Sophie Pembroke – Falling for the Bridesmaid (страница 1)
Summer Weddings
You are cordially invited to attend the
Huntingdon-Cross summer weddings.
Celebrate the shotgun marriage of Daisy
Huntingdon-Cross and Sebastian Beresford in
Save the date: on sale March 2015
Raise a glass to Rose Huntingdon-Cross and
Will Carter as they finally tie the knot
in
Save the date: on sale April 2015
Join us in celebrating Violet Huntingdon-Cross
and Tom Buckley’s star-studded wedding day
in
Save the date: on sale May 2015
Falling for the Bridesmaid
Sophie Pembroke
SOPHIE PEMBROKE has been reading and writing romance ever since she read her first Mills & Boon® book at university, so getting to write them for a living is a dream come true!
Sophie lives in a little Hertfordshire market town in the UK with her scientist husband and her incredibly imaginative five-year-old daughter. She writes stories about friends, family and falling in love, usually while drinking too much tea and eating homemade cakes. She also keeps a blog at www.SophiePembroke.com.
For George and Karen, for making this book possible through coffee, childcare and cheerleading! Thank you both, so much.
Contents
THE SWEET SMELL of rose petals filled the evening air, giving the falling dusk a sultry warmth. Music sang out from the band on the patio, romantic with just an undertone of sexy. Fairy lights twinkled in the branches of the trees and inside the marquees, and around them leaves rustled in the still warm breeze.
The whole set-up was so perfectly loved-up Violet thought she might be physically ill if she had to suffer through it a moment longer.
Glaring down at her lavender bridesmaid’s dress, she slunk to the edge of the celebrations where she could watch the live band play in peace. She needed to make more of an effort to enjoy the evening, and maybe the music would help. Her parents’ vow renewal ceremony had been beautiful, and the party that followed a huge success. Later, she had no doubt, her dad and the boys from The Screaming Lemons would take to the stage and wow the remaining guests all over again, even though they’d finished their official set an hour ago. Knowing Dad, it would probably be a lower key, acoustic set the second time around.
Keeping Dad off the stage was always more trouble than getting him on there, and he always wanted one more encore. But for now the support act seemed to be doing well enough. The courtyard in front of the stage was filled with people dancing, or just holding each other, or kissing. Falling in love.
Violet scowled and looked away.
Of course, the situation wasn’t helped by her family. There, leaning against her new husband—Lord Sebastian Beresford, Earl of Holgate, if you please—was her youngest sister, Daisy. No, the Lady Holgate now. Hard to believe that Daisy-Waisy was an honest-to-God countess, but somehow not quite as impossible to process as the slight swell of her baby bump under her carefully chosen emerald-green bridesmaid’s dress.
Just a few more months and Violet would officially be the maiden aunt of the family. Hell, she was already doing the church flowers most weekends, and taking tea with her mother’s ‘ladies who lunch’ crowd. Maybe she should just skip straight ahead to adopting a three-legged cat and taking up crochet.
Actually, she’d quite like to learn to crochet, but that wasn’t the point.
Seb rested his hand against his wife’s stomach, and Daisy’s soft smile grew into a fully fledged grin as she tilted her face for a kiss. Violet turned away, suddenly embarrassed to be staring.