A Wedding on Bluebird Way by Lori Wilde

Author:Lori Wilde [Wilde, Lori]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2018-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

Loving Hailey

Stacey Keith

Chapter One

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 face-plant. 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.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.