The Marriage Agenda: The Marriage Conspiracy / The Billionaire's Baby Plan

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

The Marriage Conspiracy

A New York Times bestselling author, Christine Rimmer has written over ninety contemporary romances for Harlequin. Christine has won the RT Reviewers’ Choice Award and has been nominated six times for the RITA® Award. She lives in Oregon with her family. Visit Christine at christinerimmer.com (http://www.christinerimmer.com).

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For those who sought friendship and found lasting love.

Chapter 1

It was hot, without a hint of a breeze. Mid-October and it felt like the dog days of August. The wedding guests wandered beneath the sweet gums and pecan trees that shaded Camilla Tilly’s backyard, faces shining with sweat, sipping cold drinks in which the ice melted too soon.

Joleen Tilly, Camilla’s oldest daughter and sister to the bride, stood at the cake table from which she’d just shooed away three frosting-licking children. Joleen felt as if she was melting in her ankle-length rose-colored satin and lace bridesmaid’s gown.

And she couldn’t help suspecting that the cake was melting, too. The icing looked thinner, didn’t it, in a couple of places? The cake had five layers, each bordered with icing swags and accented with buttercream roses. Hadn’t the top four layers slid sideways the tiniest bit, wasn’t the whole thing leaning to the right, just a little?

Joleen shook her head—at the cake, at her own discomfort, at the whole situation. She had tried to convince her sister to rent a hall, but DeDe dug in her heels and announced that she’d always dreamed of getting married in Mama’s backyard. There was no budging DeDe once she dug in her heels.

So here they all were. Melting.

And way behind schedule. The ceremony was supposed to have started an hour ago. But Dekker Smith, the closest thing the Tilly sisters had to a big brother and the one who had promised to give DeDe away, had yet to arrive.

As Joleen stewed about the missing Dekker, about the cake, about the sweltering heat, her uncle Hubert Tilly wandered over, beer in hand. He stood beside her, leaned her way and spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “It’s about time we got this thing started, don’t you think?”

“Yes. And we will, Uncle Hubert. Real soon.”

“Good.” Her uncle lifted his beer to her in a toast. “Here’s to you, Joly. We all know it’s bound to be your turn next.” He threw back his big head and drank.

Joleen, who sometimes got a little tired of hearing how it would be “her turn next,” smiled resolutely and watched uncle Hubert’s Adam’s apple bounce up and down as he drained the can.

“Well, what do you know?” Uncle Hubert said when he was through guzzling. “It’s empty.” The can made groaning, cracking sounds as he crushed it in his beefy fist. “Better get another…” He headed off toward the coolers lined up against the garden shed. Joleen watched him go, hoping he wouldn’t get too drunk before the day was over.

She turned her attention to the cake again and decided that it should not sit out here in this heat for one minute longer. Her mother’s Colonial Revival house had been built in 1923. But thirty years ago, when her father bought it, one of the first things he’d done to it was to put in central heat and air.

She grabbed herself a couple of big, strong cousins—a Tilly, from her father’s side and a DuFrayne, from her mother’s. “Pick up that cake table,” she told them. “And do it carefully.”

The cousins lifted the table.

“Okay, good. This way…” Joleen backed toward the kitchen door slowly, patting the air with outstretched hands and speaking to her cousins in soothing tones. “Watch it…careful…that’s right.…” She opened the door for them and ushered them into the coolness of her mother’s kitchen. “Watch that step. Easy. Good.”

Once she’d closed the door behind them, she led them to the little section of wall on the far side of the breakfast nook. “Right here, out of the way. Just set it down easy.” The cousins put the table down.

Joleen let out a long, relieved sigh. “Perfect. Thank you, boys.”

“No problem,” said Burly, the DuFrayne cousin. His full name was Wilbur, but everyone had always called him Burly. “When’s this thing getting started, anyway?”

“Soon, real soon,” Joleen promised, thinking about Dekker again with a tightening in her tummy that was a little bit from irritation and a lot from worry.

Dekker had called yesterday afternoon and left a message on the machine at Joleen’s house. He said he wouldn’t make it for the rehearsal, after all, but that he’d be there in plenty of time for the wedding. Joleen wished she’d been home when he called. She would have gotten some specifics out of him—like a flight number and an arrival time, for starters.

And maybe even an idea of what the heck this particular trip was about, anyway. Dekker had told her nothing so far. The last time she’d actually spoken to him, early last Wednesday morning, he would only say that he was leaving for Los Angeles right away. He’d promised he’d be back in time for the rehearsal—which, as it turned out, he was not.

Joleen assumed it must be a business trip. A lot of his clients insisted on strict confidentiality, so that would account for his being so hush-hush about the whole thing. And sometimes, she knew, his job could be dangerous. Was this one of those times?

Joleen pushed that scary thought right out of her mind.

She’d tried more than once to reach him on his cell. And each time she did, she got a recorded voice telling her that the “customer” wasn’t available and offering her the chance to leave her name and number. She had left her name and number. But she’d never heard back.

“Joly, you are lookin’ strained,” said the Tilly cousin, whose name was Bud. “You okay?”

“Well, of course I am.” She arranged her face into what she hoped resembled a confident smile. “Help yourselves to a beer. There’s plenty. Outside in the coolers. And right there in the fridge, too.”

Bud and Burly turned for the refrigerator. Joleen went out the kitchen door again, into the blistering backyard.

Her aunt LeeAnne DuFrayne, Burly’s mama, was standing under one of the two patio ceiling fans, holding the front of her dress out at the neck so that the fan’s breeze could cool her a little. As Joleen went by, Aunt LeeAnne let go of her dress and caught Joleen’s arm.

“You have done a beautiful job here, hon.”

“You’re a sweetheart to say so, Aunt LeeAnne. Too bad it’s so darn hot.”

“You can’t control the weather, hon.”

“I know, I know.”

“The backyard looks festive. And Mesta Park is such a lovely area. I always admire it so every time I visit.”

Mesta Park lay in the heart of Oklahoma City, a charming old neighborhood with lots of classic prairie-style houses and graceful mature trees. Joleen’s mother had owned the house on Northwest Seventeenth Street since she herself had been a young bride.

Aunt LeeAnne patted Joleen’s arm. “I do think we ought to start the ceremony soon, though, don’t you?”

“Soon,” Joleen repeated. What else could she say?

Aunt LeeAnne stopped patting. She gripped Joleen’s arm and whispered in her ear, “I see that you invited the Atwoods.”

Joleen made a noise in the affirmative and flicked a quick glance toward the well-dressed couple standing by themselves near the punch table. Bobby Atwood, the couple’s only son, had died just six weeks ago, in a power-skiing accident on Lake Thunderbird. Pictures of the funeral service had dominated the local news. Atwood, after all, was an important name in the state of Oklahoma.

In spite of what had happened between herself and Bobby, the sight of his grieving parents at graveside had proved too much for Joleen. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from reaching out to them.

“You have a good heart, Joly,” whispered Aunt LeeAnne. “There aren’t many who would be so forgiving.”

“Well, it seemed like a nice gesture, to ask them if they’d like to come.”