A Timeless Romance Anthology: Summer Wedding Collection Read online

  Six Romance Novellas

  Melanie Jacobson

  Julie Wright

  Rachael Anderson

  Annette Lyon

  Heather B. Moore

  Sarah M. Eden

  Copyright © 2013 by Mirror Press, LLC

  Ebook edition

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief passages embodied in critical reviews and articles.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are products of the authors’ imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Cover Design by Christina Marcano

  Interior Design by Heather Justesen

  Edited by Annette Lyon

  Published by Mirror Press, LLC

  http://timelessromanceanthologies.blogspot.com

  More Timeless Romance Anthologies

  Love Bytes, by Melanie Jacobson

  About Melanie Jacobson

  Other Works by Melanie Jacobson

  Romeo and Julie-Ex, by Julie Wright

  About Julie Wright

  Other Works by Julie Wright

  The Meltdown Match, by Rachael Anderson

  About Rachael Anderson

  Other Works by Rachael Anderson

  Golden Sunrise, by Annette Lyon

  About Annette Lyon

  Other Works by Annette Lyon

  Tide Pools, by Heather B. Moore

  About Heather B. Moore

  Other Works by Heather B. Moore

  A Regular Bloke from Stanmore, by Sarah M. Eden

  About Sarah M. Eden

  Other Works by Sarah M. Eden

  Chapter One

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  RE: Wedding drama

  Can’t you put your friend in check?

  -Dallen

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  RE: Wedding drama

  Can you put a force of nature in check? Is that a thing? Because if it is, tell me how to do it and consider it DONE— kind of like I almost am. (She’s making me crazy. Puce flowers? PUCE?! I’ve been a good best friend. What did I do to deserve this?)

  ~Bree

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  No being done. You don’t get to be done. DON’T YOU LEAVE ME WITH THESE CRAZY PEOPLE BY MYSELF. I’m counting on you to help me talk them down from ledges. I went to dinner with her and Slade last night. All she talked about was changing her flowers. Because they’re not just flowers... (You want to finish the sentence here?)

  -Dallen

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  RE: Wedding drama

  ...they’re a symbol. Everything is a symbol.

  Just remember back to the Addison you knew before they decided to get married. She’s still in there somewhere. That’s how I don’t kill her. Also, not living in Chicago with you guys helps.

  ~Bree

  To: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  RE: Wedding drama

  Stop trying to make me jealous of not living in LA.

  Don’t know how you’re surviving the maid-of-honor gig. I’m only the best man, and I still feel like the first target in the line of fire. I almost punched Slade in the face four different times this week. Only the knowledge that Addison would kill me if I broke his nose held me back.

  Remember last week when the biggest problem we had was thinking of a plan to keep Slade’s Drunk Uncle away from all the single ladies? HA! Now that Puce-pocalypse is upon us, gropey wedding guests seem like a cake walk.

  -Dallen

  P.S. Don’t mention cake walks to Addison. It will become a thing.

  Dallen hit send and smiled. It was true: he was counting on Bree, almost a total stranger, to help him manage the most stressful non-work project of his life. And it felt good. Her jokes and sense of calm had made everything more manageable from the moment they’d traded their first emails a few weeks before.

  When Slade had asked Dallen to be his best man, he’d been flattered. Now he wondered if he’d just been Tom Sawyered because Slade’s other friends were too smart to say yes. If Dallen had realized exactly how smitten Slade was with tiny, bewitching Addison, he might have found something else—‌anything else—‌more pressing to do that weekend. They’d seemed so normal for the year they’d dated, but the engagement had turned Addison into a crazy woman, and Slade refused to say no to anything.

  Dallen sighed. They were exhausting, but the truth was there wasn’t anywhere he’d rather be than standing by his best friend’s side when he said his vows to the love of his life. It helped that standing there meant digging his own toes into the white sandy beaches of Maui.

  He glared at the rain pelting his office window. His view of Lake Michigan was pointless half the year. Chicago’s late spring rains sucked, simple as that.

  He growled and leaned over the architectural blueprints. He picked up his pencil and erased a cornice, the high-maintenance bride and groom fading to white noise as he worked on perfecting the exterior of a new high rise. Changing the Chicago skyline was infinitely less stressful than being best man.

  Chapter Two

  Poor Dallen. Bree had to smile at his frustration. Addison was normally the most level-headed girl, but she was a demanding bride. It was bad enough for Bree sitting in her LA office two thousand miles away; Dallen had to listen to Addison’s obsessive attention to wedding detail in person. She’d always loved the symbolism of weddings, and as crazy in love as she was with Slade, she wanted every last detail to perfectly reflect their feelings.

  There had been discussions of live animals, exotic flowers, outdoor canopies, and horse drawn carriages. When they finally settled on a Hawaiian wedding, Bree breathed a sigh of relief. The location would limit Addison’s insane plans; horse-drawn carriages didn’t work on sand. It had still taken some fast talking to convince Addison to not enter on a white stallion. When Bree had exhausted every argument she could think of, she won on manure.

  “What if the horse poops? Is that the symbolism you’re going for?”

  After she emailed Dallen with her victory, he’d sent her a GIF of an old man laughing until he cried.

  If it weren’t for his emails cracking her up several times a week, she’d be pulling her hair out trying to keep up with Addison’s quicksilver moods and plan changes. Dallen, in exaggerating the crazy, made reality a little easier to deal with.

  Her phone buzzed with a text.

  Dallen: Wait. I don’t even know what puce is. Help me.

  Bree: Did Google fail you?

  Dallen: I could ask it but it lacks your sense of humor.

  Bree: The second you say I’m funny, my sense of humor locks up. Quit it. It screws with my mojo.

  Dallen: Did I imply you’re funny? Massive typo. Don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you need help. Study these...

  He included a link. She clicked and grinned. It was a Joke of the Day site.

  Bree: Nice.

  Dallen: I really am.

  She snorted.

  Bree: Oops. I just tried to make an emoticon for an eye roll, but it looked like...boobs. *Red face.*

  He pinged back with the old man GIF. She smothered a laugh.

&n
bsp; Bree: Fine. Think puke, as in imagine if someone ate an eggplant, chased it with a glass of cream, and puked it back up. That’s the color we’re talking.

  A long pause followed.

  Dallen: Unfortunately, I can picture that perfectly. So... thanks?

  She laughed, and Sarah popped her head over their shared cubicle wall. “The laughter— it must stop. Interior design is serious business. You can’t treat it like a joke.”

  Bree raised an eyebrow. “Okay, girl who did a whole kid’s room around Peewee’s Playhouse.”

  Sarah happy sighed. “I love celebrities and their money and their willingness to do ridiculous things with it.” Last fall, her work had attracted the notice of a major LA magazine with her whimsical design for the toddler of a TV star who wanted something besides a typical sports or space theme. “How’s your project going?”

  Bree glanced at the mockup for the upscale Melrose clothing boutique she’d been commissioned for. “Fine. Can’t find the right chairs for the lounging area by the fitting rooms, but I’ll figure it out.”

  “Not that project. How’s the wedding coming? And by wedding, I mean the online affair with your new true love.”

  “Stop it,” Bree said without any heat. She’d argued with Sarah’s interpretation too many times to think she’d shut her up, much less win.

  Sarah pointed at Bree’s green smoothie. “Losing weight for someone else?”

  “My bridesmaid dress.”

  “And the hot guy who makes you laugh ten times a day.”

  “I should have never showed you his picture,” Bree grumbled. “I bet you wouldn’t think I was losing weight for him if he were chubby and short.”

  “Moot point. He’s gorge-until-you’re-sick delicious.”

  “Ew. What a gross way to put it. I swear this diet is about the dress.” It was most definitely not about the dress. Her ex-boyfriend’s face flashed through her memory before she shoved it out and ordered her stomach to stop the automatic churning it did whenever she thought of him. This was about redemption.

  “Your friend was nice enough to pick silk. The cut’s all floaty; so you don’t have to worry. If it were satin, even boneys couldn’t pull it off without Spanx and airbrushing.” Boney was what Sarah called the exercise-obsessed trophy wives that often hired them. “If you have even a tiny figure flaw, satin is the worst. Silk is easy.”

  “Thirty pounds isn’t a tiny flaw. That’s a third of a boney.”

  Sarah shook her head. “You look so good. I don’t know why you’re starving yourself. You’ve lost, what, fifteen pounds? Stop. You don’t need to lose any more.”

  “I’m not starving myself.” It was true. She’d started a crash diet the day after Addison called, begging Bree to be maid of honor, but that lasted all of a week after food deprivation made her so cranky she threw a pillow at her Jillian Michaels workout on TV. She’d switched from a cabbage cleanse to common-sense healthy eating and made up with Jillian. After six weeks, good eating and daily exercise had begun to feel like a treat, not a chore. Now the combination was just a good habit.

  She wouldn’t admit that whenever she heard the seductive call of premium chocolate, the pictures of Dallen she had found on Slade’s Facebook page kept her out of her emergency Dove stash. Slade had messed with Dallen by creating an album titled “Dallen the Modelizer,” filled with snapshots of his friend with a dozen different thin, amazingly beautiful women. Dallen had threatened bodily harm in the comments, but Slade had fired back with, “You did it, you own it.”

  Bree liked looking at Dallen—‌his dark hair with a hint of a wave, his sexy mouth curved in a half smile, his strong jaw and broad shoulders. It was like studying candid shots of a J. Crew model. She didn’t like looking at all the models he was with, although Addison promised that none of them were current models, and all of them held jobs that required brain power.

  Brains and beauty. It hadn’t made Bree feel any better about the crush she was nurturing on her wedding partner in crime. She fell into the “pretty smart and kind of pretty” category. She used to be fine with that until Grayson ground her confidence to dust with a relentless campaign to get her to lose weight. She’d been thin when they met, but the stress of joining the firm three years ago, coupled with her parents’ surprise divorce, led to comfort food, and her clothes became very uncomfortable. At first, Grayson hinted that they should get out to bike and rollerblade, but then graduated to frowning at the food she ate. It got worse from there.

  She’d sensed his disapproval, but it only stressed her out more, which led to more bad eating. Now all she had left of that relationship were his toxic parting words.

  You can’t expect me to be attracted to you when you look like this. I hug you, and I can’t get past the fat roll. This is LA. You can’t walk a block without tripping over a gym or a health bar. Get yourself together. There’s no excuse for not looking hot.

  Sarah interrupted her thoughts. “Fine. You’re not starving yourself. But seriously, you look amazing. If you drop the last ten pounds you think you need to lose, you’re going to be a boney. Minus the rich husband, huge house, and tiny dog in an overpriced purse.”

  “Leave me to my smoothie and my newest wedding emergency.”

  “Another one?”

  “It’s been twenty-four hours, hasn’t it? Any idea where to find puce flowers in Hawaii?”

  Sarah’s eyes widened. “She changed them again? To puce? She’s messing with you.”

  Bree shook her head. “She wore a puce dress the night they met, so she wants the color reflected in the decor. It’s symbolic.”

  “If this dude asked her out on a second date after she wore a puce dress, he’s a keeper. But I’m telling you, make her get a wedding planner.”

  Bree turned to her computer again, ready to fire up a Google search for flowers. “She doesn’t trust a wedding planner. I’m the only one who can get it right.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “No,” Bree agreed. “But as long as that’s what Addison thinks, I’m the one who needs to do it.” She smiled up at Sarah. “I know this looks crazy—”

  “It is crazy.”

  “Trust me, if the roles were reversed, Addison would have my back no matter how crazy I acted. She has since we were little kids. This is the first time I’ve ever seen her so high-strung, but she’s love-drunk and happy.”

  Sarah smiled. “You’re a good friend.”

  “That depends on if I can find puce flowers.” With that, she began another Internet search.

  Chapter Three

  Light splash of cologne, check. Styling gel, check. Good jeans from the dryer, check.

  Everything was ready to go, except his motivation. Dallen groaned and ran a hand through his just-styled hair, sending a piece poking up. It mocked him in the mirror; he didn’t care. In less than an hour, he was supposed to pick up his date, but he didn’t want to. He’d been out with Amanda twice already, and she was nice. Maybe better than nice—‌gorgeous, cultured, and fit. They’d never run into any awkward silences, but somehow conversation with her fell flat.

  Instead of putting on the shirt he’d picked, he wandered to his laptop to see if Bree had emailed. Clicking his email tab was a move he made embarrassingly often. Last Friday, he’d gone out with Amanda for lobster and a gallery opening. It had been fine. But Saturday he’d stayed in and IM-ed with Bree about the footwear protocol for a wedding on the sand.

  SAND-als, she’d pinged him back, then said she had to go because there was a Homeland marathon on. He’d fed her fake spoilers all night and laughed much harder at her responses than he had on both dates with Amanda combined.

  No email from Bree. Pathetic how much that disappointed him. He tugged his shirt from its hanger and put it on. He’d go through the motions of dinner with Amanda because it would be rude to stand her up at the last minute. But it looked like this would be strike three. Too bad. Usually it took closer to a month for him to lose interest or realize he had
found, yet again, someone who deserved a bigger commitment than he was able to give.

  Fine. Than he wanted to give.

  If only he met women who made him laugh like Bree did. Funny that she was the only woman in years to stick around for any length of time. After two months in the wedding planning trenches, he looked forward to each new crisis, because he knew Bree would make it hilarious. It was the second best thing to sunshine in the Chicago gloom.

  He snatched his keys from the counter. He’d get Amanda and make the best of it, but he’d have to fight hard to not keep checking his phone for emails. He wouldn’t be that guy. It wouldn’t be easy.

  Chapter Four

  CALL ME.

  Bree glanced at Addison’s text and sighed. Luckily she had some post-workout endorphins to get her through this new crisis, whatever it was. It would definitely be a crisis. She hoped it wasn’t another change in bachelorette party plans. She’d had to book three different packages so far. Shuffling the deposits around was becoming a pain.

  When Bree called, instead of saying hello, Addison asked, “What’s going on with you and Dallen?”

  Bree had to process the words, and when their meaning sank in, her stomach sank too. “Nothing. Why?” Had he said something to Addison? Dallen seemed to find their conversations as hilarious as she did, but what if the next words out of Addison’s mouth were some gentle warning about how Bree shouldn’t get too invested? She’d need her entire Dove stash.

  “He asked about you at brunch.”

  The free fall in her stomach stopped. Asking about her could be okay. “Asked about me how?”