The Pirate & The Adventurer & The Cowboy

as the type to put up with anything he doesn't want to put up with." Margaret handed a quince-colored shirt to Sarah along with a pair of jeans.

    Kate chuckled as she reached for a brush. "I had the same impression. He's a lot like Jared in that respect. Are you really going to spend your honeymoon on a treasure hunt, Sarah? I can think of better things to do."

    "I can't," Sarah said blithely as she slipped into the jeans. She leaned toward the mirror to touch up her lipstick.

    Margaret met her eyes in the mirror, warmed by her friend's evident happiness. "Hoping to find another treasure like the Fleetwood Flowers?"

    Sarah touched the diamond earrings she was still wearing. "There will never be another treasure like the Flowers. After all, when I went looking for them, I found Gideon."

    "What did you do with the other four sets of earrings?" Kate asked.

    "Gideon has them safely hidden. He chose this pair for me to wear today." Sarah turned away from the mirror and buttoned the bright-colored shirt. "Okay, I'm ready." She hugged Kate and then Margaret. "Thank you both so much. I don't know what I would do without either of you. You're more important to me than I can ever say."

    Margaret felt herself grow a little misty. She quickly blinked away the moisture. "You don't have to say it. We all understand."

    Kate smiled tremulously. "That's right. You don't have to say it. Friends for life, right?"

    "Right. Nothing will ever change that." Sarah pulled back, her expressive face full of emotion. "There's something very special about a woman's friends, isn't there?"

    "Very special," Margaret agreed. She picked up Sarah's shoulder bag and handed it to her. "Something very special about a husband like Gideon Trace, too. Don't keep him waiting any longer."

    Sarah's eyes danced. "Don't worry, I won't."

    Margaret followed her friends into the elevator and across the hotel lobby to the large room where the wedding reception was still in full swing. A crowd composed chiefly of other writers, bookstore people and their families milled about inside, sipping champagne and dancing to the music of a small band.

    As the three women stepped through the open doorway, two big, lean men moved into their path. One of them reached for Sarah's hand, a look of proud satisfaction on his face. The other flashed a wicked pirate's grin and took Kate's arm.

    Margaret stood quietly to the side, studying the two males who had claimed her best friends as brides. On the surface there was no great similarity between Gideon Trace and Jared Hawthorne, other than the fact that they were both large and both moved with the kind of fluid grace that came from strength.

    But although they looked nothing alike there was something about them that stamped them both as being of the same mold. They were men in the old-fashioned sense of the word—men with an inner core of steel, a bit arrogant, perhaps, a bit larger than life, but the kind of men who could be relied upon when the chips were down. They were men who lived by their own codes.

    Margaret had met only one other man who was in the same league. That momentous event had occurred last year and the fallout from the explosive encounter had destroyed her career in the business world and left her bruised emotionally for a very long while. A part of her would never completely recover.

    Dressed in black and white formal attire, both Jared and Gideon were devastating although neither was particularly handsome. There was an edge to them, Margaret realized—a hardness that commanded an unconscious respect.

    Jared was the more outgoing of the two. He had an easy, assured manner that bordered on the sardonic. Gideon, on the other hand, had a dour, almost grim look about him that altered only when he looked at Sarah.

    "About time you got down here," Gideon said to his new wife. "I've had enough wedding party to last me a lifetime."

    "This was all your idea," Sarah reminded him, standing on tiptoe to brush her lips against the hard line of his jaw. "I would have been happy to run off to Las Vegas."

    "I wanted to do it right," he told her. "But now it's been done right. So let's get going."

    "Fine with me. When are you going to tell me where, exactly, we're going to?"

    Gideon smiled faintly. "As soon as we're in the car. You've already said good-bye to your family?"

    "Yes."

    "Right." Gideon looked at Jared. "We're going to slide out of here. Thanks for playing best man."

    "No problem." Jared held