Santorini Sunsets by Anita Hughes Page A

softly on the mouth.
    â€œI would have done everything I could to change your mind.”
    â€œI’m an attorney.” Brigit was suddenly giddy from the weight of the sapphire and diamond and the feel of Nathaniel’s mouth on her lips. “I don’t reverse my decision easily.”
    â€œI’d spend the rest of my life convincing you if I had to,” Nathaniel whispered. “There’s nothing I want more.”
    *   *   *
    She remembered the next ten months of black-tie dinners and cocktail receptions. She was so exhausted from her terrifying workload and the never-ending invitations that sometimes she wanted to beg Nathaniel to wait. They needed a couple of years to get settled and then they would plan a wedding.
    But he’d bounded into her office with her favorite sesame noodles and brochures of honeymoon destinations and her heart had lifted. She cracked open fortune cookies and thought none of it mattered if they weren’t together.
    *   *   *
    She fingered the plastic bucket and remembered waking up at Summerhill the morning of the rehearsal dinner. She’d slipped on her white cotton robe and sat at the dormer window. She’d gazed at the dew on the grass and the mist hanging on the sound and felt her heart pound.
    She wanted to race across the lawn and climb over the stone fence to Nathaniel’s parents’ estate. She wanted to pound on the door until Nathaniel shuffled downstairs in his plaid boxers. She wanted to say they were too young to get married; they should be focusing on their careers and planning summer holidays in Spain.
    She glanced at Daisy asleep in her white-canopied bed and thought it was all slipping away. Just yesterday they used to fight over who could borrow their mother’s cream angora sweater.
    She tied the robe around her waist and climbed the narrow staircase to the nursery. She gazed at the child-sized table and chairs and the dollhouse with its pink curtains and smiled. She and Daisy hadn’t played up there in decades but her mother refused to remove the Nancy Drew books or take down their crayon self-portraits.
    She sat on a pink wooden chair and pulled her knees to her chest. She was always so sure about everything: that Dartmouth was perfect because the academics were excellent but it wasn’t a pressure cooker like Harvard. That she wanted to be a lawyer because the best way to help people was to give them information.
    She gazed at the sapphire-and-diamond ring and wondered why she was nervous. Was she just wistful their childhood was over or was she afraid they were being hasty?
    She heard footsteps and saw a figure in a yellow robe and silk slippers. Daisy’s hair was tied in a long ponytail and her face was free of makeup.
    â€œWho gets up at seven a.m. on the day before her wedding?” Daisy yawned. “You’re supposed to sleep until noon when your maid of honor pulls you out of bed and drags you to the nail salon.”
    â€œI’m sorry I woke you.” Brigit sighed.
    â€œI like sharing a room,” Daisy replied. “It reminds me of when I was six years old, and I was afraid the tooth fairy wouldn’t come. You climbed into my bed and said I should go back to sleep. You’d make sure she wouldn’t forget me.”
    â€œI had to ask my bridesmaids to stay at Summerhill,” Brigit said. “It didn’t seem right to make them stay at the Hedges Inn.”
    â€œMom loves having people around.” Daisy grinned. “I think it finally hit her that you’re leaving. She keeps wiping her eyes and saying her allergies are terrible.”
    â€œWhat if this is all wrong?” Brigit looked up. “Nathaniel and I have never even lived together, what if we can’t agree on which cereals to stock in the pantry? And we’re so competitive, do you remember the summer when we were fourteen and I beat him in tennis?
    â€œThe next day