Just Married (More than Friends) by Jenna Bayley-Burke Read Free Book Online

have been here, but of course they’d been gone too long. What would they think of Cal? Of his modern take on a timeless custom?
    The anxiety weighing on her heart lightened to merely crushing as she imagined Cal charming her father with nothing more than their shared Scottish heritage and a smile. Cal had introduced her to the genealogy expert who’d traced her father’s family for her, filling in gaps in a history that would have stayed silent.
    She had no idea how her mother might react. An awkward, coltish adolescence had kept boy craziness at bay, so she’d never confided in her mother about boys. Would she warn of Cal’s charisma or be taken in by it?
    Even though her parents had been gone for more than half her life, she could still get yanked back to the shock of it all. Waking up alone in the house, the police officers at the door that afternoon, the shaky call to Aunt Cecile when she had to speak about the accident for the first time. Moving from New York to Seattle a few days later had felt as surreal as the accident itself.
    Her parents had been so in love, so completely enthralled with one another, that her father had left Scotland and her mother had shrugged off her disapproving family so they could be together. It didn’t get more bohemian than a yoga instructor and a musician raising a child in a Brooklyn loft, which had made her conservative grandparents so angry they never spoke to their daughter again. Because of that, or maybe in spite of it, she knew her parents would have accepted Cal as he stood, simply because she loved him.
    She spread her fingers over the table and took a shuddering breath. Did she stand in front of the friends who’d become like family and sell them on a marriage only one heart was in, or did she disappoint the man she’d been in love with since she’d spied him at the welcoming reception for law school?
    He’d been so vibrant and handsome, and his confident aura drew everyone in. From across the room she’d decided he would be her crush of a year, a silly game she’d been playing since junior high. She’d thought him as unattainable as the boy-band cutie, soap-opera hunk, or football quarterback. A safe place to pin her fantasies since they had no hope of coming true and messing with her ten-year plan.
    Only Callum Kerr had bought a former fraternity house and offered rooms to his fellow law students. She hadn’t realized how much time she’d be spending with her classmates, and soon they were a cohesive unit. Her crush started as simple physical attraction, but the more time she’d spent with Cal, the more she’d been drawn to all the things he was that she’d never been able to pull off—stylish, adored, compelling.
    He’d noticed her when no one else thought to ask her opinion. Not in the way she’d dreamed, he only saw her as a friend, but he saw her—and as head down as she was in the books, that meant something. Meant enough that when some of their classmates were joking about how as a native New Yorker he’d never bothered to learn how to drive, she’d offered to teach him. And then asked him to teach her a few things in return.
    Her cheeks burned at the awkward memory, her heart squeezing at how gently he’d handled her proposition. He could have laughed or mocked or had a myriad of other soul-scathing responses. Instead, he’d let her take the lead and spent the year showing her what most girls had picked up in high school.
    She swallowed down the emotions bringing tears to her eyes and looked up, patting her cheeks gently to ensure the makeup that had been so painstakingly applied hadn’t been ruined.
    A soft knock on the door brought her attention back to reality, the wedding coordinator peeking into the small room. She slipped through the door, carrying a giant white box in her arms.
    “What is he up to now?” Miranda hoped Tonya was being well paid for Cal’s shenanigans.
    She set the box on the bed and lifted the lid. “Have a look for