by Julia London
Also by Julia London
Historicals
The Devil’s Love
Wicked Angel
The Rogues of Regent Street
The Dangerous Gentleman
The Ruthless Charmer
The Beautiful Stranger
The Secret Lover
Highland Lockhart Family
Highlander Unbound
Highlander in Disguise
Highlander in Love
The Desperate Debutantes
The Hazards of Hunting a Duke
The Perils of Pursuing a Prince
The Dangers of Deceiving a Viscount
The School for Heiresses, Anthology. “The Merchant’s Gift,” Sabrina
Jeffries, Liz Carlyle, Julia London, Renee Bernard
The Scandalous Series
The Book of Scandal
Highland Scandal
A Courtesan’s Scandal
Snowy Night With a Stranger, Anthology. “Snowy Night with a Highlander,” Jane Feather, Sabrina Jeffries, Julia London
The Secrets of Hadley Green
The Year of Living Scandalously
The Christmas Secret, novella
The Revenge of Lord Eberlin
The Seduction of Lady X
The Last Debutante
Contemporary Romance and Women’s Fiction
The Fancy Lives of the Lear Sisters
Material Girl
Beauty Queen
Miss Fortune
Over the Edge (previously available as Thrillseekers Anonymous)
All I Need Is You (previously available as Wedding Survivor)
One More Night (previously available as Extreme Bachelor)
Fall into Me (previously available as American Diva)
Cedar Springs
Summer of Two Wishes
One Season of Sunshine
A Light at Winter’s End
Special Projects
Guiding Light: Jonathan’s Story, tie-in to Guiding Light
Anthologies
Talk of The Ton, “The Vicar’s Daughter,” Eloisa James, Julia London, Rebecca Hagan Lee, Jacqueline Navin
Hot Ticket, then: “Lucky Charm,” Julia London, Dierdre Martin, Annette Blair, Geri Buckley
The School for Heiresses, “The Merchant’s Gift,” Sabrina Jeffries, Liz Carlyle, Julia London, Renee Bernard
Snowy Night with a Stranger, “Snowy Night with a Highlander,” Jane Feather, Sabrina Jeffries, Julia London
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright © 2005 Dinah Dinwiddie
Previously published as Wedding Survivor in 2005, 2011
Montlake Romance Edition published in 2013
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance
PO Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781477805817
ISBN-10: 1477805818
CONTENTS
Start reading
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
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
If you enjoyed…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dear Reader:
I am thrilled that my earlier series Thrillseekers Anonymous is available to you once more. Now titled Over the Edge, these books are about a few men who love a good thrill. They have become fearless and brazen, and will try any extreme sport for the adrenaline rush. But there is no sport more extreme than falling in love.
They have dodged danger many times. But when they get the idea to form Thrillseekers Anonymous, creating extreme sport vacations for the very wealthy, they run into the sort of trouble where their brawn does not help them. Eli, the thinker of the group, runs across the wedding planner, Marnie, whose bubbly personality is more than he can bear. Marnie’s only goal is to put on the wedding of the century for an A-list celebrity couple…until she finds out how much she needs Eli to make that happen. Michael is the newcomer, arriving with plenty of baggage. When he runs into Leah again, he is reminded that she was The One—only Leah doesn’t quite see it that way after the way he dumped her. Finally, Jack is saddled with providing security to the latest, hottest pop star, Audrey. He doesn’t like her high-handed ways and Audrey doesn’t like mouthy bodyguards. But circumstances keep forcing them together, and the sparks begin to fly.
This series idea came to me after a family member enthusiastically described a helicopter ski trip. It made me wonder about men who have no fear of jumping out of helicopters in remote terrain, then skiing down mountain faces where there are no trails. I could picture them, bruised and battered, but very proud of themselves. And then I pictured what sort of woman could bring a man like that to his knees. It was delicious fun! I hope you find some thrills of your own in this resurrected series. Happy reading!
CHAPTER ONE
There she was, their next victim…only she didn’t really look like the other wedding planners.
That was not necessarily a bad thing.
On the edge of Beverly Hills, at the corner of Third and Fairfax, Marnie Banks, their next victim (as Eli McCain liked to think of them, for reasons that would soon be apparent to Ms. Banks), walked into the Original Farmer’s Market wearing a red baseball hat.
At least she followed instructions.
From the backseat of the Lincoln Town Car, Eli watched her stroll deeper into the market. She had a bag over one shoulder and wore a pair of snowy-white sneakers. He didn’t know a lot about women’s fashions, but he didn’t think the shoes jibed with the rest of her outfit. She was supposed to be dressed in simple, banging-around clothes, not like she was headed for a schoolteacher convention. Her pants reminded him of something his mom would wear, and her blouse was buttoned almost to her hairline.
Whatever—she’d done what they’d asked, worn the red hat and sneakers, and was presumably on her way to buy a piece of fruit so she could be distinguished from all the other schoolmarms that might be lurking in the market.
She turned right and whoa—that was a thick tail of coppery red hair falling out the back of her baseball hat. At least now Eli understood what the hell she was talking about when he’d called her to set up this interview.
He and his partners were, inexplicably, interviewing wedding planners to coordinate a very high-profile wedding. Yes, Thrillseekers Anonymous, the premier LA boys’ club, was going to add a wedding planner to its ranks.
It was a convoluted story and one Eli didn’t like to think about, but the long and short of it was,
when he’d called Marnie Banks to give her the rundown of how the interview for this gig would occur—including the red hat, piece of fruit, sneakers, and casual clothing—she hadn’t questioned any of it. Unlike the other three candidates, who seemed a little freaked out by the prerequisites, this one instantly began to chatter like a flock of magpies about how mystery and stealth were absolutely necessary to pull off the wedding of two megastars.
Eli appreciated the fact that she seemed to take their unusual request in stride, and ticked off the prerequisites for the interview. At the end of the list, she’d asked, “Could I make just one teeny-tiny suggestion?”
“A suggestion?”
“Just a little one. I mean, fruit, shoes—I get that. But what would you say to a black hat instead of a red one?”
Her question had stumped him—he could not imagine what the color of the hat had to do with anything. “Why?” he’d asked after a moment. “What’s wrong with a red hat?”
“My hair is red.”
She said it very matter-of-factly, as if it were perfectly obvious what the color of her hair meant to anyone. Eli was so baffled that he could not respond. As he was trying to work through what she could possibly mean, she’d clarified, “A red hat would really clash with my hair.”
He told her to hang on a minute, then covered the phone with his hand and stared blankly at the wall.
“What?” Cooper, one of his partners, asked, peering at him suspiciously. “Is she a whack job?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. But she thinks a red hat would clash with her red hair.”
“What do you mean, clash?” Cooper demanded hotly, looking as confused as Eli felt.
“I think she means that they don’t go together. Like green and…hell, I don’t know, whatever green doesn’t go with.”
Cooper blinked. “Get out.”
Eli frowned, uncovered the phone. “No,” he said sternly to Marnie. “Red hat.”
“Okay. Just thought I’d ask. It never hurts to just ask, right? I’ve never been shy about asking, because I fig—”
“Marnie? Is that you?”
The older woman’s voice on the line startled Eli, and apparently Marnie, too, for it was the first time she’d shut up since he’d called.
“Mom! I’m on the phone!”
“Are you? I thought I heard the phone ring. Well, sorry for the intrusion, honey. Bye now.” The phone clicked off.
“I am so so sorry about that,” Marnie had gushed. “How embarrassing.” She laughed a little too hard. “You know how mothers are.”
She lives with her mom? “Right,” he said, mentally adding a check in the con column. “So, are we straight? You know what, when, and where?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Great. See you then,” he said, and hung up.
He turned around and folded his arms across his chest and frowned thoughtfully at Cooper. “She’s chatty. Not good.”
Cooper winced. “But they’ve all been kind of chatty, haven’t they?”
Good point. But this one…Eli didn’t know why, but he had the feeling that this one was different from the others.
I was right, he thought now, as he settled in to wait for her to reemerge with her fruit. She was certainly different from the others in physical appearance, and in the best way possible. She had an athletic build. A nice athletic build. Long legs. Strong back. A nice ass and that excellent dark-copper hair. Hopefully, she could survive the interview.
About fifteen minutes later, she reappeared holding an enormous casaba melon that looked like it weighed thirty pounds.
He had told her, very explicitly, to purchase a piece of fruit that could be seen by the casual observer—he’d meant like a bright orange. Apparently she thought he meant they were blind.
She stopped next to a trash can, balanced the melon on top of it, swung the bag off her shoulder, and bent over to rummage around inside.
Eli glanced at his clock. It was a minute to two, the appointed time. She was punctual—another point in her favor. He told the driver to pull up to the curb, and as she continued to rummage, Eli got out, leaned up against the back fender of the car, hands in pockets, waiting. She finally stood, slung the bag over her shoulder, and heaved the melon to her chest again. That’s when she noticed Eli standing there and did a strange little hop-in-place.
“Marnie Banks?”
“Ah…yeah,” she said, smiling a little. “That’s me.”
“Great. You can get in,” he said, and opened the door of the Lincoln.
Still smiling, she dipped a little to see inside the car, her maple brown–colored eyes squinting.
“Why don’t you just dump the melon?” he suggested.
She jerked her gaze from the car to the melon she was holding, then to him. “Dump the melon?”
“Dump it.”
“But I paid seven bucks for it.”
Why? “Okay, so keep the melon,” Eli said. “You wanna get in?”
“Okay.” She straightened and looked at the Lincoln. For a very long moment.
Expressionless, he watched her. She was having the same reaction that the others had, and in hindsight, he thought that maybe this wasn’t the best approach to hiring a wedding planner.
“Ah…” Marnie took a tentative step forward and bent at the waist, trying to see inside the Lincoln again. “You’re the Thrillseeker guy, right?”
“Right. You mind getting in before we call attention to ourselves?”
“Do you have a name?”
“Yes. Eli,” he said, looking behind her. You could never be too safe—if she’d told anyone about this and the rag press got wind of what they were up to, they’d be all over the girl. And him.
Marnie took another step forward. “You are the dude with the same Thrillseekers outfit that is arranging the wedding of Vin—”
“Yo—” he said, cutting her off before she could utter the names of the two biggest superstars in America. “No names, remember?”
“Oh. Right.” She peered inside again, then at him with those big maple eyes. “And it’s perfectly understandable, given that you’re dealing with a supersecret wedding—well, technically, a second attempt at a supersecret wedding—”
“Ah…I think that would fall under the category of no names,” he reminded her. “Just get in, will you?”
She stepped closer, directly next to him. Eli detected a very pleasant scent as she peered inside. “The windows are black on the inside.”
“That’s right. We have clients who don’t like anyone to know they’re inside.”
“Oh,” she said, as if a light had just popped on inside her head. “Right, right.” She dipped under his arm and carefully put one long leg in the Lincoln, bent to have another look, then reluctantly slid the rest of her body inside. Eli shut the door, walked around to the other side, got in beside her, and locked the doors.
“Are you locking the doors?” she cried with alarm.
“You can unlock them from your seat,” he said, nodding at her seat controls.
“Right, okay,” she said, squinting at all the buttons on her door.
Eli waited until she had found the unlock button and tried it once or twice. When she settled back, apparently satisfied that she could flee if necessary, he asked, “Okay?”
“Okay,” she said firmly. “I’m good.”
“Yo,” he said to the driver, and pushed a button to roll up the window between the front and back seats. The driver pulled away from the curb, and Eli settled back.
Out of the corner of his eye he watched Marnie Banks remove her red hat and perch it atop the casaba melon between them, fuss with her hair a minute, then try to see out the thick, smoky glass. But she bored of that and settled back again, turning slightly in her seat to face him. “So,” she said brightly, all her reservations apparently gone. “Your name is Eli, is that right?”
“Right.”
“Riiight. Do I detect a bit of a drawl? Where are you from, Eli?”
“Ah! I love Texas. My uncle used to live in Austin. Great place. I love the music scene, do you? And the lakes. I had the best time at that huge lake down there, what’s the name? Tavish? No, Travis. Travis, that’s it. So what part of Texas are you from?”
Oh God, she was chatty. “West. We’ll arrive at our destination in half an hour.”
“Okay,” Marnie said, and picked up her bag, looking inside. “Would you like an orange?” she asked, and pulled one out, sticking it under his nose to show him. “I picked some up at the market. I figured as long as I was there, I might as well pick up a few things,” she said cheerfully.
Eli glanced down. The orange was enormous, almost the size of the melon. “No, thanks.”
The orange disappeared. She put the bag down and straightened her blouse. She was really pretty, he thought. Not gorgeous or reed-thin like the Hollywood types he was used to working with, but a lot prettier than a schoolmarm and definitely a lot curvier.
She glanced up, but did not seem to notice Eli checking her out. “I’m from LA,” she said. “Born and raised.”
Eli shifted his gaze forward.
“I used to be in high tech,” she said, casually propping her arm on the melon and crossing her legs. “I was doing pretty well until my company went bankrupt.”
Eli said nothing.
“That’s why I’m a wedding planner.” She laughed. “Yep, I finally got the opportunity to jump into the wedding business with both feet when I got laid off. But I’d wanted to do it for a long time, you know. I figured the high-tech thing really wasn’t for me,” she said with a sniff. “I’m really better suited to planning weddings than designing Web pages. Honestly? Getting laid off was the kick I needed to jump right in there and start doing it. And then I heard about this wedding!” She suddenly twisted toward him again. “So how do you know them? Vincent Vittorio and Olivia Dagwood, I mean. I knew this would happen, by the way. I read in People that they started seeing each other again on the set of The Dane.”
That much was true. Eli had worked that movie, and it was the second affair they’d had. The first one had ruined their marriages. And then they’d broken up over a makeup girl. When Vince dumped the makeup girl, their second affair had been pretty much in the open, and Olivia’s quickie divorce from the dancer she’d married while Vince was doing the makeup girl pretty much sealed the deal.
