Marrying Daisy Bellamy Read Online Free PDF Page A

fire. She felt wonderful around him, and it wasn’t the pot. She liked him. She really, really liked this guy. He was different and special and kind of mysterious. He didn’t touch her, though she wanted him to. He didn’t kiss her, though she wanted that, too. He simply sat back and offered a subtle, slightly lopsided smile.
    Those eyes, she thought, feeling a peculiar warmthshudder through her. She looked into them and thought, Hello, other half of my soul. It’s good to finally meet you.
    Present Day
    Daisy pondered her history with Julian far more than she should, especially at times like this, the middle of the night, when she was all by herself, her body aching for a human touch. If her life had followed a movie script, everything would have been simple after that first unlikely, electrifying meeting. The music would swell, the birds would sing, and that would be that. Go directly to happily ever after. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Just go.
    It was a lot of baggage to lay on the first meeting of two teenagers, she acknowledged. The wilderness camp had been the ideal setup for a summer romance—two star-crossed kids, attracted to each other against all common sense…forced apart at summer’s end by families who didn’t understand them. Perfect .
    Except things hadn’t played out that way. Instead, Daisy and Julian had done the impossible. Resisting the heady rush of revved up hormones, they had spent the summer in an agony of yearning, and by some miracle they hadn’t hooked up. It wasn’t really a miracle, but Julian’s self-restraint. He’d made a vow to his brother to stay out of trouble, and it hadn’t taken her long to realize he was a man of his word. At summer’s end, they had gone their separate ways, resigning themselves to circumstances.
    She should have realized they never had a chance to be more to each other than a summer memory. Back in Manhattan that fall, Daisy went a little nuts at the startof her senior year in high school. She’d made an incredibly bad decision that had resulted in an incredibly precious gift—Charlie, born the summer after graduation. But just because she’d had a baby didn’t mean she could forget Julian. She never had. She kept waiting and hoping their time would come. But she had a kid, and Julian had a dream of his own to follow.
    She tried to read between the lines of the invitation to his commissioning ceremony, a futile endeavor, since it was printed, like all the others had been. The words on the back could be interpreted in a variety of ways. Did he really want to see her, or was he simply being polite?
    She didn’t know, because she was in a weird place with him, like always. Despite a mutual, undeniable attraction, she tried to stay resigned to the fact that she and Julian were destined to go their own ways. He was a graduating senior at Cornell, focusing on school and on his ROTC program, as well he should. She lived in Avalon now, a place that had seemed as bleak as Siberia when she’d first seen it that first summer at Camp Kioga. These days, she called it home because it was close to family, the best place to raise Charlie.
    There didn’t seem to be any way for her and Julian to be together without one of them sacrificing everything. Some things, she told herself often, simply weren’t meant to be. Still, she couldn’t help but dream, and in the deepest, most sleepless hours of the night, she caught herself wondering if her time would ever come, if she’d ever experience the searing joy of love her camera captured, wedding after wedding.
    A small inner voice reminded her that she’d had her chance, not so long ago. There had been a ring, a proposal…but she’d been too scared and confused toeven consider it. She’d opted instead for a year of studying abroad with Charlie, which ultimately proved to her how very much she needed her family.
    Oh,