Cara Colter - Just Married! - Kiss the Bridesmaid / Best Man Says I Do

Reader favorite Cara Colter and New York Times bestselling author Shirley Jump bring you

JUST MARRIED!

Wedding bells are ringing in St John’s Cove and we’re about to see love blossoming for the bridesmaid and the best man!

Praise for Cara Colter:

‘Cara Colter’s HIS MISTLETOE BRIDE

has everything: wonderful characters,

humor and emotional depth.’

—RT Book Reviews

Praise for Shirley Jump:

‘Shirley Jump always succeeds in getting the plot,

the characters, the settings and the emotions right.’

— Cataromance.com

By

and

By

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

By

Dear Reader

I love summer. I love the lemonade, the barbecues, the July fireworks. I love swimming in ice-cold water on simmering hot days, and I love sitting in a comfy chair in the shade with a good book.

No matter what time of year you are reading this story, I hope it gives you that summertime feeling. A feeling of life being fun, and simple, and filled with delightful surprises.

To me, that is the magic of a romance novel. It can transport you, immerse you in a different world, take you from a cold place to the place of endless summer that each of us holds in our hearts. Journey with me now, from wherever you are, to the season of summer and the season of love.

With warmest wishes

Cara Colter

With thanks to Shirley Jump for all her great ideas,

and for sharing her Cape Cod summers.

“LADIES, if you would gather by the chocolate fountain, Mrs. Charles Weston is about to throw her bouquet.” Colton St. John had been best man at the wedding of two of his oldest friends, and now he was acting as the master of ceremonies.

The town had been founded by his forefathers, and leadership came easily to him. At twenty-eight, the dark-haired, blue-eyed Colton would have been a more likely movie star than a law school graduate and the youngest mayor St. John’s Cove had ever elected.

Not that Samantha Hall, bridesmaid, was admiring the confidence and finesse of her dear friend, Colton, at the moment.

It’s nearly over , she told herself as she slid toward the exit of the St. John’s Cove Yacht Club. It was hard to be unobtrusive in the bridesmaid’s gown that Amanda—make that Mrs. Charles Weston—had chosen. Amanda had glowingly described the color as fuchsia, but it wasn’t. The dress was the exact shade of pink Sam’s current stray rescued dog, Waldo, had thrown up after eating the Jell-O salad Sam had made for Amanda’s bridal shower earlier in the week.

As if the color wasn’t hideous enough, Sam considered the dress just a little too everything for a wedding. Between hitching up the hem so she wouldn’t trip over it, pulling the tiny spaghetti straps back on her shoulders every time they slipped down, and tugging at the plunging V-line of the bodice, the dress had felt like a full-time job since she had first put it on nearly twelve hours ago. Even her three older brothers, who usually teased

unmercifully when she put on “girl” clothes, had gone silent when she had come out to the car and they’d seen the dress for the first time.

“I thought you said it looked like dog puke,” her oldest brother, Mitch, had said, holding open the door of his ancient station wagon for her. She was driving with her brothers to the wedding because she couldn’t manage the clutch of her Land Rover in the three-inch heels, plus was afraid of splitting the hind end out of the dress getting in and out of her higher vehicle.

And then Mitch had done the oddest thing. He’d kissed her cheek and said, almost sadly, “When did you go and grow up, Sam?”

Since she’d been living in her own apartment above the business she had founded here in St. John’s Cove after graduating from high school seven years ago, his comment had been insulting rather than endearing.

Trust a man! Show a little too much cleavage, pile your hair on top of your head and put on a bit of makeup, and you were all grown-up.

Her brothers’ reaction had foreshadowed an uncomfortable evening. Guys she had spent her whole life in this small Cape Cod hamlet with—boating and swimming and fishing—had been sending her sidelong looks as if she’d gone and grown a second head.

Thankfully most of them were too scared of her brothers to do anything about it except gawk.

Though there was one man—he’d been introduced in the reception line on the steps of St. Michael’s Church as Amanda’s cousin, Ethan Ballard—who hadn’t been able to take his eyes off of her through the whole evening.

He was gorgeous, too. Tall, lean, broad-shouldered. Dark. Dark eyes, dark hair.

Sam killed the intrigue he made her feel.

He’d asked her to dance four times, but she’d said no. Even his voice gave her the shivers, deep and measured.

The truth was she didn’t know how to dance, and wasn’t going to make a fool of herself by trying for the first time in the heels. The truth was, Ethan was asking the illusion to dance. If he’d seen her in her normal duds—rolled-up jeans, sneakers, a faded shirt that advertised her pet store and supply business, Groom to Grow, he would have never looked that interested.

Of course, there was always the possibility one of the local guys had dared him to show interest in her, or offered him twenty bucks to dance with her.

Knowing that any man in St. John’s Cove who went near Samantha Hall was going to have to run the gauntlet of her brothers.

Sam glanced over to where Ethan was standing, one shoulder braced against the wall, his tie undone, his crisp white shirt open against the end-of-June early-summer heat in the reception room. He was nursing a drink and still looking at her.

And he didn’t look like a fool, either. Ethan Ballard radiated the confidence, wealth and poise one would expect from a businessman from Boston.

He raised his glass to her, took a long, slow sip without taking his eyes from her. Now how could that possibly seem suggestive, make her insides melt into hot liquid?

How about because she hadn’t had a date in over a year? And that date had been with a sumpie —she and her friends’ pet name for summer people—because the locals were afraid to ask her out. And with good reason. After one drink, her brother Mitch had shown up at the Clam Digger, glowering and flexing muscles earned from plying his strength and guts against the waters of the Atlantic to make his living as a lobsterman.

To the local male population, she was Sam, not Samantha. She could outrun, outsail and outswim most of them—it was a well-known fact no one had beaten her in a race to the buoys since she was sixteen. But even if the local young men weren’t totally intimidated by that, nobody wanted to deal with the Hall brothers, Mitch, Jake and Bryce, when it came to their little sister.

Which was okay with her. Fairy tales had finished for her family when her mom and dad had been killed in a boating accident when she was twelve. Mitch, newly married, had stepped up to the plate and taken in his siblings, but his wife, Karina, had not bargained for a ready-made family of two rowdy teenage brothers, and a twelve-year-old girl swimming in pain. Karina, Sam’s one chance for a bit of feminine influence, had jumped ship.