Eve Dallas and husband Roarke – #3

Getting married was murder. Eve wasn't sure how it had happened in the first place. She was a cop, for God's sake. Throughout her ten years on the force, she'd firmly believed cops should stay single, unencumbered, and focused utterly on the job. It was insane to believe one person could split time, energy, and emotion between law, with all its rights and wrongs, and family, with all its demands and personalities.

Both careers – and from what she'd observed, marriage was a job – had impossible demands and hellish hours. It might have been 2058, an enlightened time of technological advancement, but marriage was still marriage. To Eve it translated to terror.

Yet here she was on a fine day in high summer – one of her rare and precious days off – preparing to go shopping. She couldn't stop the shudder.

Not just shopping, she reminded herself as her stomach clutched, shopping for a wedding dress.

Obviously she'd lost her mind.

It was Roarke's doing, of course. He'd caught her at a weak moment. Both of them bleeding and bruised and lucky to be alive. When a man is clever enough and knows his quarry well enough to choose such a time and place to propose marriage, well, a woman was a goner.

At least a woman like Eve Dallas.

"You look like you're about to take on a gang of chemi-thugs bare-handed."

Eve tugged on a shoe, flicked her gaze up and over. He was entirely too attractive, she thought. Criminally so. The strong face, poet's mouth, killer blue eyes. The wizard's mane of thick black hair. If you managed to get past the face to the body, it was equally impressive. Then you added that faint wisp of Ireland in the voice, and, well, you had one hell of a package.