Page 7 of Kiss the Bride

“Absolutely.” Evelyn’s voice firmed. “The Captain’s Cottage would be honored to participate.”

Ryan pressed his shoulders into his chair. The question of how he’d landed a spot in the prestigious contest remained. Another guy might keep his mouth shut, sit back, and thank his lucky stars, but his mom hadn’t raised him to take unfair advantage of a situation. He leaned forward. “Alicia?” When he had her attention, he pointed out the problem. “Don’t get me wrong—I’d love for the Boat Works to be involved. But I never signed up for this.” He shrugged. “I thought you should know.”

On the other side of her desk, the older woman peered at her computer screen. “Everything was in order with your application.” She adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose. Behind the lenses, brown eyes focused sharply on him. “You’d be leaving me—leaving Heart’s Landing—in the lurch if you withdrew. Is that what you want to do?”

“Never,” he blurted. He swallowed. A bit slower, he added, “Not at all.” He still had no idea who’d submitted his name, but he could figure that out another day, another time. For now, he’d been given an opportunity. He wasn’t fool enough to turn it down.

Alicia’s gaze swung between his and Evelyn’s. “Then I can count on both of you?”

For a chance to have the Boat Works featured in a national magazine? Was she kidding? He’d cleared his schedule in order to knock out the punch list this week, but he’d take care of every single item before the sun came up Monday even if he had to pull back-to-back all-nighters to make it happen. He grinned and shot Evelyn a challenging look. “Unless you’d like to make things simple and back out now,” he teased, knowing full well she wouldn’t even think of such a thing.

“Not on your life.” She paired her answer with a cocky thrust of her chin, accepting the dare with a sparkle in her green eyes.

He grinned. Game on!

Chapter Three

Still seated across from Alicia’s desk ten minutes later, Evelyn thumbed through the blue binder brimming with information about the Wedding-in-a-Week contest. A cursory glance told her the rules hadn’t changed from last year, when she’d served as Jason’s assistant. Satisfied, she pulled the Participation Agreement from the back, signed it, and slid it across the wide desk to the event planner. “This looks great. I’ll go over it in greater detail this evening, but the directions seem pretty clear.” No surprise there. Alicia had coordinated the town’s efforts for the very first Wedding-in-a-Week and had overseen the festivities for the past ten years. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow at the train station.” She gathered her belongings.

“Jenny and I will both be there.” In answer to Evelyn’s raised eyebrow, the coordinator offered a reminder. “She’ll shadow me this year. By this time next year, she’ll be in charge.”

Another change. Lately, everyone around her was moving on to the next thing in their lives. First, Jason and Tara had found true love and gotten married.

Next, Alicia planned to retire. The woman they all depended on wasn’t just thinking about it, either. She was actually putting plans in motion.

Evelyn inhaled. When she’d left New York, she’d known exactly what she was supposed to do next. Now, restlessness plagued her, but she didn’t know which direction to head. For a while, she’d satisfied her creative bent when she’d dressed as Mary Heart and performed with Jason, aka Captain Thaddeus, at weddings and receptions. When her cousin and his new wife returned from their honeymoon, though, Tara would take over that role. She’d become the Cottage’s official hostess, as well.

Where did that leave her? She didn’t know. But handling the books and inventory for the Cottage wasn’t enough. Not for forever, anyway.

“You and Jenny, then,” she echoed. “See you tomorrow.”

She eyed the tall man who blocked her exit. Ryan’s broad shoulders rounded as he bent over his own blue binder, his intense concentration showing in the way his lips parted, the barest bit of his tongue caught between even, white teeth. She couldn’t help but smile. There was a time when she’d thought he might be the one. When the sound of his voice or a single glimpse of his blond hair had set her heart racing. But nothing had ever come of it, and like most schoolgirl crushes, she’d outgrown hers. “Ahem.”

“You need to get by?” Ryan glanced up from the manual.

She stared into a pair of piercing blue eyes. Her heart shifted into overdrive. Oh, man. He still had it. She’d never been able to define that elusive factor, but once it had made all the girls at Heart’s Landing High sigh whenever Ryan had walked past. Not that she’d been one of them. Simpering wasn’t exactly her style. Instead, she’d feigned indifference to his charms. A ploy that had worked so well, Ryan had never even looked twice in her direction.

His attention dropped to the blue binder. He turned another page. “How are we supposed to memorize all this stuff and get everything ready by Monday morning?” He wiped his brow.

She smothered a smile. She’d asked Jason the same question last year. Her cousin had warned that committing the information in the binder to memory was a colossal waste of time. The book covered every contingency, from what to do if a bride got food poisoning to how to handle a bad case of cold feet. Most of it would never happen. If something did go wrong, they could always refer to the manual.

Still, if anyone else had asked the same question, she probably would’ve left them to their studies. But this was Ryan. Her cousin’s best friend. She hadn’t talked to him much in recent years, but she’d known him forever. It wouldn’t be right to let him sit there, paging through the thick binder as if he needed to memorize every line.

She moved forward, gently taking Ryan’s copy of the book and closing it. “Sure, there are a lot of rules. Pages of them. They all boil down to a handful of guidelines. Let me treat you to a cup of coffee.” Her smile shifted into a grin. They both knew coffee flowed freely in the dining room. “I’ll go over what you really need to know.” Not that it’d matter. His Boat Works didn’t stand a chance. The bride and groom always chose the Captain’s Cottage. Always.

Interest flickered in Ryan’s blue eyes. “Throw in a couple of cookies, and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

She laughed. He wore his sandy blond hair longer than he had in high school. The lean form he’d sported then had grown more muscular. Crow’s feet now tugged at the corners of the blue eyes that once gave her heart palpitations. Some things hadn’t changed, though. Ryan had had a fondness for the cook’s macadamia fudge bars ever since he and Jason had their first play date in grade school. Today, he was in luck. She’d caught a whiff of chocolaty goodness coming from the kitchen on her way downstairs this morning. “There’ll be plenty of your favorites,” she said. “C’mon, then.”

“I don’t get it,” Ryan said once they’d filled coffee cups and plates at the sideboard in the dining room. “Why the secrecy? Why not tell us at least a little bit about the couple before they get here?” Alicia had refused to divulge even the simplest bit of information about the pair.

Evelyn raised one finger while she swallowed a bite of chocolate-and-rosemary scone that melted in her mouth. “Mmm.” She licked her lips. “Delicious.” She gave the rest of her dessert-slash-lunch a longing glance but settled her fork on her plate. The scone could wait. She’d promised to answer Ryan’s questions, and that was what she’d do. “I’ve only helped with the festivities once before, but Jason said someone once got hold of the couple’s names and leaked the information on social media. It ruined the magazine’s big reveal. From then on, information was provided on an as-needed basis.”

“They’re afraid someone in Heart’s Landing would spill the beans? Don’t they know us at all?”

Ryan’s guileless expression brought a smile to her lips. The man had a point. The town frequently hosted the weddings of the rich and famous without anyone being the wiser. Once they met the lucky couple at the train station tomorrow, no one in Heart’s Landing would even consider revealing their identities. She forked up another bite of scone.

Across from her, Ryan chewed a bite of brownie and swallowed. “We don’t know anything about them?”

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