PRAISE FOR PARIS IS ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA
“A playful, breezy read that I couldn’t put down!”
—Abby Jimenez, USA Today bestselling author of The Friend Zone
“A delightful romance with characters I adored! Jenn McKinlay takes readers along on a fun and charming adventure in Paris Is Always a Good Idea.”
—Emily March, New York Times bestselling author of Teardrop Lane
“Eat Pray Love meets Mamma Mia! I devoured this clever novel in one sitting!”
—Lori Nelson Spielman, New York Times bestselling author of The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany
“Witty, warm, and wonderful . . . an American Fleabag, told with heart, hope, and joie de vivre.”
—Lori Wilde, New York Times bestselling author of The Moonglow Sisters
“McKinlay spins a funny yet poignant tale.”
—Jen DeLuca, author of Well Met
“A funny and charming romp of self-discovery. . . . You’ll feel like you’ve been on a European vacation even if you didn’t make it out of your own backyard.”
—Kwana Jackson, USA Today bestselling author of Real Men Knit
“Sparkles with wit yet profoundly humane at its core. You will be rooting for Chelsea through all her travels.”
—Jenny Holiday, USA Today bestselling author of Mermaid Inn
“Paris Is Always a Good Idea made me smile, cry, swoon, and cheer. It’s a beautiful, funny, and relatable story about finding yourself.”
—Sarah Smith, author of Faker
PRAISE FOR JENN McKINLAY’S ROMANCE NOVELS
“Jenn McKinlay writes sexy, funny romances that will leave you begging for more!”
—Jill Shalvis, New York Times bestselling author of Almost Just Friends
“Funny, charming, and heart-stoppingly romantic. Jenn McKinlay is a rising star.”
—Jaci Burton, New York Times bestselling author of The Best Man Plan
“McKinlay once again serves up her signature literary cocktail of sassy humor and sexy romance expertly spiked with a surfeit of small-town charm and holiday cheer.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Witty dialogue and a charming small town filled with warm, loving characters will keep readers coming back to this tender series.”
—Publishers Weekly
“As cozy as the hero’s favorite Christmas sweater, with a warm, home-for-the-holidays feel.”
—Library Journal
“[Every Dog Has His Day is] superbly satisfying. . . . A contemporary romance that is practically perfect is every way.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“[Every Dog Has His Day] enchants from the very first page. . . . A sparkling gem of a book that is sure to lift your spirits!”
—RT Book Reviews (top pick)
“McKinlay delivers heartwarming humor at its finest.”
—Lori Wilde, New York Times bestselling author of The Moonglow Sisters
“Clever writing, laugh-out-loud humor, and a sizzling romance. This one is a keeper.”
—Delores Fossen, USA Today bestselling author of A Coldwater Christmas
Titles by Jenn McKinlay
• • • •
HAPPILY EVER AFTER ROMANCES
The Good Ones
The Christmas Keeper
BLUFF POINT ROMANCES
About a Dog
Barking Up the Wrong Tree
Every Dog Has His Day
CUPCAKE BAKERY MYSTERIES
Sprinkle with Murder
Buttercream Bump Off
Death by the Dozen
Red Velvet Revenge
Going, Going, Ganache
Sugar and Iced
Dark Chocolate Demise
Vanilla Beaned
Caramel Crush
Wedding Cake Crumble
Dying for Devil’s Food
Pumpkin Spice Peril
LIBRARY LOVER’S MYSTERIES
Books Can Be Deceiving
Due or Die
Book, Line, and Sinker
Read It and Weep
On Borrowed Time
A Likely Story
Better Late Than Never
Death in the Stacks
Hitting the Books
Word to the Wise
HAT SHOP MYSTERIES
Cloche and Dagger
Death of a Mad Hatter
At the Drop of a Hat
Copy Cap Murder
Assault and Beret
Buried to the Brim
A JOVE BOOK
Published by Berkley
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © 2020 by Jennifer McKinlay
Readers Guide copyright © 2020 by Jennifer McKinlay
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
A JOVE BOOK, BERKLEY, and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: McKinlay, Jenn, author.
Title: Paris is always a good idea / Jenn McKinlay.
Description: First edition. | New York: Jove, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019057298 | ISBN 9780593101353 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593101360 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Humorous fiction. | Love stories.
Classification: LCC PS3612.A948 P37 2020 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019057298
First Edition: July 2020
Cover art and design by Vikki Chu
Interior art: European sights by ostudio.ok/Shutterstock
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.
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contents
Cover
Praise for Jenn McKinlay
Titles by Jenn McKinlay
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
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
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Readers Guide
About the Author
For Alyssa Amaturo, my adorable flower girl now a beautiful grown
woman. I am so impressed by the amazing person you have become—funny, talented, smart, and with a generous heart! You helped me so much with this book. I can never thank you enough!
chapter one
I’M GETTING MARRIED.”
“Huh?”
“We’ve already picked our colors, pink and gray.”
“Um . . . pink and what?”
“Gray. What do you think, Chelsea? I want your honest opinion. Is that too retro?”
I stared at my middle-aged widowed father. We were standing in a bridal store in central Boston on the corner of Boylston and Berkeley Streets, and he was talking to me about wedding colors. His wedding colors.
“I’m sorry—I need a sec,” I said. I held up my hand and blinked hard while trying to figure out just what the hell was happening.
I had raced here from my apartment in Cambridge after receiving a text from my dad, asking me to meet him at this address because it was an emergency. I was prepared for heart surgery, not wedding colors!
Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. I wrestled the constricting wool scarf from around my neck, yanked the beanie off my head, and stuffed them in my pockets. I scrubbed my scalp with my fingers in an attempt to make the blood flow to my brain. It didn’t help. Come on, Martin, I coached myself. Pull it together. I unzipped my puffy winter jacket to let some air in, then I focused on my father.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“Pink and gray, too retro?” Glen Martin, a.k.a. Dad, asked. He pushed his wire-frame glasses up on his nose and looked at me as if he was asking a perfectly reasonable question.
“No, before that.” I waved my hand in a circular motion to indicate he needed to back it all the way up.
“I’m getting married!” His voice went up when he said it, and I decided my normally staid fifty-five-year-old dad was somehow currently possessed by a twenty-something bridezilla.
“You okay, Dad?” I asked. Not for nothing, because the last time I checked, he hadn’t even been dating anyone, never mind thinking about marriage. “Have you recently slipped on some ice and whacked your head? I ask because you don’t seem to be yourself.”
“Sorry,” he said. He reached out and wrapped me in an impulsive hug, another indicator that he was not his usual buttoned-down mathematician self. “I’m just . . . I’m just so happy. What do you think about being a flower girl?”
“Um . . . I’m almost thirty.” I tried not to look as bewildered as I felt. What was happening here?
“Yes, but we already have a full wedding party, and you and your sister would be really cute in matching dresses, maybe something sparkly.”
“Matching dresses? Sparkly?” I repeated. I struggled to make sense of his words. I couldn’t. It was clear. My father had lost his ever-lovin’ mind. I should probably call my sister.
I studied his face, trying to determine just how crazy he was. The same hazel eyes I saw in my own mirror every morning held mine, but where my eyes frequently looked flat with a matte finish, his positively glowed. He really looked happy.
“You’re serious,” I gasped. I glanced around the bridal store, which was stuffed to the rafters with big fluffy white dresses. None of this made any sense, and yet here I was. “You’re not pranking me?”
“Nope.” He grinned again. “Congratulate me, peanut. I’m getting married.”
I felt as if my chest were collapsing into itself. Never, not once, in the past seven years had I ever considered the possibility that my father would remarry.
“To who?” I asked. It couldn’t be . . . nah. That would be insane.
“Really, Chels?” Dad straightened up. The smile slid from his face, and he cocked his head to the side—his go-to disappointed-parent look.
I had not been on the receiving end of this look very often in life. Not like my younger sister, Annabelle, who seemed to thrive on “the look.” Usually, it made me fall right in line but not today.
“Sheri? You’re marrying Sheri?” I tried to keep my voice neutral. Major failure, as I stepped backward, tripped on the trailing end of my scarf, and gracelessly sprawled onto one of the cream-colored velvet chairs that were scattered around the ultrafeminine store. I thought it was a good thing I was sitting, because if he answered in the affirmative, I might faint.
“Yes, I asked her to marry me, and to my delight she accepted,” he said. Another happy, silly grin spread across his lips as if he just couldn’t help it.
“But . . . but . . . she won you in a bachelor auction two weeks ago!” I cried. I closed my mouth before I said more, like pointing out that this was hasty in the extreme.
The store seamstress, who was assisting a bride up on the dais in front of a huge trifold mirror, turned to look at us. Her dark hair was scraped up into a knot on top of her head, and her face was contoured to perfection. She made me feel like a frump in my Sunday no-makeup face. Which, in my defense, was not my fault, because when I’d left the house to meet Dad, I’d had no idea the address he’d sent was for Brianna’s Bridal. I’d been expecting an urgent care; in fact, I wasn’t sure yet that we didn’t need one.
Glen Martin, Harvard mathematician and all-around nerd dad, had been coerced into participating in a silver-fox bachelor auction for prominent Bostonians by my sister, Annabelle, to help raise funds for Boston Children’s Hospital. I had gone, of course, to support my sister and my dad, and it had mostly been a total snooze fest.
The highlight of the event was when two socialites got into a bidding war over a surgeon, and the loser slapped the winner across the face with her cardboard paddle. Good thing the guy was a cosmetic surgeon, because there was most definitely some repair work needed on that paper cut.
But my father had not been anywhere near that popular with the ladies. No one wanted a mathematician. No one. After several minutes of excruciating silence, following the MC trying to sell the lonely gals on my dad’s attempts to solve the Riemann hypothesis, I had been about to bid on him myself, when Sheri, a petite brunette, had raised her paddle with an initial offer. The smile of gratitude Dad had sent Sheri had been blinding, and the next thing we knew, a flurry of numbered paddles popped up in the air, but Sheri stuck in there and landed the win for $435.50.
“Two weeks is all it took,” Dad said. He shrugged and held out his hands like a blackjack dealer showing he had no hidden cards, chips, or cash.
I stared at him with a look that I’m sure was equal parts shock and horror.
“I know it’s a surprise, Chels, but when—” he began, but I interrupted him.
“Dad, I don’t think a bachelor auction is the basis for a stable, long-lasting relationship.”
“You have to admit it makes a great story,” he said.
“Um . . . no.” I tried to sound reasonable, as if this were a math problem about fitting sixty watermelons into a small car. I spread my hands wide and asked, “What do you even know about Sheri? What’s her favorite color?”
“Pink, duh.” He looked at me with a know-it-all expression more commonly seen on a teenager than a grown-ass man. Hmm.
“All right, who are you, and what have you done with my father?” I wanted to check him for a fever; maybe he had the flu and he was hallucinating.
“I’m still me, Chels,” he said. He gazed at me gently. “I’m just a happy me, for a change.”
Was that it? Was that what was so different about him? He was happy? How could he be happy with a woman he hardly knew? Maybe . . . oh dear. My dad hadn’t circulated much after my mom’s death. Maybe he was finally getting a little something-something, and he had it confused with love. Oh god, how was I supposed to talk about this with him?
I closed my eyes. I took a deep breath. Parents did this all the time. Surely I could manage it. Heck, it
would be great practice if I ever popped out a kid. I opened my eyes. Three women were standing in the far corner in the ugliest chartreuse dresses I had ever seen. Clearly, they were the attendants of a bride who hated them. And that might be me in sparkly pink or gray if I didn’t put a stop to this madness.
“Sit down, Dad,” I said. “I think we need to have a talk.”
He took the seat beside mine and looked at me with the same patience he had when he’d taught me to tie my shoes. I looked away. Ugh, this was more awkward than when my gynecologist told me to scoot down, repeatedly. It’s like they don’t know a woman’s ass needs some purchase during an annual. Focus, Martin!
“I know that you’ve been living alone for several years.” I cleared my throat. “And I imagine you’ve had some needs that have gone unmet.”
“Chels, no—” he said. “It isn’t about that.”
I ignored him, forging on while not making eye contact, because, lordy, if I had to have this conversation with him, I absolutely could not look at him.
“And I understand that after such a long dry spell, you might be confused about what you feel, and that’s okay,” I said. Jeebus, this sounded like a sex talk by Mr. Rogers. “The thing is, you don’t have to marry the first person you sleep with after Mom.”
There, I said it. And my wise advice and counsel were met with complete silence. I waited for him to express relief that he didn’t have to get married. And I waited. Finally, I glanced up at my father, who was staring at me in the same way he had when I discovered he was actually the tooth fairy. Chagrin.
“Sheri is not the first,” he said.
“She’s not?” I was shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
“No.”
“But you never told me about anyone before,” I said.
“You didn’t need to know,” he replied. “They were companions, not relationships.”
“They?!” I shouted. I didn’t mean to. The seamstress sent me another critical look, and I coughed, trying to get it together.
Dad shifted in his seat, sending me a small smile of understanding. “Maybe meeting here wasn’t the best idea. I thought you’d be excited to help plan the wedding, but perhaps you’re not ready.”
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