “I…I care about you…”
    “But you don’t really love me,” Hannah finished for him.
    “We’ll have a good life, Hannah. We work well together, we’re compatible—”
    “I’m sorry, Seth.” Tenderly, she laid her palm on his cheek. “Maybe we were wrong. Maybe passion is important.”
    He shook his head. “Can’t we discuss this later? The guests are here, the preacher. We have cake, we have a schedule….”
    Typical, all business, no emotional response.
    The vision of the other man appeared again, briefly but intensely, and she blinked Seth back into focus, a sickening knot balling in her stomach. Yes, Seth was the wrong man for her— No toe-curling or blood-boiling kisses. What if she married him, had children, then discovered they’d made a mistake? She never wanted to put a child through a divorce—not after the pain she’d