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Chapter 1

ผู้เขียน: Edima Wealth
last update ปรับปรุงล่าสุด: 2022-12-15 01:44:57

So, there was going to be a June wedding after all. Only it wouldn’t be Hannah McCrae in a gorgeous white dress, walking down the aisle.

No, she’d be swathed in wildflower blue. Or spring leaf green. Or dandelion yellow. Or some other color found only in nature and bridesmaid’s dresses.

Hannah didn’t slow down as she passed the cheery, hand-painted sign welcoming her to Blueberry Cove, Maine. Chartered in 1715. Population 303. “Make that three hundred and four,” she murmured, still undecided on when she was going to share that little tidbit with the rest of her family.

She should be happy for her big brother and his impending nuptials. And she was happy. Truly. Logan deserved all the love and fulfillment in the world and she was thrilled he’d finally found them. Alex MacFarland had gotten herself a good guy. Probably the last remaining good guy on the planet.

Not that Hannah was biased or anything. Or cynical, for that matter. Okay, so maybe she was a little cynical. All right, more than a little. Who could blame her after the year she’d had?

Hannah wove through the narrow streets of her hometown on autopilot, too distracted by her thoughts to soak up the sense of belonging, the unconditional love she always felt simply entering the Cove. Unable to sleep, she’d left her Old Town Alexandria row house at four that morning, then driven north for thirteen straight hours, fueled solely by the promise of that much-needed hometown group hug. Well, that and the king-sized bag of chocolate-covered pretzels presently tucked in her lap.

She dug in for another fix. They’d been an impulse buy when she’d filled her tank after passing through New York City. She couldn’t even say why. She hated salty and sweet together. Of course, she’d also hated finding out the guy she’d been giddily anticipating a marriage proposal from at any second had already proposed to someone else. In fact, he’d not only proposed to someone else, he’d married her. Four years ago. Which meant Hannah had spent eighteen months dating a married man. Eighteen monumentally stupid, blind-as-a-bat, how-could-I-be-such-an-idiot months!

She was a trial attorney, for God’s sake. A damn good one. She earned her living by knowing when people were lying to her. How could she not have known? How could she not have had at least some inkling of a suspicion long before Tim’s very petite, very blond, and exceedingly pregnant, sweet-faced wife stalked into Hannah’s office, in front of God and everyone—and by God, she meant Findley Holcombe, the senior partner of Holcombe and Daggett, and by everyone, she meant, well, everyone—and announced, quite loudly, using language that could only be described as salty, just what Hannah could do to herself, and stop doing to her husband?

Yeah, Hannah thought, and shoved the pretzel back in the bag. She hated salty and sweet.

As the Rusty Puffin pub came into view, she felt a tug in her chest, and a knot form in her throat. She wanted nothing more than to pull over, run inside, and be immediately folded into one of her uncle Fergus’s big bear hugs, but she couldn’t trust herself not to fall apart all over him. No way would she get out of there without telling him why she was a wreck, which would be as good as telling the entire town. Instead, she whispered a silent I love you, knowing she’d see him soon enough at the wedding rehearsal the following afternoon, and continued toward the coast road that would take her out to Pelican Point . . . and home.

She didn’t see the pickup truck until it was too late.

One second, she was glancing over at the tall shoots of summer lupines, in all their purple, pink, and white stalks of glory, and—dammit—digging out another chocolate-covered pretzel. The next, she was slamming her brakes and swerving to miss the tail end of the big dark green dually that was suddenly somehow passing right in front of her.

She missed the truck’s rear bumper by a hairbreadth, but the hand-painted sign on the far side of the intersection advertising BEANIE’S FAT QUARTERS, THE BEST LITTLE QUILT SHOP IN BLUEBERRY* COVE! wasn’t so lucky.

It all happened so fast, and yet each second seemed to be somehow elastic, as if she could live a lifetime inside of every single heartbeat of the accident as she was swerving through it. So many thoughts went through her mind as she careened toward the sign she knew Beanie’s husband Carl had so proudly painted for his wife when she’d opened up her little shop, what, fifteen years ago now? Sixteen? Hannah had just graduated high school. Carl had done the town sign, too, right in his adorable little potting shed-turned-art studio, touching the signs up like new every spring after the winter season did its number on them. And yes, okay, that made two good men, but Carl had gone to his great reward just last year, so that left Logan as the only one still breathing.

So many thoughts raced around inside Hannah’s brain in those weirdly elastic, terrifying, life-threatening seconds. The things she should have said to Tim during their final confrontation—on Christmas Eve, no less; that she should have told Logan and her sisters what had happened; that she should have come home for Christmas or the New Year, or both, and leaned on them instead of shouldering the holidays and the six months that had elapsed since then alone. That maybe she should have tried harder to make her newfound notoriety in the Capitol Hill legal community work for her, that she still felt terribly guilty for being involved with someone who was married to someone else, even if she hadn’t known, and hating—hating—that she’d ultimately caved, quit, and come running back home to the Cove with her humiliation tucked between her legs like the tail of failure and shame that it was.

Then Carl’s once-beautiful sign raced right up to the hood of her car and no amount of further wheel yanking and swerving was going to save her from smashing right into it. There was a small explosion as her air bag deployed, punching her in the face and chest, just as her shoulder harness jerked her tightly against her seat back. Her thoughts were yanked instantly back to the present as she plowed straight into the stack of brightly colored plaid quilting squares painted on the bottom corner of the sign. Sorry, Beanie, she thought inanely, along with Shit, shit, shit! as she finally slid to a stop a mere speck of an inch before hitting the cluster of tall ash trees that stood just behind the sign.

She instinctively batted at the white, puffy bag, trying to keep it from smothering her, as she struggled to regain clarity of thought. Her head was buzzing from the adrenaline rush, her pulse was pounding in her ears, and her face hurt. A lot. So did her shoulder. Then the driver’s-side door was being pulled open and there was a man crouching next to her. At least, given the deep voice, she assumed it was a man; she was still wrestling with the air bag.

“You okay?” he asked, his voice all deep and dark and smoky in that bass vibrato kind of way that sent shivers down a woman’s spine. Though, in all fairness, her ears were ringing from the impact and she was pretty sure shock was setting in, so it could have just been an aftereffect of the collision.

He effortlessly collapsed the air bag with one broad palm. “Whoa, whoa,” he added quickly, putting those broad, warm palms gently but firmly on her wrist and shoulder when she tried to wrestle off her seat belt. “Let’s make sure you’re okay before you move too much, all right?”

She wanted to be the cool, competent, in-control—always in-control—attorney she was. Not the exhausted, injured, bordering-on-hysterical idiot who stupidly and blindly dated married men yet still got the shivers over a smoky, hot, sexy voice. Sadly, the latter was the best she had to offer at the moment. “What . . . happened?” she managed, her voice sounding oddly tight, bordering on shrill. “Where did you come from?”

“I came from your left, through the intersection. You ran the stop sign. Not sure how you didn’t see me.”

She leaned her head gingerly back against the headrest, eyes still closed, willing her brain to get straight and her face to stop throbbing. “What stop sign? There’s no stop sign going that way.”

She felt his broad hands grow even gentler on her arm. “Well, then I took those big, red octagonal things with the word STOP on them the wrong way, but let’s not worry about that. You didn’t hit me.”

“Yeah,” she said, her breath coming out in small pants, her heart still feeling a little out of control as the shakes started to set in. “Good. I’m sorry. For scaring you. I—I’ll be okay. You don’t need to stay. I just need a few minutes, that’s all.” And a few painkillers. Possibly a few stitches. And a very long nap. “It’s not . . . your problem,” she gritted out, bolstering herself for another attempt to undo her seat belt. Though she might want to shoot for opening her eyes first. Yeah. Maybe a few more minutes. “Thank you, though. For stopping.”

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  • EVERY BRIDE NEEDS SOMETHING "BLUE"   11.4

    She boggled at him. “Ten days to let someone with Brooks’s resources cover his ass? And what if I’m right and this was just the first volley?”Logan rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and swore under his breath. “Then we’ll cross that road when we come to it.” He kept talking when she would have jumped right back in. “I’m not canceling my honeymoon. It took too long to figure out the logistics in the first place. I won’t do that to Alex, and if you say anything, she’d be the first one to do it herself to help me.”“No, no, I wouldn’t want you to and I’m not going to say anything, I promise. I just—can’t someone you trust in a nearby precinct step in to handle things? Machias maybe? Or Lubec? It’s a hike, but they have more resources than we do.”“If something happens, then yes, at least temporarily until I can get back.” He looked at her. “If something happens, I will come back immediately, Hannah. But without any proof other than a string of hunches on your part—and mine,” he ad

  • EVERY BRIDE NEEDS SOMETHING "BLUE"   11.3

    “I can’t rule it out, but it doesn’t seem likely. Not based on what I know at the moment, anyway.”“Except you don’t know anything.”They both fell silent for a moment and she ran through the previous night again in her mind, then started to list everyone connected with the docks, with Jonah, with the proposed club . . . but nothing stood out, nothing niggled, nothing seemed off. Except Winstock. Who had a lock-tight alibi.Then Logan suddenly swore under his breath.“What?” Hannah demanded. “What just occurred to you?”“There is one other thing after all,” Logan said quietly.Something in his tone made her feel a thread of alarm. “Just tell me already.”“A possible motive for Calder Blue.”“What reason could he possibly have—”“You know the family feud story, that the children Jed took might have been his, or might have been Jeremiah’s.”“That was over a century ago. What on earth could tie that to—”“If they were Jeremiah’s kids, or even one of them was . . . it’s possible then that

  • EVERY BRIDE NEEDS SOMETHING "BLUE"   11.2

    “Tim and I are no longer together,” she said, just putting it out there, boom, done. He’d hear about it from Alex or their sisters anyway.He glanced at her, then reached over and put his hand on her arm, squeezed gently, before returning it to the steering wheel. “I should have called, or pushed, or gotten Barb to push. I’m—you know I’m not good at this stuff.”“Logan,” Hannah said quietly, abashed now, her irritation fleeing as quickly as he’d stirred it up. “I—I guess I owe you an apology. The whole family. Barb, too. I should have said something. Maybe not when it happened, but at some point since then. I just . . . I had to deal with it on my own. I didn’t say anything at the time, because we broke up over Christmas. I knew it was a special holiday for you and Alex, you’d been together a whole year.” She smiled over at him. “Fiona spilled to me in an e-mail that you were going to pop the question over the holidays.” She punched his shoulder, and he mock winced. “Who knew you were

  • EVERY BRIDE NEEDS SOMETHING "BLUE"   11.1

    “Did someone die?”Hannah turned to find her brother in his big, police-issue SUV, idling at the curb. “No,” Hannah said, sniffling and smiling as she wiped her eyes. “Just . . . sister stuff.” She reached down for Alex’s hand, and squeezed it, felt better when Alex held on just as tightly.“I’m getting calls,” he said, mildly. “If you guys are going to keep this up, could you at least do it somewhere less . . . public?”Hannah looked back at the other three, then glanced past them to the gold letters painted on the shop window. They were all still standing outside Linda’s Nail Emporium on High Street. “Oh,” she said, looking back at Logan. “Right.” She gave Alex’s hand a final squeeze, then let go and walked over to the curb.“Actually,” Kerry called out, “we were just talking about The Lumber Yard. You know, that male strip club in Augusta.”Logan’s eyebrows did a slow climb as he looked from Kerry to his lovely bride-to-be.To Kerry’s delight and Hannah’s surprise, Alex simply smil

  • EVERY BRIDE NEEDS SOMETHING "BLUE"   Chapter 11

    “No strippers?” Kerry shook her head at the other three women. “If Delia were here, she’d side with me.”“She finally got the inspector out at her new place—no way was she missing that for a mani-pedi. And it would still be two against three,” Fiona said, beaming smugly.“My disappointment, it is deep,” Kerry replied gravely. “It’s like you all have lost your will to live.”“Maybe we’ve just lost our will to drive several hours to see men disrobe in front of a room full of women,” Fi shot back, smiling even more sweetly.“You all can go if you want to,” Alex said hastily. “I just—” She shrugged. “I’m good with the hot, naked guy I already have.”“Nobody likes a spoiled winner,” Kerry said, but she was giving Alex a high-five as she did so.Fiona groaned and clapped her hands over her eyes. “Bad images, bad images. I’m happy for you, but seriously, consider the audience.”Kerry rolled her eyes and slung an arm around Fi’s shoulders and pulled her in for a side hug. “That reaction is pr

  • EVERY BRIDE NEEDS SOMETHING "BLUE"   10.5

    “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”For his part, Calder just leaned back and propped his booted foot on his knee again. He didn’t need Hannah’s help, but the entertainment value alone made it well worth any potential future complications. Professional or personal. He liked seeing Hannah in litigator mode. Anyone who thought her cold must not have been paying attention. She was fiery, passionate, anything but icy. He felt other parts respond to that train of thought and deliberately looked back at Logan. Yeah, that took care of that. For now.Calder spoke. “I’ve already explained to your brother, the chief here, that I was looking out over the docks and the harbor after my meeting was canceled, trying to figure out what Brooks Winstock’s bigger plan might be, when I ran into you lecturing some poor jerk in D.C. who was trying to hire you—”“That’s not pertinent to this investigation,” she inserted calmly enough, but he’d been watching her and hadn’t missed the brief flash of su

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