Cover Copy
“It must be great thinking you know everything,” she said airily, “even when you’re dead wrong.”
“Oh, I’m not wrong. I make it my business to know things.”
“Well, you know how to bug the crap out of me. I’ll give you that.”
“Know what else I am absolutely certain of?” Jake turned toward her now that they were out of the barn. The late afternoon sun slanted across his face and lightened the blue of his eyes. “I know that before the night is done, you’re going to kiss me. You’re going to like it, too.”
Of all the things Jake could have said, she was least prepared for this one. The words just sort of hung there in mid-air. She didn’t know what to do with them.
“Are you drunk?” she sputtered. “Or are you that in love with yourself?”
The smile he gave her was indulgent, as though gently chiding her for her silly reluctance. “Oh, I’m much too controlling to drink.”
“Well, news flash, buddy. I would French kiss a water buffalo before—”
“Tonight,” he said, his voice making the hair on the back of her arms stand up. “You may hate weddings, but you’re going to like the way this one ends.”
Also by Stacey Keith
Dream On
Sweet Dreams
Dreams Come True
Stacey Keith
LYRICAL SHINE
Kensington Publishing Corp.
Lyrical Press books are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2018 by Stacey Keith
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First Electronic Edition: March 2018
eISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0389-8
eISBN-10: 1-5161-0389-0
First Print Edition: March 2018
ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0390-4
ISBN-10: 1-5161-0390-4
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
My darling John, we have sailed the changing tide in a bamboo canoe. We’ve shared darkness and the truth. Love redeems us all in the end. Thank you for carrying the vision and for not letting go. You are the jazz percussion in my heart.
Acknowledgements:
Sarah Warburton, ask me to bury dead bodies in the backyard and I am there. None of this is possible without your genius. Emily Sylvan-Kim, you’re the REAL dream-come-true! I won the agent-lottery with you. Alicia Condon, there is no such thing as good writing—only brilliant editing. I don’t know where you get the patience, the charm and the skill. Dane and Kate, your stars shine so brightly, they dazzle me. You’re the whole reason I picked up a pen in the first place.
Thank you all.
Visit me at:
www.StaceyKeithAuthor.com
http://theroticallyspeaking.blogspot.it/
CHAPTER ONE
“Celebrity weddings should come with a warning label,” Coralee said as she peered outside. “I’ve never seen such a madhouse.”
Maggie Roby glanced up from the wedding cake she was frosting. Her new employee, Coralee, hadn’t moved from that window all morning. She had a stainless-steel mixing bowl full of buttercream frosting tucked under one arm. The more agitated she got, the faster Coralee whisked.
“I don’t think my sister knew it was going to be this bad,” Maggie said. She used the back of her hand to push aside a curl that had tumbled into her face. “Cuervo’s never had this many people in it before. So of course everyone’s going crazy.”
“Sara Merriweather told me that folks here are renting out rooms in their own houses. Renting! To strangers! What’s next—putting up tents in the municipal park?”
Out of loyalty to her sister, Maggie wouldn’t admit it in a thousand years, but Coralee was probably right: their two-stoplight Texas town was absolutely in over its head. Now all Maggie could hope for was that her sister Cassidy wasn’t in over her head, too. What would happen when Cassidy figured out that love was not only a lie, but that all weddings should come with a warning label?
“Oh, great, here come another pack of reporters,” Coralee groused, trudging behind the counter. “And they look just as hungry as the last bunch.”
Maggie knew better than to wish away customers, but her sister’s wedding cake needed everything she could give it right now. You never could tell what kind of disaster might be awaiting you with these things. Even an experienced baker like her could spend hours piping icing onto a multi-tiered, sandwich-layer cake such as this one only to end up with a hideous, bulging monstrosity.
Sometimes cakes sank. Sometimes they were undercooked no matter how many toothpicks you poked into them. And sometimes, after toiling away on some elaborate creation, you got wildly nervous toward the end because you knew if you messed it up now, it was ruined forever. Her sister’s cake was the most important one she’d ever made. Even if she hated weddings herself, everything had to be perfect for Cassidy’s—and the fact that her sister was marrying Mason Hannigan, the most famous quarterback in the country, only added to the pressure.
Maggie reminded herself it wasn’t weddings she hated. What she hated was watching people make the biggest mistake of their lives. One cheating asshole of a husband followed by a heart-wrenching, finance-busting divorce and she felt like a cake that had cratered. There was a charred ache where her heart used to be.
If Mason hurt her sister, Maggie told herself with grim determination, she was fully prepared to choke him.
The bell above the door jingled. Just as men toting cameras and video equipment crowded into the bakery, her oven timer went off.
Maggie set aside the pastry bag and pulled on the handmade pink oven mitts her darling niece, Lexie, had made her last Christmas. The mitts had pugs on them done in cross-stitch. She slid the cupcakes out of the oven and set them on a cooling rack. Then the phone rang.