Chances Are

Table of Contents

 

 

PRAISE FOR
Girls of Summer

“A moving romance . . . Barbara Bretton provides a deep tale of individuals struggling with caring connections of the heart.”—
Midwest Book Review

 
“A book readers will want to savor.”—
Publishers Weekly

 
“Insightful . . . Bretton excels at women’s fiction that engages the emotions without manipulating them . . . I highly recommend that discriminating readers pay a visit to these
Girls of Summer
.”—
The Romance Reader

 
“Barbara Bretton is a master at touching readers’ hearts. Grab this one when it hits the shelves! A perfect ten!”

—Romance Reviews Today

“An engrossing tale of hope, promise, heartache and misplaced dreams . . . Its uplifting message and smooth story-telling make it a pleasant read any time of year.”

—
Publishers Weekly

 
“Bretton’s warm, wonderful book presents complex familial and romantic relationships, sympathetic characters, and an underlying poignancy . . . will please fans of Kathryn Shay and Deborah Smith.”—
Booklist

 
“Entertaining . . . Barbara Bretton bestows a beautiful modern-day romance on her audience.”—
Midwest Book Review

 
“Her women’s fiction is well-written and insightful with just the right blend of realism and romance . . . [
Shore Lights
] may be her best novel yet . . . A rich novel full of wry humor and sweet poignancy . . . The novel’s magic comes from the author’s ability to portray the nuances of human relationships at both their worst and best . . . Powerful.”

—
The Romance Reader

 
“A lovely book . . . It’s an uplifting story, warm and cozy, and easily recommended.”
—
All About Romance

 
“An absolute wonder of creative writing that comes right from Barbara Bretton’s heart . . . It flows with realism and features characters that are so well drawn that you may recognize the same personalities in people you know. A perfect ten.”—Romance Reviews Today

AND ACCLAIM FOR THE OTHER NOVELS OF BARBARA BRETTON . . .

“Bretton’s characters are always real and their conflicts believable.”—
Chicago Sun-Times

 
“Soul warming . . . A powerful relationship drama [for] anyone who enjoys a passionate look inside the hearts and souls of the prime players.”—
Midwest Book Review

 
“[Bretton] excels in her portrayal of the sometimes sweet, sometimes stifling ties of a small community. The town’s tight network of loving, eccentric friends and family infuses the tale with a gently comic note that perfectly balances the darker dramas of the romance.”—
Publishers Weekly

 
“A tender love story about two people who, when they find something special, will go to any length to keep it.”

—
Booklist

 
“Honest, witty . . . absolutely unforgettable.”—
Rendezvous

 
“A classic adult fairy tale.”—
Affaire de Coeur

 
“Dialogue flows easily and characters spring quickly to life.”—
Rocky Mountain News

CHANCES ARE
GIRLS OF SUMMER
SHORE LIGHTS
ONE AND ONLY
A SOFT PLACE TO FALL
AT LAST
THE DAY WE MET
ONCE AROUND
SLEEPING ALONE
MAYBE THIS TIME

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

 
 
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 
CHANCES ARE

 
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

 
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley edition / September 2004

 
Copyright © 2004 by Barbara Bretton.

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

eISBN : 978-0-425-19796-7

 
BERKLEY® Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. BERKLEY and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

 

 
THREE WEEKS TO the day after Maddy Bainbridge announced her engagement to Aidan O’Malley, she found herself stripped and held hostage in the bridal department of the Short Hills Saks in front of her family, her future in-laws, and a PBS research assistant named Crystal whose tattoos were outnumbered only by her piercings.

Her mother had told her she was taking her out for lunch to celebrate the pending nuptials, a splashy, fun get-together with family and friends on hand to share the good news. She had set her taste buds for the amazing chicken burritos at Casa Mexicana in Spring Lake and was dismayed when they rolled right past the exit and kept on heading north. Visions of one of those terrible spa lunches—three lettuce leaves, a grape tomato, with a side of guilt—made her wish she’d stashed a bag of chips in her purse along with her daughter Hannah’s current favorite Barbie.

As it turned out, a spa lunch would have been a vast improvement over what her mother actually had in mind.

“Where is she taking my clothes?” Maddy protested as a fiercely groomed sales associate disappeared with her favorite cotton sweater and jeans.

“Don’t worry,” Rose DiFalco said to her daughter. “This is the only way we can be sure you won’t make a run for it.”

Her fashionable aunt Lucy turned her critical eye on Maddy’s nearly naked form. “Does Aidan know about that underwear?” she asked, and the assembled aunts and cousins and future in-laws burst into laughter. Crystal, the research assistant, stood near the door trying very hard to be inconspicuous, which wasn’t easy, given the scene from
Lord of the Rings
tattooed down the length of her right arm.

“Turn around,” Maddy’s cousin Gina ordered her. “I want to see if you have Monday embroidered on your butt.”

The dream she’d been having lately—the one about being naked at Stop and Shop—suddenly seemed prophetic. How she had ended up standing on a carpeted pink pedestal in front of her nearest and dearest—and future in-laws—while wearing a pair of cotton bikini panties and a bra that predated the premiere of
Friends
was a question a Talmudic scholar couldn’t unravel.

She was a grown woman. She had a child. She had a degree from an accredited university. She had figured out a way to balance work and romance with the equally demanding jobs of daughterhood and motherhood, but from the moment she said yes to Aidan, it seemed that control of her life had been handed over to a powerful force called The Wedding.

The questions were endless. How many bridesmaids? (Don’t forget your cousins, Maddy.) Church or hotel? (Is there something wrong with The Candlelight?) Catered dinner or upscale buffet? (Why not ask Aunt Lucy to bake the cake?) Local band or big-city musicians? (You mean you’re not going to ask your cousin Benny to sing at your wedding?) Long dress with a short train or short dress with a long train or maybe some combination nobody had even thought of yet. There were flowers and menus to consider, seating arrangements and engraved invitations to design, and whatever you do, don’t even let them get started on hairstyles, makeup choices, and Brazilian bikini waxes for the blushing bride-to-be.

When Gina asked her if she was registered, it took Maddy a second to realize she was talking about wedding gifts and not the AKC.

Within moments of learning her daughter was planning to be married, Rose was on the phone to a multitude of sources, lining up auditions for bands, booking appointments to check out hotel ballrooms, and conferring with her sister Lucy about the all-important dress.

As a rule, Maddy was very happy to fly beneath her mother’s radar, but as the days passed, she began to feel like a guest at her own impending nuptials.

How come nobody ever told you that finding your soul mate was the easy part?

Falling in love with Aidan had been as natural as breathing. One moment she was moving through life, concentrating on being the best mother she could possibly be, and the next she was floating somewhere on cloud nine, madly in love and dreaming of a rose-covered cottage with a satellite dish. In her own mind she made the leap from courtship to marriage seamlessly, with maybe a few well-chosen words uttered in a small church while a handful of nearest and dearest dabbed at their eyes and toasted to their happiness.

Fat chance.

Her own clan hadn’t the slightest idea how she was feeling. Between them, Grandma Fay’s girls had walked down the aisle a total of sixteen times, which meant a total of sixteen engagement dinners, sixteen bridal showers, sixteen trips to the bridal department of every major store in the tristate area, and sixteen wedding receptions complete with laughter, music, and promises that this time it was going to last forever.

The trouble was, it never did last forever. In fact, on one memorable occasion, the marriage barely managed to last past the reception. When Aunt Toni grasped the knife to cut the pricey six-tier Weinstock wedding cake, you could hear the sound of three hundred wedding guests as they held their collective breath and prayed the groom didn’t make any false moves.

She wondered if anyone would share that anecdote with Pete Lassiter, the historian/journalist currently gathering up tales of Paradise Point’s past for a documentary on Jersey Shore towns. The second Lassiter heard that a DiFalco was planning to marry an O’Malley, his journalistic imagination shot into high gear, and he began to shape his narrative around the upcoming nuptials. The town’s oldest families, whose establishments anchored the north and south ends of Paradise Point, were about to merge before man and God and a pair of PBS’s best cameramen. Maddy had endured a series of preinterviews with Lassiter’s underlings, long and exhaustive question-and-answer sessions that dug up details not even her own mother found very interesting. Aidan, not always the most cooperative man in town, made it halfway through his first interview before he called it quits in a fairly dramatic fashion.