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  Carrie nodded and tried to keep Josh from seeing the way her hands were shaking.

  It was cold in the church, Carrie thought, but it wasn’t as cold as she felt. Her hands were clammy, yet she was sweating. It was five minutes after ten, and there was no sign of the children. ’Ring, sitting in the first pew in the otherwise empty church, looked at his pocket watch for the third time, and the minister had already said that he had another wedding in an hour.

  But Josh and Carrie had said that they couldn’t be married without the children there, and they meant it. Josh took Carrie’s hand, and his was as cold as hers. Even Choo-choo, hiding under Carrie’s old-fashioned dress, was quiet.

  After Josh looked at her once and saw the fear on her face under her veil, he couldn’t meet her eyes again. Too many thoughts were going through his head. Had Nora seen through the whole scam and taken the children away with her? Was she going to hold out until she got her Warbrooke money? Dallas was only five years old, yet Josh had asked her to be mean to her own mother. Could the child do that? Should she do that?

  Round and round Josh’s thoughts went. Had he been so clever that he’d lost his children? Due to his reputation with women, the judge had been reluctant to give Josh custody of his children, so if Nora went to a judge and testified to what Josh had said to her last evening, about the children being brats and his not wanting them, no court in the world would give the children to Josh.

  He squeezed Carrie’s hand harder.

  Standing up, ’Ring walked up behind them. “It’s twenty minutes after,” he said to his sister. “Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

  “No,” Carrie said, but her voice squeaked. “I mean…”

  “I’m sure Nora will bring the children soon,” Josh said. “She is an old friend of theirs and—”

  He broke off at the commotion at the back of the church.

  Nora entered, and for the first time since Josh had known her, Nora looked awful. Her dress was dirty, her hair hanging about her shoulders; there were dark circles of sleeplessness under her eyes, and worse, she looked her age.

  Dragging Tem and Dallas behind her by their wrists, she marched to the front of the church, practically threw the children into the first pew, then held out a paper and pen to Josh. Her face was past rage as she looked at him.

  Josh had to stick the pen in his mouth to dampen the ink, then held the paper on his hand as he signed it. When he was done, he put the paper inside his coat pocket and looked at the woman who used to be his wife.

  Nora opened her mouth to speak, but could say nothing. Turning on her heel, she stomped out of the church.

  Very calmly, Carrie and Josh turned back to the minister. “You may begin,” Josh said.

  “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of—”

  Carrie turned to Josh as he looked at her, and in the next minute the two of them exploded in laughter. In unison they turned to the dirty, scruffy children who were sitting on the pew, legs swinging, and wearing expressions of being extremely pleased with themselves. Bending, Carrie and Josh opened their arms to them.

  While the minister and ’Ring watched, the four of them hugged and kissed each other and laughed uproariously at some private joke.

  Josh was the first one to recover himself. He took Tem’s hand and Carrie’s, while she took Dallas’s hand. “You may begin again,” Josh said. “You may marry all of us.”

  “Hooray!” Dallas yelled, and the children said, “I will” and “I do” with the adults, and at the end of the ceremony, everyone kissed everyone else excessively.

  GREAT LOW PRICE!

  Sparks fly in this sexy, evocative Regency romance, the first in Meredith Duran's Rules for the Reckless series!

  Your Wicked Heart

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  ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!

  Dear Readers,

  Two weeks ago I finished a very special book. I don’t say that about all my books because the truth is, being a writer is rather like playing a never-ending game of Russian roulette. You never know what’s going to happen when you start a book, and as far as I can tell, there’s no way to predict the outcome. You can research for months, plot for months and when you write, the book just plain doesn’t have any sparkle. Once I spent six weeks traveling all over western America doing research for a novel about mountain men, then spent three months reading and plotting, but when I started writing the book, the hero and heroine didn’t like each other. Not romance-novel didn’t like, but genuinely cared nothing about each other. After a hundred and fifty pages, I threw the thing out—along with all that research—and started from scratch again.

  But every so often my Guardian Angel seems to say, “Let’s give Jude a break,” and when she does that I get a super book, a book that takes over my mind, my body, every fiber of my being. SWEET LIAR, the book I just completed, was just such a book.

  One day about a year ago, all day long I kept thinking about my grandmother, whom I loved very much, and that night on television there was a show about a man’s search for his grandmother, who had disappeared. The next day my editor called and said her grandmother had died the day before. These three things happening in the course of twenty-four hours made me think of a story of a young woman whose grandmother had left her family years before.

  Over the next few months I continued to work on Eternity, but I also made lots of notes on my grandmother story. Then in April of 1991, I went to New York for a month to research my grandmother story, which I was now calling SWEET LIAR, and to see my friends. Ordinarily I am the most unsocial creature in the world. At home in Santa Fe I go out so seldom that I have my secretary start my car for me once a week so the battery won’t run down, but in New York, I go out to lunches and teas and movies—just like a normal person.

  The difference on this trip was that suddenly I didn’t want to see anyone. I stayed in my rented apartment for the whole month, doing nothing but thinking about SWEET LIAR—and for the next six months I thought of nothing else but this book.

  Sometimes I don’t talk about my books, but with this one I never shut up. If anyone had the misfortune to call me and ask how I was doing it would be ten minutes before I quit telling them about SWEET LIAR.

  I was so wrapped up in this book and its characters that I cried for the entire last two weeks of writing it. I think the love story in SWEET LIAR is the most poignant, the most meaningful, the most personal one I’ve ever written. During the last three days of writing I didn’t sleep or eat much, I just typed and cried. I don’t know if the author bawling through the end of her book is a recommendation or not, but I can attest to the fact that the book is indeed involving.

  Last of all, I want to tell you that SWEET LIAR has a contemporary setting. Throughout my career I’ve found that each of my stories demands its own special time and place. From its conception, SWEET LIAR cried out to be set in the present day. When I wrote A Knight in Shining Armor I thoroughly enjoyed working on the contemporary sections and so I was delighted to get the chance to write a novel set entirely in the modern world—a modern world with the fairy tale still in it.

  I loved everything about this book: the hero, the heroine, the story. And writing it was a great deal of fun (yes, even the parts where I cried were, in their own way, fun). I got to write about my beloved New York City, and I got to visit a few characters from some of my earlier books.

  On the day I finished the book, 14 August 1991, I went to my secretary’s office and told her I was done. She said I looked awful, but by then I hadn’t eaten or slept for nearly three days (no, I did not lose a single ounce. I guess my Guardian Angel is only willing to do so much) and I was shaky. After she read the book she said the story was worth whatever I had to go through to write it.

  I hope you, the reader, will like my story and will like my Michael Taggert as much as Samantha and I do.

  Books by Jude Deveraux

  The Velvet Promise

  Highland Velvet

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