AVERY NESBITT WAS IN LOVE. Madly, passionately,

wildly in love. She was besotted. She was bedazzled. She was befuddled. She was in love as she'd never been in love before.

And it was with a man who went beyond dreamy. He was smart and witty. He was creative and articulate. He was handsome and sexy. He always said what she needed to hear, right when she needed to hear it. He knew her backward and forward, just as she knew him inside and out. And he loved her exactly the way she was. That, more than anything else, had sealed her fate and ensured that her love would last forever. Andrew Paddington made Avery feel as if nothing in her life would ever go wrong again. He was just perfect in every way.

The bastard.

Theirs had been a whirlwind courtship, had come at Avery out of nowhere and swept her into a fantasy worthy of an epic romance. Andrew was in her thoughts and her dreams, in her plans and her performance, in her ego and her id. He filled her days with delight and her nights with pleasure, imbued her with joy that made her downright giddy. And that was no small accomplishment for a woman who was normally pragmatic, cynical and down-to-earth. Although Avery had only met him a month ago, she'd known after that first encounter that their meeting must have been destiny. Fate. Kismet. It was simply Meant To Be.

Bastard.

What difference did it make if they'd never actually met in person? Physical trappings weren't what love was about. Love was a meeting of minds, a melding of souls, a blending of hearts. Besides, they'd exchanged photos, and the ones he'd sent to her depicted him as a sandy-haired twentysomething with the eyes of a poet, the mouth of a troubad