A White Wedding Christmas. Andrea Laurence

      

       “This is the one.”

      The minute she put on the wedding gown, Natalie knew it. Delicate silver-stitched designs looked like snowflakes dancing across the fabric. It was the most beautiful dress she’d ever seen, and she’d seen hundreds of brides come through her chapel.

      It was perfect. Everything she’d ever wanted.

      Natalie swallowed hard. Everything she’d ever wanted for the bride, she corrected herself.

      Quickly she turned to Colin. He said nothing as he walked toward her. Did he hate it?

      She felt her chest tighten. He wasn’t looking at the gown. He was looking at her. The intensity of his gaze made her insides turn molten. Her knees started trembling.

      Just when she thought she couldn’t bear his gaze any longer, she turned back around. But this time she caught his reflection in the mirror beside her. Maybe it was the confusion of playing the part of the bride … but for one moment he looked like a groom.

      Her groom.

       * * *

      A White Wedding Christmas is part of the Brides and Belles series: Wedding planning is their business … and their pleasure

      A White Wedding

      Christmas

      Andrea Laurence

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      ANDREA LAURENCE is an award-winning author of contemporary romance for Mills & Boon Desire and paranormal romance for Mills & Boon Nocturne. She has been a lover of reading and writing stories since she learned to read at a young age. She always dreamed of seeing her work in print and is thrilled to share her special blend of sensuality and dry, sarcastic humor with the world.

      A dedicated West Coast girl transplanted into the Deep South, Andrea is working on her own happily-ever-after with her boyfriend and their collection of animals, including a Siberian husky that sheds like nobody’s business. If you enjoy Colin and Natalie’s story, tell her by visiting her website, www.andrealaurence.com; like her fan page at facebook.com/authorandrealaurence; or follow her on Twitter, @andrea_laurence.

      To Diet Coke & Jelly Belly—

      A lot of people have supported me throughout my career and over the course of my multiple releases, I’ve done my best to thank them all. Now that I have, it would be remiss if I failed to thank the two crucial elements of my daily word count: caffeine and sugar. My preferred delivery methods are Diet Coke and Jelly Belly jelly beans (strawberry margarita, pear and coconut, to be precise). They have helped me overcome plot challenges and allowed me to keep up with my insane deadline schedule.

      Contents

       Cover

       Introduction

       Title Page

       About the Author

       Dedication

Prologue

One

Two

Three

       Four

       Five

       Six

       Seven

       Eight

       Nine

       Ten

       Eleven

       Twelve

       Epilogue

       Extract

       Copyright

       Prologue

      A lot had changed in the past fourteen years.

      Fourteen years ago, Natalie and her best friend, Lily, were inseparable, and Lily’s older brother Colin was the tasty treat Natalie had craved since she was fifteen. Now, Lily was about to get married and their engagement party was being held at the large, sprawling estate of her brother.

      He’d come a long way since she saw him last. She’d watched, smitten, as he’d evolved into the cool college guy, and when Lily and Colin’s parents died suddenly, Natalie had watched him turn into the responsible guardian of his younger sister and the head of his father’s company. He’d been more untouchable then than ever before.

      Lily and Natalie hadn’t seen much of each other over the past few years. Natalie had gone to college at the University of Tennessee and Lily had drifted aimlessly. They exchanged the occasional emails and Facebook likes, but they hadn’t really talked in a long time. She’d been surprised when Lily called her at From This Moment, the wedding company Natalie co-owned, with a request.

      A quickie wedding. Before Christmas, if possible. It had been early November at the time, and From This Moment usually had at least fourteen months of weddings scheduled in advance. But they closed at Christmas and for a friend, she and the other three ladies that owned and operated the wedding chapel agreed to squeeze one more wedding in before the holiday.

      Natalie’s invitation for the engagement party arrived the next day and now, here she was, in a cocktail dress, milling around Colin’s huge house filled with people she didn’t know.

      That wasn’t entirely true. She knew the bride. And when her gaze met the golden hazel eyes she’d fantasized about as a teenager, she remembered she knew a second person at the party, too.

      “Natalie?” Colin said, crossing a room full of people to see her.

      It took her a moment to even find the words to respond. This wasn’t the boy she remembered from her youth. He’d grown into a man with broad shoulders that filled out his expensive suit coat, a tanned