KENSINGTON BOOKS

       http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

      Acknowledgments

      Thanks to the usual suspects, my lovely and talented critique group: Nazima Alli, Michelle Hancock, and Elizabeth Allan. And as well, to my agent, Emily Sylvan Kim, my editors, Audrey LaFehr and Hilary Sares, and all the people at Kensington who do such a great job with the Aphrodisia line. Special thanks to Martin Biro for making my life so much easier.

      I’ll be eternally grateful to Doug for flying me business class when we visited Australia. Not only did it save me from turning into a pretzel, it gave me the idea for this book.

      I’m thrilled to be writing another series for Kensington, and have had great fun playing with the “planes” segment of my sexy “planes, trains, automobiles, and a cruise ship” series. I call the series Wild Ride because, for each of the four Fallon sisters, the journey to love truly is a wild ride. The next book—the “trains” one, Love, Unexpectedly—is a bit of a wild ride for me, too. It will be released under the pen name Susan Fox in April 2010, and will be in Kensington’s Brava line.

      Readers are, of course, the reason we authors do what we do. Thanks to all of you for reading romance. I invite you to visit my web site at www.susanlyons.ca, e-mail me at [email protected], or write c/o PO Box 73523, Downtown Postal Outlet, 1014 Robson Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6E 4L9.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      1

      If someone had asked me a week ago, I’d have said I wouldn’t be caught dead buying bridal magazines. However, the resident expert—my newly married secretary at the University of Sydney—told me it was impossible to plan a wedding without them.

      Of course I had managed my own registry wedding without the assistance of any fancy magazines, but then again, look how well that had worked out. A three-month blip of married life to mar my otherwise pristine thirty-two years of singledom.

      Ironic that now it was up to me, Theresa Fallon, with a little help from my sisters, Kat and Jenna, to plan the perfect wedding. On two weeks’ notice.

      No, not mine. My genius IQ didn’t prevent me from making mistakes, but I tried my best to never repeat one, so I’d pretty much sworn off men.

      It was my baby sister, Merilee, back in Vancouver, B.C., who’d be bridal-marching down the aisle, a march she’d been dreaming of since, at age five, she’d repeatedly propelled Bride Barbie into the arms of tuxedo-clad Ken.

      Merilee was marrying Matt, her soul mate since grade two. You’d have thought fifteen years of love and dreams would have resulted in something more organized than a spur-of-the-moment wedding. However, Merilee’d had a rough time of it health-wise this year, then Matt found a last-minute deal on a Mexican Riviera cruise, and the result was that in thirteen days my kid sister was going to have the wedding she’d always dreamed of.

      Except that she, who was frantically catching up the university work she’d missed due to illness, didn’t have time to make wedding arrangements.

      Merilee needed help, and I loved Merilee. So did our middle sisters, Kat and Jenna, of course, but as always, I was the organizer. The truth was, I liked being in charge. In fact, I preferred doing things myself, so they’d get done right. Snotty? Given my awe-inspiring IQ, my parents’ expectations, and the responsibilities that had been foisted upon me at an early age, could I have turned out any other way?

      Ergo, I, who so didn’t relate to the white-lace-and-promises concept, was now on the hunt for a couple of those frilly magazines to supplement the gigantic bible on wedding planning I’d purchased at the uni bookstore. After clearing Sydney airport security late Sunday afternoon, I made for the Newslink store.

      A display of hardcover books near the entrance caught my attention. The under-construction pyramid featured Wild Fire, the new release from one of Australia’s popular novelists, Damien Black. A female sales clerk was plastering “Autographed Copy” stickers on covers that were a touch garish—eerie flames in yellow and red blazing on a black background—but definitely eye-catching.

      As a sociologist specializing in the study of Indigenous Australians, I knew Black’s name. He was part Aboriginal and wrote paranormal mystery thrillers featuring a police officer who was an Aboriginal Australian.

      Though I rarely read fiction, I’d picked up one of the novels. It had been surprisingly entertaining, moderately accurate when it came to the facts, and even, here and there, insightful. But only here and there. Mostly, his work was crassly commercial. The man should devote his writing talents to something serious.

      I certainly didn’t plan to read another of his books. “Waste of time. Glib and superficial.”

      “Pardon?” The sales clerk turned to me.

      “Sorry.” One of the hazards of spending so much time on my own; I had a bad habit of voicing my thoughts. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

      The clerk grinned. “No worries. Lots of readers disagree with you, though. He sure sells well. Me, I can’t put the books down. He’s kept me up all night, more than once.” She winked. “Wish he’d do it in person, though. He was just in signing these books and I gotta say, the man’s seriously hot.”

      “I’m sure ‘hot’ is an important criterion for making one’s reading choices,” I said dryly.

      A male snort told me someone had overheard.

      The clerk glanced over my shoulder. Her eyes widened and color flooded her cheeks. “Oops! Sorry.” She ducked her head and concentrated on stickering books.

      I turned and saw a man who definitely qualified as hot. His clothes were as simple as you could get—worn jeans, a navy tee—but they showcased a tall, well-muscled frame. His face and arms were tanned dark, and he obviously didn’t believe in haircuts. Though I wasn’t a fan of long hair, the shiny black waves hanging almost to his shoulders did suit him. He had a strong-featured face with a hint of the exotic, and bright gray eyes that were currently regarding me with a sparkle of humor.

      I felt an odd kind of physical awareness. Of him as a man. And me as a woman. Which definitely wasn’t the usual way I reacted