The Wedding Dress by Lucy Kevin Read Free Book Online Page B

Anne said.
    It should have looked like just random littering. It should have looked too odd to be beautiful. It should have been pure chaos.
    Yet, Gareth had to admit that the flowers made the shoe garden a riot of colors, while the shoes in between blended with those colors. It was strange but also very beautiful indeed. He found himself smiling as he looked around the place. At the thought that someone could have done this.
    “Who put all this together?”
    “People just come along and plant shoes.”
    “But that should be chaos,” he told her when he couldn’t make sense of it.
    Anne smiled. “I suppose so, but fortunately, it seems to work anyway.”
    She led the way around another bend in the path to a spot where there were trays of bedding plants along with soil. Gareth could guess what she intended.
    “Oh no. No way.”
    “Everyone should do it at least once.” She took off her own shoes without hesitating. They were beautiful heels that matched the dress she was wearing. Gareth guessed that she’d either customized them herself or made the dress to fit the shoes.
    “You’re really going to plant a flower in those shoes?”
    “Of course. Come on, try it. You won’t regret it.”
    He thought he might, given how much the shoes he was wearing had cost, yet Gareth found himself bending down to untie them and pick out a plant.
    Anne planted hers beside his. “There,” she said. “Doesn’t that feel good?”
    It did. Better than he’d have thought. And as they padded out of the park together, Anne in her bare feet and Gareth in his black dress socks, in that moment he felt like he could tell her anything.
    But he really didn’t want to talk about the case just then. Which really left only one other thing…
    “Do you remember before, when I mentioned leaving the precinct?”
    “Yes. From your tone of voice, I was wondering if something happened to make you want to leave.”
    “My partner, Brian, met a woman. He fell in love with her.”
    “That doesn’t sound like a reason to leave your job.”
    “It wasn’t.” Gareth kept walking. “Except she had a kid, and the kid was in trouble. He’d made the kind of friends who didn’t think twice about having him transport drugs for them. Brian looked the other way.” No, Gareth thought, he had to tell her the full truth. “Actually, it was worse than that. He ‘lost’ some evidence.”
    “He did that just because he loved someone?”
    “Yes, but it was also illegal. In the end, even though I knew the right thing to do was turn him in, I couldn’t. So I left the force instead.”
    Anne paused, looking up into his eyes. “Why are you telling me this?”
    “I need you to know how important the law is to me. How I can’t just ignore it, even if I want to.”
    “Because you want to do the right thing,” Anne said, reaching up to touch his face.
    “Because I have to do the right thing. It isn’t just my job; it’s who I am.”
    “And what’s the right thing to do now?” she whispered.
    “I should go,” he whispered back, “but I can’t.”
    And then he kissed her.

Chapter Eleven
     
    Anne melted into Gareth’s kiss, and when they finally pulled apart, she stared at him breathlessly. She knew Gareth was a man who believed in doing things the “right” way, but who’d have thought that extended to his kissing?
    Because his kiss had been more than right.
    It had been perfect .
    “You realize it’s going to be a long walk back to my car without any shoes?” Gareth said, but even though he was clearly conflicted over his feelings for her, he said it with a smile.
    Anne’s heart leapt at his grin when he usually seemed so very serious, like the world wasn’t something to be enjoyed.
    “I didn’t think we were in a hurry, are we?” she asked.
    “No,” Gareth said slowly, “I guess we’re not.”
    Anne liked the fact that he was making time for her.
    She liked the fact that he held her hand as they walked, while rubbing the pad