#1 "New York Times" bestselling author Nora Roberts invites
readers to the wedding event of the year #1 "New York Times"
bestselling author Nora Roberts presents her first trade original-a
novel of love, friendship, and family-Book One in the Bride
Quartet. Wedding photographer Mackensie "Mac" Elliot is most at
home behind the camera, but her focus is shattered moments before
an important wedding rehearsal when she bumps into the
bride-to-be''s brother...an encounter that has them both seeing
stars. A stable, safe English teacher, Carter Maguire is definitely
not Mac''s type. But a casual fling might be just what she needs to
take her mind off bridezillas. Of course, casual flings can turn
into something more when you least expect it. And Mac will have to
turn to her three best friends-and business partners-to see her way
to her own happy ending.
關於作者：
Nora Roberts is the author of more than 190 New York Times
bestsellers, with more than 300 million copies of her books in
print. Under the pen name J. D. Robb, she is author of the
bestselling futuristic suspense series featuring Lieutenant Eve
Dallas and Roarke.
內容試閱：
PROLOGUE
By the time she was eight, Mackensie Elliot had been married
fourteen times. She’d married each of her three best friends—as
both bride and groom—her best friend’s brother under his protest,
two dogs, three cats, and a rabbit. She’d served at countless other
weddings as maid of honor, bridesmaid, groomsman, best man, and
officiant. Though the dissolutions were invariably amicable, none
of the marriages lasted beyond an afternoon. The transitory aspect
of marriage came as no surprise to Mac, as her own parents boasted
two each—so far.
Wedding Day wasn’t her favorite game, but she kind of liked being
the priest or the reverend or the justice of the peace. Or, after
attending her father’s second wife’s nephew’s bar mitzvah, the
rabbi.
Plus, she enjoyed the cupcakes or fancy cookies and fizzy
lemonade always served at the reception.
It was Parker’s favorite game, and Wedding Day always took place
on the Brown Estate, with its expansive gardens, pretty groves, and
silvery pond. In the cold Connecticut winters, the ceremony might
take place in front of one of the roaring fires inside the big
house.
They had simple weddings and elaborate affairs. Royal weddings,
star- crossed elopements, circus themes, and pirate ships. All
ideas were seriously considered and voted upon, and no theme or
costume too outrageous.
Still, with fourteen marriages under her belt, Mac grew a bit
weary of Wedding Day.
Until she experienced her seminal moment.
For her eighth birthday Mackensie’s charming and mostly absent
father sent her a Nikon camera. She’d never expressed any interest
in photography, and initially pushed it away with the other odd
gifts he’d given or sent since the divorce. But Mac’s mother told
her mother, and Grandma muttered and complained about “feckless,
useless Geoffrey Elliot” and the inappropriate gift of an adult
camera for a young girl who’d be better off with a Barbie
doll.
As she habitually disagreed with her grandmother on principle,
Mac’s interest in the camera piqued. To annoy Grandma— who was
visiting for the summer instead of being in her retirement
community in Scottsdale, where Mac strongly believed she
belonged—Mac hauled the Nikon around with her. She toyed with it,
experimented. She took pictures of her room, of her feet, of her
friends. Shots that were blurry and dark, or fuzzy and washed out.
With her lack of success, and her mother’s impending divorce from
her stepfather, Mac’s interest in the Nikon began to wane. Even
years later she couldn’t say what prompted her to bring it along to
Parker’s that pretty summer afternoon for Wedding Day.
Every detail of the traditional garden wedding had been planned.
Emmaline as the bride and Laurel as groom would exchange their vows
beneath the rose arbor. Emma would wear the lace veil and train
Parker’s mother had made out of an old tablecloth, while Harold,
Parker’s aging and affable golden retriever walked her down the
garden path to give her away. A selection of Barbies, Kens, and
Cabbage Patch Kids, along with a variety of stuffed animals lined
the path as guests.
“It’s a very private ceremony,” Parker relayed as she fussed with
Emma’s veil. “With a small patio reception to follow. Now, where’s
the best man?”
Laurel, her knee recently skinned, shoved through a trio of
hydrangeas. “He ran away, and went up a tree after a squirrel. I
can’t get him to come down.”
Parker rolled her eyes. “I’ll get him. You’re not supposed to see
the bride before the wedding. It’s bad luck. Mac, you need to fix
Emma’s veil and get her bouquet. Laurel and I’ll get Mr. Fish out
of the tree.” “I’d rather go swimming,” Mac said as she gave Emma’s
veil an absent tug.
“We can go after I get married.”
“I guess. Aren’t you tired of getting married?”
“Oh, I don’t mind. And it smells so good out here. Everything’s
so pretty.”
Mac gave Emma the clutch of dandelions and wild violets they were
allowed to pick. “You look pretty.”
It was invariably true. Emma’s dark, shiny hair tumbled under the
white lace. Her eyes sparkled a deep, deep brown as she sniff ed
the weed bouquet. She was tanned, sort of all golden, Mac thought,
and scowled at her own milk white skin.
The curse of a redhead, her mother said, as she got her carroty
hair from her father. At eight, Mac was tall for her age and skinny
as a stick, with teeth already trapped in hated braces. She thought
that, beside her, Emmaline looked like a gypsy princess.
Parker and Laurel came back, giggling with the feline best man
clutched in Parker’s arms. “Everybody has to take their places.”
Parker poured the cat into Laurel’s arms. Mac, you need to get
dressed! Emma—”
“I don’t want to be maid of honor.” Mac looked at the poofy
Cinderella dress draped over a garden bench. “That thing’s
scratchy, and it’s hot. Why can’t Mr. Fish be maid of honor, and
I’ll be best man?”
“Because it’s already planned. Everybody’s nervous before a
wedding.” Parker flipped back her long brown pigtails, then picked
up the dress to inspect it for tears or stains. Satisfied, she
pushed it at Mac. “It’s okay. It’s going to be a beautiful
ceremony, with true love and happy ever after.”
“My mother says happy ever after’s a bunch of bull.”
There was a moment of silence after Mac’s statement. The unspoken
word divorce seemed to hang in the air. “I don’t think it has to
be.” Her eyes full of sympathy, Parker reached out, ran her hand
along Mac’s bare arm.
“I don’t want to wear the dress. I don’t want to be a bridesmaid.
I—”
“Okay. That’s okay. We can have a pretend maid of honor. Maybe
you could take pictures.”
Mac looked down at the camera she’d forgotten hung around her
neck. “They never come out right.”
“Maybe they will this time. It’ll be fun. You can be the official
wedding photographer.”
“Take one of me and Mr. Fish,” Laurel insisted, and pushed her
face and the cat’s together. “Take one, Mac!”
With little enthusiasm, Mac lifted the camera, pressed the
shutter.
“We should’ve thought of this before! You can take formal
portraits of the bride and groom, and more pictures during the
ceremony.” Busy with the new idea, Parker hung the Cinderella
costume on the hydrangea bush. “It’ll be good, it’ll be fun. You
need to go down the path with the bride and Harold. Try to take
some good ones. I’ll wait, then start the music. Let’s go!”
There would be cupcakes and lemonade, Mac reminded herself. And
swimming later, and fun. It didn’t matter if the pictures were
stupid, didn’t matter that her grandmother was right and she was
too young for the camera.
It didn’t matter that her mother was getting divorced again, or
that her stepfather, who’d been okay, had already moved out. It
didn’t matter that happy ever after was bull, because it was all
pretend anyway.
She tried to take pictures of Emma and the obliging Harold,
imagined getting the film back and seeing the blurry figures and
smudges of her thumb, like always.
When the music started she felt bad that she hadn’t put on the
scratchy dress and given Emma a maid of honor, just because her
mother and grandmother had put her in a bad mood. So she circled
around to stand to the side and tried harder to take a nice picture
of Harold walking Emma down the garden path. It looked different
through the lens, she thought, the way she could focus on Emma’s
face—the way the veil lay over her hair. And the way the sun shined
through the lace was pretty.
She took more pictures as Parker began the “Dearly Beloved” as
the Reverend Whistledown, as Emma and Laurel took hands and Harold
curled up to sleep and snore at their feet.
She noticed how bright Laurel’s hair was, how the sun caught the
edges of it beneath the tall black hat she wore as groom. How Mr.
Fish’s whiskers twitched as he yawned.
When it happened, it happened as much inside Mac as out. Her
three friends were grouped under the lush white curve of the arbor,
a triangle of pretty young girls. Some instinct had Mac shifting
her position, just slightly, tilting the camera just a bit. She
didn’t know it as composition, only that it looked nicer through
the lens.
And the blue butterfly fluttered across her range of vision to
land on the head of a butter yellow dandelion in Emma’s bouquet.
The surprise and plea sure struck the three faces in that triangle
under the white roses almost as one.
Mac pressed the shutter.
She knew, knew, the photograph wouldn’t be blurry and dark or
fuzzy and washed out. Her thumb wouldn’t be blocking the lens. She
knew exactly what the picture would look like, knew her grandmother
had been wrong after all.
Maybe happy ever after was bull, but she knew she wanted to take
more pictures of moments that were happy. Because then they were
ever after.
CHAPTER ONE
On January first, Mac rolled over to smack her alarm clock, and
ended up facedown on the floor of her studio.
“Shit. Happy New Year.”
She lay, groggy and baffled, until she remembered she’d
ne...
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