Teresa Hill - Countdown to the Perfect Wedding

Amy and gorgeous man both froze, leaning over the spilled bag of powdered sugar.

The cloud had enveloped them—sugar was sprinkled over their faces, their hair, getting in their mouths, even up their noses.

She blinked. Yes, there was a bit on her eyelashes, too.

The man coughed. Amy did, too, sending tiny puffs of white powder into the air once again.

“Oh, my God, I’ve probably ruined your suit,” she said, afraid it had cost more than several months’ rent on her apartment.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll just take this off right here.” He shrugged out of his jacket, more powder flying as he did.

He peeled off his tie next. He started to unbutton the shirt, but then quit when he had it half-off. “Is this…Do you mind?”

Amy shook her head.

Mind was not the word.

More accurate ones would be…

Appreciate the sight before her?

Oh, my .

TERESA HILLtells people if they want to be writers, to find a spouse who’s patient, understanding and interested in being a patron of the arts. Lucky for her, she found a man just like that, who’s been with her through all the ups and downs of being a writer. They live in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, in the foothills of the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, with two beautiful, spoiled dogs and two gigantic, lazy cats.

Teresa Hill

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my niece, Rachel, who has welcomed her first child,

Ashley Nicole, into the world and brought incredible

joy to my parents, now the happiest

great-grandparents ever.

Eleanor Barrington Morgan smiled and nodded, she hoped with nothing but a mixture of happiness and acceptance showing in her face, as her most favorite person in the whole world, her godson, Tate Darnley, told her he’d met yet another woman.

This one was an investment banker.

“Mmm.” She nodded, having to grit her teeth beneath her smile. “Someone from your office?”

“Yes,” Tate said.

Eleanor could just picture her, disciplined as could be; fastidious in her dress, diet and exercise plan; highly intelligent when it came to numbers and strategy; working her little fanny off to get ahead.

She probably came to bed clutching a spreadsheet, not quite able to let it go completely.

Eleanor’s husband used to be that way. He was an investment banker, cool, calculating, highly intelligent and with the warmth and interpersonal skills of a deep freeze. She’d endured thirty years of trying like a fool to change him, to figure out what was wrong with her that she couldn’t make him love her or want her the way she wanted to be loved, and she wanted so much more for Tate.

Instead, he’d been raised by a stockbroker, become a venture capitalist himself, and showed all the signs of following in all of their footsteps.

Especially in his choice of women.

She wanted to weep, to scream at him, to try to knock some sense into him, to tell him there was so much more to this world and to life other than money, the latest business deal and numbers. But of course, a Barrington-Holmes woman simply did not do those kinds of things. She’d been raised to be too dignified for that.

So she sat there and smiled and nodded, until he kissed her on her cheek and left. Her best friends at Remington Park Retirement Village, Kathleen and Gladdy, saw him go and came to hear the news right away.

“He found another one,” Eleanor told them. “Just like the last one and the one before that, it sounds like. How can men be so stupid?”

Kathleen and Gladdy shook their heads and sighed, having heard it all before.

“That first woman like that? Did she make him happy? No,” Eleanor said, answering her own question. “The second one? Was he happy with her? No. The third one? Not even close, and now, here we are. Number four, who sounds like a clone of the first three. I could tell by the way he talks about her. No real emotion there at all, no excitement, no warmth. Just all this bunk about compatibility and shared goals. Please! It sounds like they’re going into business together.”

Kathleen frowned. “What exactly is your objection to… trying to gently nudge him toward someone else? Someone you think would make him happy?”

“Well, Mother always said we shouldn’t meddle,” Eleanor said.

“Oh, please.” Gladdy dismissed that with a huff and a smile. “What kind of mother is that? And besides, you told me your mother died twenty years ago. It’s not like she’s going to come scold you for anything now.”

“I know, but…well, the honest truth is I’ve tried before to steer Tate in a different direction, and…I’m afraid I’m just no good at it,” Eleanor admitted, much as it cost her to say so. She was raised to never admit any kind of inadequacy she might have.

“Oh, honey.” Kathleen laughed. “We can fix that. Gladdy and I are terribly good at meddling. Just ask anyone. What we pulled off with my darling granddaughter Jane…”

“It was a thing of beauty. A master feat,” Gladdy bragged. “And now, Jane’s happy as can be, and believe me, we despaired of Jane ever truly being happy. In truth, sometimes we despaired of her ever so much as going on a date.”

Kathleen nodded. “It was bad. Very bad. I don’t think anyone but Gladdy and I ever thought we could save Jane, but we did. We can save your godson, too. Just say the word, and we’ll go to work.”

Eleanor sighed. She’d heard this story. Practically the whole of Remington Park had been involved in the match-making scheme and had a blast doing it, she’d been told.

Her people, the Barringtons, and her husband’s, the Holmes, were just repressed, stuffy, private people, crippled emotionally and quite possibly beyond all help, Eleanor sometimes thought, and it was hard, breaking the patterns of decades, the ones imprinted on the very DNA in every single cell in one’s body.

“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” she said.

“Don’t worry.” Gladdy patted her hand reassuringly. “We do.”

Eleanor tried to be good. Truly, she did. She stayed out of Tate’s supposed love life, although honestly, she doubted there was any kind of love involved, emotional or physical. Poor thing.

And what did her noninterference get her?

Six months after first mentioning her, Tate announced he was engaged and finally admitted the woman he’d been seeing all that time was none other than Victoria Ryan! A girl he’d known for years. They’d practically grown up together, acting more like brother and sister than anything else. And Victoria, unfortunately, had the most disagreeable mother. Eleanor shuddered at the thought of ever having to face that woman over a holiday dinner table or, even worse, at a wedding.

Still, Eleanor thought it wouldn’t last. No woman ever really had with Tate. She wasn’t worried, wasn’t sorry she’d stuck with her plan of not butting in.

Six months after that, the wedding—a huge extravaganza in that mausoleum of a place Eleanor once called home—a mere two weeks away, she was hungrily searching for any signs that the nuptials would somehow fail to take place.