Page 1 of The Teacher

Prologue

Love can make you do the strangest things.

It can make you swoon, it can make you laugh, it can make you cry.

It can even make your heart stop.

But love is rare.

And finding it - true, everlasting love - can sometimes take a lifetime. Once you’ve had it you should never let it go, believe me.

I did. I let it go.

A long time ago.

But now I’ve had the chance to see it again, that rare thing called love. I got to see it work its magic on my brother and my best friend.

Their wedding was when I saw love again.

1

SANDY

It all started the day of the wedding of my brother and my best friend, that day when I saw him again.

Him.

That man, the man of my dreams and of my nightmares, the same man who I’d thought, and wanted, never to see again.

Him.

At the wedding.

After all these years.

No, this can’t be real. He can’t be here.

Everything changed the day that man strolled right on in, right back into my life, acting as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t broken my heart all those years ago and left it scattered on the ground behind him. Discarded.

Torn apart.

Left behind.

Yeah, that man. The man I never wanted to even think about.

He was back.

Everything changed that wedding day when I saw him again.

* * *

“Sandy, help. There’s a problem with the bride, it’s an emergency.”

The tone of the bridesmaid’s voice is already enough to send me on edge, but her franticly delivered words make my heart go into overdrive.

Oh, shit. Here we go.

My hand’s already freezing up on the bottle of champagne I’ve only just pulled from the hotel fridge. It is very cold, but I don’t have time to freak out over the temperature.