Kate Hardy - Wish Upon a Wedding

And before Mac could shake his head and back away he found the phone thrust out to him.

He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat and took it. ‘Hey, Russ, how you doing?’

‘Better than you, by the sounds of it. Though it explains why you haven’t answered my last two calls.’

He winced. ‘It’s all I’ve been able to do to keep up with my email.’ I’m sorry, bro. He hadn’t been good for anyone. Least of all his brother.

‘Well, you listen to Jo, okay? She’s got a good head on her shoulders.’

He glanced at said head and noticed how the wavy dark hair gleamed in the sun, and how cute little freckles sprinkled a path across the bridge of her nose. She had a rather cute nose. She cocked an eyebrow and he cleared his throat.

‘Will do,’ he forced himself to say.

‘Good. I want you in the best of health when I come to visit.’

He choked back a cough. Russ was coming to visit?

‘Give my love to Jo.’

With that, Russ hung up. Mac stared at Jo. ‘When is he coming to visit?’

She shrugged and plucked her phone from his fingers.

‘Why is he coming?’

‘Oh, that one’s easy. Because he loves you. He wants to see you before he goes under the knife.’ She met his gaze. ‘In case he doesn’t wake up after the operation.’

‘That’s crazy.’

‘Is it?’

‘Russ is going to be just fine!’ His brother didn’t need to exert himself in any fashion until he was a hundred per cent fit again.

She stared at him for a long moment. ‘Are you familiar with the Banjo Paterson poem “The Man From Snowy River”?’

Her question threw him. ‘Sure.’

‘Can you remember what comes after the first couple of lines? “There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around that the colt from old Regret had got away...”.’

‘“And had joined the wild bush horses—he was worth a thousand pound, So all the cracks had gathered to the fray”,’ he recited. His class had memorised that in the third grade.

‘Wild... Worth... Fray...’ she murmured in that honeyed liquid sunshine voice of hers.

‘Why?’

She shook herself. ‘No reason. Just an earworm.’

She seized her suitcases and strode back towards the house with them, and he couldn’t help feeling his fate had just been sealed by a poem.

And then it hit him.

Honey! The ingredient he’d been searching for was honey.

Copyright © 2015 by Michelle Douglas

Cara’s gaze skittered across his mouth, lingering. “I’m pretty aware of the breadth of your skill set.”

Her voice had dropped, turning sultry, and Keith’s body hardened in an instant. Yeah, he remembered how hot their kisses had always been.

“Are you flirting with me, Cara?”

“Not in the slightest. Your best skill is walking away, and I took copious notes. Allow me to demonstrate what I learned.”

She pivoted and walked away, leaving Keith standing alone by the pool. With a tropical storm on the horizon and a grand reopening combined with a bridal expo in two days, Cara was a distraction he could not afford to indulge.

KAT CANTRELLread her first Mills & Boon ®novel in third grade and has been scribbling in notebooks since she learned to spell. What else would she write but romance? She majored in literature, officially with the intent to teach, but somehow ended up buried in middle management in corporate America, until she became a stay-at-home mum and full-time writer.

Kat, her husband and their two boys live in north Texas. When she’s not writing about characters on the journey to happily-ever-after, she can be found at a soccer game, watching the TV show Friends or listening to ’80s music.

Kat was the 2011 Mills & Boon So You Think You Can Write winner and a 2012 RWA Golden Heart Award finalist for best unpublished series contemporary manuscript.

One

Even the sandpipers were getting more action than Cara Chandler-Harris.

But she was working at this Turks and Caicos resort instead of frolicking in the crystal-blue surf with a nearly naked, oiled companion. Cara would be the sole designer showcasing her fairy-tale-inspired wedding dresses to two hundred industry professionals at a three-day bridal expo. The wedding-dress fashion show was one of the premier events and Cara Chandler-Harris Designs, which was still in its fledging stages, was poised to explode with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for exposure.

Adding testicles into the mix would only drive her to drink.

Cara swept a glance over the woman in white silk standing before her in the Ariel wedding dress and repositioned the model to face forward. Wincing as she knelt for the four hundredth time, Cara stuck another pin through the lace-trim edging of the mermaid skirt.

“Don’t forget her heels will be five inches. Not four,” her assistant, and sister, Meredith, reminded Cara as she handed her another pin. “And yes, I checked with the airline again. The missing bag with the shoes in it will be here by four o’clock.”

“Thanks, honey. I took her heel height into account. Is Cinderella ready to go?” Cara glanced at her sister.

Meredith nodded and flipped her long ponytail over her shoulder. “Won’t need more than a slight waist alteration. I did good matching the models with the dresses, don’t ya think?”

She had and knew it. Meredith wore her designer’s assistant role like a second skin. Cara smiled. “Worried I’m going to fire you for ripping Aurora’s sleeve?”

“Nah. I’m more worried about stuff I’ve done you don’t know about yet.” With a saucy, cryptic grin, Meredith handed Cara the final pin and hummed under her breath as she tapped out something on her phone.

“You know I hate that song,” Cara mumbled around the pin in her mouth.

“That’s why I sing it. If little sisters aren’t annoying, what are we good for?”

“Herding the rest of the girls into place. We only have three days until the expo starts and we haven’t even done one run-through.” Her lungs already felt tight to be so far behind schedule. Good God Almighty. Missing luggage, torn dresses and a room with a faulty air conditioner. And it was only their first day in Grace Bay. “Why did I let you talk me into this?”

Cara had no idea how her name had come up to the powers that be who’d selected her for this event. Yes, a small handful of Houston brides had marched down the aisle in her dresses in the eighteen months she’d been in business, and yes, all of them had graced the pages of glossy society magazines. Yes, Chandler and Harris were both names everyone in Houston knew. But still. Grace Bay was a long way from Houston.

“Because you recognize my brilliance. Stop stressing. Plans can be altered.”

“Dresses can be altered. Plans are carved in granite, and hell has a special level for those who mess with mine.”

Meredith waved in two more visions in white who had appeared at the entrance to the pavilion, both barefoot, like the others. All of the models’ shoes were in the missing bags.

“Where’s Jackie?” Cara glanced back at the empty entrance.

“Puking her guts out,” one of the girls responded with a ladylike shudder. “I told her not to drink the water.”

Cara frowned. “The resort water is purified.”

“Then something else is wrong with Jackie,” Meredith said and rubbed Cara’s shoulder. “A virus. It’ll pass.”

“It better. She has to be on stage in six days.” A virus. Which could easily be transmitted to everyone else. Cara eyed Jackie’s roommate. “How are you feeling, Holly?”