Frenched

Book 1: Frenched

by Melanie Harlow

Genres: Romance; General Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

When Tucker Branch, playboy heir to Branch Bolt and Screw, screws and bolts a week before their wedding, Mia Devine wants nothing more than to crawl under her newly monogrammed sheets and plan a funeral for her dignity. But her friends convince her that bitter tastes better when it's drowned in Bordeaux, so Mia grits her teeth and packs her bags, determined to make the best of her luxurious Paris honeymoon-alone.


She never planned on meeting Lucas Fournier. The easygoing bartender's scruffy good looks and less-than-sympathetic ear annoy her at first, but when she takes him up on his offer to show her around the city, she discovers that the romance of Paris isn't just a myth.


The last thing Mia needs is another doomed love affair, but since she only has a week, she figures she might as well enjoy her time with Lucas while she can. But each day-and night-with Lucas is better than the last, and suddenly her heart is telling her that this is more than a rebound fling.



Contains mature themes.

Release date: March 16, 2014

Print pages: 336

Sample

Chapter One

Top Five Reasons (Out of 100) I Am NEVER

Coming Out Of This Blanket Fort

 

1) 220 hand-engraved invitations.

2) $18,000 hand-pieced Vera Wang gown.

3) 1500 Felicity roses imported from Ecuador.

4) Bridal portrait on the current cover of Wedding Chic magazine.

5) Text message from fiancé calling off dream wedding a week before it happens. 

I threw the pen on the floor and propped the pad of paper against my headboard. If anyone managed to get past my locked bedroom door, they could read the list and not pester me, unless they wanted to hear the other ninety-five.

“Mia, please. You have to come out of there.” Coco rattled the handle before pounding on the door again.

“No, I don’t.” I pulled the crisp white sheets over my head and yanked my pillow into the tent with me. Embroidered on the pillowcase in navy thread was TBM, for Tucker and Mia Branch. The monogrammed sheet set had been a wedding shower gift, along with monogrammed towels, a duvet, some throw pillows, a set of luggage, and even a bathrobe. The softest, most comfortable bathrobe in the universe. Tainted with Tucker Branch’s initials.

“Then you have to let me in.” 

“Why? Do you have wine?”

“It’s nine A.M!”

“And?”

“Mia, please. You don’t have to come out. I just want to talk to you. Come on, we’ll…make a list or something. You love making lists.”

I did love making lists. They calmed me, made me feel like I was in control, on top of things, sticking to a plan. But all over the floor were crumpled and wadded-up lists with titles like Pooping Your Pants in Public and Other Things That Are ALMOST As Humiliating as This But Not Quite and Not 10, Not 50, but 100 Reasons Why Tucker is a Fucker, and I was pretty sure making another one would not make me feel better. “No deal. And who’s we? Who else is here? I told you not to let my mother in again.”

“No, your mother went back to Chicago. It’s just Erin. She’s making some coffee.”

Coffee sounded pretty good, actually. Maybe not as good as wine, but a close second. I waffled a bit, and Coco sensed my hesitation.

“You can put some Bailey’s in it,” she coaxed.

Good enough. I threw the sheets off me and slid out of bed, a king-sized monstrosity with a horribly uncomfortable mattress that Tucker bought purely because it was the most expensive one in the store. I told him it was too soft for me, but he’s the kind of person who just assumes the most costly brand of anything is always the best. Now I was stuck sleeping in it alone. 

Alone, between my expensive TBM-monogrammed sheets on my expensive squishy mattress in an expensive fucking suburban townhouse that I didn’t even own. I’d moved out of my cool downtown Detroit loft months ago, and there was a waitlist to get into that building. 

FML. That’s what I need to monogram on all this shit.

It gave me an idea, which brightened my mood a bit, so after unlocking the door I went into the adjoining bathroom and grabbed my nail scissors from a drawer. I avoided looking at myself in the mirror—I was almost positive I’d showered at least once in the last week, but my curly hair probably looked like I’d stuck my finger in a socket and then been rolled over by a Zamboni. Multiple times.

That’s pretty much how I felt, too. 

When I emerged, Coco was opening the curtains and cranking open the windows in the bedroom. She wore running shorts and a hoodie, and her long black hair was pulled back in a ponytail. 

“Oh my God, Mia. It’s so stuffy in here.” 

“You wanted to come in,” I reminded her. I sat on the bed and took one king-sized pillow on my lap. Then I carefully started cutting the monogram from the case.

Coco gasped. “What are you doing? Those are expensive sheets!” She tried to grab the pillow from me, but I held on tight.

“I’m cutting the TBM off this pillowcase. Wait, I guess I could leave the M. Only the Fucker’s initials have to go.”

Coco sighed and let go, dropping onto the bed beside me. “And this will make you feel better?”

I shrugged as I went back to work. Snip. Be gone, TB. For fucking ever. “It might.” 

“You plan on cutting his name off everything in here?” She glanced around. “It’s gonna take a while.”

“I’ve got time. I took a few weeks off, remember? Because I’m supposed to be getting married tonight and going to France tomorrow.” The words were so bitter in my mouth I wanted to spit after saying them.

“Well, I can think of a lot more fun things to do than this with that time off. Even going to work is better than this.” She shook her head and pointed at me. “You’re leaving the house today, even if I have to drag you out of here by your hair, caveman style. I can’t see you in this depressed funk any longer.”

I cocked a brow at her. “Didn’t you hear me? It is supposed to be my wedding day. Now it’s nothing but a gazillion-dollar fiasco.”

She looked down her nose at me. “I heard you. And I know. I helped plan your gazillion-dollar fiasco. But it’s been a week since Tucker called it off, and you’ve been holed up in here long enough.”

“Yay, you’re awake.” Erin entered the room with a tray and set it down on the bed. It held three cups of coffee, a pitcher of cream, and a bowl of sugar. One of the cups said Branch Industries on the side and another had a photo of Tucker and me on it, a gift from his little niece, one of the few people in his family I would miss. But Tucker’s handsome face made my guts churn.

I gave Erin the stink eye. “Coco said there would be Bailey’s.”

Erin rolled her eyes but left the room to retrieve the booze. 

“It’s in the bar cart in the living room!” I called. “Bring the whole bottle!”

“Here. Have some of this, please.” Coco handed me a cup with the Devine Events logo on the side, which was the event planning business we ran together. 

“I’ll wait for the liquor,” I told her, going back to my cutting. When the first king-sized pillow was done, I reached for the second. “You know, I don’t even like these sheets. I didn’t want plain white. I wanted the blue ones with the paisley. A little damn color.”

Coco picked up a throw pillow and bunched it under her chin. “Then why’d you register for the white?”

“Because Tucker insisted. He said I could plan the wedding any way I wanted to, but he got to make our interior design choices.”

“What’s he got against color?” She looked around. Everything in the room was white, navy, or gray.

“Beats me. But the man’s favorite color is pewter, for fuck’s sake. This entire house looks like one giant cloudy-ass day.”

The corners of Coco’s mouth lifted. “A joke. That’s a good sign.”

I stopped snipping and met her eyes. “That wasn’t a joke.”

“Come on, Mia.” She took the scissors from my hand and set the mutilated pillowcase aside. “It’s time to start getting over this. You know, there’s color outside. And wine. And meals. When’s the last time you ate something decent?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.” The seven days since I’d gotten the Dear Jane text from Tucker were a bit of a blur—I remembered trying desperately to reach him the first day, succeeding on the second when he finally returned my frantic calls (from Vegas, mind you), and a lot of screaming, crying, and phone-throwing after that. Days three, four, and five were a haze of wine and naps and dealing with my mother, and days six and seven were spent wallowing and making lists. And now defacing pillowcases. I glanced at his closet door with a laser beam eye—maybe his precious custom suits would be next.

I was reaching for the scissors again when Erin returned with the Bailey’s and poured a shot into each cup. That actually made me smile a little—my girls never let me drink alone.

“OK.” She handed Coco the Branch Industries cup and held up the one with the photo on it. “To waking up and starting over.”

“Cheers.” Coco clinked mugs with Erin. “I was just saying the same thing to her. You have your entire life ahead of you, Mia. And we’ve already decided this was a blessing in disguise. He didn’t deserve you.” She touched her cup to mine before taking a sip.

“You decided that. I will never feel that this humiliation is anything but punishment.” 

“Punishment for what?” Erin asked. “What could you possibly need punishing for?”

I groaned. “God, so many things… For ignoring everyone who told me Tucker would never settle down and feeling so fucking superior that I was proving them wrong. For ignoring that little voice in the back of my brain telling me something was off. For refusing to admit to anyone—or even to myself—that everything wasn’t perfect between us, and maybe getting married wasn’t the right idea.” 

“Even so, you don’t deserve punishment.” Erin rubbed my leg. “You’re human, Mia. We all make mistakes.”

“This was more than just a mistake. I deliberately ignored any sign that I was making the wrong decision. All I could think about was pulling off the dream wedding. And it was nothing but a stupid fantasy.” Anger at myself knotted with my wrath for Tucker, pulling my stomach muscles so tight they ached.

“See? That’s what I’m saying,” Coco soothed. “You knew this was coming, deep down inside. Better to know now before you married him, right?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and lifted the cup to my lips. The bitterness of the French roast laced with the sweetness of Bailey’s tasted so good, I took two more big swallows before speaking. “I know. Rationally, I know what you’re saying is true, but all I can think about are the thousand little details that were supposed to make this day the biggest, bestest day of my life.” I gestured toward my closet door, where a wedding dress still hung, wrapped in its protective bag. “That’s my wedding gown over there. Which I paid for myself. Which I should be wearing tonight at five o’clock when four hundred-plus people watch me walk down the aisle on the rooftop of the Ritz. Oh, God—” I gave Coco a panicked look. “Tell me someone called the Ritz.”

She rubbed my hand. “Those things were taken care of. And you do so much business with all those vendors, most of them didn’t even keep your deposit.”

Relief loosened the tension in my shoulders. I’d been so out of it over the past week, I wasn’t sure what had been done. I’d had clients cancel a wedding once or twice in my career, but never with only a week to go. “It wasn’t my deposit. They can keep Tucker’s money, for all I care. He won’t miss it.” I took another glug of coffee. “What about the guests?”

“Done,” said Erin. “You’ve got nothing to worry about except moving forward.”

“I’m totally doing that.” I lifted up a pillow with a hole in the case. “See?”

Erin paled, not easy for a girl with her fair Irish complexion. “I’m just gonna take that gown out of here, OK honey? Be right back.” She set her coffee cup on the tray and grabbed the dress, scurrying from the room with a worried expression.

I watched her go, a vise squeezing my heart. “That dress was the one, Coco. I felt it the moment I put it on. Now I’ll never wear it again.” 

“You might,” Coco said hopefully. “You never know.”

“I won’t. I’ll die an old maid, cold and alone. I won’t even have cats because I’m allergic to them.” 

She rolled her eyes. “Mia, please. You’re twenty-seven.”

“But I wanted to be married by twenty-eight, and now that’s impossible! I wanted to start a family by thirty, and I’ll have to scrap that plan too!” 

“Now you just sound ridiculous. Your uterus is not going to shrivel up and die at age thirty.”

“Sorry for being ridiculous about my dreams.” My chin jutted out. “But that’s how I feel.”

She rubbed my back. “You want to talk about it some more?”

“What’s left to say?”

“I don’t know. Are you…are you sad about losing Tucker? Or just about the wedding?”

I swallowed hard. “Both, I guess.”

“Do you still love him?”

My first reaction was revulsion, but then his handsome face swam before my eyes. And I could still smell him on the sheets. He always smelled so good and dressed so impeccably. And he could be thoughtful and generous and fun. We’d had so many plans together, starting tonight. Tucker, how could you do this to me? My throat tightened. “No. Yes. I don’t know.”

“I wish you would have said something about those doubts you had. I feel awful that I didn’t sense them. I see you every day. We talked about this wedding nonstop.” Her blue eyes were full of guilt.

“It’s not your fault. I put on a good show.” I shrugged. “People were always saying what a perfect couple we made. I was trying to be that.”

“You looked perfect,” Erin clarified as she returned to the bed. “But no one knows anything about anyone else’s relationship for real. Look at my parents—married for twenty years before my mom got sick of his closet alcoholism and mean behavior and left. People were shocked. I can’t tell you how many of her friends said to her, ‘Your marriage seemed so perfect.’” She shook her head. “They were clueless, even her best friends, because in public he was so charming. She kept it all in because she was embarrassed.”

I grimaced and brought my coffee to my lips. “I know that feeling.”

Coco toyed with her coffee cup. “How was it between the two of you when you were alone? Did things feel right?”

“I guess so. I mean, he’s not the most open person in the world. He didn’t talk about his feelings a lot, but he did say he loved me. And he was romantic in some ways, always getting me little gifts—or big ones, even—and taking me places and stuff.”

“Yeah, he loved showing you off, that was obvious.” Erin’s tone was harsh. “And showing off how good he was to you.” 

“But what about when you were alone alone?” Coco went on. “Was the sex still good?”

“Not as good as it should have been.” I shrugged. “It was OK. He’s hot, and he got the job done, I suppose, but there wasn’t much variation on the theme.”

Erin laughed. “What was the theme?”

“Fast and clean.”

Coco choked on her coffee. “What?”

“Yeah,” I said, warming to the subject. It actually felt good to finally speak the less-than-perfect truth. “He has two positions he likes, and once we get into one of the Approved Positions, that’s how we stay until he’s finished—which doesn’t take long. He doesn’t like moving around because that causes wet spots on the sheets. He has an aversion to bodily fluids.”

“Oh my God.” Erin’s jaw hung open. “You must be joking.”

“No. And he doesn’t like oral sex for the same reason.”

“Not even blow jobs?”

I shook my head. “Nope. And forget about the other kind. Oh, and after he’s finished, he races to the bathroom to clean himself up. Whether I’m finished or not.”

Both of them sat there blinking at me in disbelief. “Holy shit, Mia,” Coco said. “I’m pretty sure the universe did you a big favor here. You deserve a way better man than that asshole. I don’t care how good looking he is. Or how rich. Any man that jumps out of bed to go clean himself up before making sure his woman is satisfied is a prick.”

“Agreed.” Erin nodded emphatically. “I wish you had said something about this sooner.”

“Why? I wouldn’t have listened to reason. I was too busy planning metro Detroit’s most glamorous wedding of the year,” I said, quoting from the article in Wedding Chic magazine. They’d done a whole profile of me, complete with photo shoot. “Oh, God, that stupid magazine article…all those pictures.” I slammed my eyes shut.

“Forget that. No one reads that magazine anyway.” Erin put her hand on my arm. “And some other scandal will replace you on Facebook.”

I opened my eyes to see Coco glaring at Erin. “It’s on Facebook?” They’d confiscated my laptop days ago, probably so I couldn’t check social media.

My friends both bit their bottom lips, and Coco glanced to her left, which she always does when she lies. “No, no. She just meant people have sent messages on Facebook hoping you’re OK.”

“Christ, Coco. You’re the worst liar in the world.” I set my cup down and flopped onto my back. “It’s OK. I’m sure it’s all over the Internet that Tucker Branch jilted me a week before the wedding. People love gossip. I’ll just have to deal with it.”

Silence. 

Propping myself on my elbows, I opened one eye and frowned at their nervous expressions. “What?”

“Well,” Erin began as Coco’s eyeballs flicked to the left again, “it’s not so much the gossip as Tucker’s post. Uh, posts.”

“What posts?”

“He, um, tweeted something about barely escaping a burning building by ditching the ball and chain. And he followed that up with a lot of pics of himself with girls in Vegas.”

My stomach lurched. “He didn’t.”

Coco nodded. “He did.”

Dropping my head back onto the pillow again, I flung my arms over my burning face. Tucker, you bastard. Did you ever really love me? Why did you even propose?

I thought about the night Tucker had given me the ring, a big, beautiful diamond set in platinum, which he’d had the waiter place into a flute of expensive champagne on our one-year anniversary. At the time I’d loved the spectacle of his getting down on one knee in front of everyone at the restaurant, but I had to admit half of the thrill was because everyone had told me what a playboy he was, that he’d never take me seriously, that he’d break my heart into a million pieces. But he hadn’t. 

For a solid year we’d had a blast together—whenever we had time, that is. Running Devine Events kept me crazy busy, and he worked a ton of hours as VP of Sales at his family’s bolt and screw corporation. Neither of us was particularly clingy or emotionally needy, so we enjoyed each other’s company when we could and didn’t whine about the times we were apart. 

He often said I was the ideal woman for him—beautiful, smart, and low maintenance. Those were his criteria. And I’d thought he was the ideal man—a gorgeous suit-and-tie guy with a master’s degree, a trust fund, and a flair for showy romantic gestures in front of an audience. The former drama student in me adored that. 

So after downing the champagne, I slipped that ring on my finger and got busy planning a wedding worthy of a princess and playboy heir. I also moved into his townhouse, but even then we didn’t make a lot of demands on each other’s time. 

Maybe we should have.

Maybe you’re supposed to want to actually be together more than Tucker and I wanted to. Maybe you should miss each other when you’re apart. Maybe the regret you feel after your fiancé calls off your wedding should be more about the man and less about the dress, the roses, and the menu.

(Surf and turf, by the way. Lobster and filet mignon. And the wine…oh good God, the wine.)

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Ugh, I’m so embarrassed. How could I have been so dumb?”

“Come on, Mia,” Erin said. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Each of my two best friends took a hand and pulled me up to a seated position. “It was a fantasy, like you said. Anyone would have been caught up in it.”

“Well, now it’s all just one big fucking waste,” I said bitterly. “All that time and money—gone.”

They glanced at each other. “You know what we think?” Coco patted my hand.

“What?”

“You should go to France tomorrow.”

“What! By myself?” 

“Yes.” Erin got off the bed and disappeared into my walk-in closet. Before I could ask her what she was doing, Coco started in.

“You’ve been working nonstop, Mia, and planning your own wedding every spare second. Now you need a vacation, alone. You need time to reflect and think and just get over this.”

I blinked at her in disbelief. “And going to Paris alone is going to help me do that? When it was supposed to be my honeymoon?”

“Don’t think of it as a honeymoon.” Erin appeared with my big old suitcase, the only one that was not monogrammed with TBM. The bright red one that I’d taken on all our girl trips—just the sight of it made me perk up a little. “Think of it as Tucker’s parting gift to you—an all-expenses-paid luxury send-off!”

“I can’t. That wasn’t the plan.”

“Fuck the plan for once, Mia!” Coco bounced off the bed and gestured dramatically. “Just do it! Think of Paris—think of all the things on your list you’ve always wanted to see! Those things are still there, and they’ll look the same even without Tucker at your side. In fact, they’ll look better.”

It was true, I did have a Paris list. I had several, actually. One for dining, one for drinking, one for shopping, one for museums and cathedrals, one for outdoor attractions, one for romance…the idea soured in my mind. “No. It was going to be my honeymoon, goddammit. All I’d do is sit around drinking wine and brooding that this was supposed to be the most romantic week of my life and instead I’m there alone.”

“But think of how good that wine will be!” Erin smiled so brightly I almost laughed. “You’re just going to do the same thing if you sit around here for the week. Why not do it in view of the Eiffel tower?”

“The Louvre!” Coco added, clapping her hands.

“The Pont Neuf!”

“Notre Dame!”

“The Arc de Triomphe!”

“OK, OK, please.” I put up my hands to stop the ad campaign. “Please don’t start singing The Marseillaise. I get it. France is awesome. Yay France. I’m just not up for it. And you know how I am about flying.”

“I’ll give you a sleeping pill. You’re going.” Erin put the suitcase on the bed and unzipped it. “Now let’s pack your bags. This trip is paid for, and if you don’t go, then Coco and I are going, and we might love it so much we’ll decide we’re a lesbian couple and stay there without you.”

“You’re so not her type,” I said. But I allowed her to pull me to my feet. “Coco goes for tall, dark, and tattooed. That little heart above your ass doesn’t count.”

Erin smiled sweetly. “But it’s Paris. Anything can happen there.”

“And I just thought of another benefit,” Coco added. “Your mother will be a whole country away. You destroyed your phone and we stole your computer, so she won’t even be able to get a hold of you.”

I chewed my lip. That was a benefit—my mother’s anxiety drove me nuts even when she didn’t have to deal with the fact that her daughter’s wedding was just canceled. 

“Go to Paris, Mia.” Coco’s eyes pleaded with me. “You’ve been talking about it since you were a kid.”

“If you’re miserable, you can hop on a flight home—my mom will change your ticket for nothing,” promised Erin, whose mother worked for Delta. “But at least you can say you’ve been there.”

I hesitated. Could I do it, really?

“If you don’t, I’m telling your mother to come back to Detroit because you need her.”

I shot Coco a murderous look. “OK, OK, I’ll go. To the most romantic city on earth. Alone.”

They squealed and clapped their hands. “Good girl,” Coco said. “Now let’s get you packed, and we’re putting in all the sexy little outfits you had planned—I know there’s an outfits list here somewhere.”

“I’ll bet French men don’t jump out of bed to clean up right after sex,” added Erin.

“Please. I’d be happy just to stray from the Approved Positions.” I stretched a little and actually felt a flutter of excitement in my stomach, which was odd because I am not a person who can fly by the seat of her pants and enjoy it. I am a planner, a list-maker, a think-it-through-in-advance kind of girl. But for once, I was going to do something spontaneous. 

Maybe I’d even enjoy it.