Daring Brides Read Online Free PDF Page B

Correction. Brian was finally in love with her. That blockhead had made her wait nearly her whole life, but now that he’d found his brain like the Scarecrow Groom he was, she didn’t care.
    She was mostly over the moon about the baby now—except for the puking part—but having a baby had prompted a different approach to wedding planning.
    It was like they’d ordered the fast-food wedding special—even though Brian hated it when she called it that. He was such a gourmet food snob sometimes. But she wasn’t complaining. She’d dreamed about marrying Brian McConnell since the third grade. Now she was going to have him for good.
    But everything had been so hectic lately, what with her new “Love”—emphasis on the capital L—relationship with Brian, the BABY—who deserved all caps—her new job with The Grand Mountain Hotel, and training Margie to be the new manager of her coffee shop, Don’t Soy With Me. And that was why she was currently locked in her sister Meredith’s bathroom while her mom, her sister, her Denver cousins, and her dear friend, Peggy McBride, chatted outside. They were laughing about something, and she felt a little left out, but it felt good to take this quick moment for herself.
    “Jill!” Meredith called. “Did you fall in or something? Come on, we need to get to the church pretty soon.”
    Her makeup was flawless, she had to admit, and it did a great job of covering the red splotches on her face from an early-morning bout of morning sickness. She hadn’t put on her dress yet or her shoes. She prayed no one would notice that the bride wore a size eleven heel. Please God let them be too busy gazing in wonder at the most beautiful bride they’d ever seen. Her. She could finally look in the mirror and see her beauty. Brian had helped with that, but she’d mostly done it herself.
    Her red hair lay in curled waves down her back. Putting it up in some coif wouldn’t have been her, and no one would have recognized her in the pictures. The pink blush on her cheeks made the hollows look a little more pronounced, like she had more prominent cheekbones. And her signature Hale green eyes—well she wasn’t too shy to admit they looked like sparkling emeralds.
    “You’d better call a plumber,” she called back. “My engagement ring fell off my finger when I was flushing, and it went down the toilet.”
    “What?” her sister and a few of her cousins called out.
    She opened the door with a smirk and held her left hand up so her ring glinted in the light. “Gotcha!”
    Her mother, Linda, fanned herself. “Jill Marie Hale. I swear. Sometimes you give me heart palpitations.”
    Since Jill’s dad had recently experienced heart palpitations and then some, her smirk faded. “Sorry, Mom. I was just responding to what Meredith said about me falling in. Jeez. Can’t anyone go to the bathroom in peace anymore?”
    “You were in there forever,” Meredith said.
    “Natalie,” she said to her cousin, “was she timing me?”
    The brunette tapped her watch face. “No, but I was. Jill, you told me to keep you on schedule. You said, and I repeat, ‘You know how I am.’”
    Which is why Natalie was always in charge of the wedding emergency kit at family weddings. Unlike a normal kit with red-eye drops or moist towelettes, hers included saltine crackers and sparkling water, which always settled her stomach.
    “Good point.” She did know how she was. If there had been a high school yearbook category for the Woman Who Will Most Probably Be Late For Her Own Wedding, she would have swept it. She had always been way too spontaneous for her own good.
    “Let’s get a move on then,” her cousin, Moira, said, picking up the plastic garment bag holding her dress. “I have the dress.”
    “I have the makeup bag,” her other cousin, Caroline, said.
    Her mom rushed up and gave her a big hug. “And I have you, Jillie Bean.”
    Meredith bustled in and hugged them both. “Me too.”
    Seconds later, her