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eBook Category: Romance
eBook Description: It was bad enough, Kate Jefferson thought, to be hired by her ex-boyfriend Brian's too rich/too blond/too bitchy fiancée to orchestrate the wedding of the century for them. When her regular photographer is forced to send a last-minute substitute, the San Francisco wedding coordinator's already frazzled nerves get an unbidden zap of romantic distraction. Jack Armstrong is not only a charismatic hunk but seems to have an uncanny way of rescuing her from one rehearsal snafu after another. Grateful as she is for Jack's gallantry, a part of her can't help but wonder if he has something more than photography on his mind.

eBook Publisher: SynergEbooks, Published: SynergEbooks, 2004
Fictionwise Release Date: December 2004

26 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [756 KB], eReader (PDB) [259 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [265 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [238 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [235 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [279 KB], hiebook (KML) [640 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [351 KB], iSilo (PDB) [222 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [276 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [328 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [357 KB]
Words: 77356
Reading time: 221-309 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
ISBN: 0-7443-0869-0

Kate Jefferson hung up the phone with a display of undisguised annoyance. "I told you we should have just said 'no'," she declared, brushing a loose curl of dark hair off her forehead.

Across the room, her best friend and business partner, Melinda O'Donnell, looked up from her desk. "Said 'no' to what?" she asked.

"This whole stupid weekend!" Kate snapped. She indicated the notepad of lengthy scribbles that reflected the Murchie bride's latest whiny little demands to the caterers. "I swear this woman's going to be the death of us one way or the other."

"Mission Control, we have T minus forty-eight hours and counting. All systems look ?go? for a successful launch. I know this is a colossal pain, but we're down to the last straw, the home stretch, the final countdown?" Mel scrunched her forehead as if trying to squeeze one more cliché out of her brain.

"If only, you mixed martinis as well as metaphors, I'd be a lot happier right now. Look outside, will you? It's a beautiful Friday afternoon, we're in San Francisco, we should be knocking off work early and go play. But noooooo, we have to be on call 24/7 for the Princess Bride. What do we look like?doctors?"

"I think the more accurate title is ?miracle workers?."

"Yeah, tell me about it."

Hands down, Livia Murchie was the most self-centered and troublesome client who had ever walked through their front door. Unfortunately, she and her mother also held the power to keep others in their elite social circle from walking through it between now and eternity if they weren't totally and completely happy with every last detail.

"Talk about over-inflated egos!" Kate declared and not for the first time since this whole ordeal had begun.

"That's not the only thing inflated about them," Mel quipped. "Dare I ask what her Highness wants now?"

Kate shook her head in exasperation before launching on Livia's latest litany of changes. With each item, she felt her temper rise in response. Wasn't a wedding supposed to be the happiest day of a young woman's life? Certainly this one was doing everything in her power to keep everyone on a high boil.

"Yikes," Mel responded before the end of the first page had even been flipped. "No wonder you're turning five shades of purple. Next time, just let the machine get it."

"Wouldn't stop her," Kate predicted. "She'd just use up the whole tape and then call back."

"Look on the bright side. It'll all be over by this time Sunday afternoon and then we can crash."

"We're not crashing enough already? I'm telling you, Mel, Hell has a place for weddings like this."

Her partner's response was a chuckle of agreement. "Need I remind you that's why she's getting exactly what she deserves by marrying a jerk like Brian."

Kate arched a brow of suspicion. "I always thought you liked him."

"I'm the best friend, hon. I'm supposed to like everybody you like. That is, until you don't like them anymore, then I can tell you what I really think."

"Oh great, that helps."

"It should. It also happens to be true."

"Then why were you the one always inviting him along?"

Mel pondered the question a moment. "He had a great car for tailgate parties at the beach. You gotta give him that."

"It was a hearse, Mel," Kate reminded her. "That's what you get when you're dating a mortician."

"Yeah, well, just be glad you're not marrying one. Can you imagine if he ever started bringing his work home."

Good ol' Mel. Always knowing just the right thing to say. It was the reason the two of them had hit it off from the very first day of high school. It was the same reason why?years later?their partnership had made EVERYTHING BUT THE GROOM the most successful wedding consultant agency in the Bay Area. Romantics at heart, there had seemed no better outlet for their creativity and initiative than in helping happy couples plan a stress-free day and keep within a well tailored budget. "Not to mention," Mel always hinted, "that it puts us first in line to meet all the bachelor groomsmen and wealthy uncles that nobody else has snagged yet."

Suffice it to say, her wishful thinking from the sidelines had thusfar yielded only the attention of a ringbearer who looked like Eddie Munster and an octogenarian minister who had kept asking her if he was at the right wedding and which one of them was going to pay his bus fare back to Antioch. The Murchie/Iverson nuptials didn't promise to reverse the current trend.

Kate, on the other hand, was too wed to the business to be aggressively scouting for potential soulmates. Or so Mel had come to realize. It's wasn't as if she didn't get her share of looks, even, Mel noticed, from an occasional groom whose mind she probably could have changed in a heartbeat just by returning his smile. Instead, there was a disturbing sense of resignation about her, an outside-looking-in feeling that all the best men had already been taken and that all the best weddings would belong to someone else.

"It's not the worst thing in the world to see an old college boyfriend get married," Mel had been telling her for the past six months. Kate had to agree with her. The worst thing in the world was getting hired by his too-blond, too thin, and too-rich fiancee to make their Mill Valley nuptials the social event of the century. "I want this to be the wedding that everyone talks about," Livia informed them as if they personally possessed the ability to influence the tide of public reaction. What ever happened to just living happily ever after, Kate wondered.

"So what else does the Queen of Sheba want us to do?" Mel inquired, stretching back in her chair.

Beneath long lashes, Kate's green eyes were flashing with contempt. "What do you want to hear about next," she said, "the ice sculpture swans or the goose pate?"

Mel feigned horror. "Oh God," she gasped, "don't tell me that the swans are history. I loved the swans." Although the stylization that made their long necks look like a giant heart wasn't exactly a new idea, Mel had always maintained it was nonetheless pretty.

"Kiss 'em good-bye," Kate replied. "Now she wants them to be the Eiffel Tower."

"What?"

"Yep, you heard me."

"In two days?!?

"Two days and counting."

"Is she totally out of her mind?"

"Oh, she acquired a mind? What, someone brought her one at the shower? Or was it on the gift registry and I just missed it?" Kate had her own opinions as to why Livia axed the swans and now shared it out loud for Mel's benefit. "Personally, I think she just likes rubbing it in that she and Brian are going to Paris for their honeymoon."

"Whoopy-doo. As if she hasn't already told us about it eighty-three thousand times."

"So this makes eighty-three thousand and one."

"You've been to Paris," Mel pointed out for no particular reason. "Twice."

Kate had been to the City of Light twice, and was alone for both trips to the most romantic city in the world. It seemed to be a fitting condition for a woman whose life was filled with such bittersweet ironies. At twenty-eight years old and with no permanent commitment besides to her job, it was a state that wasn't likely to change any time soon. Even though she knew that being alone was far preferable to the type of self-centered petty existence those two were about to enter into, there were times, and this one in particular, when she wondered why she didn't take the offer made to her years ago.

As she proceeded down the list, her best-friend was only half-listening. Mel knew back when they were both in college that Kate was way too close to succumbing to the superficial charms of Brian Iverson. Kate deserved a lot better. She did then, and she did now. Kate deserved a knight in shining armor. A knight in shining armor with a nice head of hair and a great ass. An animal lover would be nice, too, she thought. Dogs. Kate was the kind of person who should have dogs and a couple children. Dogs and children and a devoted husband who knew how to take care of all of them. Thank goodness it wasn't Kate's wedding to that Iverson jerk.

The irony, of course, is that Kate?especially lately?had been trying to convince herself and everyone else that not only was a happily ever after just not in the cards but that, further, she was okay with it. Mel couldn't even remember the last time she'd been out on a date. A real date, that is, and not just one to interview other professionals in the wedding industry. "You're gorgeous," Mel kept telling her. "The mirror doesn't lie."

Kate was naturally slender where Mel had a tendency to do daily battle with the bathroom scale. Kate's hair was long and nearly black; Mel had inherited her mother's curly Irish locks that were kept short as a futile attempt to try to keep them in line. Even their contributions to the agency itself were worlds apart. Kate was the cool-headed businesswoman with the finesse to work miracles; Mel was the clown with the sense of humor to keep Kate and everyone else from killing each other at zero hour.

"I really think we should pass on this one," Kate had remarked when the Murchie/Iverson wedding first fell into their laps right after Christmas.

Mel mistakenly interpreted Kate's words at the time to mean that she still had passionate feelings for the groom. "I thought you'd put all that behind you," she'd said, wondering how she'd been so blind as to not see any semblance of a still-flickering torch for Love Gone Wrong. Granted, she'd rather see her best pal pining in love for someone who was actually worthy of her, someone like Mel Gibson or Tom Selleck or?well, practically anyone on the planet just as long as he wasn't Brian Iverson.

"It's not about Brian at all," Kate assured her. Brian Iverson had been a self-centered control freak who was still living his life as an extension of high school. Romantic and attentive at the start of their romance, he had quickly devolved into someone who saw Kate as little more than the ultimate trophy date to show off to his friends. "Yeah, yeah, so you'll miss getting all those sprays of lilies," Mel comforted her when they broke up, "but how do you know for sure they weren't really?okay, how do I put this delicately?leftovers?" Kate's dating the only heir to the Iverson Mortuary had provided Mel with a wealth of puns.

"So why exactly should we turn the job down?" Mel had pressed. "We're talking big bucks, kiddo." Livia Murchie was the closest thing to a walking blank check they'd probably ever see in their lifetimes. Undeniably, it would be a huge coup to have her as a client, particularly in terms of the word-of-mouth publicity that it could generate among her as-yet-unmarried peers. If Livia was a prime example of the Mill Valley mind-set, they were all avaricious and competitive young women for whom the glitter and glitz of the wedding day, the exotic honeymoon, and the warehouse of presents from San Francisco's finest department stores took precedence over any commitment to the marriage itself.

"We're also talking big pressure," Kate warned her.

"It's only another wedding. Nothing we haven't done before."

"Au contraire, mon ami. One tiny thing goes wrong with this wedding and Livia Murchie blames the whole ball of wax on me."

"Why? Just ?cuz you used to date the guy she's ending up with?"

"Empires have been leveled for far less, believe me."

"Chill out," Mel said. "We're in this together. What could possibly go wrong?"

For the past six months, and particularly the last six days, they were discovering that little, if anything, was going right.

"Well, at least the whole schmear will look nice in an album when it's over," Mel now remarked as she stuck her plastic fork into the take-out carton of WINGS cashew chicken she had just started nibbling on during the latest Livia Moment. When was the last time we actually treated ourselves to a real lunch out somewhere, she tried to recall. Certainly their location near Union Square afforded them plenty of opportunity to experience the best of the city's culinary diversity. Lately, though, they'd been subsisting on whatever they could call in and one of them could run out and pick up.

Her reference to their photographer brought a momentary smile to Kate's face. In the big scheme of things, it was the only area that had been left untouched.