The Marriage Campaign

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

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.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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.