Kiss the Bride by Lori Wilde Read Free Book Online Page B

done.”
    “There’s no reason we can’t wait a while longer.”
    “Yes, there is, Nicky. I’m selling the house,” she said, her firm tone telling him she’d brook no argument.
    Nick couldn’t have been more stunned if she’d reached through the phone and punched him squarely in the gut. “Nana, no, absolutely not. You can’t sell the house.”
    “I can’t talk about this now. There’s someone at the front door. We’ll finish this discussion when you come over tomorrow afternoon.” And with that, she hung up on him.
    The dial tone mocked his ear.
    Nana had hung up on him!
    Feeling as if he’d just gone fifteen pulverizing roundswith a heavyweight boxing champ, Nick slipped his cell phone back into his gym bag.
    All right then, if that’s the way it was going to be, he’d look at the upside. At least he had something to do besides fantasize about the woman in the raincoat and fret over his knee—confront his grandmother and convince her she couldn’t sell the only real home he’d ever known.
    On Sunday evening, Delaney got her rain check.
    Evan took her to La Maison Vert, the only five-star French restaurant in Houston. He wore a tux. She had on a little black cocktail dress. The decor was elegant, the service impeccable. And the pan-seared, pecan-encrusted mahimahi bathed in a rich buttery caper sauce was definitely worth the three additional hours on the treadmill the extra calories were going to cost her.
    It should have been a magical evening.
    Instead, Evan talked nonstop about his work, spoiling the romantic mood. Any other time, Delaney wouldn’t have minded. Evan was passionate about his job and she was a good listener, but tonight she found herself wishing that he were half as passionate about her as he was about medicine.
    She’d still planned on seducing him, but extreme embarrassment—following what had happened outside Evan’s office—caused her to give up on the hostage-taking fantasy and go for something a little lower key. She had reserved a room at the Hyatt and worn a dress that showed lots of cleavage with sexy underwear underneath, and she’d ordered oysters on the half shell for an appetizer.
    But Evan hadn’t wanted any.
    Glumly, she’d sucked down the delicacies alone while her husband-to-be extolled the virtues of a new hipreplacement procedure. Delaney zoned out on the details. She didn’t know how to tell him he was boring her to tears.
    This is how the meals are going to go for the rest of your life.
Skylar’s voice rang in her head.
    Now that was a depressing thought.
    It’s okay,
she reassured herself. She had her work too, and she loved it. Evan probably got just as bored listening to her talk about All the World’s a Stage as much as his shoptalk bored her. Except she never really talked about her job with him.
    She’d gotten into the business of staging houses quite by accident. She had received her master’s degree in liberal arts and was trying to decide what to do with it when Tish, who’d been struggling to make a big mortgage payment after her divorce, asked Delaney to help her fix up her house so she could sell it.
    She had given her friend’s place a complete makeover, and it sold the following week at ten thousand more than the asking price—and that was after the house had been on the market for over a year. Delaney had found her niche, and on the plus side, it was also a career her mother endorsed.
    Excited by the headiness of that first success, she’d borrowed money from her father and started All the World’s a Stage last summer. But while the business was breaking even, it was only because of her mother’s friends. To date, besides Tish, only one other of her clients had not come from the pool of people who regularly kissed up to Honey Montgomery Cartwright.
    But Delaney was eager to change all that. She was determined to succeed on her own, without her mother’s help.
    She ordered another glass of wine to loosen her up enough to proceed