SIX DAYS
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♦ THE ♦SISTERS ♦QUARTET ♦WEDDING ♦
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MARY J. WILLIAMS
© 2019
Copyright © 2019 by Mary J. Williams.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the Copyright owner and publisher of this book.
First E-book Printing, 2018
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Writing isn't easy. But I love every second. A blank screen isn't the enemy. It is an opportunity to create new friends and take them on amazing adventures and life-changing journeys. I feel blessed to spend my days weaving tales that are unique—because I made them.
Billionaires. Songwriters. Artists. Actors. Directors. Stuntmen. Football players. They fill the pages and become dear friends I hope you will want to revisit again and again.
Thank you for jumping into my books and coming along for the journey.
HOW TO GET IN TOUCH
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Please visit me at these sites, sign up for my newsletter or leave a message.
http://www.maryjwilliams.net/
https://www.bookbub.com/authors/mary-j-williams
https://www.facebook.com/maryjwilliamsauthor/?ref=hl
https://twitter.com/maryjwilliams05
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https://www.instagram.com/2015romance/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5648619.Mary_J_Williams
MORE BOOKS BY MARY J. WILLIAMS
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Harper Falls Series
If I Loved You
If Tomorrow Never Comes
If You Only Knew
If I Had You (Christmas in Harper Falls)
Hollywood Legends Series
Dreaming With a Broken Heart
Dreaming With My Eyes Wide Open
Dreaming Again
Dreaming of a White Christmas
(Caleb and Callie's story)
One Pass Away Series
After the Rain
After All These Years
After the Fire
Hart of Rock and Roll
Flowers on the Wall
Flowers and Cages
Flowers are Red
Flowers for Zoe
Flowers in Winter
WITH ONE MORE LOOK AT YOU
One Strike Away
For a Little While
For Another Day
For All We Know
For the First Time
The Sisters Quartet
One Way or Another
Two of a Kind
Three Wishes
Four Simple Words
Five More Minutes (The Sisters Quartet Christmas)
Coming in 2019
Almost Paradise
ROCK AND ROLL FOREVER BOOK ONE
(A Hart of Rock and Roll Spin-Off Series)
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
To all the lovers, young and old.
Remember, the heart is an amazingly, wondrously resilient organ.
Hope springs eternal.
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HOW TO GET IN TOUCH
MORE BOOKS BY MARY J. WILLIAMS
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
EPILOGUE
SIX DAYS
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♦ THE ♦SISTERS ♦QUARTET ♦WEDDING ♦
CHAPTER ONE
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WHO WAS HE?
Dee Wakefield knew his name. After all, she was a private investigator. Her job was to uncover the unknown. Not that she had to dig far. Andi Benedict—hostess for the evening and everyday friend—held the information at the tip of her fingers. And why not? Her party, her guests.
Lincoln James. The name rang an immediate bell. Not because he was the number-one-ranked tennis player in the world. Who the hell followed tennis? In Dee’s mind, running around in pretty, white shorts as you slapped a ball over a net was more of a rich man’s pastime than a sport.
No, the reason she recognized Lincoln James by name had nothing to do with his so-called profession and everything to do with his off-court reputation. The man was tabloid fodder—information she took with a grain of salt. As long as he only pulled out his dick for willing partners over the age of consent, he could sleep with every model and actress on the planet—she couldn’t care less.
Dee’s dark gaze narrowed as she watched the man across the room watching her. Where was his shame? When caught staring, most people had the decency to drop their eyes or, at the very least, appear contrite—even if they felt no such emotion.
Not Lincoln James. Instead, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Way Too Good Looking upped the ante. He locked his gaze on Dee, raising an eyebrow as if to challenge her. His clear, unwavering blue eyes seemed to say, if you have a problem, come and tell me to my face—I dare you.
Sipping her champagne, Dee remained calm on the outside as she counted to ten. I dare you. The man couldn’t know her weakness for a challenge. When she was younger—a teenager who didn’t give a flying leap about something as trivial as impulse control—she would have marched over and told the jerk exactly what she thought of men who stared.
Then, as a cherry on top of her misspent youth, she would have found the first empty room and screwed the smirk off his face.
Born with a streak of crazy her parents couldn’t control, Dee carried a soft spot in her heart for the girl she used to be. While she didn’t miss the raging hormones or the inexplicable need to shoot a metaphorical—occasionally literal—middle finger at any form of authority, she almost missed the feeling of utter freedom and liberation that came with an I don’t give a crap attitude.
Trouble was, young Dee had nothing to be liberated from. She grew up loved and cared for in a nice, middle-class neighborhood, with nice parents, and a nice older brother. Their nice house came with a nice backyard where every Sunday, her father barbequed nice after-church hamburgers.
Nice, nice, and nicer. Even now, with the wisdom of time and age, the idea made Dee shudder. She loved her family, honestly and wholeheartedly. But she never quite fit into the life they were content to live.
Older, hopefully wiser, Dee understood some people’s need for safe, secure, and settled. However, to understand wasn’t the same as to desire. Her mother continued to hold onto the belief her youngest child would one day become what society considered normal.
Sorry, Mom. Not going to happen.
To be fair, Dee admired her mother’s single-mindedness—the one trait they had in common. If only Judy Wakefield’s ingrained beliefs didn’t clash so hard with her daughter’s, they might find a way to get along for more than five minutes at a time. In Judy’s mind, a woman could never be happy unless she was married with children.
Just the idea of home and hearth made Dee want to jump off the nearest cliff.
The rebel in her would never be completely tamed. Yet, in the past twenty years, Dee had mellowed. A respecte
d private investigator, her reputation as a never quit until the job was done professional was hard-earned and, if she did say so herself, well-deserved.
Dee’s clients always received their money’s worth.
A responsible adult who paid her bills on time and never cheated the government on her taxes, she had changed in many ways. However, as much as Judy Wakefield wished and prayed, one thing Dee would never be was her mother’s definition of normal.
Normal. Again, Dee felt an uneasy prickle race along her nerve endings. She touched the brightly colored ends of choppily cut, dark hair and smiled. Not so long ago, she sported a bleached-blond mohawk. Though her look had softened a bit, Dee was as snarky as ever. If the edges of her razor-sharp personality ever softened to mush, she would sell her Beretta and settle in the New Hampshire suburbs next to her parents and happily married brother.
In other words, never.
“The day I leave New York City is the day they bury me six feet under,” Dee muttered.
The words were meant for her ears only. Unfortunately, she wasn’t alone. A party swirled around her, festive and filled with revelers ready to ring in a new year. Included in the sea of strangers were a surprisingly large number of familiar faces. Brow raised, Adam Stone stopped by her side, a spark of a question in his eyes.
“I’d rather you didn’t leave New York under any conditions.” The friendly glint in his blue eyes sharpened. “Something wrong?”
“What’s the problem?” Calder Benedict, Andi’s sister, Adam’s fiancée, joined them. Concerned, she lay a hand on Dee’s arm. “Tonight’s party is supposed to be a trouble-free zone. A chance to ring in the new year with nothing but smiles and good tidings, et cetera, et cetera. If someone’s giving you grief, let me know. I’ll sic Destry on him or her.”
Dressed for the festivities, Adam in an impeccably tailored black suit, Calder in a shimmery bronze dress designed to show off her tall, lithe figure to perfection, they had the look of a young, successful couple, thoroughly and irrevocably in love.
In the case of Adam Stone and Calder Benedict, looks did not deceive.
“Since Dee is the only person I know, man or woman, who might be able to take your sister in a fair fight, I don’t think she needs kickass help.”
“True.” Calder gave her fiancé a bright smile. “As long as my little sister and Dee are around, we Benedict women are better protected than Fort Knox.”
“Ouch.” Adam pulled an imaginary arrow from his chest. “Right in the ego.”
“Please.” With a scoff, Calder shook her head. “One of the many reasons I love you is because you can handle a strong woman. If you couldn’t, I’d have left you in the dust long ago.”
“Can’t shake me now.” Chuckling, Adam raised Calder’s free hand, his lips brushing the platinum and diamond band on her ring finger. “Fact is, I fell the moment I saw you. Just took a while for you to catch up.”
“Ten minutes, by my calculations, and I was in love.”
As Dee watched the exchange, she quickly identified the twinge in her gut as wistfulness rather than envy. She long ago put aside the belief she’d find love—an emotion she doubted existed outside her immediate family until Adam and Calder proved her wrong. They were the real deal. Solid as a rock, and so hot for each other anyone within a mile could feel the heat.
“You two want to be alone?” Their friendship was strong enough for a little good-natured teasing. “Unless you plan to put on a show and give your guests something they’ll never forget?”
“I think we can restrain ourselves,” Calder assured Dee. “Now, tell me what’s wrong.”
Damn, Dee sighed. The woman was unrelenting.
“Hoped I’d forgotten?” The brunette shrugged. “Where my friends and family are concerned, I never forget anything.”
Suddenly, Dee felt foolish. She almost wished she could go back to before she met Calder and her sisters—almost. Before they sucked her into their glitzy universe.
Born rich, raised in luxury, sophisticated to the tips of their blue blood toes, the Benedict sisters were Dee’s opposites. They had nothing in common. Certainly, not enough to build a friendship.
On paper, they were pampered princesses. To her surprise, they turned out to be four women she admired as much as anyone she’d ever met. Andi, Calder, Bryce, and Destry Benedict had become an important part of her life. And Dee, shockingly, wouldn’t have it any other way.
“One of your guests keeps staring at me. No, don’t look,” Dee hissed when Adam and Calder would have turned their heads. “I’m silly to let him get to me.”
Calder tried to take a surreptitious peek but found the angle was wrong.
“Do you know who he is?” Dee asked with a frustrated sigh.
Luckily, Adam’s peripheral vision was unobstructed.
“Lincoln James.”
“Yum, yum.”
“Hey,” Adam chided his fiancée. Calder smiled at his teasingly disgruntled expression.
“I’m allowed to look at a handsome man—and appreciate his charms. As are you.”
“Linc isn’t my type.”
Adam’s lighthearted rejoinder echoed Dee’s response when Andi Benedict made the same observation about the man. She had no doubt Lincoln James appealed to a wide range of people—men and women. If honest, she had to admit the guy was easy on her eyes.
She knew his kind the second their eyes met. And met again. And again. Polished and smooth, like a rock in a stream washed by years of flowing water—or generations of careful breeding.
Dee wasn’t into glamor boys with inflated opinions of themselves.
“Linc is a friend. As are you.” Adam frowned. “But if he’s done something to bother you, I’ll have a few words with him.”
Yes, she was bothered, a fact Dee didn’t want to admit even to herself. She was embarrassed by her reaction—and a bit confused. The last thing she needed was to let Lincoln James know how much his stare affected her.
“Please don’t.” Dee did her best to laugh off the situation. “I’m sure he’s harmless.”
“Hardly,” Adam snorted. “Don’t get me wrong. Linc is one of the good guys. However, where women are concerned, he’s a wolf. One, I assure you, who plays fair.”
“Linc doesn’t force his attentions where they aren’t wanted,” Calder assured Dee. “At least I haven’t heard anything to the contrary. We all know stories about men with seemingly sterling reputations who, in reality, weren’t so sterling.”
In Dee’s business, she came across a lot of men—and women—who never hit the headlines but were as bad, or worse, than the ones who did. Sex was rarely the motive. The worse kind of predators, they got their jollies off vulnerability, fear, and desperation. Power, not passion. A fact too often ignored by those who continually chose victim blaming over facts.
Dee knew, as well as many of her clients, the pain of abuse and the memories of the whispers and looks from her so-called friends. She walked away—from the Navy, from the life she’d built, the career she loved. And almost died in the process.
“Hey. Are you okay?” Calder’s dark eyes filled with concern. “You look a little pale.”
She was okay. Better than okay. She’d survived the worst, then, she thrived.
Shaking off the memories, Dee gave her friends a reassuring smile. As Calder said, tonight was a celebration. The last thing she wanted was to dwell on the shadows of the past.
“Tell me about your wedding plans.”
The Benedict sisters were loyal and protective of those they cared about. The list was short and carefully guarded. Much to her surprise, Dee was added soon after they met. More befuddling? She felt the same about them.
Calder displayed one of the big reasons she’d earned Dee’s friendship when she looked as though she would ask more questions, then, bless her, allowed Dee to change the subject.
“Do you really want to know about bouquets and place settings?
”
“No.” Dee rolled her eyes in a good-natured way, drawing a grin from Calder. “I want to know if any of you have set a date. Or, do the Benedict sisters plan to have the longest engagements in recorded history?”
“Andi and Noah plan a fall wedding. Mid-October. Bryce and Zach, if they can clear their busy schedules, will probably elope—followed by a blow-out party.
Alone, Bryce Benedict and her director fiancé, Zach Devlin, were A-list celebrities. Together, they were the equivalent of American royalty. If they could sneak away and tie the knot without the press getting wind of the event, more power to them.
Still, Dee couldn’t imagine Bryce walking down any aisle without her sisters there as witnesses.
“Elope? Really?” Dee asked with a doubtful frown.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Calder assured her. “No matter where or when, Andi, Destry, and I will be there.”
“Some elopement,” Adam winked.
“And Iris?” Dee inquired about the newest Benedict sister.
“Naturally. The little scamp.” Exasperation tinged affection flitted across Calder’s face. “Not even three-years-old and she already rules the roost.”
“She’s a Benedict.” Dee grinned. “What else would you expect?”
“Did you have something to add?” Calder asked her fiancé when she noticed the way he rolled his eyes.
Though Adam was devoted to the love of his life, he didn’t wear blinders. Calder—like her sisters—could be a handful. Wisely, he knew when to stand his ground and when to retreat to fight another day.
“I love you.”
“For Pete’s sake,” Calder huffed—then, burst out laughing. “Men seem to think I love you is the cure-all. A get out of jail free card.”
“Works better than half the time,” Adam pointed out.
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