“You can’t get married without a groom,” Grant said, shaking his head
Annie grabbed his arm, her fingers crumpling the sleeve of his tuxedo with desperation. “Please. You’ve got to help me. All you have to do is pretend to go through the ceremony as your brother. Then you can just drop me off at the airport and that will be the end of it.” She paused and looked pleadingly up at him. “I just can’t face this town as a deserted bride again.”
Taking a step closer, she touched his chest, reminding him of the sizzling kiss they’d just shared. A kiss that struck Grant as far from brotherly.
Damn. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll play along.”
Annie’s face transformed into a dazzling smile. Before he could brace himself, she hugged him close, her body colliding with his, her curves reminding him how good it felt to hold her. Her musky scent whispered to him like a lover’s invitation, and he felt the tug of desire. His gaze dropped to her mouth and he remembered how sweet and tempting she tasted.
“Thank you,” she whispered before he could dip his head for another forbidden sample. “You won’t regret this.”
But he already did.
Dear Reader,
When I was a small child, my mother gave me a precious gift—the love of reading. While she sewed dresses for me, she read aloud my favorite stories, like Go Dog Go, over and over again as I turned the pages. When I became an adult, my sister suggested I should turn that “gift” into a profession—writing. And it’s changed my life. Now that I’m a mother and a writer, I spend nap time and late night hours weaving stories. At all other waking moments, I am trying to pass the “gift” on to my two toddlers. I can’t imagine a better life!
I’m especially thrilled to be part of the Get Caught Reading campaign, a national promotion created by North American publishers to encourage reading for the sheer pleasure of it. I’m sure my heroine, Annie Baxter, wouldn’t mind being caught reading…but as the book opens, she’s more worried about being caught without a groom! I hope you enjoy Annie’s amorous adventures. And I hope even more that I’ve passed the “gift”—the love of reading—on to you.
Enjoy,
Leanna Wilson
Books by Leanna Wilson
HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION
763—BACHELOR BLUES
SILHOUETTE ROMANCE
1305—HIS TOMBOY BRIDE
1378—BABIES, RATTLES AND CRIBS, OH MY!
1430—THE DOUBLE HEART RANCH
1484—THE THIRD KISS
Just Say Yes!
Leanna Wilson
For Kathy, Frank, Jacob & Laura.
Thanks for all the love and support.
Contents
1
“YOU SAW HIM?” Annie Baxter worried her bottom lip. “You’re sure? Positive? No mistake?” She knew she sounded paranoid, but she’d earned the right.
“All tuxed out and ready to marry you.” Aunt Maudie grinned, revealing a smear of hot-pink lipstick across her front tooth. She stuck one final bobby pin into Annie’s blond hair to secure her veil then stepped back with a “Voila!”
Surveying the effects of the cascading veil, Annie felt a pinch in her chest. Would it really happen this time? Without a hitch? Maybe today she’d finally wed and be off to her new life.
Aunt Maudie fingered the satin trim along the veil and read Annie’s expression in the mirror. “You don’t like what I did with your hair?”
“No, no.” She touched her wispy bangs and smoothed a lock behind her ear. She’d worn her hair in a pixie cut for years. There wasn’t much that you could do to mess it up. Taking a tissue, she erased the lipstick off her aunt’s enamel. “My hair’s fine. This is simply…unbelievable.” She took a steadying breath. “I can’t believe it’s really happening this time.”
“Of course it’s happening. Now quit your worrying. You need to stop listening to those old windbags in town. You should know it’s only idle gossip.”
But their words had prickly points that jabbed and wounded. She’d been the headliner for the past three years.
Unfortunately, she’d given her nosy neighbors grist for their rumor mills. After all, she’d been jilted twice. Folks called her jinxed, and she’d been on the verge of believing them—until today.
Her groom was here. Griffin Thomas Stevens had arrived, ready and willing to marry her, to take her away from this dull town and insipid life!
It was her turn to have the last laugh. And she would, as she and her new husband peeled out of town on their way to their fabulous honeymoon in some romantic city—hopefully Paris or Rome. She wouldn’t look in the rearview mirror at her hometown or the sad and humiliating memories that had trapped her here for too long.
“You are not the jinxed bride-to-be that everyone says.” Maudie gave a curt nod, making her dyed platinum-blond hair bob around her flamboyant earrings. “That’s pure nonsense.”
Annie sank onto a velveteen chair in the corner of the bridal room at the Second Baptist Church of Lockett. She crossed her arms over the Hawaiian-print shirt she’d worn while her hair was being coiffed. She had a nightmare vision of living here the rest of her life in her parents’ house as an old-maid schoolteacher. Kids would ask their folks why Miss Baxter was so tart, so irritable. “It’s because she couldn’t catch herself a husband,” they’d say with a mixture of pity and sympathy.
Well, just watch!
One month ago when Griff had popped the question, she’d only half believed this day would arrive with church bells ringing and the organ playing the wedding march.