by Grace Greene
They discovered Greg was a romantic, too. Over the course of April and May, he courted Clair with dinners and small gifts and flowers. A silly waste of money, of course. But silliness had an important place in romance and love. If lovers couldn’t embrace life and love, then what was the point?
More importantly, Greg also went immediately to work making arrangements to move his life, including his business, to Emerald Isle.
On June 1st, Greg proposed. On the beach, of course—at Emerald Isle, not at Enchanted Island. The waters weren’t turquoise but the sun was golden and the sea birds flew by serenading them with their calls as he knelt before her. Yes, he knelt. He took her hand, kissed it, and asked her to marry him.
Her heart glowed so warmly that it lit her whole being.
The breeze blew her unruly curls into her eyes. She brushed them back and said, “What?”
He kept her hand clasped in his. He frowned a little, a pretend frown, and raised his voice to be heard better over the ocean. “I asked you to marry me.”
“I know.” Clair sank to her knees on the sand beside him. “I wanted to hear you say it again.”
“Marry me, Clair.”
“Yes,” she said, as she kissed his hand and then moved on to his lips.
Epilogue
A Beach Wedding
They wanted a beach wedding. Not at Enchanted Island, in part because Clair wasn’t risking any “enchanted” complications. But mostly because Emerald Isle was home. When Greg asked where she’d like to go for the honeymoon, she told him the mountains.
“Rent us a romantic cabin in the Smokey Mountains,” she said. “Our destination wedding will be here at home and our honeymoon will be within driving distance.” She smiled, her dark eyes fastened on his gray ones. “We’ll create our own adventure.”
Mallory expressed her concern at the short timeline. It was her job to do that as the big sister, but once done, she hugged Clair and they set to work making the arrangements.
“I wish we had more time to plan.”
Clair said, “Keep it simple. This is about love and our future. We already have everything we need for that.”
“But it’s happening too fast.”
“I planned before and look how it ended up. I can’t say it’s smarter to do it this way, but I’m going to give it a try and trust to love.”
“I’m a little jealous, you know,” Mallory said. “It’s so impetuous. But I’m also afraid for you.”
Clair kissed her sister’s cheek. “Don’t be. I’ve always been a little envious of you, too. Of how you make everything seem reasonable and rational. I want you to know that. But mostly, I want you to know we’re not leaving you in a lurch. You will have your own life, too, I promise. Darcy is making real progress, but she has a lot of ground to make up. With the three of us to help and encourage her, she’ll come all the way back to us. Her future will be the brightest of all.”
The night before the wedding, Mallory threw a magnificent bridesmaids party. The guest list was exclusive. The three sisters ordered in pizza and spent the evening painting each other’s fingernails and toenails. Darcy had chosen the color. Red. Simple, solid red, without the white base in Clair’s dream. It was a blast. No matter how they reassured her, Darcy spent an hour flapping her hands and blowing on her nails to make sure they dried thoroughly and didn’t get mussed.
Darcy still didn’t talk a lot—only when she felt strongly about something—yet the direct interaction, the voluntary hugs and smiles, were frequent. Clair caught Darcy trying to read on her own, and she had finally refused to nap, declaring she wasn’t a baby. Clair was delighted.
Two weeks after the proposal, Mallory stood beside Clair as her maid of honor, with the additional honor of escorting the bride to give her away. Darcy walked ahead of them, carrying her red bucket, but that was okay because it was filled to overflowing with rose petals. She dropped them as she walked. They scattered on the sand and were picked up by the breeze and set to dancing across the beachfront. The fragrance of roses swirled all around them as Clair walked toward the ocean where Greg stood with the pastor, waiting.
At Darcy’s insistence, Clair wore their mother’s gown. The white satin and lace was as brilliant as ever. The sisters were barefoot, but the red polish on their nails glistened and the sun cast a gentle glow around them. Clair looked at Greg. Her vision sparkled, not with tears, but with happiness. As he smiled in welcome, Clair noticed that the sky was clear—a perfect, infinite blue with no chance of rain.
The End
About the Author
Grace Greene is an award-winning and USA Today bestselling author of women’s fiction and contemporary romance set in her native Virginia (Kincaid’s Hope, Cub Creek, The Happiness In Between, The Memory of Butterflies) and the breezy beaches of Emerald Isle, North Carolina (Beach Rental, Beach Winds, Beach Walk, Beach Christmas). Her debut novel, Beach Rental, and the sequel, Beach Winds, were both Top Picks by RT Book Reviews magazine. For more about the author and her books, visit www.gracegreene.com or connect with her on Twitter @Grace_Greene and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/GraceGreeneBooks.
BEACH BRIDES THANK YOU
Thanks for reading Clair’s story!
Jenny’s book is next.
You’ll find a Sneak Peek in the Excerpt.
Find all of the Beach Brides at Amazon!
MEG (Julie Jarnagin)
TARA (Ginny Baird)
NINA (Stacey Joy Netzel)
CLAIR (Grace Greene)
JENNY (Melissa McClone)
LISA (Denise Devine)
HOPE (Aileen Fish)
KIM (Magdalena Scott)
ROSE (Shanna Hatfield)
LILY (Ciara Knight)
FAITH (Helen Scott Taylor)
AMY (Raine English)
Excerpt Copyright Information
Prologue and Chapter One from
Jenny (Beach Brides Series) by Melissa McClone
Copyright © 2017 Melissa McClone
]
JENNY
Beach Brides Series
By
Melissa McClone
Prologue
Jenny’s Message in a Bottle
Dear Bottle Finder:
You have precisely forty-two minutes to complete your mission or life as you know it will end. If you happen to be color blind and can’t tell the red wire from the others, just crack open a beer or unwrap a candy bar and enjoy the next forty-one minutes before it’s all over.
Oh, wait.
Wrong mission.
Let’s try this again…
I’m on a Caribbean vacation with my girlfriends, and we’re tossing messages in bottles into the sea in hopes of finding true love. Please understand that alcohol was free flowing when we decided to do this. No, fruity rum drinks with paper umbrellas aren’t really an excuse, but they were delicious! And who knows? Maybe dream heroes do exist and ours are out there!
I’d love to say I’m a complete romantic, and that I believe in my heart of hearts whoever’s reading this is my soul mate, but I also think we’re one EMP away from an ELE. If those acronyms have you heading to Google to do a search, then you likely aren’t my other half.
If by some miracle, or alien intervention, you are reading this and think, hey, this could be the woman of my dreams, then your mission is to email me at the address below if you:
•Are single and male.
•Think something strange did happen in Roswell.
•Know your name will never be on the FBI’s Most-Wanted List.
•Aren’t allergic to cats or dogs.
•Prefer armchair traveling to jet-setting.
Or… if you’re certain I’m not the one for you, but want to let me know where you found the bottle and that you read this message, feel free to email me, too, so I can die of embarrassment.
Cheers,
JH
8675309@…
CHAPTER ONE
Thirteen months later…
At two o’clock in the morning, Jenny Hanford still sat at her desk in the half-lit study on the first floor of her house. Day or night, nothing much happened in Berry Lake, Washington, a small town located north of the Columbia River Gorge. Maybe that was why she’d grown up devouring novels and now wrote books full of intrigue, espionage, and non-stop action.
Jenny stifled a yawn.
Yes, she was tired, but sleep could wait until she finished the draft of her new novel, Assassin Fever—the next volume in her best-selling thriller series featuring spy extraordinaire Ashton Thorpe.
Almost there…
As sights, sounds, and smells swirled through her mind, her fingers flew over the keyboard. The tapping sound became nothing more than white noise. She focused on the screen. Letters turned into words that became sentences and then paragraphs.
Her breath caught in her throat.
Tears stung her eyes.
Oh, Ash. You did it. You saved the world. Again.
With a sigh, she typed her two favorite words in the English language—The End. The draft was finished.
Satisfaction flowed through her.
A good feeling considering she’d been certain the story was the worst thing she’d ever written only four days ago. Still not perfect, but the manuscript didn’t suck as badly as she’d thought. All she needed was feedback from her editor so she could do revisions. She typed a quick email, attached the file, and then hit send.
Now she could sleep. Well, once her brain slowed down.
If she went to bed now, she’d lay awake. The story still looped through her mind. The elation of finishing mixed with the sadness of saying goodbye for now to her favorite character.
Might as well do something productive until she could sleep.
The number of emails in her inbox made her do a double take. Jenny groaned. She’d been ignoring everything for almost two weeks, but…
8132.
She groaned again.
Don’t look at them.
But, of course, she had to.
Jenny deleted as much of the junk as she could. Message notifications from her online book club could wait until tomorrow. They were used to her disappearing to write. When she’d first joined the Romantic Hearts Book Club, she’d been a full-time textbook editor and part-time author. Now she only edited an occasional textbook project—usually as a favor to her former boss—and wrote full time.
So much had changed over the past four years. Her entire life really, though few knew because she’d never made a big deal over writing as Jenna Ford. She wasn’t that secretive about her pseudonym, but she’d quickly learned too many people only wanted to be Jenna’s friend. Not Jenny’s.
Maybe that was why her closest friends, other than her sister-in-law, were people she’d met virtually. She could just be herself with them. It was easier that way.
She scrolled through her inbox and deleted what she could. The subject line “Message in Bottle Found” caught her attention.
She did a double take. “Seriously?”
Over a year ago—thirteen months to be exact—she’d taken a Caribbean vacation on Enchanted Island with eleven other members of her book club. Meeting in person seemed appropriate after being together online for three years.
Boy, was it ever!
Spending face-to-face time with friends, having fun in the sun, and talking about books was exactly what she’d needed. Jenny hadn’t realized how badly she’d needed a vacation—or how enjoyable it would be to hang out with women from the book world.
Before they returned home, they’d each tossed a message in a bottle into the ocean in hopes of finding true love. They weren’t called the Romantic Hearts for nothing. Surprisingly, a few had met their dream heroes after they received replies and were now married.
Not Jenny.
She’d gone into the bottle toss with zero expectations. Oh, she’d hoped it might work out, but deep in her heart of hearts, she had a feeling it wouldn’t. She might write fiction, but her life was no storybook. Her romantic past read more like a comedy—a dark one. She’d assumed a tanker or cargo ship would run over her bottle and the note would never be read. But now…
Jenny tapped on the subject line.
Message in Bottle Found
DOR2008@…
To: Jenny <8675309@…>
Message received, Jenny. I assume that’s your name. 867-5309 is one of my mom’s favorite songs.
Bottle found on beach in Key West.
An asteroid has a better chance of causing an ELE than an EMP. Just sayin’.
Roswell, seriously? You should be more embarrassed about that than someone reading your message in a bottle. Guess you’re a Bigfoot believer, too.
DOR
P.S. I am single and male, but not in the market for a soul mate. Hope you’ve found your true love.
Well, her bottle had at least reached an unmarried guy. What were the odds of that?
She laughed at his last line.
Jenny hadn’t found her one true love, but that was okay. She had room for only one man in her life.
Yep, good old Ashton Thorpe.
He might only live in her mind and on the pages of her novels, but he was the ultimate book boyfriend—the kind of guy men aspired to be. Her series that featured him had made more money than she ever imagined having, and Ash would soon grace the big screen in what the producers hoped would be a successful movie franchise.
He was made for that kind of stardom… if the actor slated to play Ash could pull off his combination of courage, daring, and hotness. The right amount of swagger wouldn’t hurt, either.
Larger than life was the only way to describe Ash. Perfect was another. No guy she’d dated could compete. Although… she hadn’t given up hope one would someday.
Jenny read the message again. The fact DOR knew the song she used for her email address impressed her. The bottle reaching Key West didn’t surprise her given the currents and the amount of time that had passed. The Roswell and Bigfoot comments brought a much-needed smile to her tired face.
Yawning, she typed off a quick reply. The cursor hovered over the send button.
Another yawn.
In the morning, Jenny would likely regret she’d responded, but she was too tired to care now. She hit send.
Will Jenny regret replying to DOR’s email? If you’d like to find out what happens next, click HERE to get your copy of Jenny’s story!
***End of Excerpt***
JENNY
(Beach Brides Series)
By
Melissa McClone
Fiction by Grace Greene
Emerald Isle, North Carolina Novels
Beach Rental
Beach Winds
“Beach Towel” (A Short Story)
Beach Christmas (Christmas Novella)
Beach Walk (Christmas Novella)
Clair (Beach Brides Series Novella)
Virginia Country Roads Novels
Kincaid’s Hope
A Stranger in Wynnedower
Cub Creek
Leaving Cub Creek
Other Virginia Novels
The Happiness In Between
The Memory of Butterflies (Sept. 2017)
www.gracegreene.com