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Runaway Bridesmaid
Karen Templeton
Walk down the aisle with Sarah Whitehouse on his arm? Shoot, Dean Parrish had dreamed of that for as long as he could remember. But sexy Sarah wasn' t the bride, he wasn' t the groom– and they weren' t even speaking!Sarah had always known Dean would come back to sleepy Sweetbranch one day. But she' d expected him to be the rogue who had broken her heart– not the charmer who' d stolen it in the first place. With their siblings' wedding looming, the last thing she needed was to rekindle a romance with the best man– and risk him discovering her shocking secret….
“How many times do I have to tell you, Sarah, I made a mistake?”
Her hand plowed through her hair. “Don’t you see, Dean? It doesn’t matter.” Anguish again flooded her features; a cold, sick feeling washed over him that they weren’t having the conversation he thought they were having. “It’s not just a matter of my forgiving you, if that’s what you want. Too much has happened, too much time has passed….”
The look in those honey-brown eyes stabbed him all the way to his soul.
He didn’t care what happened now, even if she belted him clear into another zip code. She still cared. A great deal, unless he was way off course.
And, heaven help him, so did he.
Dear Reader,
You’ve loved Beverly Barton’s miniseries THE PROTECTORS since it started, so I know you’ll be thrilled to find another installment leading off this month. Navajo’s Woman features a to-swoon-for Native American hero, a heroine capable of standing up to this tough cop—and enough steam to heat your house. Enjoy!
A YEAR OF LOVING DANGEROUSLY continues with bestselling author Linda Turner’s The Enemy’s Daughter. This story of subterfuge and irresistible passion—not to mention heart-stopping suspense—is set in the Australian outback, and I know you’ll want to go along for the ride. Ruth Langan completes her trilogy with Seducing Celeste, the last of THE SULLIVAN SISTERS. Don’t miss this emotional read. Then check out Karen Templeton’s Runaway Bridesmaid, a reunion romance with a heroine who’s got quite a secret. Elane Osborn’s Which Twin? offers a new twist on the popular twins plotline, while Linda Winstead Jones rounds out the month with Madigan’s Wife, a wonderful tale of an ex-couple who truly belong together.
As always, we’ve got six exciting romances to tempt you—and we’ll be back next month with six more. Enjoy!
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Senior Editor
Runaway Bridesmaid
Karen Templeton
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
KAREN TEMPLETON’s
background in the theater and the arts, and a lifelong affinity for love stories, led inevitably to her writing romances. Growing up, she studied art, ballet and drama, and wanted to someday strut her stuff on Broadway. She was accepted into North Carolina School of the Arts as a drama major but switched to costume design.
Twelve years in New York City provided a variety of work experiences, including assisting costume designers at a large costume house, employment in the bridal department buyer’s offices of several department stores, grunt work for a sportswear designer and answering phones for a sports uniform manufacturer. New York also provided her with her husband, Jack, and the first two of her five sons.
The family then moved to New Mexico, where Karen established an in-home mail-order crafts business that she gave up the instant the family bought their first computer. Now writing romances full-time, she says she’s finally found an outlet for all that theatrical training—she gets to write, produce, design, cast and play all the parts!
To Gail Chasan, editor and friend, who refuses to believe me when I say “I can’t.”
Acknowledgment
To Wendy Wade Morton, DVM, whose veterinary advice—as well as her insight into daily life in the Auburn/Opelika area of Alabama—has hopefully prevented me from looking like a total fool.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
Chapter 1
“Hey—what’s with the horse out in the waiting room?”
At the familiar sarcastic drawl, Sarah Whitehouse glanced up from the examining table where she held an ill-tempered ginger tomcat in a hammerlock, treating it for ear mites. She allowed a beleaguered grin for her younger sister, Jennifer, who worked at the travel agency just up the street. “Ah. That would be Bojangles.”
“Bo-what?”
Sarah grimaced as she wrestled with the pissed-off cat. “Bojangles. Great Dane. Nine months old.”
“Nine months?” Jennifer rolled her eyes, then shifted in the doorway, crossing her arms so that her engagement ring, modest though it was, twinkled brilliantly. “Hey, listen—”
“Anybody else out there?”
“Uh…oh, I don’t know….” Sarah caught the whiff of petulance in her sister’s voice. “Two more cats, maybe? At least, two more cat carriers. I can’t vouch for what’s in ’em. A collie, a Dobie…and some small fuzzy thing I’ll have to guess is a canine with indiscreet parents. Sarah—”
“Damn. They must all be drop-ins. The Dane was all I had scheduled, which is why I let Jolene go off to lunch.” Sarah ignored the cat’s menacing growl as she swabbed his ear. “Anyone seem panicked? Bleeding? In labor?”
Her sister considered for a moment, then shook her head, a half-can’s worth of Aqua Net prohibiting any individual movement of her shoulder-length waves. “Nope. Just the usual panting and get-me-outta-here whimpering and butt-smelling routines. Though one owner looks like she misplaced her Prozac—”
“Could you tell everyone to hold on, I’ll get to ’em soon as I can?”
With a telling sigh, Jennifer stuck her honey-gold head out the door and delivered Sarah’s message, then waltzed on into the examining room and plopped her handbag on a chair in the corner. By now she was pouting.
Sarah got the message.
“I’m sorry, honey…was there something you wanted to tell me?”
Jennifer hesitated, then gave a short, dismissive wave of her hand. “It’ll wait. You’re busy.”
“You sure?”
“No point in talking to you if you’re not listening.”
“I promise to give you my undivided attention just as soon as I’m finished….” The thing twisted out of Sarah’s grasp and spit at her.
Her sister took a circumspect step backward, her nose wrinkled in distaste. “And what is our problem?”
Sarah wrapped the cat’s leash around her palm, reined him back in. “I think we know that ear mites aren’t the only things being removed today.”
“Oooh,” Jennifer said with a comprehending nod in the creature’s direction. The cat actually sneered at her as Sarah elbowed the thing into her chest and went after the other ear. “Heck, you ask me, it couldn’t happen to a better guy. Except maybe Bruce Miller. Did you know Abby’s pregnant again?”
Sarah stifled her laugh. “Stop it, will you? I’m having enough trouble doing this.”
“Sorry. Couldn’t resist.” Out of the corner of her eye, Sarah caught Jennifer’s glance around the room. “Where’s Katey?”
“Little girl’s room, I expect.” Sarah paused in her torture of the cat and stroked his head. The feline’s eyes squeezed shut with each touch, though whether in pleasure or irritated tolerance, she couldn’t say. “Begged the living daylights out of me to come, but now that she’s here, of course, she’s bored to tears.”
Jennifer’s expression indicated she agreed with her baby sister’s assessment of the situation, but she diplomatically refrained from comment. Instead, she said with a bright, lip-glossed smile, “So…how about lunch? Then I can tell you my news.”
The sigh just sort of slipped out. “This have anything to do with the wedding?”
“Now, how’d you know that?”
“Thank God—oh, be still, you nasty beast—we only have a week more to go through this,” Sarah groused good-naturedly. She finished with the cat and pushed him into a carrier. “But lunch ain’t gonna happen today, as you may have guessed.” Shoving a hand through her cropped hair, she added, “Ed’s out on farm duty, and Doc’s off, so it’s just me. I can’t leave. So you’ll have to tell me here.”
Jennifer squinted at her through smoothly mascara’d eyelashes. “I was trying to.”
“Sorry. So…spit it out.”
But “spitting it out” had never been part of Jennifer’s repertoire. She paused for dramatic effect, which had been part of her repertoire since she was two and a half. “We-e-ell…you know how Tim Reynolds couldn’t be Lance’s best man after all ’cause he’s got National Guard training camp that week?”
Sarah leaned one hip against the examining table. “Ye-e-es—”
“But did you know Tim wasn’t Lance’s first choice, anyway?”
“He wasn’t? But they’ve been best friends since kindergarten—”
“I know,” Jennifer said with a slow, conspiratorial nod of her head. “But, see, turns out Lance had someone completely different in mind. He just didn’t think he could convince him to do it.”
“Jen. Today, please.”
“Oh, all right.” She struck a pose, hands splayed out to the sides. “Ta-da! Dean said he’d be Lance’s best man.”
Sarah went catatonic, staring at Jennifer with what must have been an incredibly stupid expression on her face. Her sister however, continued bubbling away like a just-poured glass of warm Dr. Pepper. “Isn’t that the best? Lance is so excited he’s been talking a mile a minute ever since Dean called him and said he’d be in tonight.”
That brought Sarah back to the land of the living. Underneath her smock, her sleeveless cotton blouse fused to her back. “He’ll be here tonight?”
“Uh-huh,” Jennifer continued in euphoric oblivion. “And he’s gonna be here for a whole week, I guess since he hasn’t been here in so long. Anyway, Mama said to tell you dinner’s at our house, and for you to get your skinny little butt home on time. You know, hang the little sign on the clinic door that says Closed?”
For emphasis, her sister mimed hanging up the sign, flashing long, tapered fuchsia fingernails the same color as the six-inch flowers splashed across her romper. Then she let out a little squeak, as if she’d been pinched.
“Oh! Oh, my God! I just realized…” Jennifer grabbed Sarah’s wrist, sending a cloud of flowery perfume wafting up from between a set of breasts that had been making men bump into things since she was fourteen. “Here the two of you were high school sweethearts, and now, after all this time, he’s going to be best man and you’re going to be maid of honor at my wedding!” Her palm flattened over the magnificent bosomage. “What a hoot!”
“Yeah,” Sarah said weakly. “Hoot.”
“Well, hey, listen, I’ll get out of your hair.” Jennifer flapped at her sister’s boyish ’do. “What’s left of it, anyway.” She scooped up her handbag and straightened out her perfectly straight collar. “Oh—don’t forget. Gown fittings tomorrow morning at Miss Ellis’s.”
Sarah managed something close to a smile. “How could I forget?”
Jennifer paused by the door, her hand on the frame. “Isn’t tonight just going to be great?” She crinkled her nose in time-honored cute Southern cheerleader tradition, giggled and disappeared like Tinkerbell. Poof! Gone.
Sarah sank onto the desk chair in the examining room, dropping her head onto her arms. She wasn’t sure what she felt at that moment, but great was not one of the choices. What most shocked her was that the prospect of seeing Dean again should be producing any effect at all. She’d long since gotten over him.
Long since.
“Sarah? You okay?”
She lifted her gaze to a pair of large, worried eyes the same whiskey color as hers set in a face with the same narrow nose, the same wide mouth, the same square jawline ending in an incongruously pointed chin. People always said they’d never seen sisters look as much alike as Katey and Sarah. Like twins born eighteen years apart.
Sarah let out a long, shaky breath and clasped the little girl’s slender waist, forcing a smile which God knew she did not feel. “Sure, baby. Just resting my eyes for a moment. Why don’t you go tell Mr. Arby to bring Bojangles on in?”
As Katey scampered over to the door, Sarah rubbed her makeup-less eyes with a stubby-nailed forefinger. According to Jennifer’s count, she had at least a half-dozen cases to see, and that wasn’t counting later appointments or any emergencies that might come in. Of all the times to be the only vet in the clinic. Well, she told herself as she got to her feet and smoothed out the front of her smock, she’d just have to deal with her ambivalent feelings about Dean Parrish later. Preferably before she came face-to-face with him in her living room.
Panic sliced through her.
She heard extra-large-size canine toenails scraping on the linoleum floor as Ben Arby half lugged, half shoved the reluctant Great Dane into the examining room. The black behemoth took one look at Sarah, yelped, and promptly piddled all over the floor.
“Oh, come on, now, sweetie…” She ripped off a half-dozen paper towels from the spindle over the sink and tossed them onto the floor, stepping on them to soak up the puddle as she scratched the dog’s ears. “How bad can it be, huh?”
She didn’t want to know.
Dean wished he were invisible. At least for a hour or so, anyway, just until he got used to the idea of being back in Sweetbranch before anyone else noticed he was.
That not being an option, he decided to hide out in his pickup for a bit, cruising the back roads, trying to come to terms with that weird sensation when you return someplace after being away for a long time and everything seems so familiar and strange all at once. And here he’d gone and said he’d stay for a whole week. Lord. If he’d been a drinking man, he’d’ve sworn he’d had one too many when he’d made that promise. He’d figured he’d feel unsettled. What he hadn’t figured on was how right it felt to be home.
And he didn’t quite know what to do with that feeling.
Nine years. Nine years of growing up, of making something of himself in spite of a reading disability that had finally bested him halfway through his junior year of high school. Nine years of forcing himself to stay away from everything good he’d ever known in order to give Sarah Whitehouse the chance to become everything she could. Nine years of wondering if he’d made a dumb-assed mistake.
Well, he thought as he took a swallow of warm Coke from the almost empty can he’d been nursing since Atlanta, nothing to be done for it now. Not a dad-blasted thing.
