Carole Buck - Annie Says I Do

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To the “real” Annie, who’s actually an Ellen. May all your ever-afters be as happy as you deserve.

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

While they were known to friends and family as Annie, Zoe and Peachy, they called themselves the Wedding Belles.

None of them was absolutely certain who had first suggested the nickname. However they all agreed that the appellation had been inspired by the bridesmaids’ gifts given to them by Eden Marie Keene the weekend before she married Richard Powell.

The gifts were bell-shaped silver lockets on delicate silver chains.

“Oh, wow. ” Eden’s thirteen-year-old sister, Peachy, breathed when she opened the velvet-covered box that contained her present. She looked up at the bride-to-be, her green eyes luminous with pleasure. A flush pinkened her freckle-dusted face, clashing with her incorrigibly curly red hair. “This is great. ”

“It’s beautiful,” Zoe Alexandra Armitage declared softly, lifting her locket with slender, impeccably manicured fingers. A willowy, blue-eyed blonde of twenty-two, she was one of two women who’d spent four years sharing a college dorm suite with Eden.

She was also living proof that looks could be very deceiving. Judging on appearances alone, few people would ever guess that such a coolly elegant young woman had spent a significant portion of her formative years in places where the only available running water was that found coursing between the banks of a river.

“Let’s wear them for the wedding,” Eden’s other roommate, Hannah “Annie” Martin, suggested with characteristic decisiveness. Where Zoe resembled a picture-book princess, she was the epitome of the All-American, no-artifice-necessary girl. Of average height, Annie had an athletically slim figure. Her sable brown hair was thick and glossy, her creamy skin glowed with good health. She exuded an aura of energetic confidence.

Eden’s lips curved into a radiantly satisfied smile. “I was hoping you’d want to.”

“These will look terrific with our dresses,” Peachy commented, tracing the exquisitely engraved surface of her locket.

“Anything would look terrific with those dresses, Peachy,” Annie declared, her long-lashed brown eyes sparkling. “Unlike some brides I could name, your sister has excellent taste.”

“You’re not going to start complaining about your second cousin’s wedding again, are you?” Eden grimaced. “It happened years ago!”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Annie countered. “I still suffer from flashbacks about being one of Barbara Jeanine’s bridesmaids. I think I’ve got some kind of postnuptial stress disorder. Or maybe a chronic case of taffetaphobia.”

Eden and Zoe looked at each other and groaned.

“What was so awful about your second cousin’s wedding, Annie?” Peachy—whose given name was Pamela Gayle—wanted to know.

“Chartreuse,” came the succinct response.

“Huh?”

“The bridesmaids’ dresses were chartreuse,” Zoe explained. Her uninflected tone suggested she was repeating information she’d heard many, many times before.

Peachy pulled a face. “Oh, gross.”

“The dresses also had hoop skirts,” Annie noted.

“Oh, seriously gross!”

“Don’t forget the parasols,” Eden said.

“Or the picture hats,” Zoe added.

“I looked like a bilious mushroom.” Annie gestured expressively. “It was a marriage made in heaven, with bridesmaid dresses straight from hell.”

“Heaven?” Eden scoffed. “You said Barbara Jeanine and what’s-his-name—Marvin? Melvin?—got into a raging fight at the reception and wound up throwing chunks of wedding cake at each other! I thought they filed for divorce before the honeymoon even started.”

“They did,” Annie conceded easily. “But I don’t believe in letting facts get in the way of a clever turn of phrase.”

“No wonder you’re planning to go into advertising,” Zoe quipped.

“Well, we don’t have to worry about food fights or ugly dresses where Eden’s wedding is concerned,” Peachy asserted. “It’s all planned out and it’s going to be perfect.”

“Eden does seem remarkably calm,” Annie observed, cocking her head to one side. “I mean, most brides-to-be I’ve known spent their final weekends as single women popping tranquilizers, breaking up with their fiancés, or plotting to murder their mothers. Sometimes all three.”

“My mother and I did have a minor disagreement before I came to meet you,” Eden admitted with a smile. “But aside from that, everything’s fine. I’ve only got one real concern.”

“That Rick won’t show up at the church?” Annie was teasing, of course. She had good reason to know that the chances of the groom in question leaving his bride-to-be standing at the altar were nil. After all, she was the one who’d introduced the couple and seen the romantic sparks fly. If ever two people were made for each other...

This wasn’t to imply that matchmaking had been Annie’s objective when she’d invited Eden to spend part of their sophomore year spring break at her home in Atlanta, Georgia. Heavens, no! Love at first sight had been the last thing on her mind when she’d casually presented her college roommate to her longtime next door neighbor. Yet within thirty seconds of their eyes meeting and hands touching, it had been obvious that Eden and Rick were bonded for life.

Of course, tumbling into love like the clichéd ton of bricks seemed to be standard operating procedure where the Powell men were concerned. According to family lore, Rick’s father had proposed to his future wife in the middle of their first date. And Annie had watched Rick’s younger brother—her best buddy, Matt—lose his heart to a girl he’d never met, whose name he hadn’t even known, on the first day of their junior year of high school.

“Bite your tongue, Annie,” Eden retorted. While her tone was chiding, her serene expression indicated that she harbored no doubts about the strength of her husband-to-be’s emotional commitment to her.

“ I know,” Zoe said, her sky-colored eyes dancing. “You’re worried about what you’re going to do with four food processors.”

“Five,” Peachy corrected with a giggle. “There was another one delivered to the house yesterday afternoon. I heard Uncle Ralph tell Dad he should raffle off the extra ones to help pay for Eden’s reception.”

“Aha!” Annie fixed the prospective bride with a triumphant look. “You’re worried that your uncle Ralph is going to do something embarrassing at the wedding!”

“Uncle Ralph always does something embarrassing at weddings,” Eden responded dryly. “At funerals, too. It’s a family tradition.”

“So what do you have to worry about?” Zoe questioned. She frowned consideringly for a few moments then continued in a pseudomelodramatic whisper, “Could it be... the wedding night? ”

“Oh, I’m all prepared for that,” Eden replied airily. She cast a conspiratorial wink at her younger sister. “Peachy lent me the textbook from her sex education class.”