Slightly Engaged

Slightly Engaged
Wendy Markham

There are a lot of things worse than being SLIGHTLY ENGAGED…being entirely broke, completely alone and wholly perplexed.It's been a year and a half since Tracey and Jack moved in together, and everything's totally perfect–well, okay, almost perfect. There's still Tracey's mom, who says they're "living in sin," and her friends, who are all smug, married and totally sure that there would already be a ring on Tracey's finger if she hadn't been in such a rush to cosign a lease. Even Tracey is beginning to wonder whether Jack really is looking for a permanent relationship, or whether she's just renting space in his heart.But just when Tracey's doubts are seriously raging out of control, Jack's mom lets her in on a secret–he's just taken an heirloom diamond out of the family's safe-deposit box, which must mean that he's going to propose any day now.Okay, any week now…Any month now?

CRITICAL PRAISE FOR Mike, Mike & Me

“The inventive premise of Markham’s winning novel involves a love triangle in both the past and the present among pretty Beau, the Mike she married, and the Mike she left behind…. Markham’s latest is an appealing, wholly original yarn.”

—Booklist

“…hilarious…readers will be instantly catapulted back in time, into their own versions of Very Big Hair and spandex bike shorts.”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub

CRITICAL PRAISE FOR Slightly Settled

“Readers who followed Tracey’s struggles in Slightly Single, and those meeting her for the first time, will sympathize with this singleton’s post-breakup attempts to move on in this fun, lighthearted romp with a lovable heroine.”

—Booklist

“Like many women, Tracey needs to figure out when to listen to her friends and when to listen to herself.”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub

CRITICAL PRAISE FOR Slightly Single

“…an undeniably fun journey for the reader.”

—Booklist

“Bridget Jonesy…Tracey Spadolini smokes, drinks and eats too much, and frets about her romantic life.”

—Publishers Weekly

WENDY MARKHAM

is a pseudonym for New York Times bestselling, award-winning novelist Wendy Corsi Staub, who has written more than sixty fiction and nonfiction books for adults and teenagers in various genres—among them contemporary and historical romance, suspense, mystery, television and movie tie-in and biography. She has coauthored a hardcover mystery series with former New York City mayor Ed Koch and has ghostwritten books for various well-known personalities. A small-town girl at heart, she was born and raised in western New York on the shores of Lake Erie and in the heart of the notorious snow belt. By third grade, her heart was set on becoming a published author; a few years later, a school trip to Manhattan convinced her that she had to live there someday. At twenty-one, she moved alone to New York City and worked as an office temp, freelance copywriter, advertising account coordinator and book editor before selling her first novel, which went on to win a Romance Writers of America RITA

Award. She has since received numerous positive reviews and achieved bestseller status, most notably for the psychological suspense novels she writes under her own name. Her Red Dress Ink title Slightly Single was one of Waldenbooks’ Best Books of 2002. Very happily married with two children, Wendy writes full-time and lives in a cozy old house in suburban New York, proving that childhood dreams really can come true.

Slightly Engaged

Wendy Markham

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

In loving memory of my beautiful mom,

Francella Corsi

April 17, 1942–May 11, 2005

You alone read and loved everything I ever wrote….

And you said you liked the “funny ones” best of all. Here’s one

more, written with laughter through tears, especially for you.

Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers, and sisters, aunts and cousins, but only one mother in the whole wide world.

—Kate Douglas Wiggin

Contents

Part I: Labor Day Weekend

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Part II: Sweetest Day, Beggar’s night

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Part III: Thanksgiving

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Part IV: Christmas

Chapter 13

Chapter 14