Roz Fox - The Secret Wedding Dress

“Who said that, Kay?” Sylvie Shea stopped cold.

“You mean he’s not?”

Sylvie shrugged. “I suppose, if looks are all you care about. He’s a bit of a grouch. Which you’ll discover if I don’t get out there and save his daughter’s cat. He’ll yell at me through an upstairs window and order me to corral my dog.”

“ Joel Mercer has a daughter? Wow, I don’t think the gals at the nail salon know he’s married.

A couple of them are drawing straws over him already.”

Sylvie didn’t mention that she hadn’t seen a wife show up next door. Nor would she admit that Joel Mercer was better to look at than a chocolate fudge sundae. The last thing Sylvie needed was her mother or her sisters to get wind of the fact that she considered her neighbor worthy of a second glance. If Mercer was separated, as she’d begun to suspect, the last thing he needed was to get flattened by the Shea freight train—aka the wedding express.

Dear Reader,

Ideas for stories come to writers in different ways. We don’t have (as some people seem to think) warehouses brimming with plots and characters. Ideas pop into my head at odd times—like when I sleep, or travel, or I’m reading a funky weekly newspaper I found in an airport. I never know if a setting will grab me first or a character will. But I’ve learned to take whatever I get, in whatever form it arrives.

Sylvie Shea and Joel Mercer kicked around in my brain for months. She’s a woman of eclectic talents who once left a small town nestled in the Smoky Mountain foothills and went to the big city, when she imagined fulfilling a lifelong dream. Her hopes dashed, she returns to Briarwood, North Carolina, a changed person.

He’s a city guy who made his mark in his career, failed at marriage, but wants to raise his daughter in the warm, small-community environment he remembers fondly from boyhood summer visits. That place, too, is Briarwood, North Carolina.

I confess that it took me too long to see that Sylvie and Joel were meant to find each other. I always knew, however, that Joel’s six-year-old daughter, Rianne, needed the unconditional love and acceptance of an extended family. A family just like Sylvie’s.

I hope readers reach the same conclusion—that Joel and Sylvie belong together. Sylvie’s sure that after being a bridesmaid thirteen times she’ll never find a love of her own. And Joel, a confident man, a good father, a successful comic strip artist, is equally sure he’s insulated against falling in love. I hope you’ll enjoy discovering that they’re both wrong!

I love to hear from readers. You can drop me a line at P.O. Box 17480-101, Tucson, AZ 85731. Or e-mail me at rdfox@worldnet.att.net.

Roz Denny Fox

The Secret Wedding Dress

Roz Denny Fox

www.millsandboon.co.uk

HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

1036—TOO MANY BROTHERS

HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

649—MAJOR ATTRACTION

672—CHRISTMAS STAR

686—THE WATER BABY

716—TROUBLE AT LONE SPUR

746—SWEET TIBBY MACK

776—ANYTHING YOU CAN DO…

800—HAVING IT ALL

821—MAD ABOUT THE MAJOR

847—THE LYON LEGACY

“Silver Anniversary”

859—FAMILY FORTUNE

885—WELCOME TO MY FAMILY

902—BABY, BABY

926—MOM’S THE WORD

984—WHO IS EMERALD MONDAY?

999—THE BABY COP

1013—LOST BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

1046—WIDE OPEN SPACES

1069—THE SEVEN YEAR SECRET

1108—SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME

1128—THE SECRET DAUGHTER

1148—MARRIED IN HASTE

1184—A COWBOY AT HEART

1220—DADDY’S LITTLE MATCHMAKER

1254—SHE WALKS THE LINE

1220—A MOM FOR MATTHEW

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Through an open window in her sewing room, Sylvie Shea heard car doors slamming, followed by men’s voices and, very briefly, a child’s. Seated on the floor, Sylvie was busy stitching a final row of seed pearls around the hem of an ivory satin wedding dress. The commotion outside, unusual to say the least, enticed her to abandon her project. Her rustic log cabin, nestled into the base of the Great Smoky Mountains, didn’t exactly sit on a highly trafficked street. Not that any street in her sleepy hamlet of Briarwood, North Carolina, could be called highly trafficked, she thought fondly. But because her family reminded her often enough that a woman living alone on the fringe of a forest couldn’t be too careful, she’d better spare a moment to investigate.

Sylvie didn’t expect anyone with a child for a fitting today. Nor was it garbage collection day. Russ Peabody’s grandson sometimes rode with him in the truck.

Checking her watch, Sylvie saw she had at least an hour before Oscar, the Great Pyrenees belonging to Anita Moore, was scheduled to be dropped off for grooming. Her Mutt Mobile, as she’d named her mobile pet-grooming service, was Sylvie’s second job; the first had always been making wedding gowns.

Pushing aside the dress form that held the cream-colored gown, she squeezed her way through eight other forms displaying finished bridesmaids’ dresses for Kay Waller’s wedding.

An eighth headless mannequin had been shoved into a corner. Sylvie automatically straightened the opaque sheet covering it, as she frequently did, making sure the dress remained hidden from prying eyes. Satisfied the cover was firmly in place, she finally reached the oversize picture window she’d had installed in what had once served as Bill and Mary Shea’s sunporch. A year ago she’d converted the porch into a sunny sewing room.

The shouting outside hadn’t abated. Sylvie parted the curtain she’d sewn from mantilla lace. Normally the filmy weave filtered the sun, which gave her enough light to sew, yet wouldn’t fade any of the fine fabrics stored in bolts along a side wall. When she pulled aside the lace curtain, a bright shaft of August sun momentarily blinded her.

Blinking several times, she couldn’t immediately see any reason for the racket. Then, as she pressed her nose flat to the warm glass, Sylvie noticed a large moving van had backed into the lane next door.

Iva Whitaker’s home had been closed up for more than a year. Her overgrown driveway ended at a detached garage set apart from a rambling cedar shake home by a breezeway. Nearly ninety when she passed on, Iva had outlived Sylvie’s grandparents. The Whitakers and the Sheas had always been best friends. Still, the house next door had been vacant for so long, Sylvie had practically forgotten there was a structure beyond her wild-rose-covered fence. At Iva’s death, rumors abounded concerning her will. Who would inherit this house and property? Her land shared a border with Sylvie’s. Iva’s tract included a small lake fed by a stream running through Sylvie’s wooded lot. She often wondered why, when each couple owned five acres, they’d built their homes within spitting distance of each other. Iva, though, had been a dear neighbor. If Sylvie was to have new ones, as the moving truck seemed to indicate, she hoped the same could be said of them.

Straining to see better, she watched a man with straight, honey-blond hair come out and unload a small pet carrier from a dusty white seven-passenger van parked to the right of the moving van. He was in his thirties, of medium height and a wiry build, with slashing eyebrows over a straight nose set in a hawkish face. He wore a pair of gold, wire-rimmed glasses. Good-looking, yes…Sylvie saw him as a sort of corporate version of country singer Keith Urban.