Merried
Page 29
“I discovered her,” Janice said with an agreeable nod.
“I gave birth to her,” Vicky sniffed.
“Well, thank God for you then. Where would any of us be without you?” Janice steered Vicky and Patrick toward the office. “Cheese? Let me tell you about the movie option Amber just signed.”
It was another few hours before Max had Merry to himself again. Back home, he squeezed her once more and pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Have I mentioned you were amazing today?”
Her face lit up when she smiled. “I feel amazing. Not hiding is—it’s strange, but good.”
“So you’re glad you went?”
“It’s the second best decision I’ve made in my life.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the first?” He knew, but he wanted to hear her say it.
And she did. “You.”
If this was a cursed love life, then Max would take it.
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Keep reading for a sneak peek of Pepper Blue’s story! For news and updates from Jamie Farrell, including notification when the next Misfit Brides novel is available, subscribe to Jamie’s newsletter HERE!
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The Misfit Brides Series:
Blissed (CJ and Natalie)
Matched (Will and Lindsey)
Smittened (Mikey and Dahlia)
Sugared (Josh and Kimmie)
Merried (Max and Merry)
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The Officers’ Ex-Wives Club Series:
Her Rebel Heart (Lance and Kaci)
Southern Fried Blues (Jackson and Anna Grace)
Moonshine & Magnolias (Zack and Shelby)
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Meet Tony Cross, the man who just might be hero enough to break Pepper Blue’s pre-bride streak… or is he?
From Spiced (Misfit Brides #6):
Tony Cross had smiled through dog drool, a flat tire, and accidentally discovering Bliss’s elderly nudist colony tonight, all for the sake of drumming up business. But he wasn’t sure he could smile through this last stop of the night.
“Stripper’s here!” a girly voice shrieked.
He’d known this day would come—he did live in the bridal capitol of the Midwest—but until tonight, he’d managed to avoid the bachelorette parties. Not that he objected to bachelorette parties. He simply objected to a bachelorette party at this house.
The brown oak door on the turn-of-the-century two-story foursquare next door to his own house swung open. Two redheads, a brunette, and that floppy black species-confused dog grinned at him from inside the screen door. All of them but the dog were in pajamas, party tiaras, and boas in all colors of the rainbow. And all of them—even the pint-sized dog—were eyeballing his package.
And by package, he didn’t mean the four pizzas rapidly cooling in the winter night.
At least it wasn’t her. “Pizza delivery.”
“Oh, he’s going to role play! I wonder how many of those are sausage.” The leader of the pack—a petite green-eyed redhead in blue leggings and Captain America’s logo on her T-shirt—flashed him a come-hither grin that did nothing for the blood flow south of the border.
Not that he’d expected it to. Blood hadn’t flowed there in…he didn’t want to talk about it.
“One supreme, two pepperoni, and one vegetarian,” he said. “As ordered.
She popped the latch on the screen door and snagged his pizza insulator box while the brunette grabbed the mutant dog. “Come on in, pizza man.”
“Just need a signature and that box, ladies.” He hit them with the famous Cross smile.
Big mistake.
The first redhead crooked a finger at him. “The box for your shirt.” It was rapidly getting passed deeper into the room. He’d lost three other insulators this week, and he couldn’t afford to be any shorter with Super Bowl Sunday coming up.
Three more women lingered in the back of the room. A brunette with glasses lifted his insulator. “Weird box for props, but I like the theme.”
“Check out the way his jeans fit. Those aren’t going to be easy to rip off. Think they have snaps on the side?”
“Just need a signature from Ginger Johnson,” he repeated to the redhead-in-charge.
Yes, he’d just said Ginger Johnson, and every one of the ladies within hearing distance was snickering now.
He would’ve snickered too, but he wanted to get out of here before she realized who was on her front porch.
Click HERE to get SPICED now!
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Like Southern gentlemen and military heroes? Meet Jackson Davis, hero of SOUTHERN FRIED BLUES (Officers’ Ex-Wives Club #1)…
Anna braced herself, scooted into the car, and cranked the engine. Steam flowed out of the air vents. She tilted them away while the AC system caught up. After buckling in, she gave her rearview mirrors a quick check. The gearshift seared her palm, but she gritted her teeth and put the car in reverse anyway.
Something tickled her finger. She absently scratched it and gave the car a little gas. Something else tickled the back of her hand.
She frowned.
Sweat didn’t usually tickle. Not like that.
She moved to shift the car into drive and something dark scurried over her windshield. “What the—”
A line of fire ants marched across her steering wheel.
Anna shrieked. She threw the car into park and tumbled out of it. “Get off! Get off!” She raked her hands over her arms and hopped on her clogs to shake the little buggers off. The prickles moved to her back, up her neck, into her hair. She knew the ants couldn’t be up there, there’d only been one or two, but she scrubbed at her scalp anyway.
“Ma’am? You okay?” A guy leaned out the side of a red car behind her. She was blocking one of the exits.
“Oh, yeah, sure, you betcha.” She wiggled her itching toes. “Sorry. It’ll just take me a minute to get out of your way.”
Her car’s engine whined. Heat radiated off the hood and wrinkled the air. The backs of her knees tingled as if a hundred ants had gathered there for an impromptu Riverdance.
A car door shut behind her. “Need a hand?” he drawled in a local-boy kind of way.
“Everything’s fine. Thanks.” Because she carried insect-killer in her car all the time in case her car came down with a case of the ants.
It took some effort to not reach for her phone. This was the kind of thing Neil would’ve taken care of for her. And it pissed her off that she wanted to let the man approaching solve her problem.
She was an independent woman, dammit. She’d fix this herself. She squared her shoulders, marched to the edge of her door, and hit her trunk release. She scooted around the car to survey the potential ant weapons in her trunk. She had to have something useful. Maybe she could club them one by one with her jumper cables. Shoot her emergency flares at them. Drop the box of Neil’s junk on them. Label them to death with the label maker.
It’d worked on her marriage.
And there was that stingy feeling behind her eyeballs again.
Long runner’s legs ending in flip-flop–clad feet entered her blurred vision. “You got some friends there.”
If Neil had to leave her, he should’ve done it somewhere else. Somewhere without fire ants, somewhere more hospitable to her Norwegian coloring, somewhere with halfway intelligent locals. She shot her audience a look she should’ve tried on the ants. “Where I come from, they’re called a nuisance.”
Instead of shriveling up and dying, he flashed her a goofy grin. His dark-lashed eyes creased in the corners.
Those lashes and the mass of just-long-enough-to-be-curly hair on his head were proof positive a man could have brains or looks, but not both.
And that tingly sensation along her breastbone was proof positive she had no business being si
ngle. First she agreed to a date with Rodney, now she was getting hot over a redneck.
She was supposed to be worrying about the ants. Class. Her life.
He scratched his curly hair and surveyed her neatly organized trunk.
As if he could wield her jumper cables better than she could against an army of fire ants.
Instead, he swung her Windex out of the trunk like a gunslinger preparing for a showdown, then tucked her paper towels under his arm.
“My car is very—” she started, but then it hit her.
He wasn’t going to clean it.
Carbon-based ants, meet ammonia.
Forgetting simple chemistry principles was not a good omen for her degree.
Wanting to watch her unexpected helper go to battle against the ants wasn’t a good omen for her sanity.
Her skin flushed as if she were standing inside Hell’s boiler room. She reached for the Windex, but something stopped her before she could get close enough to grab it.
Something that tasted suspiciously like fear.
Not of him.
Of herself.
“I’ll do it,” she bit out. She flicked her fingers up, gesturing for him to hand over the Windex.
“Ain’t no trouble.” His gaze wandered down her body, and she felt a whomp in her chest beneath the tingles spreading to her rib cage.
“Be a shame to mess up them pretty clothes,” he said.
“I can handle this,” she said firmly. She gestured to his car. “There’s another exit two rows down. I’ve taken enough of your time.”
His eyes were big and blue as her wounded heart, but when he squinted at her like that, they went a shade darker to cobalt. “Now I’m sure it don’t matter none to you, but my momma’d have my hide if she heard I abandoned a lady with critters in her car.”
Anna stifled a whimper of frustration. She swiped at her forehead. She’d probably drown in her own sweat before she managed to wrestle the Windex out of his hands.
If she could get brave enough to get within touching distance of him. “I don’t know your momma, so you don’t have anything to worry about.”
He scratched his hair again, and she felt an intense desire to claw out that part of her that wanted to know how it would feel between her fingers.
Rebound, her brain yelled.
Something more primitive was still clamoring about his hair.
…Excerpt from SOUTHERN FRIED BLUES by Jamie Farrell ©2013
Get Southern Fried Blues now!
Click here to sign up for Jamie’s Newsletter to find out about the next books in the Misfit Brides and Officers’ Ex-Wives Club series!
The Complete Jamie Farrell Book List
The Misfit Brides Series:
Blissed (CJ and Natalie)
Matched (Will and Lindsey)
Smittened (Mikey and Dahlia)
Sugared (Josh and Kimmie)
Merried (Max and Merry)
Spiced (Tony and Pepper)
The Officers’ Ex-Wives Club Series:
Her Rebel Heart (Lance and Kaci)
Southern Fried Blues (Jackson and Anna Grace)
Moonshine & Magnolias (Zack and Shelby)
Standalone Books
Mr. Good Enough (Trent and Maddie)
Acknowledgments
To my family—thank you for your unwavering support and belief in me. I love you!!
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To Deb Nemeth—thank you so much for all your amazing advice and encouragement. And for your brilliant suggestions for Max. He’s very grateful.
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To my Feisty Belles Fan Club—y’all rock!! I love popping in and chatting with you every week!
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To Jaycee DeLorenzo at Sweet ‘N Spicy Designs—thank you for putting such pretty covers on my books. I love them!!
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To Jessica Snyder—words can’t express how much I appreciate your attention to detail!
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To Angele McQuade—Titus the owl thanks you for his role in this book. And Merry’s totally on pins and needles waiting for your first book. (So am I.)
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And a huge thank you to everyone who helped name characters in Merried! To Rachel Poole for naming Max’s grandfather, Harvey Gregory. To Colleen Wade Ray for inspiring the name of the Lilac Mills Chapel. And to Corie Glenn, Marti Pease, and Micki Noel Sellers for all picking the name of Max’s car. (And you thought we were just playing a fun game of “Name an exotic dancer” in the Belles that day…)
About the Author
Jamie Farrell is a bestselling author of feel-good contemporary romances. She believes love, laughter, and bacon are the most powerful forces in the universe. Her debut novel, Southern Fried Blues, was a finalist in the National Readers’ Choice Awards and the National Excellence in Romance Fiction Awards. Blissed, the first book in her Misfit Brides series, received a starred review in Publishers Weekly Magazine.
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A native Midwesterner, Jamie has lived in the South the majority of her adult life. When she’s not writing, she and her military hero husband are busy raising three hilariously unpredictable children.
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For news and updates on Jamie’s books, and for a glimpse into her sometimes zany personal life:
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Visit Jamie’s website at:
www.JamieFarrellBooks.com
Follow Jamie on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/JamieFarrellBooks
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http://www.twitter.com/TheJamieFarrell
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Copyright
MERRIED
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Copyright © 2016 by Jamie Farrell
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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ISBN: 1-940517-15-X
ISBN-13: 978-1-940517-15-5
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Cover Design by Sweet ‘n Spicy Designs
Cover Photo © iofoto via DepositPhotos.com
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http://www.JamieFarrellBooks.com