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The Wedding Planner's Big Day
Cara Colter
A wedding in paradise!Tycoon Drew Jordan has been responsible for his family since the death of his parents. Now Drew craves freedom, not commitment—he'll help arrange his brother's tropical wedding, but he'll never walk down the aisle himself!Wedding planner Becky English has given up on her own fairy tale, throwing herself into making it come true for others. She refuses to let the groom's cynical—though irresistible!—brother get in her way. But when clashes turn to moonlit kisses, can they begin to believe that happy endings could exist—for them both?
“A girl like you does not kiss a guy like me!”
Becky could ask what Drew meant by a girl like her, but she already knew that he thought she was small-town and naive and hopelessly out of her depth, and not just in the ocean, either. What she wanted to know was what the last half of that sentence meant.
“What do you mean a guy like you?” she asked. Her voice was husky from the salt and from something else. Desire. Desire was burning like a white-hot coal in her belly. It was brand-new, it was embarrassing and it was wonderful.
“Look, Becky, I’m the kind of guy your mother used to warn you about.”
“The kind who would jump in the water without a thought for his own safety to save someone else?”
“Not that kind!”
“What kind of guy, then?” she asked, gently curious. “Self-centered. Here for a good time. Commitment-phobic. Good-time Charlie. Confirmed bachelor. They write whole articles about guys like me in your bridal magazines. And not about how to catch me, either. How to give a guy like me a wide berth.”
He glanced at her. She bit her lip and his gaze rested there, hot with memory, until he made himself look away.
“It was just a kiss,” she pointed out mildly, “not a posting of the banns.”
“You’re in shock,” he said.
If she was, she hoped she could experience it again, and soon!
The Wedding Planner’s Big Day
Cara Colter
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CARA COLTER shares her life in beautiful British Columbia, Canada, with her husband, nine horses and one small Pomeranian with a large attitude. She loves to hear from readers, and you can learn more about her and contact her through Facebook.
To all those readers who have made the past thirty years such an incredible journey.
Contents
Cover (#uaa79ff00-8941-5175-b9d7-03fe639f6443)
Introduction (#u80946418-00eb-5afa-8b9b-583358994c89)
Title Page (#u8c99dd4d-99fd-5c8c-875d-cc34aa262824)
About the Author (#ub9274aa0-5a60-5b9a-88a9-13f0844fd01c)
Dedication (#ub9351e4d-2921-58a4-9d6b-a5a11e25aa72)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_56e26a83-e70b-5d06-90fa-070672425f8f)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_148a76ce-c02b-59b6-99f0-7e5b2b6ae3b1)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_bf81b53a-3841-59bc-8f1a-b4c121fa6145)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_68f5f741-4b9a-56a7-a6f6-e26f09286212)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_d54b9950-a1bf-5769-bdd4-2d51c746e3f5)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_9862df61-7ee5-5b41-977c-0cac4da4f73d)
“NO.”
A paper fluttered down on her temporary desk, slowly floating past Becky English’s sunburned nose. She looked up, and tried not to let her reaction to what she saw—or rather, whom she saw—show on her face.
The rich and utterly sexy timbre of the voice should have prepared her, but it hadn’t. The man was gorgeous. Bristling with bad humor, but gorgeous, nonetheless.
He stood at least six feet tall, and his casual dress, a dark green sports shirt and pressed sand-colored shorts, showed off a beautifully made male body. He had the rugged look of a man who spent a great deal of time out of doors. There was no sunburn on his perfectly shaped nose!
He had a deep chest, a flat stomach and the narrow hips of a gunslinger. His limbs, relaxed, were sleekly muscled and hinted at easy strength.
The stranger’s face was mesmerizing. His hair, dark brown and curling, touched the collar of his shirt. His eyes were as blue as the Caribbean Sea that Becky could just glimpse out the open patio door over the incredible broadness of his shoulder.
Unlike that sea, his eyes did not look warm and inviting. In fact, there was that hint of a gunslinger, again, something cool and formidable in his uncompromising gaze. The look in his eyes did not detract, not in the least, from the fact that his features were astoundingly perfect.
“And no,” he said.
Another piece of paper drifted down onto her desk, this one landing on the keyboard of her laptop.
“And to this one?” he said. “Especially no.”
And then a final sheet glided down, hit the lip of the desk, forcing her to grab it before it slid to the floor.
Becky stared at him, rather than the paper in her hand. A bead of sweat trickled down from his temple and followed the line of his face, slowly, slowly, slowly down to the slope of a perfect jaw, where he swiped at it impatiently.
It was hot here on the small, privately owned Caribbean island of Sainte Simone. Becky resisted a temptation to swipe at her own sweaty brow with the back of her arm.
She found her voice. “Excuse me? And you are?”
He raised an arrogant eyebrow at her, which made her rush to answer for him.
“You must be one of Allie’s Hollywood friends,” Becky decided.
It seemed to her that only people in Allie’s field of work, acting on the big screen, achieved the physical beauty and perfection of the man in front of her. Only they seemed to be able to carry off that rather unsettling I-own-the-earth confidence that mere mortals had no hope of achieving. Besides, it was more than evident how the camera would love the gorgeous planes of his face, the line of his nose, the fullness of his lips...
“Are you?” she asked.
This was exactly why she had needed a guest list, but no, Allie had been adamant about that. She was looking after the guest list herself, and she did not want a single soul—up to and including her event planner, apparently—knowing the names of all the famous people who would be attending her wedding.
The man before Becky actually snorted in disgust, which was no kind of answer. Snorted. How could that possibly sound sexy?
“Of course, you are very early,” Becky told him, trying for a stern note. Why was her heart beating like that, as if she had just run a sprint? “The wedding isn’t for two weeks.”
It was probably exactly what she should be expecting. People with too much money and too much time on their hands were just going to start showing up on Sainte Simone whenever they pleased.
“I’m Drew Jordan.”
She must have looked as blank as she felt.
“The head carpenter for this circus.”
Drew. Jordan. Of course! How could she not have registered that? She was actually expecting him. He was the brother of Joe, the groom.
Well, he might be the head carpenter, but she was the ringmaster, and she was going to have to establish that fact, and fast.
“Please do not refer to Allie Ambrosia’s wedding as a circus,” the ringmaster said sternly. Becky was under strict orders word of the wedding was not to get out. She was not even sure that was possible, with two hundred guests, but if it did get out, she did not want it being referred to as a circus by the hired help. The paparazzi would pounce on that little morsel of insider information just a little too gleefully.
There was that utterly sexy snort again.
“It is,” she continued, just as sternly, “going to be the event of the century.”
She was quoting the bride-to-be, Hollywood’s latest “it” girl, Allie Ambrosia. She tried not to show that she, Becky English, small-town nobody, was just a little intimidated that she had been chosen to pull off that event of the century.
She now remembered Allie warning her about this very man who stood in front of her.
Allie had said, My future brother-in-law is going to head up construction. He’s a bit of a stick-in-the-mud. He’s a few years older than Joe, but he acts, like, seventy-five. I find him quite cranky. He’s the bear-with-the-sore-bottom type. Which explains why he isn’t married.
So, this was the future brother-in-law, standing in front of Becky, looking nothing at all like a stick-in-the-mud, or like a seventy-five-year-old. The bear-with-the-sore-bottom part was debatable.
With all those facts in hand, why was the one that stood out the fact that Drew Jordan was not married? And why would Becky care about that, at all?
Becky had learned there was an unexpected perk of being a wedding planner. She had named her company, with a touch of whimsy and a whole lot of wistfulness, Happily-Ever-After. However, her career choice had quickly killed what shreds of her romantic illusions had remained after the bitter end to her long engagement. She would be the first to admit she’d had far too many fairy-tale fantasies way back when she had been very young and hopelessly naive.
Flustered—here was a man who made a woman want to believe, all over again, in happy endings—but certainly not wanting to show it, Becky picked up the last paper Drew Jordan had cast down in front of her, the especially no one.
It was her own handiwork that had been cast so dismissively in front of her. Her careful, if somewhat rudimentary, drawing had a big black X right through the whole thing.
“But this is the pavilion!” she said. “Where are we supposed to seat two hundred guests for dinner?”
“The location is fine.”
Was she supposed to thank him for that? Somehow words, even sarcastic ones, were lost to her. She sputtered ineffectually.
“You can still have dinner at the same place, on the front lawn in front of this monstrosity. Just no pavilion.”
“This monstrosity is a castle,” Becky said firmly. Okay, she, too, had thought when she had first stepped off the private plane that had whisked her here that the medieval stone structure looked strangely out of place amidst the palms and tropical flowers. But over the past few days, it had been growing on her. The thick walls kept it deliciously cool inside and every room she had peeked in had the luxurious feel of a five-star hotel.
Besides, the monstrosity was big enough to host two hundred guests for the weeklong extravaganza that Allie wanted for her wedding, and monstrosities like that were very hard, indeed, to find.
With the exception of an on-site carpenter, the island getaway came completely staffed with people who were accustomed to hosting remarkable events. The owner was record mogul Bart Lung, and many a musical extravaganza had been held here. The very famous fund-raising documentary We Are the Globe, with its huge cast of musical royalty, had been completely filmed and recorded here.
But apparently all those people had eaten in the very expansive castle dining room, which Allie had said with a sniff would not do. She had her heart set on alfresco for her wedding feast.
“Are you saying you can’t build me a pavilion?” Becky tried for an intimidating, you-can-be-replaced tone of voice.
“Not can’t. Won’t. You have two weeks to get ready for the circus, not two years.”
He was not the least intimidated by her, and she suspected it was not just because he was the groom’s brother. She suspected it would take a great deal to intimidate Drew Jordan. He had that don’t-mess-with-me look about his eyes, a set to his admittedly sexy mouth that said he was far more accustomed to giving orders than to taking them.
She debated asking him, again, not to call it a circus, but that went right along with not being able to intimidate him. Becky could tell by the stubborn set of his jaw that she might as well save her breath. She decided levelheaded reason would win the day.
“It’s a temporary structure,” she explained, the epitome of calm, “and it’s imperative. What if we get inclement weather that day?”
Drew tilted his head at her and studied her for long enough that it was disconcerting.
“What?” she demanded.
“I’m trying to figure out if you’re part of her Cinderella group or not.”
Becky lifted her chin. Okay, so she wasn’t Hollywood gorgeous like Allie was, and today—sweaty, casual and sporting a sunburned nose—might not be her best day ever, but why would it be debatable whether she was part of Allie’s Cinderella group or not?
