The Marriage Campaign

The Marriage Campaign
Karen Templeton

He’s the Man with a Plan Maid of honour at her cousin’s wedding is as close as designer Blythe plans to get to tying the knot again. But widowed congressman Wes Phillips refuses to take “I won’t” for an answer. Getting re-elected isn’t as important as winning Blythe’s trust and convincing the guarded beauty to take a shot at love…even if her scandalous past threatens to derail his political future.Wes’s future with Blythe comes first – if they’re both willing to risk their hearts for a second chance that’s worth fighting for. Summer Sisters: Three women, bound by blood, back home where they belong!

Bear took off with the ball in his jowls, sending both Wes and Jack scrambling after him from opposite directions, colliding in a jumble of bare calves and black fur and laughter.

A moment later Wes sat up, grinning like a goon, the ball held aloft … but only until Jack snatched it from him a moment later.

Blythe laughed, the sound apparently reaching Wes on the same breeze that toyed with her already crazed hair, soothing skin she hadn’t realized was heated. Which heated more when a panting, grinning, messy-haired Wes glanced over. Oh, my.

“Come join us,” he yelled, raking a hand through that hair. Flashing those damn dimples. “You can be on the dog’s team.”

I can’t, she wanted to say. Needed to say.

I can’t, because I have to get back home, to my safe, solitary little life, the one where there’s no dimpled, sexy, stalwart man tugging at my heart and his young, needy son tugging even harder.

Dear Reader,

Although easygoing Blythe Broussard will already be familiar to readers of my first two Summer Sisters books (The Doctor’s Do-Over and a Gift for All Seasons), just like them I knew who she was only through her cousins’ eyes. Not until I started writing her story did she finally cough up her secrets … and the pain and insecurities brought about by those secrets. Thus Blythe and I—and Wes Phillips, the last man Blythe has any business falling in love with—began quite the journey of discovery, a journey that eventually frees this loving, generous character from an emotional bondage that shackled her for far too long … just as it does far too many people in the real world.

So to all my readers who may be struggling with a similar situation, or know someone who is, I dedicate this story, hoping it might serve as an inspiration—or a kick in the pants! Because we don’t conquer our fears by hiding from them, but by facing them down, by learning from them and moving forward. We all make mistakes, and we all deserve forgiveness … starting with forgiving ourselves.

Blessings,

Karen Templeton

About the Author

Since 1998, two-time RITA

Award winner and Walden-books bestselling author KAREN TEMPLETON has written more than thirty novels for Mills & Boon. A transplanted Easterner, she now lives in New Mexico with two hideously spoiled cats and whichever of her five sons happens to be in residence.

The Marriage

Campaign

Karen Templeton

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Chapter One

It wasn’t that Blythe Broussard hated Valentine’s Day as much as she had no real use for it. Like camping gear. Or a garlic press. Not that she was above glomming half-price chocolate the day after—if she happened to be out and there it was, languishing. Because if bargain chocolate was involved, what did she care what kind of box it came in?

Not that there hadn’t been a time when she’d wake up on Valentine’s Day, hope blooming in her heart that she’d maybe at least get a card from a boy in her class. However, those memories were as relegated to the past as the few cards she’d received, from the few boys not intimated by a girl who, by the fourth grade, towered over them—an imbalance Mother Nature hadn’t rectified until well into high school.

At which point Blythe latched on to the first boy whose eyes met hers without getting a crick in his neck. And he, her. With far more enthusiasm than expertise. Or staying power. Unfortunately, by the time Blythe realized her deflowering was going to be memorable, all right, but for all the wrong reasons, it was too late to ask for her virginity back.

And, naturally, said inauspicious event happened on Valentine’s Day. Fourteen years ago to the day, Blythe thought morosely, slumped in the faded blue velvet couch in the wannabe chichi bridal shoppe—yes, with the extra p and e—while her cousins Mel and April tried on bridal gowns in adjoining dressing rooms, for their double wedding four months hence. For which Blythe, God help her, had not only agreed to be their maid of honor, but to coordinate the event. Because decorating people’s houses somehow qualified her to be a wedding planner.

But as children, when they’d spent their summers together at their grandmother’s house in nearby St. Mary’s Cove on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the three had been like sisters. Despite drifting apart as teens, when they’d reunited some six months before to settle their late grandmother’s estate, it was as though the intervening decade had never happened. So Blythe would do anything for them.

Even plan their weddings.

Beside her, Mel’s ten-year-old daughter, Quinn, squealed, then bounced off the love seat and over to the window, her bright red curls glimmering in the pearly light.

“Look, Blythe! It’s finally snowing!”

Sure enough, fat, lazy snowflakes floated from a flannelled sky, already clinging, Blythe realized when she joined Quinn, to the strip mall’s sidewalk. She frowned, not looking forward to driving across icy bay bridges to get back to her house in Alexandria, on the outskirts of Washington.

“So it is,” Blythe said, checking her cell phone for the time. Two hours, they’d already been here. Behind her, she heard April’s musical giggle from the nearest dressing room. Please, God, she thought as she returned to her seat, let this be The One …

Quinn tromped back to join her, her momentary excitement about the snow yielding to the agony that was waiting for not one, but two brides to decide on their gowns. On a huge yawn, she collapsed against Blythe’s side. Smiling, Blythe wrapped one arm around her younger cousin’s shoulders. “Remember, you wanted to come along.”

“Because I thought it would be fun. Jeez, how long can it take to pick out a stupid white dress?”

Blythe chuckled, even though she totally empathized. “It’s a process,” she said, cramming memories of her own wedding back inside her jam-packed brain. Although she hadn’t spent much longer picking her outfit—first white suit she saw, done—than she had her groom. Perhaps if she had, she’d still be married.

Or not. Although Giles hadn’t been … untalented, she thought with a quick twist to her mouth. Unfortunately, “talent” by itself hadn’t been a strong enough glue to keep them together. Which they both admitted, divvying out the blame for their marriage’s demise three years ago as equitably as they had the Williams-Sonoma cookware and Pottery Barn lamps.

At least April and Mel, now running their grandmother’s inn, had both picked good men, men who were crazy about them, but not crazy. And both cousins seemed so confident in their choices, their love bubbling from some perpetually flowing spring Blythe could never quite seem to find—

“Ohmigosh, Mom!” Quinn popped up straight when her radiant mother appeared in a draped, corseted satin gown. “You look amazing!”

Kid did not exaggerate. Not only did the gown hug Mel’s generous curves in all the right places, but it was … Mel. Simple but not plain, elegant but sexy as hell. Exactly like the brunette wearing it, her gray-green eyes glittering underneath dark brown bangs.

“Oh, God, Mel …” While the thought of getting married again made Blythe break out in hives, she was truly happy for her cousin. After ten years of single motherhood, the woman deserved the something wonderful that was Dr. Ryder Caldwell, whom Mel had loved even as a little girl. “You look so damn good in that dress I could choke. And don’t you dare repeat that,” she said to Quinn, who rolled her eyes before rushing to her mother and hugging her.

A moment later their youngest cousin, April, swished out from the dressing room in a beaded, strapless, tulle confection that oddly didn’t swallow the gingery blonde’s petite figure.

“April!” Mel said, planting her hands on her hips when April climbed up beside her on the platform. “Holy cannoli.”

“You got that right,” April said, her huge grin the only thing brighter than the blingified bodice, flashing like mad underneath the salon’s lights. Of course the alterations department would have to lop a good foot off the front of April’s hem and do some creative molding around Mel’s ample boobage but, other than that, the dresses were bang on. And, as different as they were, complemented rather than competed with each other.

“Well, come on—jack us up!” April said, waggling her hands at the two black-outfitted, smugly grinning consultants standing off to the side. A minute later, April sported a beaded, elbow-length veil that made her look like a fricking Madonna, while Mel opted for a clutch of silk camellias over her left ear. And it was all amazing and wonderful and too perfect for words.

As opposed to the weather, which, Blythe was horrified to note, was not.

Because by the time both brides were back in their regular clothes, the fluffy, lazy flakes had given way to a blizzard. A blizzard not even April’s hotsy-totsy Lexus, in which they’d all trooped up from St. Mary’s, was going to like a whole lot.

So much for getting back to D.C. Or anywhere, for that matter, a thought that made Blythe’s head hurt.

Or her cousins any too happy, either, apparently. The two cousins with Big Plans for the evening, what with it being Valentine’s Day and all.

“Can you drive in this?” Mel asked April as they pushed through the glass doors into the snow scene from The Nutcracker. But without the magic factor. Or the glorious music.

“I grew up in Richmond, what do you think?” April sighed out, then looked from Blythe to Mel. “I’m good with either of you driving, though—”

“No way,” Mel said, draping a protective arm around her daughter before spearing Blythe with her gaze. “And don’t even think about it. The way you drive in ideal conditions is scary enough.”