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    His Blushing Bride
    His Blushing Bride
    His Blushing Bride
    Ebook145 pages2 hours

    His Blushing Bride

    By Dani Collins

    5/5

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    About this ebook

    Wedding fever has hit the little town of Marietta...

    Piper Tierney is busy wrapping up the school year and planning the music for Marietta’s Wedding Of The Century. She does not need one of her parents’ backpacking hippies under foot. Except the guy they let stay in their house is so much more than the California couch-surfer he resembles. Before she knows it, she’s making time to make time, even though he’s only in town for a couple of weeks.

    Taking a break from working on his doctorate in political science, Sebastian Bloom wants to reassure himself his sister isn’t making another mistake with her upcoming wedding to a Marietta rancher. He’s definitely not looking for a bride for himself. Marriage and family are a trap. But Piper is cute, funny, and wants to move on from her ex.

    They agree to a no strings affair, but will they wind up tying the knot?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTule Publishing
    Release dateMay 11, 2015
    ISBN9781942240549
    His Blushing Bride
    Author

    Dani Collins

    When Canadian Dani Collins found romance novels in high school she wondered how one trained for such an awesome job. She wrote for over two decades without publishing, but remained inspired by the romance message that if you hang in there you'll find a happy ending. In May of 2012, Harlequin Presents bought her manuscript in a two-book deal. She's since published more than forty books with Harlequin and is definitely living happily ever after.

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      Book preview

      His Blushing Bride - Dani Collins

      His Blushing Bride

      A Montana Born Brides Novella

      Dani Collins

      ––––––––

      H

      is Blushing Bride

      Copyright © 2015 Dani Collins

      The Tule Publishing Group, LLC

      ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

      No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      ISBN: 978-1-942240-54-9

      To all the Marietta fans. I can’t thank you enough for so generously welcoming my characters into your home. I wish Marietta was a real place, too.

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Copyright Page

      Dedication

      Dear Reader

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Epilogue

      The Montana Born Brides Series

      About the Author

      D

      ear Reader,

      I am so excited to bring Sebastian to you. I’ve fallen in love with Marietta and was really pleased when I was given the green light to contribute to the Bride series. The only problem was, while I knew I wanted to write a bride story, I didn’t have a premise or characters in mind.

      Fortunately, I remembered Liz from Blame The Mistletoe confiding a family secret to Blake about her brother. I won’t spoil it here, but once I recalled that piece of backstory, I had to know more about how it had shaped Bastian as a man.

      And then, given Bastian’s playboy tendencies, I knew he needed the most wholesome good girl ever to bring him to his knees. Along came Piper Tierney, the high school music teacher. She’s pert and smart, firmly rooted in her life here in Marietta, and eager to lose her V-card.

      As experienced as Bastian is, he’s never met anyone like Piper. She sure as heck doesn’t have any experience with a man like him. Together they’re sinfully sweet and trying to keep it no strings—which doesn’t work out for them at all.

      I hope you enjoy their journey to happily ever after. And I hope you enjoy a visit with all the characters from my previous books set in Marietta. If you haven’t met them yet, they’re here:

      Hometown Hero – Skye & Chase

      Blame The Mistletoe – Liz & Blake

      The Bachelor’s Baby – Meg & Linc

      Happy reading!

      C

      hapter One

      Piper Tierney saw the email from her parents as she was tidying up the band room, after the final bell.

      Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. It was one thing when her father had picked up hitchhikers wherever he happened to find them and brought them home. Her mother had always been happy to give them a bed and a meal, and Piper had to admit she had met some interesting people growing up, but now they wanted to send strangers to their empty house while they traveled South America?

      No, she decided firmly, spelling out she was in the middle of planning all the year end performances, including graduation, and had NancyLynn Pruitt’s over-the-top wedding to prepare for. No time to babysit. Sorry.

      Miss Tierney? The girlish voice from the door was hesitant. Piper looked up to see an unfamiliar student, which was a strange experience this late in the year. By May she ought to know who belonged at Marietta High and who didn’t. There was something distantly familiar about her stunningly pretty face and long blond hair, but all Piper could think was that the boys in this school were going to drop two letter grades on her arrival alone.

      The final bell rang so I’m allowed to have this, Piper said, pretending to be defensive as she held up her phone. The staff struggled daily against these devices so they were all trying to set the example they expected. Which meant students had as much right to ask teachers to put aside their phones as the other way around.

      The teenager shook her head and smiled. I wouldn’t tell anyway. I’m, um, Bella Davis. She pressed curled fingers to her chest, coming in with slow steps. The office said I should talk to you if I want to join band next year because I didn’t do it this year.

      Her gaze was openly nervous and hung up where the dark pink birthmark swept like a sideburn over Piper’s right cheek.

      Definitely a new student. Each fall, even when she’d been a student herself, Piper had suffered through the stares. But school, and music, had eventually become her safe place, where everyone knew her and no one remarked on it anymore.

      It’s a birthmark, she said casually, then asked, Is your mom Magdalena Davis? The grapevine had it that Marietta’s most notorious teen pregnancy had moved back to town fifteen years after the fact. My dad always said she had the loveliest voice.

      Your dad knew my mom? Bella asked, attention quickly flashing up from her scan of the instruments set against the back wall.

      He was the music teacher here before me. He retired two years ago.

      Oh. I didn’t know that. We only moved here a few weeks ago. Mom knows a lot of people in town, but I don’t.

      You will, Piper assured her. And the first thing you need to know about us Tierneys is we don’t turn away anyone who wants to make music. What would you like to play?

      Bella wasn’t sure. She didn’t have an instrument and didn’t know if she could afford to buy or rent one. They settled on flute, since one of Piper’s flutists was graduating this June and she only had one other. I’ll look through Dad’s music room. He’ll have a used one you can borrow. I can even give you homework for the summer if you’d like to practice before starting in the fall?

      Bella agreed and ran off to catch her bus.

      Piper moved to her desk and sent an email to the office, approving Bella’s enrollment.

      That made her think of her friend Skye, who was on leave of absence from her position as secretary here. Piper had a feeling she wouldn’t be back. Skye was living the dream, engaged to Chase Goodwin, traveling with him as he played baseball in the majors. It sounded so perfect. Piper not only missed her friend, but envied her. Skye had reconnected with the hot guy from high school and made falling in love and getting engaged look easy.

      Of course, not everyone got a happily ever after, Piper thought. Look at Bella’s mom, single all these years after who knew what kind of teenaged fling. And Skye had certainly paid her dues with her first marriage.

      Piper supposed everyone had to. She had paid her dues with her first relationship, hadn’t she?

      She absently touched her cheek, where her birthmark flamed. It didn’t feel any different from the rest of her face, but she knew exactly where it was and that it made her different.

      That’s where the angels kissed you, her mother used to tell her when she was young. She’d been laughed out of the classroom the first time she tried repeating that at school.

      For about the millionth time, she thought about seeing a specialist, convinced the birthmark was the one thing holding her back from happiness, but every time she started to book an appointment, she heard her mother say, Honey, the right man won’t even see it.

      The wrong man, Kevin, had hated it. He’d nagged her to have it ‘fixed.’ But the students didn’t see it. She knew it was possible for this stupid birthmark to disappear over time as people got to know her.

      So maybe she kept it as a test to weed out the jerks.

      And maybe all the good, non-jerks in Marietta were taken. The bachelor auction at Valentine’s Day should have at least gotten her a date, but she’d lost on all her bids. Now it was wedding season, all these great guys were getting married, and she wouldn’t even be a bridesmaid. She was conducting the orchestra, for heaven’s sake. She might as well be sweeping up the rice.

      Not that she needed a man to make her happy, she reminded herself. Her life was full and fulfilling. She had awesome family and friends. She laughed every day, especially at work. Yes, she’d like to marry and have kids, but that was a ‘someday’ goal, not a mad panic thing she needed to happen today.

      No, she just thought it was time to move on from Kevin.

      It was time to lose her virginity, damn it.

      Which was a terrible way to think, she knew. In her heart of hearts, she wanted her first experience to be romantic and loving and sexy and satisfying. From what she’d heard, though, it was usually awkward and disappointing—much like Kevin, ha ha. But one act could accomplish both goals. She would finally feel like she was in the club with her peers and would firmly put Kevin behind her.

      At the very least, dinner and a movie would be nice. Maybe a bit of making out. A small sign of interest was all she was asking for. Something to reassure her that the fish in the sea thought she was worth a nibble.

      Glancing at her watch, she shook herself out of her despondency, sent a brief email to Skye to ask how she was doing, then locked up and was out the door.

      Honestly, the real reason she didn’t have a man in her life was probably that she was such a moving target. She couldn’t remember when she’d last gone straight home from school and not turned around and left again, or opened the door to a piano lesson, or spent the evening on the phone planning rehearsals and performances. After she got through June, she promised herself, she’d make more time for herself.

      And men.

      At least she had Charlie. The longer days meant she could take him for a run after dinner so—

      Whoa. Who was that?

      Pulling into the driveway of her parents’ house, Piper jammed the car into park and stared at the guy leaning on the veranda rail. He wore a white T-shirt, faded jeans, and sneakers. He was reading the romance novel she’d left on the table between the two lounge chairs where she’d sat for five minutes and five pages while eating a breakfast wrap, catching this morning’s sun.

      He lifted his head and Piper heard her own breath come in on a sharp inhale.

      Wow. Good-bye virginity.

      He was thirty-ish, muscled and tanned, had dirty blond hair that was overlong and shaggy, making him look very devil-may-care. Dark golden stubble coated his square jaw beneath hollow cheeks. When did the burgling industry start recruiting through modeling agencies?

      Not bothering to pull into the garage since she had to run out again right away, she opened her door and set one foot on the

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