Summer Kisses (35 page)

The mob roared with delight, causing Jill to sigh with relief. This was no longer a day about joining Derrick and herself in matrimony, but instead, a day of forgiveness, a day of joy and celebration, a day where everybody and anybody was welcomed to the Baylor farm with open arms.

“Will you marry me?” Connor asked Sandy.

Tears swept down Sandy’s cheeks and over her chin, making it impossible for her to find her voice.

“Yes!” Lexi shouted as she ran into Connor’s arms, making him drop the ring and causing at least a dozen people to fall to the ground to look for the diamond.

“I LOVE you!” Lexi shouted into Connor’s ear. “We will marry you.” Lexi looked up at Sandy. “We love him, right, Mom?”

“We do,” Sandy said, her voice squeaking with happiness.

“Did you hear that?” Jake asked excitedly from the back of the crowd. “Lexi said LOVE, not WUV!”

For the next few minutes half of the crowd hugged Lexi and made a big to-do over her newfound ability to pronounce the letter L, while the other half continued to scour the lawn for the lost ring.

“Here it is! I found it!” Phil Baylor said, handing the ring to his son.

As Connor slid the ring onto Sandy’s finger, one long ponderous sigh of content erupted from the Baylor farm.

“Oh, no!” Derrick cried out.

Everybody’s eyes were on the groom as he cut through the crowd and ran after Hank. He almost caught up to the dog, too.

Close but no cigar.

Hank had a sweet tooth and he was on a mission. In one perfect leap, he landed on the table holding the cake that Jill had spent weeks planning and preparing and all day yesterday baking. Derrick had been subjected to dozens of taste tests, and he had watched her closely as she made crystallized edible flowers for the top tier that he knew would be savored on their one-year anniversary, along with the memories of their special day.

Hank was fast and he was hungry, though, and he had a quarter of the bottom layer eaten by the time Derrick caught up to him. Instead of removing the dog, Derrick grabbed the top layer and held it over his head for protection, his eyes beaming with pride that he’d saved the best part.

That one small action might not have meant anything to anyone else, but it meant the world to Jill. His knee had been acting up all week, but Derrick had just run across the yard as if he was a gazelle, as if his life depended on saving the top layer of their wedding cake because he knew it had been made with love for just the two of them.

She loved Derrick Baylor. She loved him more than mere words could ever express.

And if there was one thing she knew in that moment, it was that sometimes actions really did speak louder than words.

~~~

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Having My Baby
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After reading my first romance novel in 1992, I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life…write novels…fun, quirky novels that would provide busy women around the world a few hours of entertainment. I knew I was truly a writer when I was working full-time, while raising four children, and nothing could stop me from getting the words to the page.

Taming Mad Max

An Offer He Can’t Refuse

Here Comes the Bride

Finding Kate Huntley

A Knight in Central Park

Return of the Rose

Books by T.R. Ragan

Abducted

Dead Weight

A Dark Mind

Obsessed

Almost Dead

Evil Never Dies

BY

KATIE GRAYKOWSKI

Lucky Strickland has lost everything. First it was her dignity and then it was her husband and now it’s her house. She’s penniless, stuck at the McDonalds in Bee Cave, Texas, and her only hope, her brother-in-law, just stole her car.

Eighteen months ago, she was the wife of rock-and-roll legend, Ricky Strickland. Rock-My World, their reality TV show, was number one. Then, on the live season finale, Ricky introduced her to his mistress and their three daughters. Lucky stormed out. Ricky followed after her and wrapped his car around the nearest oak tree.

Will Brodie, Lucky’s bother-in-law, will do anything to get her back home. Lucky needs to grieve for her husband and take care of the lawsuit the realty TV network filed. They want their money back OR a new realty TV show—with Ricky’s children. Two months ago, Ricky’s daughters lost their mother to cancer—now they only have Will.

If Will can get Lucky to open her heart to the girls and to him, maybe he can finally give Lucky the family she’s always wanted.

For all the dreamers…it’s okay to believe in the fairy tale.

Getting Lucky
wouldn’t be a reality without the love and support of many people. For my husband, thanks for doing all of the cooking and giving me the support to make my dreams come true. For my darling daughter, thanks for making me smile, especially when you weren’t trying to be funny. For my fellow writers—Emily McKay, Tracy Wolff, Robyn De Hart, Hattie Mae, Shellee Roberts, and Sherry Thomas—thanks for being my fairy godmothers and not banishing me for being the wicked witch of West Austin. Thank you, Penny Poalson, for answering my numerous questions and being willing to read crappy first drafts. Thanks, Mom, for dropping everything, driving six hours in the freezing cold, and coming to my rescue when life got in the way of writing. You are the best mother in the world. And thanks to my fans. Y’all are the reason I write. I hope you like Lucky’s story, and may your dreams come true!

Lucky Strickland logged onto her eBay account and nearly cried. Whether the tears were due to grief, despair, elation, or gastric upset from the Big Mac and super-sized fries she’d just wolfed down, it was hard to say.

Her prized black Manolo Blahnik alligator boots had just sold for a whopping seven hundred bucks to one of her best customers, WABROCKS101. Not eighteen months ago, she’d paid fourteen grand for them and hadn’t batted an eye; now that seemed like another lifetime. In the last year and a half, she’d lost—in no particular order—her husband, her house, her cars, her dignity, and now her Manolo Blahniks… It was the pointy-toed, straw-thin heel that broke the camel’s back.

Shifting on the hard, plastic yellow bench at the back of the McDonald’s in Bee Cave, Texas, she slurped the last of her Diet Coke and didn’t make eye contact with the three teenaged girls sitting across the aisle from her. They huddled around an iPhone and giggled between not-so-surreptitious glances.

Having been through this at least a gazillion times, Lucky could practically hear the questions running around their empty heads:
Are you really Lucky Strickland? Did you really not know that your husband had three kids with his mistress until he introduced them to you on live TV? Did your husband really die in a car accident, or was it staged for ratings?

Good thing the police were sure the car hadn’t been tampered with or Lucky would have been the number one suspect.

Being famous hadn’t been Lucky’s dream, and neither had the reality show that had been her life.
Rock -My World
was supposed to advance her husband’s music career, not turn her into a worldwide laughingstock. Thanks to her dead husband’s bizarre will, she only legally owned all of the contents of her bedroom closet—not the house, only her closet. If she’d known this when he was alive, she’d have shopped more and bought bigger diamonds. After two full years of probate wherein any/all of Ricky’s illegitimate children could come forward and be considered for their share of his estate, she got everything … sort of. As it stood, she had to share his estate with three illegitimate children, but God only knew how many more were out there.

Lucky closed the lid on Lana, her MacBook Pro, shook her cup, clamped her teeth around the red straw, and repositioned it to get the last molecules of Diet Coke. She stood. Since free refills were all she could afford, it was a good thing she was dining in. On her way to the drink machine, she paused at the teenaged girls’ table.

“The answers are: yes, no, and hell yes, dead as a doornail … really.” She sauntered over to the fountain drink machine and didn’t look back.

Gawkers she could deal with; it was the sympathetic looks on the knowing faces of other wronged wives that made her want to pull the covers over her head and never get out of bed again.

A short man with an obvious comb-over headed her way. His brows rose as his eyes slithered down her body. Lucky, at six foot even and size fourteen, was all boobs and butt. In Dolce and Gabbana black skinny jeans, black motorcycle boots, and a Marc Jacobs red sequin tank, she wasn’t hiding, but she wasn’t flaunting it either. After leveling a don’t-even-think-about-it glare at the comb-over, she tossed her long chestnut hair over her shoulder and double-dog-dared anyone to pity her. As long as the world still believed she was the ultra-wealthy party girl who didn’t give a shit that her cheating husband had a family with another woman, she could keep her head held high.

“Excuse me.” Someone tapped her on the shoulder. Clearly the comb-over hadn’t taken her glare seriously.

“Yes, I am; no, I didn’t know about the mistress; and yes, he couldn’t be deader if he’d wrapped his car around that tree twice.” She kept her eyes on the cup, filling it to the tip-top.

“I know Ricky’s dead.” Will Brodie’s voice was so like her husband’s, only more controlled. “I’ve missed you, Lucky.”

Rage and longing rolled through her. What she wouldn’t give to hear Ricky say her name just one more time. She’d savor the sound of it rolling off his lips while wrapping her hands around his throat and choking the life out of him.

Will touched her shoulder again. “You can’t avoid me forever. There are things to deal with… The production company is suing you, me, and anyone else associated with the show. They want their twenty million back.”

People didn’t always get what they wanted. For example, she didn’t want to be the penniless widow of a cheating bastard, but when the shoe fit… Too bad she’d had to sell most of her shoes.

“If Ricky’s property wasn’t tied up in probate, they’d have taken everything.” No emotion—no highs or lows, no drama—just the opposite of his half brother, Ricky. How two such different people could’ve come from the same womb was a mystery.

Taking her time turning around, she debated the idea of throwing her Diet Coke in his face. But she was thirsty, and the value meal was the last of the cash she’d gotten from the sale of her favorite Judith Lieber evening bag. Steven Tyler had given her that bag—she should have slept with him when she’d had the chance. Out of respect for Steven, she resolved to drink no less than nine more free refills.

“Having me followed?” Lucky stared directly into Will’s milk-chocolate eyes. He had three times the amount of eyelashes as a normal person, and she’d forgotten how tall he was. She had to look up a good five inches. “That’s beneath even you.”

His eyes lingered on her face—like he was drinking it in so he could store every detail.

She swiped a hand across her mouth in case there was some mustard or secret sauce on her upper lip.

“Don’t flatter yourself. Several people tweeted that you were here working on your laptop. You don’t exactly blend in.” He’d always said that if a Victoria’s Secret model and Xena the Warrior Princess had a lesbian love child, Lucky would be it. Even if she’d been wearing mom jeans and a PTA tee shirt, she’d stick out.

His level stare was starting to piss her off. Why didn’t he yell? Not that he was justified, but it would have felt good to make him lose his cool … just once. “We need to talk.”

Her eyes were beginning to sting, but she refused to blink first. “No, we don’t. I’m done with you.”

He blinked.

She took a victory guzzle of her drink. “If I never see you again, it’ll be too soon.” Stepping left, she tried to go around him, but he blocked her way.

“I can have you arrested. There are several bench warrants with your name on them.”