Kara Lennox - Out of Town Bride

“Wow! Kara Lennox’s BLOND JUSTICE series has it all—smart, determined heroines, ya-gotta-love-’em macho heroes, taut suspense and romance that will steam your glasses while it melts your heart. Each book is a winner; together they’re pure magic.”

—USA TODAY bestselling author

Merline Lovelace

Dear Reader,

There’s almost nothing more stressful than a wedding. Sonya Patterson has the added stress of a mom in the hospital, a con-man groom after her millions, a reporter hunting for scandal, and the man she’s loved and hated her whole life suddenly becoming more than her dutiful bodyguard.

I had a lot of fun wrapping up the BLOND JUSTICE series. If you’ve enjoyed watching The Blondes get the best of slippery con man Marvin Carter, you’ll be delighted with their brand of ultimate justice. But I hope you’ll also take pleasure in watching Sonya and John-Michael work through barriers of wealth, social class and a painful history to reach the happy ending they deserve.

Please let me know what you think! I love hearing from readers. Visit me at www.karalennox.com or write me at karalennox@yahoo.com.

All my best,

Out of Town Bride

Kara Lennox

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

For the Thursday Lunch-’n-Starbucks crowd—Victoria Chancellor, Judy Christenberry, Kay Dykes, Tammy Hilz and Rebecca Russell. Y’all keep me sane.

MILLS & BOON AMERICAN ROMANCE

934—VIXEN IN DISGUISE*

942—PLAIN JANE’S PLAN*

951—SASSY CINDERELLA*

974—FORTUNE’S TWINS

990—THE MILLIONAIRE NEXT DOOR

1052—THE FORGOTTEN COWBOY

1068—HOMETOWN HONEY†

1081—DOWNTOWN DEBUTANTE†

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Airplane seats were way too small and too crowded together. Sonya Patterson had never thought much about it before, since she’d always flown first class in the past. But this was a last-minute ticket on a no-first-class kind of plane.

She’d also never flown on a commercial airline with her bodyguard, which might explain her current claustrophobia. John-Michael McPhee was a broad-shouldered, well-muscled man, and Sonya was squashed between him and a hyperactive seven-year-old whose mother was fast asleep in the row behind them.

She could smell the leather of McPhee’s bomber jacket. He’d had that jacket for years, and every time Sonya saw him in it, her stupid heart gave a little leap. She hated herself for letting him affect her that way. Didn’t most women get over their teenage crushes by the time they were pushing thirty?

“I didn’t know you were a nervous flyer,” McPhee said, brushing his index finger over her left hand. Sonya realized she was clutching her armrests as if the plane were about to crash.

What would he think, she wondered, if she blurted out that it wasn’t the flying that made her nervous, it was being so close to him? Her mother would not approve of Sonya’s messy feelings where McPhee was concerned.

Her mother. Sonya’s heart ached at the thought of her vibrant mother lying in a hospital bed hooked up to machines. Muffy Lockridge Patterson was one of those women who never stopped running all day, every day, at full throttle with a to-do list a mile long. Over the years Sonya had often encouraged her mother to slow down, relax and cut back on the rich foods. But Muffy seldom took advice from anyone.

Sonya consciously loosened her grip on the armrests when McPhee nudged her again.

“She’ll be okay,” he said softly. “She was in stable condition when I left, and Tootsie was with her.”

“Tootsie? Is that supposed to comfort me?” Tootsie Milford, Muffy’s best friend since boarding school, was a consummate snob who never did a kindness for anyone unless she thought she could get something out of it—usually attention.

Sonya said little else to McPhee during the short flight, and he returned the favor. It was only after the limo picked them up at Hobby Airport that they spoke openly, safe from curious eavesdroppers.

“Do you want to go home first?” McPhee asked.

“No, of course not. Tim,” she said, addressing the chauffeur, “let’s go straight to the hospital, please.”

Tim hit the gas as Sonya fastened her seat belt. McPhee, as usual, didn’t bother. Sonya tried her best to ignore him. She rooted through her suede bag for her compact and busied herself powdering her nose and refreshing her lipstick. Other people might consider her vain, worrying about her appearance during a crisis. But grooming rituals had always given her comfort. That was something she and her mother shared. The world might be crashing down around her ears, but that didn’t mean she had to take it with a shiny nose and flyaway hair.

“Are you going to tell me what you were doing in New Orleans with your ‘sorority sister’?” McPhee asked, apparently unwilling to be ignored.

So, he hadn’t bought her cover story. But she’d had to come up with something quickly when McPhee had tracked her down hundreds of miles away from where she was supposed to be. She’d already been caught in a bald-faced lie—for weeks she’d been telling her mother she was at a spa in Dallas, working out her prewedding jitters.

“I was shopping in New Orleans for my trousseau,” she tried again. “Brenna’s a fashion consultant.”

McPhee laughed out loud at that one. “Lord help us if you start dressing like her.”

All right, so Brenna was a little avant-garde with her spiky hair, miniskirts and platform shoes.

“Anyway,” McPhee continued, “why would a fashion consultant be wanted by the FBI? Come on, Sonya, who is she? And don’t tell me she’s an old friend. I know all your old friends.”

“You think you know everything about me, don’t you? Well, you don’t. I met Brenna at the spa.”

“I checked with Elizabeth Arden. You haven’t been there in over three years.”

“I went to a different spa this time.” The lies were stacking up—and none of them were flying with McPhee.

He didn’t respond, merely stared her down with those incongruously dark-brown eyes. His eyes had always fascinated her, so dark when his hair was blond, and so blasted knowing, as if he could see straight to her most intimate thoughts.

She resisted the urge to squirm under his gaze. She was an adult, she reminded herself. “I have private reasons for my trip to New Orleans, and they don’t concern you.”

“Very well, Miss Patterson,” he said in his Jeeves-the-butler voice. “Forgive me for overstepping my bounds.”

She hated it when he accused her of acting like mistress of the manor. She wasn’t the class-conscious one around here, after all. In fact, she’d once tried to erase the social and financial barriers that separated them. McPhee was the one who had erected most of those barriers, making them more unbreachable than a twenty-foot concrete wall.