“This is the right time,” she told him. “This is a good place. Tell me one more time I’m the one.”

“You’re the one.” He cupped her face again. “The only one.”

The one, she thought, on this fresh new day. And the one through all the days after.

Hand in hand, they started back up the steps to share the next moments with family.

Teaser chapter

KEEP READING FOR A SPECIAL PREVIEW OF
THE NEXT BOOK
IN THE BRIDE QUARTET
BY NORA ROBERTS

HAPPY EVER AFTER

COMING IN NOVEMBER 2010
FROM BERKLEY BOOKS

THE CRAZY BRIDE CALLED AT FIVE-TWENTY-EIGHT A.M.

“I had a dream,” she announced while Parker lay in the dark with her BlackBerry.

“A dream?”

“An amazing dream. So real, so urgent, so full of color and life! I’m sure it means something. I’m going to call my psychic but I wanted to talk it over with you first.”

“Okay.” With the grace of experience, Parker reached over, turned her bedside lamp on low. “What was the dream about, Sabina?” she asked as she picked up the pad and pen beside the lamp.

“Alice in Wonderland.”

“You dreamed about Alice in Wonderland?”

“Specifically the Mad Hatter’s tea party.”

“Disney or Tim Burton?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Parker shook back her hair, noted down key words. “Go on.”

“Well, there was music and a banquet of food. I was Alice, but I wore my wedding dress, and Chase looked absolutely amazing in a morning coat. The flowers, oh, they were spectacular, and all of them singing and dancing. Everyone was so happy, toasting us, clapping. Angelica was dressed as the Red Queen and playing a flute.”

Parker noted down MOH for Angelica, the maid of honor, then continued to record other members of the wedding party. The best man as the White Rabbit, the mother of the groom as the Cheshire cat; father of the bride, the March Hare.

She wondered what Sabina had eaten, drunk, or smoked before going to bed.

“Isn’t it fascinating, Parker?”

“Absolutely.” As had been the pattern of tea leaves that had determined Sabine’s bridal colors, the tarot reading that had forecast her honeymoon destination, the numerology that had pointed to the only possible date for her wedding.

“I think maybe my subconscious and the fates are telling me I need to have an Alice theme for the wedding. With costumes.”

Parker closed her eyes. While she would have said that the Mad Hatter’s tea party suited Sabina to the ground, the event was less than two weeks away, and the decor, the flowers, the cake and desserts, the menu, the works—already chosen.

“Hmmm,” Parker said to give herself a moment to think. “That’s an interesting idea.”

“The dream—”

“Says to me,” Parker interjected, “the celebrational, magical, fairy-tale atmosphere you’ve already chosen . . . It tells me you were absolutely right.”

“Really?”