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www.millsandboon.co.uk
To the “real” Annie, who’s actually an Ellen. May all your ever-afters be as happy as you deserve.
Contents
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
Prologue
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.”
“Really?” Annie looked intrigued. “Has Rick seen it?”
Eden’s mouth quirked provocatively. A wicked glint appeared in her crystal gray eyes. “Actually,” she drawled, “I thought I’d let the facts of life—ahem—come as a surprise to him.”
“Eden!” her roommates gasped.
“What?” The inquiry was the essence of innocence.
“Girls who plan to get married in virginal white aren’t supposed to make dirty jokes,” Annie informed her primly.
“Who’s joking?”
“Well, if that’s the case,” Zoe said, “you should at least give Rick a chance to skim the table of contents of Peachy’s textbook.”
“Maybe there’s a video version of it,” Annie suggested. “That way he could fast-forward through the boring stuff.”
“I’d be glad to lend him my notes,” Peachy volunteered. While the blush on her cheeks hinted she was not completely comfortable with the bawdy banter going on around her, the impish light in her eyes indicated she was game to join in the fun. “I mean, I did get an A in the class.”
“Really?” Zoe asked, arching her well-groomed brows. She sounded sincerely impressed.
The color of Peachy’s face intensified. “Well, actually, it was an A-plus. I did an extra-credit project.”
“Forget about lending your notes to Rick, Peachy,” Annie said, starting to chuckle. “Give them to me!”
“Me, too,” Zoe concurred, joining in Annie’s humor. A split second later Peachy was laughing, too. Within a matter of moments, all three prospective bridesmaids were helpless with hilarity.
“Ladies...please...” Eden reproved, gesturing for decorum like an old-fashioned schoolmarm. “Settle down.”
It took a while, but order was eventually restored.
“You...” Annie paused to catch her breath. “You still haven’t told us what you’re worried about, Eden.”
The soon-to-be Mrs. Richard Powell looked blank for an instant, then the corners of her lips curled up. “Oh. That.”
“Yes?” Zoe prompted.
Eden’s smile widened to embrace her two dearest friends and her kid sister.
“I’m worried about which one of you is going to catch my bouquet...and be the next bride.”
One
“I‘m still having trouble believing you saved that thing, Annie,” Matt Powell said, plunging a tortilla chip into the bowl of salsa in front of him. “It’s been nearly nine years since the wedding.”
The “thing” to which Matt was referring was Eden Keene’s bridal bouquet. He’d discovered it in Annie’s possession—pressed and carefully packed away—several hours ago while helping her settle into her new condominium in Atlanta’s fashionable Buckhead area. He’d been teasing her about it ever since.
Teasing was one of the hallmarks of Matt and Annie’s three-decade-old relationship. They’d been born in the same hospital just twenty-four hours apart and had grown up living next door to each other. They’d shared baths and sandboxes as toddlers, schoolwork and secrets as preteens, and a unique bond of understanding throughout adolescence and into adulthood.
If Annie had been given a dollar each time somebody had told her that she and Matt were “just like brother and sister,” she would have been able to retire as an extremely wealthy woman before reaching age thirty. Heck, receiving just a dime per repetition would have allowed her to build up quite a respectable nest egg!
She’d never liked the sibling analogy. It was such a cliché. More than that, it failed to reflect the fundamental truth about her ties to Matt.
Brothers and sisters were supposed to be close. It was more or less written into their genetic contracts. She and Matt had chosen to bond with each other. Theirs was a purely voluntary alliance that, despite a blood oath of mutual fidelity sworn at age eight, was subject to unilateral abrogation at any time.
When asked how she’d describe her relationship with Matt—and his with her—Annie usually replied that the two of them were best buddies. People unwise enough to suggest that there might be something sexual percolating beneath the apparently platonic surface of their friendship provoked either hoots of laughter or offended glares, depending on her mood.
This wasn’t to suggest that what went on between Hannah Elaine Martin and Matthew Douglas Powell was all sweetness and light. Heck, no. They’d been trading verbal jabs from the time they’d learned to talk. They’d even had a few playground skirmishes that had degenerated into fistfights. But when push came to shove...
Put it this way: Annie was absolutely certain that if she ever telephoned Matt in the middle of the night from equatorial Guinea and said she needed him, he’d come rushing to her aid on the first available plane—no questions asked.
What’s more, she was equally positive that she’d respond in the same unreserved fashion should he ever call her for help.
“I don’t understand why you’re making such a big deal out of this,” Annie complained, selecting a tortilla chip and skimming it across the surface of the salsa. Both she and Matt loved spicy, south-of-the-border food. The Mexican restaurant in which they were sitting was one they’d patronized together many, many times. “I caught the bouquet at Eden’s wedding and I kept it. So what?”
“I don’t remember you actually catching the bouquet,” Matt drawled, picking up the long-necked bottle of beer at his elbow and taking a healthy swig. He surveyed her with amused blue-gray eyes. “It seems to me the bouquet bounced off somebody’s head and fell into your hands by default. You didn’t look very pleased when it did, either. In fact, I think there was a second or two when you seriously considered dropping the thing.”
Annie crunched down on the salsa-coated tortilla chip. In point of fact, Matt’s recollection was right on the money. She’d definitely experienced a moment of dismay when she’d realized that, despite some determined maneuvering to avoid doing so, she’d somehow ended up clutching Eden’s bridal bouquet.
There’d been plenty of female guests who’d tried to catch the ribbon-trussed bundle of flowers, of course. Had there been an inconspicuous way of handing the bouquet off to one of those want-to-be-wedded types, Annie would have opted for it. But there hadn’t been. So she’d been forced to smile and laugh and graciously respond to a lot of prying questions about her matrimonial prospects.
The one thing nobody had asked her nine years ago was, “Do you want to get married?”
Her answer—had someone put the query to her—would have been succinct.
“No,” she would have stated. “I don’t.”
If pressed, Annie would have gone on to explain that although she had nothing against marriage, it wasn’t high on her list of priorities. She craved a challenging career and the opportunity to establish herself as an independent woman. When she imagined the sweet smell of personal success, it didn’t include the delicate odor of orange blossoms.
Her feelings about getting married hadn’t changed much in the nine years since Eden’s wedding. She’d thought they might when she’d reached thirty. This expectation had been the result of watching a significant number of her contemporaries go into husband-hunting frenzies after they’d passed the Big 3-0 unwed.
While the spousal search had paid off for some, it seemed to Annie that most of her single women friends were still frantically seeking Mr. Right. There were even a few so desperate to do the nuptial deed that they were ready to settle for Mr. Not Too Obviously Wrong...or worse.
“Don’t you want to get married, Annie?” an unattached acquaintance had recently demanded of her. The context of the question had been a discussion—a one-sided litany of complaints, really—about the lack of eligible men in Atlanta and the abundance of competition for them.
“Not particularly,” she’d answered frankly. “Although I’m certainly not ruling it out. If I meet someone wonderful and we fall madly in love with each other, I’ll probably want to get married. But I’m not really looking. I like the life I have. The life I’ve made for me. Being on my own is—”
The sound of her name summoned Annie back to the present. She looked across the table at Matt, wondering how long she’d been caught up in her thoughts.
“Have a nice trip?” he inquired wryly.
“Sorry,” she apologized, reaching for the glass of unsweetened ice tea she’d ordered when they’d sat down. She sipped at it, trying to recall what they’d been discussing before she’d gotten so enmeshed in her marital musings. “I, uh, what...?”
“We were talking about your keeping Eden’s bridal bouquet.”
“Oh.” Annie set down the glass and shifted in her seat. “Right.”
“It’s not like you to be so sentimental,” Matt asserted, then paused for a few moments. When he resumed speaking, his tone was tender. “Now if it had been Lisa who’d caught Eden’s bouquet...”
Annie’s breath wedged at the top of her throat as the half-whispered words gave way to an emotionally charged silence. She watched, hands clenched, heart hammering, as Matt retreated into himself—into a world of memories she knew she’d never share.
Lisa, she thought. It’s always going to be Lisa.
“Lisa” was Lisa Anne Davis.
Lisa...
The new girl in school with whom Matthew Douglas Powell had fallen head over heels in love on a September morning nearly a decade and a half ago.
Lisa...
The young woman Matthew Douglas Powell had married in a joyous June ceremony some nine years later.
Lisa...
The adored wife Matthew Douglas Powell had laid to rest on a bleak February afternoon a few months shy of his fifth wedding anniversary.
Annie had been with Matt at the beginning and the end...and afterward. Monitoring his well-being had been one of her chief concerns since Lisa’s tragic passing, fifteen months ago. She’d done everything she could to help him piece his shattered existence back together.
She’d held him while he’d wept for his lost love.
She’d soothed him while he’d raged against the unfairness of life.
She’d spent hours—aching, seemingly endless hours—listening while he’d recalled the soaring happiness that had been his.
The first year after Lisa’s death had been hard on Matt. So hard that there’d been a few desperate days when Annie had genuinely been afraid that he might surrender to his grief and do something irreparable.
Thankfully, those desperate days—and the heartsick fears they’d engendered—had passed. Anger had eased. Sorrow had yielded to resignation, if not acceptance. In recent weeks Annie had begun to believe that Matt had finally come to terms with what had happened and had started to heal.
Or had he? she wondered uneasily, studying the lankily built man sitting across the table from her. If the look on Matt’s face was any indication—
“It’s chow time, y’all.”
The ebullient announcement jolted Annie out of her anxiety-tinged reverie. Its source was a ponytailed young waiter named Rudi. The possessor of an eager-beaver grin, a bodybuilder’s physique, and an apparently inexhaustible store of enthusiasm for his job, he’d served Annie and Matt during many of their previous visits to the Rio Bravo restaurant.
“For the lady, the usual fajitas con pollo.” Rudi said, plunking a sizzling platter of chicken chunks, onion strips and sliced green peppers in front of Annie. “Hold the guacamole, double the side order of pico de gallo. Watch the plate, it’s really hot.”
“Thanks,” she managed, still a bit off-balance.
“You’re welcome,” came the cheerful response. “And for the gentleman—what else but tacos al carbon. Heavy on the onions, forget the sour cream.”
“It looks great, Rudi,” Matt said, surveying the feast being placed before him. The introspective expression that had troubled Annie was gone. He looked as though the weightiest matter on his mind was how to fill his mouth as quickly as possible.
“We aim to please,” the waiter answered. “Although it’s not very difficult with you two.” He tilted his head to one side. “Look, I realize it’s none of my business—but do y’all ever eat anything besides chicken fajitas and beef tacos?”
“Oh, sure,” Matt said easily, flashing a quirky, crook-cornered smile. “Whenever we go out for Chinese, I get shrimp fried rice and she gets Moo Goo Gai Pan.”
“Sometimes we split an order of stir-fried green beans with garlic,” Annie noted.
“In other words, y’all know what you like and you stick to it.”
“At least as far as food goes,” Matt qualified.
Rudi considered this for a few seconds, then glanced back and forth between Matt and Annie. “Anything else?” he asked helpfully. “Another beer, maybe? Or a refill on the ice tea?”
“I’m fine for now,” Matt said, picking up his fork.
“Me, too,” Annie concurred.
“Okay. I’ll check back with y’all later. Enjoy your meal.”
“We always do,” Matt replied.
Rudi grinned in response, then pivoted on one heel and bustled away, his ponytail bobbing against his bulked-up neck.
Matt dug into his entrée almost immediately. Ignoring the tantalizing aroma of her own main course, Annie studied him as he ate. While his show of appetite was reassuring, her mind kept flashing back to the expression she’d seen on his face when he’d uttered Lisa’s name.
He’d seemed much more at peace with himself lately, she reminded herself. And today, when he’d helped her unpack at her new home, she’d felt as though the “old” Matt had been restored to her. The old Matt, who’d never been touched by true love or untimely death—who’d laughed easily, shared unstintingly, and embraced each new day as having the potential to be better than the one before it.
Finding Eden’s bridal bouquet hadn’t appeared to have had an adverse effect on his mood. In fact, if she’d been asked to compare their reactions to the discovery, Annie would have said that she’d been more unsettled by the discovery than he.
She’d chalked her response up to a certain degree of...well, embarrassment wasn’t precisely the word, but it was in the neighborhood. Allocating the silver Wedding Belle locket she’d received from Eden a place of honor in her jewelry box was one thing. Treating a dried-out bunch of ribbon-tied rosebuds as though it were some sort of treasured artifact was entirely another.
Matt had been right when he’d said it wasn’t “like” her to be sentimental. Except for an abiding romantic fantasy that involved waltzing with Fred Astaire, mushy-minded emotionalism had never been her style.
It wasn’t a matter of being insensitive. At least, Annie didn’t think it was. She had feelings. Intense, deeply held feelings. And she cared—passionately—about her family and friends. Nonetheless, if there was a gene for going gooey over raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, it obviously had been left out of her DNA.
Lisa Davis, on the other hand, had sighed about the beauty of sunrises, sunsets and starry nights. She’d sobbed during weddings, baby showers and certain television commercials. She’d also been a total sucker for holidays, happy endings and the music of Barry Manilow.
It had taken Annie a long time to accept that Lisa’s lace-trimmed, hearts-and-flowers attitude was genuine. It had taken her even longer to understand that this attitude was one of the things Matt—her reasonable, rational best buddy Matt—loved most about the woman he’d made his wife.
Annie bit her lower lip and continued to scrutinize Matt. Maybe she’d been wrong, she worried. Maybe his teasing her about Eden’s bouquet had been a smokescreen for his true feelings. Maybe he was suffering inside, haunted by memories of his own wedding. Maybe the fragile, faded flowers had made him think of the baskets of blossoms that had filled Lisa’s hospital room during the awful days near the end of her—
“I’m okay,” Matt interrupted quietly.
Annie stiffened. “What?”
“I’m okay,” he repeated in the same even tone, setting down his fork on the edge of his plate. “You can stop looking at me like you’re afraid I’m going to freak out.”