The sun is shining, the garden’s in bloom and every detail is perfect as the wedding of the year gets underway at the charming Bluebird Inn. But when the Big Day becomes an even bigger fiasco, the surprises unfold in four entwined tales featuring the unforgettable Loving family…
The moment for “I do” has arrived, and all eyes are on the bride . . . until she turns heel, hijacks a Ducati, and speeds out of town! Now everyone entangled in the wedding that wasn’t takes off on an unexpected adventure of the heart: A down-on-her-luck B&B owner who needs a little help finding her own bluebird of happiness. . . . A big city cop with small-town roots who pulls over the girl he could never have. . . . A jilted groom and a Type A wedding planner with mischievous twins who discover a little chaos can make life—and love—wonderfully exciting. And of course, the caterer—a hometown girl who risks getting burned when she reconnects with an old flame.
That loving feeling is sweeping through tiny Serendipity, Texas, and second chances are turning into happy endings as sweet as the bluebirds coming home to nest . . .
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An excerpt from The Wedding That Wasn’t by Lori Wilde from A Wedding on Bluebird Way
From the moment newly retired Army Major Tom Loving laid eyes on the sexy blond innkeeper, he was smitten.
She had a bright sparkle in her eyes and a winsome bounce to her step that immediately drew his attention and his interest.
And that voice!
She stood behind a reception desk in the small front room of the Victorian house turned B&B, rearranging a lush bouquet of white lilies and singing “All of Me” in an angelic voice that could have drawn tears of joy from John Legend himself.
Tom’s forty-two-year-old heart skipped a beat, and he forgot to exhale.
When she looked up and spied him standing in the doorway, clutching his backpack in one hand, her full lips melted into the most genuine smile he’d ever seen. A wide tent of a smile, big and sheltering.
One look and she made him feel like he was the only person on the face of the earth. It was compelling, and more than a little intoxicating. Strangely, Tom felt as if he’d finally come home after an interminable journey.
Truth was, he wasn’t from anywhere in particular. As the son of the black sheep, Carl Loving, Tom had been raised a military brat, and he’d easily followed in his father’s wandering footsteps. His older half-brother, Joe, had gone in the opposite direction, making peace with their dad’s family, taking up the Loving mantel, fitting right in with kith and kin.
Tom held no grudges. The feud between his father and his uncles had never been his battle. He preferred staying clear of emotional shrapnel. He and Joe had not ever been close. They were five years apart in age, had different mothers and vastly different personalities. Joe had a shoot-from-the-hip-take-no-prisoners style, whereas Tom was a strategic team player, who listened more than he spoke. In all honesty, he’d been pretty surprised to receive an invitation to his niece’s wedding.
He’d almost not come, but in the end sentimentality won out. Maybe it was time to start building bridges, reconnecting with family after a lifetime of being on the move.
The Army had taught him how to pack up, pick up, never look back, and just keep on going forward. But it had not taught him how to linger or develop deeper relationships. The ability to skim the surface was the reason he’d shaken off his divorce without too much drama. Of course, Heidi claimed that detachment was the reason for the divorce. As if sleeping with his best friend hadn’t had anything to do with it.
Heidi was right about one thing. Staying in one place was hard for Tom, and two weeks into retirement, he was already at loose ends. Even though his Loving ancestral roots were sunk deep in Texas soil, and he’d been born in Wichita Falls, just south of the Oklahoma border, he’d never considered the Lone Star State home.
Until now.
Serendipity, he thought as he peered in the gorgeous blonde’s big blue eyes, and laughed. It was crazy really, but he couldn’t help what he felt.
“Hello,” she said in her soft Texas drawl, and he could hear her heritage in the way she drew out the long O. “And who might you be?”
“Running late,” he said.
“Now that’s an odd name, Mr. Late,” she teased. “Welcome to the Bluebird Inn. Are you with the wedding party?”
He deposited his backpack on the ground, grinned like a fool at her corny joke, and strode forward, hand outstretched. “Tom Loving. I should have been here last night, but my flight out of LaGuardia got canceled. I’m sorry to have missed the rehearsal dinner. But, hey, I’m just the uncle. Hopefully, my absence was easily overlooked.”
“I seriously doubt you’ve ever been overlooked, Mr. Loving,” she said, and shook his hand with a firm, yet delicate grip.
“Flattery will get you everywhere, Miss . . .”
“Mrs. Patterson,” she said. “Felicity.”
An excerpt from There Goes the Bride by Allyson Charles from A Wedding on Bluebird Way
The wind whipped her hair into a frenzy around her head. The late morning sun kissed her bare arms. And her eyes watered as she rocketed down the back highway at seventy miles per hour.
Savannah Loving was finally free. And crazy screwed, but she was going to ignore that last bit for as long as she could. The Ducati hummed between her legs, and she opened the throttle further, let the vibrations speed her from the disaster she’d escaped back at the Bluebird Inn. Or was it a disaster she’d created?
A mess of hair blew across her mouth, and she shook her head, knocking the hair free. The rushing wind tore the air from her throat, and she was only able to suck down short, fast breaths. A wave of panic threatened to crash over her, and Savannah pushed all thoughts of the look on her dad’s face from her mind. Of Chance shouting after her as she’d sped off. She was finally making her own choices, damn it, and she was going to enjoy every second of her motorcycle ride as she fled from Serendipity, Texas.
Her newfound freedom didn’t last long. A siren echoed in her ears, the wails growing louder, and blue and red lights flashed in her side mirror. For one crazy moment, she thought about testing the Ducati, seeing just how fast her uncle’s bike could go, before sanity set in. Well, her version of it anyway.
Pulling to the side of the road, she stopped beneath the shadow of an old billboard. It advertised a gas station three miles down the road that had shut its pumps over twenty years ago. Strips of paint had peeled from the billboard, and other patches of the advertisement had blanched almost white from the sun. Frayed, worn, and colorless. Savannah knew just how the billboard felt.
The Ducati hummed softly as she watched the cop step from his truck, adjust the wide brim on his black cowboy hat, and make his way toward her. His short-sleeved black shirt stretched across a wide chest and showcased a pair of strong, bronze arms. Large, mirrored sunglasses hid half of his face, but a niggle of recognition slid beneath her breastbone, and she squeezed the grips.
“Ma’am, turn off the motorcycle, please.”
Savannah looked down the empty road ahead of her, an enticing serpentine path through grassy fields dotted with wildflowers. She’d only made it ten miles out of town, and the thought of turning back closed her throat.
“Hank Evans, is that you?” She scraped her teeth against her top lip. “I heard you’d moved back from Dallas.”
He took off his sunglasses and slid them in his breast pocket, right below the silver badge pinned to his shirt. Deep, whiskey eyes examined her, looking her up and down, and pausing on her bare feet.
She curled her toes into the dirt on the shoulder of the road. When she’d first started planning her great escape, she’d thought to wear the tank top and leggings under her wedding dress, but she’d forgotten to set aside a pair of sneakers. She should have kept her heels on.
“Savannah Loving?” He shook his head. “I hardly would have recognized you all grown up. Now, please turn off your motorcycle and show me your license and registration.”
An excerpt from Loving Hailey by Stacey Keith from A Wedding on Bluebird Way
When Hailey Deacon parked her ten-speed next to the Bluebird Inn, her heart was pounding, but it wasn’t from the ride over. She sat in the shadow of the old Victorian, trying to catch her breath, and still her pulse wouldn’t stop bumping.
Just admit it, you coward.
After almost four years of maybes and what ifs and I hope he’s happy at med school, she was going to see Joshua Loving again. Four years of wondering what might have been if things were different. If she hadn’t been plain Hailey Deacon of Serendipity, Texas, and he hadn’t been Joshua Loving of the Mayflower Lovings, the closest thing to royalty they had in these parts.
But that was as far as it went, of course. Hailey leaned her paint-flaked ten-speed on its rusty kickstand and started toward the back entrance marked Staff. Her old feelings for him were as gone and buried as . . . well, a lot of things in her life. You went on because you had to. Joshua might have broken her heart, but they’d been eighteen then. Just kids. At twenty-two, they were both past all that.
Hailey pressed one hand against her fluttery chest. It was weird, working his sister’s wedding, knowing he would be there. Maybe with a date. Probably with a date. Beneath the crisp white shirt of her catering uniform, Hailey felt her heart give another double thump. Oh, for crying out loud, why? She needed to be focused right now, not this jumbling mess of nerves.
You’re the strongest girl I know, Josh had told her once. Not just strong—a warrior.
Okay, so she’d be a warrior. But when she glanced at her reflection in a window, her fledgling confidence did a faceplant. Even for a tomboy who preferred cargo pants, sleeveless tees, and dog tags, she saw at once that the thick black slacks were boxy and the pink bow tie made her look like a circus clown. She passed one hand over her ponytail to smooth the flyaways, cringing when she saw her bitten nails.
Get a grip, she told herself. You don’t care now, remember? Stop being such a . . . girl.
She opened the garden gate that led to the back entrance and darted a look around. None of the Lovings were there yet—not Joshua, not his sister Savannah, not even their parents Marion and Joseph. They were probably inside the house getting ready.
Good.
She knew what Joshua’s family thought of her. The Deacons—what were left of them, anyway—were “poor folk.” Nowhere near good enough for the son and heir of the Loving family fortune. Unlike Savannah, Hailey didn’t attend debutante balls or pledge sororities or go to spring cotillion with men like Dr. Chance Worthington.
No, Hailey worked. She had three jobs right now. Catering, which wasn’t steady enough to do full-time. Dog walking. And being a pump jockey down at Wilbur Garrison’s corner gas station. Serendipity was small—hardly the kind of Texas town that was cranking out high-paying jobs.
“Hailey!” Sam Besher waved to her from the pergola, which had ivy and yards of white tulle wrapped around it. Chatty, gossipy Sam fit in perfectly, as though she’d been decorated for the wedding, too—a self-described “candy box blonde” with her dyed platinum hair, pink push-up bras, and false eyelashes that could clear a bookshelf. She had a twelve-year-old boy whose dad had left them in Memphis and a kind of lazy cynicism about men that Hailey found exciting, probably because she herself didn’t know the first thing about them.
But the backyard was beautiful. Metal folding chairs, sectioned into rows, had elaborate aqua bows and aqua seat cushions—more color in a garden that was full of the bright pink clusters of redbud, creamy yellow butterfly magnolia, juicy cones of purple grape hyacinth, and a trail of sunny trillium. Ten other catering people Hailey didn’t recognize zipped around with stemware, cut flowers, and wedding programs. Even from a distance, Hailey saw the words Savannah Loving and Dr. Chance Worthington on those programs in gold curlicue letters.
That was what beautiful pampered princesses like Savannah got on their wedding day. What girls like Hailey got was carpal tunnel syndrome from carrying the trays.
An excerpt from Bachelor Honeymoon by Janet Dailey from A Wedding on Bluebird Way
Dr. Chance Worthington stood in the driveway as his bride roared off on her uncle’s Ducati. He shook his head in disbelief while she vanished around the corner.
Un-freaking believable! She’d really done it.
He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Bending, he gathered up the cloud of tulle, satin, and lace that had landed at his feet. He had to hand it to her. Savannah had planned this escape and carried it out with all the finesse and timing of a prison break.
He should have been surprised. But he wasn’t. Not really. He’d already suspected that Savannah was getting cold feet—especially after last night’s rehearsal dinner, when he’d overheard her telling a friend that she felt like she was marrying her older brother.
His one regret was that he hadn’t called her aside and talked to her then, if not sooner. Maybe they could have avoided this last minute fiasco. But even though he and Savannah had known each other most of their lives, they were eight years apart in age. Aside from the friendship between their families, they’d never had much common ground. Even in the few months they’d dated before their engagement, they’d never really been confidantes, let alone lovers. When he’d proposed, in front of her excited family, and slipped that showy diamond ring on her finger, their kiss had felt awkward, like two actors faking it onstage.
He’d told himself that he loved her—and he did. Savannah was a wonderful woman. She would have made the perfect doctor’s wife. Marrying her would have been the right thing to do, the next logical step in his well-ordered life. But Savannah had wanted more—and she’d had the good sense to listen to her heart. He could only wish her well.
The scene in the garden was sheer pandemonium—guests milling about in confusion; Joe Loving cursing at his brother; the organist still fumbling the last notes of the wedding march.
Chance was dimly aware of the women who’d swooped in to console him, patting and cooing. He knew he wouldn’t have to worry about being lonely. But it was too soon for condolences or invitations to a home-cooked dinner. He was still in a mild state of shock.
The wedding planner, a striking brunette Chance had noticed earlier, was shouting into her headset. He assumed that she was urging everyone to calm down. But no one was paying her any attention.
Dropping the abandoned gown on an empty chair, Chance made his way to the luncheon pavilion and headed for the bar, which had opened early. Right now, he could use a drink.
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About Allyson Charles
Allyson Charles lives in Northern California. She’s the author of the “Pineville Romance” series, small-town, contemporary romances published by Lyrical Press. A former attorney, she happily ditched those suits and now works in her pajamas writing about men’s briefs instead of legal briefs. When she’s not writing, she’s probably engaged in one of her favorite hobbies: napping, eating, or martial arts (That last one almost makes up for the first two, right?). One of Allyson’s greatest disappointments is living in a state that doesn’t have any Cracker Barrels in it.
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About Janet Dailey
Janet Dailey’s first book was published in 1976. Since then she has written more than 100 novels and become one of the top-selling female authors in the world, with 325 million copies of her books sold in nineteen languages in ninety-eight countries. She is known for her strong, decisive characters, her extraordinary ability to recreate a time and a place, and her unerring courage to confront important, controversial issues in her stories. To learn more about Janet Dailey and her novels, please visit JanetDailey.com or find her on Facebook at Facebook.com/JanetDaileyAuthor.
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About Lori Wilde
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Lori Wilde is a fifth generation Texan, a registered nurse with a specialty in forensics, and a certified yoga instructor. She’s written over seventy-five books, most of them set in her home state. She loves creating stories of stalwart cowboys and heart-melting military heroes to share with her readers.
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About Stacey Keith:
Award winning author Stacey Keith doesn’t own a television, but reads compulsively—and would, in fact, go stark raving bonkers without books, most of which are crammed into every corner of the house. She lives with her jazz musician boyfriend in Civita Castellana, a medieval village in Italy that sits atop a cliff, and she spends her days writing in a nearby abandoned 13th century church. But the two things she is most proud of are her ability to cook pasta alla matriciana without burning down the kitchen and swearing volubly in Italian with all the appropriate hand gestures.
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