TANDING NEAR A ROSE-COVERED GAZEBO WHERE HE WAS about to be married by a thoroughly inebriated judge to a totally unsuspecting photographer, Spence chatted amiably with two women who didn’t know they were about to become his in-laws.

Corey had wanted happy faces for her pictures, and he’d provided two hundred of them for her, with the aid of an amazing quantity of French champagne, a fortune in Russian caviar, and a brief, amusing speech he’d given that had gained their full cooperation. In fact, all the guests seemed to be having a thoroughly enjoyable time.

The bridegroom certainly was.

Lifting his champagne glass to his mouth, Spence watched his bride-to-be study the angle of the sun as she readied the last of the tripods for the shots of the actual wedding. The long rain of her ten-thousand-dollar wedding gown had gotten in her way, so she’d tied it up into a makeshift bustle, and her long lace veil was currently slung over her shoulders like a crumpled stole. He decided she was the most exquisite creature alive. Utterly fetching. Completely unself-conscious. And she was about to become his. He watched her hurrying toward him, her eyes glowing with pleasure at the shot she’d lined up. “I think we’re all set,” she told him.

“It’s a good thing,” Spence chuckled. “Lattimore is roasting alive in that gazebo in those robes you’ve made him wear for the last hour, and he’s been quenching a very big thirst.”

Corey’s grandmother summed it up differently as she reached up to rearrange Corey’s veil. “That judge is drunk!” she declared.

“It’s okay, Gram,” Corey said, twisting around to watch her mother unwind her train and stretch it out carefully behind her. “He isn’t really a judge. Spencer says he’s a plumber.”

“He’s a lush, that’s what he is.”

“How’s my hair?” Corey asked when they were finished.

Spence particularly loved her hair today, even though it wasn’t loose around her shoulders the way he wanted to see it tonight, in bed. They’d pinned it up into curls at the crown to keep it from looking untidy in the pictures. “It looks fine,” mrs. Foster declared, reaching up to straighten the headpiece.

Spence offered Corey his arm and grinned. He was so damned happy, he couldn’t stop smiling. “Ready?” he asked.

“Wait,” Corey said as she straightened his black tie. Spence envisioned a lifetime of Corey straightening his ties.

Corey felt a sharp ache in her chest as she looked up at the elegant man in a tailor-made tuxedo who was smiling down at her with all the tenderness of a real bridegroom. She’d dreamed this dream a thousand times in years gone by, and now it was only make-believe. To her horror, she felt the sting of tears and hid them quickly behind an overbright smile.

“Will I do?” Spence asked, his deep voice strangely husky.

Corey nodded, swallowed, and smiled gaily. “We look like Ken and Barbie. Let’s go.”

Before they could take the first step onto the white carpet that stretched between the rows of chairs and into the gazebo, someone in the front row turned around and good-naturedly called, “Hey, Spence, can we get this thing going? It’s hot as hell out here.”

It hit Spence at that moment what he’d forgotten. He looked around for something to use and saw a piece of gold wired ribbon lying in the grass.

“Ready?” Lattimore said, running his finger around the collar of his robe.

“Ready,” Spence said.

“Okay if we make it sh… short?”

“That’s fine,” Corey said, but she was leaning back, trying to see where Kristin was with the spare camera they’d decided to use for extra shots.

“Miss… uh… Foster?”

“Yes?”

“It’s cushtomary to look at the groom.”

“Oh, sorry,” Corey said. He’d been very nice and very cooperative, and if he wanted to play his part to the fullest, she didn’t mind in the least.

“Place your hand in Spence’s hand.” On the right, Corey saw Kristin move into position and lift her camera.

“Do you, Spencer Addison, take Cor… er… Caroline Foster to be your lawfully wedded wife so long as you both shall live?” the judge said so quickly the words ran together.

Spence smiled into her eyes. “I do.”

Corey’s smile wavered.

“Do you, Caroline Foster, take Spencer Addison to be your lawfully wedded wife… husband… so long as you both shall live?”

Alarm bells began ringing in Corey’s brain, but they sprang from a source she couldn’t understand.

“For God’s sake, Corey,” Spence teased gently, “don’t jilt me at the altar.”

“It would serve you right,” she said on a breathless laugh, trying to concentrate on the whereabouts of Mike.

“Come on. Say yes.”

She didn’t want to. It seemed wrong to perpetrate this sham. “This isn’t a movie, these are still shots,” she said.

Spence reached out and took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tipping her face up to his. “Say yes.”

“Why?”

“Say yes.”

He bent his head and as his lips moved closed to hers, she could almost hear Kristin rushing forward for this unexpected shot.

“You can’t kiss her until she says yes,” Lattimore warned in a slur.

“Say yes, Corey,” Spence whispered, his mouth so close to hers that his breath touched her face. “So the nice judge will let me kiss you.”

Corey felt a helpless giggle well up inside her at his cajolery and his insistence on being kissed. “Yes,” she whispered, laughing, “but it better be a very good k-“

His mouth swooped down, smothering her voice, and his arms closed around her with stunning force, gathering her to him, stifling her laughter while the judge happily proclaimed, “I now pronounce you man and wife, give her the ring.” The crowd erupted into laughing applause.

Caught completely off guard by the deep, demanding kiss, Corey clutched his shoulders for balance as her senses reeled; then she flattened her hands, forcing him away. “Stop,” she whispered, tearing her mouth from his. “That’s enough. Really:”

He let her go, but he laced his fingers tightly through hers and kept them there while something round and scratchy slid against her knuckle.

“I need to change out of this gown,” Corey said as soon as they stepped out of the gazebo.

“Before you go – we have to –“ the judge began, but Spence intervened. “You can congratulate me in a few minutes, Larry,” he said smoothly. “I’ll meet you in the library, where it’s quiet, as soon as I take Corey upstairs. There’s a cab front to take you home after we talk.”

In the space of time it took to leave the gazebo and start down the hall to her suite, Corey’s emotions had plummeted from an enthusiastic high over the outstanding photographs she was certain the’d gotten to an inexplicable depression, which she tried to rationalize as a normal letdown after a day of extraordinary tension and hard work. She knew Spence wasn’t to blame. He’d played his role as surrogate bridegroom with a combination of unshakable calm and boyish enthusiasm that had been utterly charming.

She was still trying to sort out her tangled emotions when he opened the door to her suite and stepped aside, but when she started to walk past him, he stopped her. “What’s wrong, beautiful?”

“Oh, please,” she said on a choking laugh, “don’t say anything sweet, or I’ll burst into tears.”

“You were a gorgeous bride.”

“I’m warning you,” she said chokily.

He drew her into his arms, cupping the back of her head and pressing her face to his heart in a gesture that was so tender and so unexpected that it moved her another step closer to tears. “It was such as awful farce,” she whispered.

“Most weddings are an awful farce,” he said in quiet amusement. “It’s what comes afterward that matters.”

“I suppose so,” she said absently.

“Think about the weddings you’ve seen,” he continued, ignoring the startled looks of several wedding guests who saw them through the open door as the guests walked down the hall. “Half the time the groom is hungover or the bridge has morning sickness. It’s pitiful,” he teased.

Her shoulders shook with a teary laugh, and Spence smiled because the sound of her laughter had always delighted him, and making her laugh had always made him feel as if he were better, stronger, nicer than he really was. “All things considered, this is about as close to a perfect wedding as you could hope for.”

“Not to me it isn’t. I want a Christmas wedding.”

“Is that the only thing you dislike about this wedding – the season of the year, I mean? If there’s anything I can do to make you happier about all this, tell me and I’ll do it.”

You could love me, Corey thought before she could stop herself, then she pushed the thought aside. “There is absolutely nothing more you can do beyond what you’ve done. I’m being ridiculous and overemotional. Weddings do that to me,” she lied with a smile as she stepped back.

He accepted that. “I’ll deal with Lattimore, and then I want to change clothes. In the meantime, I’ll have some champagne sent up here, and then I’ll come up and share it with you, how does that sound?”

“Fine,” she said.