Married by June

His dad pushed his chair back and stood so fast it tipped over. “What the hell are you talking about, Cooper?”

“I broke off the engagement. Right before you called me.”

“My God! You and your brother are going to ruin this family. How could you be so stupid?”

“It didn’t have anything to do with the family, Dad.”

“You don’t think ‘Cheating Senator’s Brother Breaks Heart of Grieving Fiancée’ is going to be a story that gets picked up? Or did you forget somehow that your wedding is the kick-off event for the tenth anniversary of the Wish Foundation, a group that grants goddamn wishes to people who are dying? How is the governor supposed to appoint you if you’re no better than your brother?”

“Maybe it’s a good thing,” Cooper said. “I won’t be distracted by Jorie and the wedding. Total focus for the new job.”

He looked to his cousin for support, but Theo only said, “There’s no way, Coop. You’re going to get crucified.”

“Get Jorie back,” his dad said flatly.

So. It was already starting. The switch from a private, ordinary life to a life that was a career. And Jorie had gone from ex-fiancée to business asset in the span of one afternoon.

Dear Reader,

When I first started writing romance, I thought all of my books would have to end with a wedding. As I learned more about this genre, I realized I was wrong about that. (And many other things!) Romances aren’t about marriage, they’re about commitment and true love. For some of the fictional couples in my books, a wedding is the right happily ever after, but for some, their commitment to each other may take a different form, at least at the point where the book ends.

This book starts with an engagement, but I wasn’t sure how it would end until the last minutes of revision on the last draft before I handed it in. I think life works that way sometimes—it’s hard to find the right path, especially when the stakes are high and hearts are involved. I hope you’ll have a good time reading along with Jorie and Cooper as they work out their story.

Extras, including behind-the-scenes facts, deleted scenes and information about my other books are on my website at www.ellenhartman.com. Look for other Harlequin Superromance authors and readers on our Facebook page at: www.facebook.com/HarlequinSuperromance. I’d love to hear from you! Send email to [email protected].

Ellen Hartman

PROLOGUE

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

EPILOGUE

“M
Y MOM LOOKED A
little better tonight, didn’t she?” Jorie asked.

It was a clear night but the D.C. streets were practically empty. Cooper had suggested that he walk her home after their hospital visit, and Jorie was glad he was with her. Her mom was dying. Probably before the year was over, although her doctor had hopes that his latest treatment cocktail would buy a few extra months. It was almost impossible to accept that her mom would soon be gone.

Cooper and his family had met her mom, Chelsea, only a few months ago, but they’d taken her into their hearts. For the first time, Jorie was sharing her mom with other people who loved Chelsea. It felt like a luxury.

Cooper took her hand.

“She got some news today that perked her up,” he said.

“What news? Why didn’t she tell me?”

“She wanted it to be a surprise.”

The spotlights on the front of the Capitol building
glinted in his brown eyes, making them sparkle as he looked down at her. Suddenly he swung in front of her and dropped to one knee. “Jorie, will you marry me?”

“What? No!” she said. The guard halfway up the steps straightened. He held his gun casually in front of his chest, but the Capitol was no place for messing around. “You’ve got to be—”

“The Wish Team granted your mom’s wish,” Cooper said, never looking away from her.

“What wish?” Jorie could feel her world starting to spin.

“She wants to give you a princess wedding. The one she’s always dreamed of. The Wish Team is picking up the tab—”

“Wait— My wedding? To whom?”

He stood up. She’d hurt him. Well, obviously. She was acting as if he was the last man she’d ever consider marrying when he’d been the one keeping her afloat these past few months. “Oh, God, Coop. I’m sorry. I’m just—this is all…”

Suddenly he took her by the waist and swung her up onto the third step. The stairs made her slightly taller than him, but the difference in perspective didn’t do much to calm her. She put her hands on his shoulders to steady herself.

“Jorie, she made this wish for us. I know it sounds
nuts, but as soon as she told me, I knew she was right—the idea is inspired. Marry me.”

She couldn’t think with him looking up at her, proposing to her. How many times had her mom described this scene to her when she was a little girl?
Someday, Jorie, your prince will ask you to marry him.
Cooper was sweet and smart and funny and gorgeous—everything she’d ever wanted in a guy. She thought she loved him, why wouldn’t she love him? But—

“We met six months ago, Cooper,” she said, trying to remind herself why she had to say no. “You can’t let my mom’s schemes get in the way of your good sense. She’s obsessed with romance—with weddings—and always has been.”

The guard had moved down a few steps, his stance alert. Cooper noticed him for the first time and waved one hand. “I’m proposing!”

“Good luck to you,” the guard called back, but he now stood close enough to hear what they said. Cooper put his arm around her shoulders and escorted her across the sidewalk, out of view. He stopped under a streetlight and reached into the breast pocket of his suit. She expected him to come out with a ring box, and when he didn’t, she wasn’t sure if she should be relieved or disappointed. He handed her a packet of papers.

“Okay, yes. I want to make your mom happy. If
we get married now, she can be there to see it. But I wouldn’t be asking you if it wasn’t right. I knew you’d say we haven’t been together long enough, but if we wait…your mom…”

He couldn’t finish, and she realized she wasn’t the only one who loved her mom. “I wrote this for you,” he said.

She took the little booklet and saw that he’d drawn a picture on the cover. The people in the picture were quick sketches in the spidery black ink she recognized from his fountain pen. The man was about twice as tall as the woman, who had a binder under one arm and a slice of cake in her other hand. She and Cooper, no doubt. He’d drawn a heart around the couple and underneath had written, “To be continued…”

She turned the page and started reading.

It was a fairy tale—the worst kind of romantic nonsense.

Her hands shook as she read each page.

He’d imagined their relationship, the way it would have been if her mom weren’t sick. If they waited to get to know each other better, to cross all their bridges and find all their necessary compromises. He was a speechwriter and knew how to pull his reader in with the perfect phrase.

He described it all. Their first fight followed by their first make-up sex. (He kept the description to a minimum but she gave him credit for creativity. And also optimism.) The first time he took her to a college reunion and introduced her to his buddies who still called him Lefty, which she hadn’t known, but which suited his two left feet perfectly. The first time they slow danced on New Year’s Eve, Cooper stepping on her toes while she hummed along to “Love and Marriage.” The day he took her back to the Antietam Museum where they’d had their first date. He proposed as the bugle blew for the last cavalry charge in the Civil War battle reenactment, and she said yes while the fireworks display started.

He’d imagined an entire relationship, writing each scene with a deft eye for detail and his uncanny way of knowing what would make her happy.

On the second-to-last page, he’d described their wedding. They walked down the aisle, Jorie in a lace wedding dress with a huge tulle skirt, Cooper in a top hat, her mom between them, with a hand on each of their arms, as “Ode to Joy” played. On the last page another simple heart surrounded the words, “And so on…”

Her own heart was pounding. She should say no. They didn’t know each other well enough, and for most of the time they’d been dating, her mom had been dying.

Still, he’d written their fairy tale, and all she needed to do was believe.

Her tears made it hard to see the pages. When she looked up his eyes were full of the power of his story.

And so on…

Cooper didn’t know how precious those words were to her. He took it for granted that they could marry each other and live happily ever after. He was offering this dream to her.

“I love you, Jorie.”

“I love you, too, Cooper.”

“Then marry me, already. That’s how it works.”

Maybe that’s how it worked in his world, but it had never been that way for the Burkes.

“Don’t do it for your mom, do it for us,” he said. He kissed her, and she felt the same thrill she had
the very first time. His shoulders were warm and strong under her hands. Here he was, and here she was, and they loved each other even if it hadn’t been long enough or any of those other arguments she couldn’t remember right now.

“Yes, Cooper. I’ll marry you.”

When they kissed again, his story got caught between them and Jorie could feel the pages against her heart.

Seven months later

“M
OM, IT’S AN
April Fool’s joke,” Nadine Richford said. “No one would seriously propose this for a wedding. You totally got her, Jorie.” She shook her head in admiration. Except, Jorie thought nervously, this wasn’t a joke.

It was eleven-fifteen on April Fool’s Day and she was meeting with Sally and Nadine Richford at one of the round ironwork tables in the lobby of the St. Renwick hotel. The fountain, whose water had doused the flames when the White House was burned by the British, was close enough that drops of spray tickled the back of her neck. Tossing pennies in the famous fountain was supposed to be good luck. Sitting in the splash zone conferred no such benefits, Jorie realized, watching as her fortunes turned as quickly and thoroughly as a wedge of Brie left on a sunny buffet table at an outdoor wedding.

The Richford wedding was the only contract
standing between her and a total collapse of her wedding planning business. Maybe she should have known better than to have such an important meeting on April Fool’s Day. But Jorie had fully expected to wow the Richfords—mother and daughter—with her plans to turn the Lilac Garden and Filigree Ballroom of the St. Renwick into a fifties-themed, full-on James-Dean-
Rebel-Without-a-Cause
fantasy wedding. She was positive she’d nailed the interviews with the bride and groom-to-be, working her trademark magic to capture the essential elements of their relationship and the way they’d want to present themselves to their guests. They were supposed to love her concepts so much, they’d fall over themselves to sign on the dotted line.

Sally Richford frowned when Jorie mentioned the skinny ties and gray suits for the groomsmen. Her daughter, Nadine, giggled nervously when Jorie started to describe her idea for red-and-white accents in the flowers and linens, based on the colors of James Dean’s iconic jacket and T-shirt.

“I really don’t think…” Sally pushed back the gold bangle bracelets on her slender, tanned wrist.

Okay, maybe they needed a visual. Jorie pulled out the planning binder she’d put together for Nadine. During her first year in business, she’d searched long and hard to find functional but pretty binders. This style, handmade by a boutique stationer in Aspen,
was one and a half inches thick and bound in linen in shades ranging from pale lemonade to ice-blue to peppermint-pink. The corners were covered in white leather, as was the spine, which was constructed so the binder lay flat when it was opened. Jorie had yet to meet a bride who didn’t fall deeply in love with her wedding binder. Nadine’s was silvery-gray to go with the old-time movie theme.

“In our conversations, you mentioned that you and David went to the movies on your first date.”

“The Sing-Along
Sound of Music,
” Nadine said. “David sang ‘Edelweiss’ to me on the way home in the taxi.”

“Doesn’t everyone die at the end of
Rebel Without a Cause?
” Sally asked. She didn’t sound as if it were really a question, though. She uncrossed her legs and stood up before Jorie could answer.

“Sal Mineo’s character dies, but he’s meant to be a symbol of…” She was losing them. “That’s not the point anyway…the point is…”

Nadine clutched the strap of her purse to her chest. The corners of her eyes were red. Brides were always crying about something. Normally, Jorie would have offered her a tissue, but in this case, she didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that she’d made Nadine cry. When a bride signed the contract, she and her mother both received a green leather, custom-designed envelope perfectly sized
to hold a travel pack of tissues. Gloria Santana (September 2008, four hundred guests at the Widmere) had had the tissue envelope replicated as the favor for her shower guests. Tears and tissues were a big part of Jorie’s business. The higher the tear count, the better.

Nadine’s tears, however, were the wrong sort.

Jorie had been speaking, she realized, but now she couldn’t remember what she’d been trying to say.

“Why did you think I’d want a wedding based on a movie where everyone dies?” Nadine asked. “My cousin Mira called you the wedding whisperer. Her wedding was beautiful, all springtime-in-Paris pastels and nothing about guns.”

“I didn’t mention guns,” Jorie said. “It was just the theme, you know. Movies. We could pick a different movie.
Gone With the Wind,
maybe.”

“That’s a war movie!” Nadine said, turning to her mother. “What did David and I say that made her think of war? Is there something wrong with us?”

“You and David have perfectly lovely ideas,” Sally said, patting her daughter’s shoulder. “This isn’t your fault.”

“Everyone says you hire Jorie Burke because she can tell what you really want.” Nadine’s voice was rising now. “Does David want to shoot people?”

They had forgotten she was there. Just as well, probably.

Jorie held her smile until the Richfords disappeared through the revolving lobby doors, then she carefully closed the binder and slid it back into her black leather shoulder bag. Her brides never abandoned their wedding binders. Or cried the wrong kind of tears. Planning weddings used to be effortless. Coming up with this idea for Nadine and David had been nothing but hard work and it hadn’t gotten her anywhere. She sat on the uncomfortable iron chair, splashed by the lucky fountain, and waited to see if she was going to cry. But the numbness that had settled on her when her mom died six months ago didn’t seem to be affected by the impending collapse of her business.

Once she was certain she wasn’t going to cry, she picked up her bag and crossed the lobby to the restroom, where she splashed water on her face and then checked her lipstick in the mirror. That was when she saw the spiky brown splotch that spread from just beneath the neckline of her gray, crepe-silk dress to the top of her left breast. It wasn’t huge, but no one would miss it. She wet a paper towel, but even as she blotted the stain, she knew it was futile—the dress was ruined. She must have spilled her coffee on the way to her appointment. She’d been so preoccupied thinking about which of her
outstanding bills she was going to clear with the Richfords’ down payment that she hadn’t even noticed. The mark had been there the entire time she’d been pitching the James Dean-themed wedding.

Two years ago, when her business had been growing faster than she could manage on her own, she’d had interns, a pair of sophisticated, romantic-minded college girls from Sweet Briar. She’d trained them to look perfect but unmemorable—brides liked their wedding planners to reflect their good taste, but they didn’t like to be shown up by the help. Between the coffee stain and the fact that the wide, patent-leather belt around her waist was straining at the very last hole, she’d lost all of the image points she normally counted on during an interview. She turned sideways and ran a hand over her stomach. She’d put on weight. As much as she wished she could attribute the too-small belt to a dry cleaning accident, she knew where the blame for her expanding waistline lay. With her. Well, with her and cake. Only she and the Lord knew exactly how many slices of her friend Alice’s cakes she’d consumed in the past few months. Jorie had always loved food, but since her mom died, she’d felt a desperate inability to get full, no matter how much she ate.

Chelsea Burke was probably rolling in her grave. Actually, knowing her mom, she was plotting some way to escape her grave so she could chide Jorie in
person for letting herself go. Chelsea had loved to tell people, “The Burke women have always been thin.” She never revealed that it wasn’t genetics, but hard work, strict diets and, in her mom’s case, occasional fasts, that helped maintain that image.

Jorie missed her mom. When she was little, Chelsea had moved them from city to city, searching for the next guy to support them and shelter them. They’d been a pair of chameleons, changing themselves to suit whatever guy her mom had chosen as her next possible Mr. Right. In a way it was ironic that Jorie had become a wedding planner. Building a career around the one great disappointment of her mom’s life might seem twisted, but she was successful because she’d grown up with Chelsea Burke. She knew how much the idea of a wedding meant to the women who sought her out. The ones who were so desperate for the perfect day that they’d leave the planning to a stranger. She’d worked hard to make sure her brides had the wedding they’d dreamed of and she’d been successful. Until her mom died and she suddenly lost her ability to connect with anyone’s wedding dreams.

She slid her lipstick into a small pocket in her leather bag and then checked that she had the binder for her next appointment, a cake tasting at Alice’s bakery, where she would restrict herself to the tiniest bites possible. She may have lost her last client, but
she had one more wedding to plan. She was marrying Cooper Murphy, younger brother of Senator Bailey Murphy. If her fairy-tale wedding to one of the most-desirable bachelors in Washington, D.C., couldn’t put her business back on the map, she’d eat her own bouquet (blush-pink peonies, white heather and pale green hydrangea).

S
T
. H
ELEN’S CHURCH WASN’T
open on weekdays. Vandalism and a skeleton staff in the parish office combined to limit the public hours. Cooper had explained to Father Chirwa that he wanted to sit in the church to write his wedding vows, and the priest had made an exception for him. If he’d been born in an earlier generation, maybe back in County Cavan before the first Murphy emigrated, they’d have said he had the gift of the gab. His brother was fond of telling people Cooper could talk Greenpeace into advocating for more whaling. Not that he would, but the potential was there.

He’d been alone in the church for two hours now. He was supposed to meet Jorie to choose their wedding cake in a little more than forty-five minutes. So far, he’d read the Stations of the Cross, lit a candle for his grandmother, said a prayer that the Nationals would find a starting pitcher and, if it wasn’t too much, a center fielder who could both catch and hit. Then he’d decided that he shouldn’t be praying
about baseball so he’d lit another candle and prayed for peace and enlightenment and fortitude, because he’d always liked that word.

The pages of his notebook stayed stubbornly blank. He uncapped his favorite fountain pen and put a heading on the page.
Wedding Vows.
He jotted some words underneath—love, Jorie, wife, eternal and a curse word that he immediately crossed out and then apologized to God and the saints for. He took another turn around the perimeter of the church, the leather soles of his shoes making a lonely echo. When he got to the candle rack again he stopped, and this time he prayed for wisdom.

Writing the vows was his only job for the wedding and he couldn’t even do that. He slid into a pew and laid his notebook and pen down next to him. He looked at the altar; imagined himself up there, waiting for Jorie to walk down the aisle toward him. Of course, their wedding wasn’t here in his home parish, but in the National Cathedral. The Wish Team, which had fulfilled Jorie’s mom’s wish by funding her daughter’s dream wedding, had pulled strings to get the venue. Jorie was over the moon about decorating the cathedral. The exact setting didn’t matter to Cooper. Soon enough, he’d be in a church, waiting for Jorie and minutes away from vowing to…something.

He leaned forward, resting his head in his hands.

The thing about marrying a wedding planner was that nothing was left to chance. Jorie had plans for every moment of the ceremony and the reception. She consulted him before making a decision be cause she was the kind of woman who thought men should be included in that stuff, but the wedding was really hers. Writing the vows was the only thing she’d moved permanently off her to-do list and onto his.

She said it was because he was the better writer. He’d been writing political speeches and ghostwriting op-ed pieces and thousands of other communications for close to ten years, so yeah, writing wedding vows was definitely something he should be able to do. The only trouble was…well…actually there were two problems. One, he was pretty damn sure she’d given him this job because she couldn’t have done it herself. The reality was, she didn’t know him, didn’t really love him and hadn’t ever really wanted to marry him. And number two, he was pretty sure he felt the same way.

Yeah. Those were the main issues and he had only himself to blame. It was Chelsea’s idea for them to get married, and her wish, which had been expanded into a huge fundraiser for the Wish Team’s tenth anniversary, was being granted even though
she’d died months ago, much sooner than they’d hoped. But it had been his own inability to resist a romantic gesture that sealed the engagement.

He could have said no, but Chelsea’s defiant belief in the power of wishing after a lifetime of disappointment had touched him. He’d seen the hope in her eyes that she could give Jorie this one thing before she died, and he’d said yes, because how could he not help her when he knew exactly what it meant to care that much about your family?

He and Jorie had only been dating for six months at the time and their relationship was still so new he hadn’t seen any downside. He didn’t stop to think about consequences, so caught up in Chelsea’s dream that he couldn’t have said no if he’d wanted to. His mom had been complaining about this habit of acting from the heart ever since he’d set the class room pets loose in kindergarten. The rabbit hadn’t gotten far, but two of the gerbils and the corn snake hadn’t been seen again. He was the guy who always put his hand over his heart for the National Anthem. He’d given the toast at his brother’s wedding and two different women had propositioned him afterward and a guy from the World Wildlife Fund had asked him to write their annual donor appeal. Which he’d done. He liked pandas as much as the next guy.

Chelsea Burke had offered him the chance to
be a knight in shining armor and he’d said yes. His fault.

His romantic impulsiveness had brought him and Jorie to this point, but his good sense had finally caught up. It was late. Too late in many ways, but they hadn’t passed the irrevocable point where they pledged some as yet unwritten vows to each other. He’d screwed up and he was going to hurt a lot of people, but he’d do the right thing before it really was too late.