Something Blue

Book 1: Orchard Inn

by Heather McGovern

Genres: Contemporary Romance; Romantic Comedy; Western Romance

Synopsis

This wedding needs to be the event of the season. Unfortunately, the best man is doing everything he can to derail it . . .

Wedding planner Beth Shipley has seen it all: bridezillas, monster-in-laws, and last-minute jitters at the altar. But this wedding is different—and the stakes are much, much higher. Not only is her best friend the bride, but bookings at her family’s inn have been in free fall ever since an unfortunate food-poisoning incident. Beth’s got one chance to save her family’s business, and she knows she can do it. As long as she doesn’t let Sawyer Silva’s good looks and overprotective, overbearing older brother act distract her.

Sawyer learned firsthand that forever doesn’t last. So when his brother decides to race down the aisle with a woman he barely knows, Sawyer is determined to keep him from making the biggest mistake of his life. Yet the more time Sawyer spends around the passionate and hardworking Beth, the more trouble he has disentangling his feelings—about the wedding and the wedding planner. When Beth discovers Sawyer’s plans, can he convince her that his only real objection is to a future that doesn’t include her?

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 352

Sample

Chapter 1

Your Caesar salad darn near killed three people.”

Beth pinched her eyes closed and swallowed the wince that’d been threatening since they started discussing quarterly earnings.

“Isn’t that being a little overdramatic?” her sister, Aurora, whispered.

Cece, the youngest, shook her head. “Not really.”

Beth hit the mute button on her phone before their accountant became privy to the peanut gallery.

“At least five members of the wedding party went to the hospital,” Tom kept talking. “One of them was the governor’s press secretary.”

She wanted to crawl under the table and hide for the next three months. Instead, she unmuted her phone and centered it on their kitchen table. “I’m aware. I was there when it happened, remember?”

Like a slow-motion nightmare, the bad news had trickled in that night in February.

Then, it poured.

She’d pulled off the society wedding of the season last winter at the Orchard Inn, but a few hours after the sparkler send-off for the bride and groom, the first call came in.

The mother of the bride didn’t feel so good. The bride wasn’t doing great either. Then a groomsman got sick. Then a bridesmaid. Then another, and another. Could it be…food poisoning?

“I know you were. And I’m sorry to dig up old bones, but bad press like that is going to have negative impacts on a business. I just didn’t expect it to be this negative. Then again, you did almost kill a press secretary.”

“It was a salad!” Aurora blurted.

Beth patted her arm, attempting to calm and shush her. Aurora was only a few years her junior, but twice as blunt.

“It wasn’t even a main course of bad chicken or fish,” she muttered anyway. “Like you’d serve bad romaine on purpose?”

“Tom,” Beth spoke over her sister’s indignance, “I’m looking at our income and expenses year to date, and they don’t seem completely dire.” Just really, really desperate.

“But how many events do you have booked for next quarter?”

She pinched her lips together. That’d be zero, Tom.

“I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you what this means for your bottom line.” Tom had been their family’s accountant for decades, and while he still called them “girls” even though they were in their twenties, he’d always respected and supported their decision to keep Orchard Inn in the Shipley family, with Beth taking the helm.

That didn’t change the fact that the inn, and their wedding business, were in a pickle.

No. That wasn’t fair to pickles. Pickles were delicious.

The Shipley sisters were in a great big salad of doom.

“Thanks for going over this with us, Tom. I’ll look over everything else tonight and call you tomorrow if I have any questions. We won’t keep you, though.”

“Good luck, girls.”

Aurora quirked her lips as soon as the call ended. “At least he was nice about telling us we’re broke.”

“We’re not broke.”

“Who even eats that much salad at a wedding, anyway?” Aurora asked the question like she was addressing a room of thousands. “You know the good stuff is coming out later. You eat a few bites to be polite and save up for the mains and cake.”

“Can we stop obsessing over the food, please?”

“Not when the food is what got us into this mess in the first place.”

And as a trained chef, Aurora was incapable of not obsessing over food, and she hadn’t been Orchard Inn’s chef at the time. Still working in Los Angeles, she’d been nowhere near the doomed wedding reception, but the family business was the family business to the sisters, regardless of how near or far they roamed.

“And not when we wouldn’t be here if they’d only eaten a couple of bites,” Aurora continued.

“I don’t think E. coli works that way.” Beth needed to get this thought train back on track before they spent the next hour debating and speculating. “Regardless, we can’t blame guests for eating the food we served at the wedding they paid us to host.”

“I know all that, and I know exactly how E. coli works, but…” Aurora let the sentence die.

“But I’m trying to be nice.” Beth filled in the blank for her.

An argument of fluff and fluster, attempting to salve Beth’s guilt by removing some of the pressure and blame.

Good luck with that.

Her sisters had to know by now that this disaster rested squarely on Beth’s shoulders, and she wasn’t sharing.

“Come on.” She rose from the table in their common area, signaling the end of dwelling on their bad news. “Let’s get some tea and sit on the back porch. The few guests we do have will start getting back from town soon. They may need something, and we can’t wear long faces in front of them.”

Besides, she was the type to dwell on things endlessly. No sense in her sisters duplicating her efforts.

“Y’all go on out there and I’ll get the tea,” Aurora said. “I made some little cheese biscuits I want you to try before I put them out for guests.”

Beth followed Cece out of their shared family space at the back of the inn and tossed her financial file and the accountant’s review into her room.

Ever since they’d invested in taking their orchard house from a private residence to the Orchard Inn, the girls had lived in a collection of four rooms at the back of the house. The house was plenty big, but it was still an adjustment. Now that Aurora had moved home, even more so.

Three grown women living in less than a thousand square feet.

Good thing they loved each other. And had several acres of peach orchard to escape into for privacy.

“You want to rock?” Beth nodded to the rocking chairs that lined the left side of the back porch.

Cece nodded, and Beth took the chair farthest from the door, saving her sister the extra steps.

It was silly and unnecessary, and Cece would flay her with one look if she knew it was intentional, but old habits died hard.

Her sister had been on her feet a lot today, working around the inn and running errands back and forth to town and the orchard’s main shop. Her foot had to be killing her.

Cece dealt with exhaustion or discomfort by soldiering through it. Beth wished she’d treat herself more gently sometimes, and would realize that giving herself a break wasn’t a sign of weakness.

“Here we go.” Aurora showed up carrying a beautiful tray with three glasses of iced tea, a porcelain plate of little cheese biscuits the size of half dollars, and a bowl of the most perfect strawberries Beth had ever seen.

“Aurora. You didn’t have to do all that.” She felt guilty enough already.

Aurora set the tray down on the table next to Cece. “Yes, I did. We could use a little pick-me-up after that call.”

Cece quietly took one of the biscuits and nibbled on it, her silence quickly becoming a concern.

She was always quiet—painfully so when around new people—but usually, when it was just the three of them, she came out of her shell with quick-witted comments or a thoughtful retort.

This afternoon she’d said barely two words.

Beth grabbed one of Aurora’s latest offerings. If only she could bury all her worries in a biscuit.

She took a bite. Soft and buttery, fluffy with just the right bite of cheddar. It was a handful of heaven. “Oh, my word, how do you do it?”

Aurora shrugged it off and took the rocking chair on the other side of Cece. “It’s just flour and water. Salt. Some cheese. And an oven.”

“It’s not just anything. You’re a magician.”

Cece giggled, the first sound she’d made since they’d gotten off the call. “She’s a kitchen magician.”

That was more like it.

Beth had another bite of her biscuit, toes curling inside her flats.

Aurora was way too humble about her talents. She had been a genius with food and flavors since they were kids, and she’d taken that natural gift and honed it at culinary school. Honed it so well she’d gone on to work in one of the best kitchens in Los Angeles.

That was, until things imploded back home at Orchard Inn and she’d come to Beth’s rescue.

If she’d been working at Orchard Inn and catered the wedding in February, Aurora would’ve somehow prevented the salad scandal and everything would be fine. And while it wasn’t fair she had to deal with the fallout, Beth was forever grateful.

She chanced a glance at her sister.

Their old catering manager had been let go, and as soon as Aurora heard, she’d insisted on returning home. She also insisted it was no big deal. She was happy to help. This was partially her business too—and on and on with why her leaving her life in LA was okay. But Aurora had to resent her for what she’d left behind.

It kept Beth up at nights.

“You’re awfully quiet over there.” Aurora leaned forward with a raised eyebrow. “You aren’t spiraling, are you?”

“No.” Only a little bit.

Orchard Inn was her brainchild. All of this was her doing.

“Mmm-hmm.” Aurora wasn’t buying it, but she went back to rocking in her chair.

Three years ago, when their mother announced she wanted to sell the place, get a little condo, and travel the world, Beth had come up with the idea for them all to pitch in, financially and otherwise, take out a loan, and turn their large home into the wedding destination in the Hill Country of Texas.

A charming country inn, complete with ideal orchard location and Texan hospitality, combined with Beth’s business sense and years of experience as an event planner, Aurora’s culinary talents, and Cece’s eye for aesthetics and things of beauty, they were sure to be a success.

And they were. Or at least they were headed that way.

Season after season of working their butts off, and they’d made a name for themselves. Enough so that, last year, some big restaurant group courted Aurora off to California. And then came the doomed Caesar.

“We’ll figure something out,” Aurora tried to reassure Beth. “Try not to worry.”

But if Beth didn’t do something, fast, they were going to lose not just their business, but the orchard and estate that had been in their family for generations. Their employees, including the brand-new orchard manager, would be out of jobs. Worst of all, the biggest connection she shared with her sisters would be severed.

Stifling a frustrated grumble, Beth devoured what was left of the biscuit. The savory softness danced across her taste buds.

Life couldn’t be that bad with snacks like this.

And it wasn’t all bad. She had both of her sisters home now. Even if they had little else, they had each other.

When their dad took off decades ago, Beth had helped hold the family together. That was her job as the oldest. She’d started working as soon as she turned fifteen, worked all through school, and specifically gone to business school with the intention of keeping the orchard in the Shipley family name. This was her business, and, more importantly, her family.

She’d always looked out for them, and she wasn’t about to stop now.

Somehow, she was going to get the inn back in the good graces of the Texas Hill Country. She’d get their finances back in the black and be profitable. The wedding schedule would once again be booked solid. Cece would not have to work as hard as she did, doing three different jobs. And she would ensure Aurora’s return to California, back to the life she’d put on pause.

Beth reached for a second helping of her sister’s delicious snack.

Somehow, she was going to make this work, but figuring out how was going to take more than just one cheese biscuit.

  

Beth snuggled under her softest blanket with a cup of honey chamomile and the accountant’s report. It’d be hours before sleep caught up with her, but the tea and numbers might help.

She was neck-deep in their payables when her phone vibrated on the nightstand.

OMG. Are you still awake?! Please say you’re awake! I need to talk to you!

The text was from Shelby Meyers, her roommate from UT and still one of her dearest friends. They didn’t talk as often now, what with life and careers, but if Shelby was texting at almost midnight, she wasn’t going to stop until she got a reply.

I’m awake. What’s up? Beth texted back.

I’m on your back porch! Let me in.  

“What in the world?” She got up, not completely surprised by the giddy behavior. Excitement about pretty much everything was Shelby’s default setting. But showing up late at night?

“Shelby?” She stepped out into the porch light to find her friend bouncing on the balls of her feet, her left hand flung out toward Beth.

“Guess what! Guess what!”

Judging by the size of the blinding rock on her fourth finger, she—

“I got engaged!”

Beth grabbed the hand that’d been thrust in her face. “Oh my gosh! Shelby! Congratulations!” She hugged her friend tight and tried to think when she’d even started dating the guy. A couple of months ago?

“Thank you! I am just beside myself. I’m so happy!”

“So, when— How? When did all this happen?”

“Tonight. He proposed tonight. We were walking around downtown after dinner—it’s what we did after our first date—and he took me by the hand and told me how much he loved me, how I felt like home. Then he got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife.” Shelby’s eyes glimmered with joyful tears, her smile radiant.

“I am so happy for you and—” Oh jeez. Started with a G. “Garrett!”

It wasn’t Beth’s fault. She’d never met the guy, and she and Shelby had only talked two or three times since they started dating.

“Thank you. Can you believe it? I know it’s soon and all, and people will probably think we’re crazy, but we’re in love. We’re perfect for each other. I mean other than him and his whole family loving horses. But you’ll see. I want you to meet him and get to know him. There’s time for all of that.”

“I know. And I think it’s wonderful.” Truly, she did. Marriage was on Beth’s agenda too.

At some point.

That whole key element of finding someone you loved, and who loved you in return? See, that’s where life got tricky.

Surely all good things in time, right? But she’d never found a good thing, and now was most definitely not the time.

Shelby was obviously over the moon, and if anyone deserved happiness, it was her. She’d never been anything but good to Beth and, while she put on a face for the rest of the world, she had to deal with a lot when it came to her family.

“Have y’all picked a date yet? Do you have time to get a dress?”

“Well, the date isn’t written in stone yet, but funny you should ask about all that. We want to have the wedding right here at Orchard Inn!”

Beth had to blink to keep her eyes in their sockets.

“I know things have been slow around here since…you know.”

Shelby had always said a lady didn’t speak of unseemly things. Like bad salad.

“And this could really help you out. The wedding will be a big event. Garrett said his family will pay for part of it, so you’ll have a nice budget to really do things up.”

“That would be amazing and thank you, but don’t feel obligated to—”

“You stop right there. This is not out of obligation. This is where I’d want to get married regardless, because it’s beautiful and perfect and you’re my best friend. And we want a big outdoor wedding that’s romantic and charming, and there’s no better place for that than right here.”

When Shelby got nervous, she rambled.

Beth took her hands. “Okay. Just forget I said a word.”

“You remember the dream box I kept under my bed, freshman year?”

She smiled at the memory. “The one with Southern Living magazine clippings and pictures of Channing Tatum? Yes, I remember.”

“And the articles about interior design because I just knew I was going to have my own show on HGTV someday.” Shelby laughed. “See? No one else knows me or could plan my wedding like you.”

She wasn’t wrong. Beth had heard all about the dream wedding for years. If it wasn’t the oil baron who looked like Channing Tatum, it was the quarterback at Tamu, who’d surely go pro. And play for one of the Texas leagues. Naturally.

“Fair enough. I would love to give you the wedding you’ve always wanted.”

“Eee!” Shelby started bouncing again. “And, and, and”—she flapped her hands in the air—“I think you know what else I’ll ask, or you should, but would you please be my maid of honor?”

Beth’s breath caught. She actually hadn’t known Shelby would ask. Yes, they were best friends from college, but Shelby had close-knit cousins galore and a sister-in-law. The Meyers family was laden with potential bridesmaids and maids of honor, with a tendency to keep high-profile gigs like MoH in the family. “Of course I will. I’d be honored to do it.”

She had a feeling there’d be some sour grapes among Shelby’s family over this, but too bad. Beth was going to be the best maid of honor anyone had ever seen!

“So, tell me when you want to get married.” Because the planning would need to start ASAP.

“Well, before it gets too hot, so…soon. Like, in two months? Tops?” Her already huge brown eyes widened expectantly. “The sooner the better, I think. Right?”

People never said no to the Meyers family. Not even when they wanted the moon.

Beth wouldn’t say no because she loved her friend. She also wouldn’t say no because this was a blessing in the making.

A big wedding in two months was exactly the redemption Orchard Inn needed. Shelby might be preppy and privileged, but she wasn’t completely clueless. The rush-order wedding was meant to benefit Beth too.

“I think you’re right. And I think you’re an awesome friend.”

“Aww. Don’t sing my praises just yet, though. You have to deal with my mother on some of this too.”

Beth’s stomach turned to cold lead.

Evelyn Meyers. Old Texas money, expensive taste, impossible expectations. For everything.

Their freshman year of college, she’d berated Shelby to the point of tears because she’d wanted to pledge a different sorority than Evelyn’s legacy. Shelby had won out in the end and gone her own way, but to this day, it was a point of contention between mother and daughter.

Evelyn was queen of the castle. Everybody’s castle.

“Everything is going to be perfect.” Beth smiled. Because she’d make sure it was. Whatever challenge came along with this wedding, she’d rise and conquer, for her family.

“This will be the best wedding Texas has ever seen,” she promised her friend.

“Thank you.” Shelby hugged her tight. “I know you won’t let me down.”

Chapter 2

Engaged. Can you believe it? Boy is barely out of law school and can’t even get out of the gate before getting tied down.” Sawyer shook his head and waited for a response.

Clyde, his most reliable confidant and horse, trotted along with nothing to say as they made their way around the first bend on the family property’s easiest trail.

“I know, I know. He’s been out of college and working for years now, but he’s still young. Too young to go marry some girl this fast.” In Sawyer’s eyes, his brother, Garrett, was eternally underage.

Too young to go away to school. Too young to drink. Too young to move somewhere like Austin. And way too young to be someone’s husband.

Clyde reached the top of the hill and came to a halt, familiar with the route of their favorite ride.

“What is he thinking?” But Garrett was going to do whatever Garrett wanted to do, same as always. Unless Sawyer truly put his foot down.

That’d only happened twice in their lives, and neither were moments he wanted to revisit.

“You talking to the horse again?” Uncle Joe came up beside him, his steed, Malice, nuzzling into the tall grasses next to Clyde.

“Like you don’t do it too.”

“All the time. A horse makes a good listener. Only when they start talking back that you’ve got a problem.”

Sawyer grinned at the long-running joke.

“Something on your mind, son?”

He shook his head but started spilling anyway. “Just Garrett and this getting-married business. Thinking he’s all grown up when he’s not even old enough to know better. He’s known her what, a month? And now she’s just supposed to be a part of the family? I’ve been around her exactly two times.”

“He says he’s in love.”

“He’s been in love before.”

Love was a bedtime story people told themselves so they’d sleep better at night. People were people, and at the end of the day, their self-interest would always come before love.

“He says this time is different.”

“That’s the infatuation talking.” Everything was always sunshine and a field of flowers at first. Give it time. It’d all turn to torrential rain and mudslides in the end.

“He seems pretty sure of himself.”

Sawyer rubbed Clyde’s neck. Garrett was always sure of himself.

He’d been sure he wanted a beat-up old Chevy as his first truck, because it was a classic. They worked for weeks getting the thing to run, only for Garrett to buy a new truck a year later. The old Chevy, still temperamental as a mule, remained in Sawyer’s garage.

Garrett had been sure he didn’t want to be a part of the family business too. Then, after college, he’d used that big brain of his to change his mind and get into land-use law. He might not be a part of Silva Ranch’s day-to-day operations, but Garrett regularly came to town and consulted with them on the future of their ranch.

“Garrett doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Sawyer insisted.

They slowly made their way through a pasture, and his uncle offered no reply for at least five minutes. “Big step, getting married. Neither of us have done it,” he finally said.

His statement hung there between them in the long silence, the low sounds of the horses winding around his words.

Uncle Joe was a self-proclaimed bachelor for life. Early on, it’d likely been by choice. Later, he’d been saddled with raising Sawyer and his brother.

Saddled wasn’t the right word. His uncle had raised them both with a good spirit, even if with a gruff demeanor.

When their parents died, he’d taken on the responsibility, protecting and providing for them both like they were his own. And, as the oldest, Sawyer had fallen into a surrogate role of nurturer.

Garrett was their responsibility.

So how in the world was his baby brother responsible enough to get married?

And who was this girl, anyway? Shelby Meyers.

He knew the Meyers name. Everybody knew the Meyers name.

“How much do we really know about this Shelby, anyway?”

His uncle shrugged.

“I guess she seems nice enough, but she’s a Meyers.”

“Mmm.”

Deep down, she would be just like the rest of them. Looking down their nose at everyone else in the county, or in the whole state, all because they have—or had—money and their ancestors settled Texas—way back in 1330 BCE, to hear them tell it.

“I’m not overly fond of that family.”

“Mmm.”

He wasn’t fond of the rumors about their financial state either.

He’d seen an article in the local magazine featuring Shelby Meyers as one of their “30 Under 30,” and she’d flat-out told the interviewer she intended to turn her family’s fortune around.

Turn it around, as in turn it from bad times to good.

He didn’t put a ton of stock in gossip, but where there was smoke, there was at least a flame. If even a whisper of the gossip was true, the uppity Meyers family was on much harder times than they alluded to.

Their little princess marrying someone as well-off as Garrett Silva would go a long way to ensuring the future smoothed right out for them.

He didn’t like thinking that way, but in the ranching business and, unfortunately, in life, he’d learned that thinking the worst of people was often the s. . .