LITMIR.BIZ

      Orla held on to the train of Aislin’s dress as if it were life support. She could do nothing to stop her legs trembling.

      Tonino Valente. The name she’d spent three years desperately trying to remember. Aislin had uttered his name and in that instant a light had switched on in Orla’s brain. If she hadn’t ripped the tiny clasp from Aislin’s dress she might very well have fainted, but the panic over ruining the hundred-thousand-euro dress had been equal to the shock of recognition at Tonino’s name.

      The flurry of activity that had followed, the hunt for the designer, who’d eventually been found in the hotel bar and who’d given Orla more evil eyes during the fixing of the clasp than she’d previously received in her lifetime, the arrival of Sabine’s daughters—Orla’s fellow bridesmaids—and the arrival of Aislin’s father… Suddenly the suite had been crammed with people and she’d been forced to get a grip of herself.

      This was the biggest day of her sister’s life. Aislin had put her life on hold for three years for Orla and Finn. Orla would never have been able to bear the scars that marked her body inside and out without her sister’s steadfast support. More than support. Aislin had raised Finn for the first eighteen months of his life, been the first to realise he wasn’t developing as he should, the one there every single day of Orla’s rehabilitation.

      And now it was Orla’s turn to support her sister; her protector, her best friend, her guardian angel made flesh. This was Aislin’s day.

      Sick dread continued its steady drum as they moved closer to the altar and she had to use all her concentration to keep the train of Aislin’s dress stretched out and keep control of the little bridesmaids by her side, both of whom were merrily waving at the packed congregation as if they were royalty. She hardly dared look away from them in case she found the dark brown stare that had haunted her dreams.

      Could it really be him?

      It had been almost four years. All they’d shared was one night. Or was it two? Or three? Or more? She wished she could remember but her memory had as many holes in it as a lump of Swiss cheese. Many of the holes had closed with time and the lost memories had returned but everything to do with Tonino and her time in Sicily remained blurry snapshots. She knew they’d met at the hotel she’d checked into during her fruitless attempt to meet her father, but that had been her only concrete remembrance…apart from his face. She remembered that handsome face vividly. Every time she’d pictured it, she’d had to suck in a breath of air to counteract the lance of pain that had accompanied it and blink away tears she’d had no clue from whence they had come.

      ‘Mummy!’

      Her son’s voice broke through the fog of fear in her head.

      Stretching her cheeks into a smile, she finally had a clear view past her sister to the spot at the left of the altar where she’d been promised she and Finn would sit.

      The smile froze, half formed.

      A tall, dark, utterly gorgeous man sat beside Finn. His black stare was fixed directly on her.

      Her stomach plummeted. Thick heat pulsed and swirled through her head, dizzying her.

      She had no recollection of Aislin’s father handing the bride to the groom, no recollection of the two small bridesmaids leaving her side, no recollection of her feet taking her to her son. All she remembered from taking those steps was the blazing heat that suffused her entire body and the feeling that she could fall into a dead faint from the shock.

      The man watching over her son until she could take her place beside him was Tonino. Finn’s father.