Table of Contents
Blissed
Book List
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Blissed
Book #1 in the Misfit Brides series
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Welcome To Bliss, the Bridal Capitol of the Midwest!
Natalie Castellano practically has it all—beauty, brains, and a stellar reputation. Because childbearing hips and exhaustion lines are totally sexy. And knowing when to let go of her family’s failing bridal boutique is smart…right? Plus, who doesn’t want to be that divorced mother in Bliss?
With all she has going for her, it would be selfish to secretly wish for love too. Who needs it? Definitely not Nat. But perhaps she does need to take her wedding dress-obsessed little boy somewhere else for a fresh start.
CJ Blue is on top of the world. At least, he was last week when he stood on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. Now, he’s in an empty confessional, hiding from the hullabaloo of a family wedding. Aka the depths of hell.
His meddling relatives want to poke at the deep psychological wounds he supposedly bears from being a twenty-something widower. But he doesn’t want to talk, he doesn’t want to be fussed over, and he certainly doesn’t want another chance to fail at love. He just wants to get through this wedding and back to his adventurous life.
But when a dark-haired, wounded-eye beauty invades his sanctuary and whispers a secret he was never supposed to know, he gets swept up in her life. Is he brave enough to tackle the adventure of life in Bliss, or will he walk away from the only woman in the world who could offer him love, forgiveness, and a second chance?
Other Books by Jamie Farrell
The Misfit Brides Series
Blissed (CJ & Natalie)
Matched (Will & Lindsey)
Smittened (Mikey & Dahlia)
Sugared (Kimmie & Josh, release date to be announced)
The Officers’ Ex-Wives Club Series
Southern Fried Blues (Jackson & Anna Grace)
Moonshine & Magnolias (Zack & Shelby)
To my mom, for being the inspiration for all my strong female characters.
Chapter One
NATALIE CASTELLANO had spent the better portion of the last five years in the shadow of happily ever after. Usually it came from the family bridal boutique or the Knot Festival committee, sometimes from the five-story wedding cake monument standing guard over downtown Bliss. But today?
Today, it came from the man who had broken her fairy tale.
He was back, and if the Queen General got her way—which she always did—he was back to stay.
Bliss was giving Natalie the blues. In more ways than one.
She wove through the crowded foyer of St. Valentine’s Catholic Church, focused on two goals: be invisible, and avoid CJ Blue. All two hundred million of his relatives—or possibly only fifty or sixty or them—filled the foyer and blocked her path to a stained-glass door leading outside. It wasn’t just a door. It was escape. Escape from the well-dressed crowd, escape from the overpowering perfume of wedding flowers, escape from her own memories and regrets and guilt.
She clutched her sewing kit in her slick hand and stopped when yet another pastel-clad woman sporting a corsage stepped into her path. Natalie ducked her head and dodged right. “Excuse me,” she murmured.
The last few years, she’d gotten good at being invisible at weddings.
More like she’d gotten good at not making appearances at weddings at all. Were it not for today’s high-profile guest list—both the bride and groom had spent the last several years touring with the bands of some mega country music stars—Natalie wouldn’t have left the bridal boutique to do an emergency fix on a veil she hadn’t sold.
For CJ Blue’s sister.
Nevertheless, Nat couldn’t pass up the chance to represent Bliss Bridal among a crowd like this. The boutique couldn’t buy this kind of publicity.
The boutique couldn’t buy any publicity lately. Not in Bliss.
If the Queen General caught Natalie here, though, publicity would be the least of Bliss Bridal’s problems. So Nat had kept her name to herself in the bride’s quarters and dropped a few generic Bliss Bridal business cards in the room. And now she was alternately keeping her head down and scanning the crowd while she zigzagged for the door. Dress, dress, dress, tuxedo. Check the hair—no red—keep going. Dress, dress, dress, tuxedo.
Fifteen more feet, and she’d be outside. Then a dash across the parking lot, and with any luck, the Queen General would never know Natalie had been here.
Four chattering women stepped into Nat’s path. She dodged left and bumped into the chalky ivory wall. Another two women approached from her side. She slid along the wall until she was boxed in by a closed wooden door, a table holding church bulletins, and a group of women more fragrant than a bride’s bouquet. Fourteen more feet, and the crowd was swelling around her like jellyfish. “Excuse me,” she murmured again.
The back of her neck prickled. Then the backs of her knees. A tinny taste tickled the back of her tongue.
Oh, shit.
What was she doing here? She should’ve been setting up a wedding cake somewhere.
But there she was, the Queen General herself, marching through a crowd that parted for her like trees splitting in a tornado. A tornado headed away from Natalie. For the moment.
Marilyn Elias, Queen General of Bliss, had more power than the mayor. Probably more power than the governor of Illinois. As chairperson of the entire Knot Festival, she oversaw the annual week devoted to Bliss’s celebration of its very purpose—weddings and marriage and bliss. She managed the subcommittees responsible for every Knot Fest event from the parade to the bridal expo to the Husband Games, Bliss’s final festival event where men competed in a series of challenges—like lawn mowing, dishwashing, and wife-kissing—to be named Husband of the Year. And she did it all with the single-minded, take-no-prisoners drive usually reserved for dictators, bridezillas and cartoon villains.
Natalie hugged the wall, one eye straining to follow the QG, the other on the outer door she could barely glimpse now. She had to escape.
Now or never.
“Excuse me,” she said.
Her voice drowned in the normal pre-wedding chatter. She tried to shift around the table, but the crowd pushed her back against the door.
The QG stopped near the chapel entrance. Natalie could tell because the shuffle of bodies stopped. But she had another clue too. A big one, towering over the female-dominated crowd, his back to her.
A man. In black. With red hair.
A word entirely inappropriate for a church squeaked through her lips.
Forget escape.
Nat had to hide.
A MAN DIDN’T grow up with eleven sisters without learning how to effectively duck the squawking, and CJ Blue thought he had outdone
himself today. He was equal parts impressed and horrified at the depths to which he’d sunk in his quest for an estrogen-free zone. But between his sisters and mom in one room screeching about a ripped veil and the multitudes of aunts and girl cousins lurking around every pew—all giving him the how-you-doing-you-poor-thing look—a guy had to take what he could get.
What he got was a gift from God Himself.
An empty confessional.
His brother, Basil—Father Basil to the members of his newly assigned parish of St. Valentine’s here in Bliss—said confessions were mostly done face-to-face now, so the room was never used. Bonus: Basil was tied up preparing for the wedding mass. No one would look for CJ here.
But just in case, he made himself at home behind the screen in the red vinyl lounge chair on the priest’s side of the dimly lit room. Everything smelled vaguely of christening oil. The muffled murmur of a crowd told him the rest of his relatives were arriving. He’d escaped just in time, so now he could pop back out at the opportune moment to witness Saffron’s nuptials while avoiding the relatives asking his feelings on his sister’s decision to have a destination wedding here. Of all places.
They always added of all places.
But until the ceremony, he had a comfy chair, blessed semi-quiet, and a God-given reprieve from guilt and condolences and memories. After the ceremony, he had about twenty-four more hours of family obligations, and then he could hit the road and leave this all behind.
Again.
He set his watch alarm, closed his eyes and pictured the sunrise he’d experienced at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro a week ago. As he was about to doze off, the door on the other side of the screen wrenched open. A louder hum of female voices wafted in on the draft. Just as quickly, the door clicked shut and CJ’s peace was restored.
Momentarily.
“Oh shit shit shit,” a woman said. Her voice rippled with the kind of panic CJ expected from the bride today, but her husky undertones were too low for her to be any of his female relatives.
Perhaps the confessional hadn’t been a gift from God after all. “If that’s what you need to do, but not right now, please,” CJ said.
Her shriek splintered his last hopes for peace. “Ohmigod!” his intruder gasped.
“Not generally, but hey, if that’s what you want to call me, I’m game.”
“I—you—what?”
He’d learned his lesson about that tone when his sister Pepper got him with the tailpipe off Basil’s first heap of junk. Which meant goading his unexpected visitor was a bad idea. He covered the family jewels and settled deeper into the chair. “Never mind. Like I said. Wrong guy.”
She inhaled a ragged breath. “Sorry. Sorry sorry. I thought this was an office.” A shadow moved behind the screen, as if she were heading out.
Guilt nipped at his chest.
Probably a good thing she was leaving, whoever she was.
But the shadow stopped. If he were looking close—which curiosity might’ve encouraged him to do, but through only one eye, because he still wouldn’t have minded that nap—he might’ve seen the shadow’s head drop.
Heard a wobbly breath. For courage?
Sympathy added a few prickles to the guilt. “Nah, not an office. It’s more personal than that,” he said.
“More… personal?”
“As personal as it gets.”
She started muttering then, words he wouldn’t have been able to understand even if he had been able to see her face, but the acoustics in this room were impressive and he did have a lifetime of experience with translating irritated-female. Not that he cared to translate. He’d let her mumble herself out, she’d leave, and he’d get back to dreaming about where he’d been and where he was headed next.
“I’m sorry?” he said. Because he was an idiot.
“Right, right. Get out so you can do your business.” Her shadow hovered at the doorway.
His business. Sleeping. Avoiding relatives. Not asking her questions.
Not thinking about Serena and weddings and how the confessional suddenly smelled like oranges.
Just like Serena had.
His other eye slid open, along with one of those psychological wounds his sisters had spent the last fifty-eight hours talking at him about. “My business?” he prompted the woman.
Because it was better than thinking about oranges.
“You know what?” she said. “What if I just cover my ears? I can’t see anything, and everybody does it, so what’s the big deal?”
Whatever the lady thought everybody did in here, CJ was fairly certain this wasn’t it. Besides, he knew for a fact he never did what the room was designed for, and he suspected most of his sisters avoided it whenever possible too. Plus that whole majority of the world that wasn’t Catholic. “No need to cover your ears,” CJ said. “I, ah, do it quietly.”
“You know what else?” she said. “Most buildings would at least have the courtesy to put a big sign on the door. So you can’t miss it.”
A sign for what?
CJ straightened. The orange scent was fading, and his mind was engaging in a puzzle. This was good.
Better than where his mind had been headed. “In my experience, the people who want to use a confessional don’t need the sign.”
“A con—oh, God.” A hollow knock sounded, like a head hitting a door. “Shit! I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to say God. Really.”
His chuckle caught him off-guard. Of all the things he thought he’d be doing today, laughing inside a confessional wasn’t one of them. “Ah, you’re forgiven.”
He didn’t so much hear her suspicion dawning. He smelled it.
Familiar odor, that. Sort of like a bad pork chop on top of department store perfume, set off by female intuition and probably hormones too.
So much for funny. Still better than oranges.
“Are you the new priest?” she said.
“No, ma’am. Just a single guy too early for a wedding.”
More voices echoed on the other side of the wall, louder and closer. He couldn’t make out the exact words of the conversations outside, which gave him hope the confessional was as private as it was supposed to be, but he should’ve been whispering.
Basil would be pissed if he found CJ in here like this, and CJ still had enough respect for the collar that he wouldn’t suggest they take it out back to settle the grievance.
“You’re hiding too,” the woman said, the husky back in her voice. Distrust? Or was she intrigued?
“So few places to do it effectively,” he said.
If she got the hint, she ignored it. “Are you in the wedding?”
“Nope.” Dylan, the groom, had more best friends than CJ had sisters. Cleared him of all responsibility. Didn’t even get asked to be an usher.
Or maybe Saffron didn’t want to pick any more of his scabs.
“Why so early?” his intruder asked.
“I was in housekeeping’s way.” He could’ve stayed at the rectory, but Basil’s housekeeper was stopping by with her very single daughter. “You?”
“Oh, I’m not here for the wedding. Not to attend the wedding. The bride had a problem with her veil. All fixed now. So I should get going.”
She didn’t move. Not her shadow, not her scent—which was getting more orangey again since the suspicion had left her voice—not even her breath seemed to move.
CJ waited. Held his own breath.
“You having some trouble with somebody out there?” he asked. He didn’t know jack about any of these musician types Saffron and Dylan had invited today, and he wouldn’t tolerate it if a single one of them made any of his sisters or cousins or nieces uncomfortable.
“Oh, no. Not today. Exactly. It’s just—” She blew out a shaky laugh. “Hey, this is a confessional, right?”
Basil would have his head if he didn’t cut this off right now. “Technically there has to be a licensed operator for it to actually be a confessional.”
“Licensed operator?”
/>
“Licensed from God. I’m not. Just a normal guy here. You sure nobody’s giving you grief?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just hiding from the Queen General and her latest poster boy.”
“The Queen General?” Which one of his sisters fit that description?
More like which one didn’t.
“Queen General Marilyn,” his visitor said. “Supreme ruler of Bliss and chairperson of Knot Festival.”
The words Knot Festival twisted CJ’s stomach, and the room seemed to climb ten degrees hotter. He tugged at his bow tie. The woman kept talking.
“According to the Queen General, divorced women don’t belong in Bliss’s bridal business, and divorced women don’t belong at Knot Fest, and divorced women especially don’t belong at high-profile Bliss weddings.”
He couldn’t tell if it was bitterness or regret coloring her words, but he would happily worry about someone else’s problems if it helped him ignore the itching beneath his undershirt. “You live your life according to your rules or hers?” he said.
“The last time a divorced person tried to buy a shop on The Aisle, the Queen General was so displeased she made the town flood.”
He stared at her shadow. Her words were English, but when she put them together like that, she might as well have been speaking alien.
Normal for a woman. But he’d take crazy woman-talk over Knot Fest talk and memories. He stretched out again. He could get her started, then doze off while she rambled. He was good at grunting go on noises in his sleep.
God bless his sisters.
“Do tell,” he said.
“She probably didn’t actually cause the flood,” the woman said. “But she did keep the divorced guy from buying the shop. She jacked up the price of joining the BRA—”
Blissed (Misfit Brides #1) Page 1