Slightly Engaged. Wendy Markham

      CRITICAL PRAISE FOR Mike, Mike & Me

      “The inventive premise of Markham’s winning novel involves a love triangle in both the past and the present among pretty Beau, the Mike she married, and the Mike she left behind…. Markham’s latest is an appealing, wholly original yarn.”

      —Booklist

      “…hilarious…readers will be instantly catapulted back in time, into their own versions of Very Big Hair and spandex bike shorts.”

      —Romantic Times BOOKclub

      CRITICAL PRAISE FOR Slightly Settled

      “Readers who followed Tracey’s struggles in Slightly Single, and those meeting her for the first time, will sympathize with this singleton’s post-breakup attempts to move on in this fun, lighthearted romp with a lovable heroine.”

      —Booklist

      “Like many women, Tracey needs to figure out when to listen to her friends and when to listen to herself.”

      —Romantic Times BOOKclub

      CRITICAL PRAISE FOR Slightly Single

      “…an undeniably fun journey for the reader.”

      —Booklist

      “Bridget Jonesy…Tracey Spadolini smokes, drinks and eats too much, and frets about her romantic life.”

      —Publishers Weekly

      WENDY MARKHAM

      is a pseudonym for New York Times bestselling, award-winning novelist Wendy Corsi Staub, who has written more than sixty fiction and nonfiction books for adults and teenagers in various genres—among them contemporary and historical romance, suspense, mystery, television and movie tie-in and biography. She has coauthored a hardcover mystery series with former New York City mayor Ed Koch and has ghostwritten books for various well-known personalities. A small-town girl at heart, she was born and raised in western New York on the shores of Lake Erie and in the heart of the notorious snow belt. By third grade, her heart was set on becoming a published author; a few years later, a school trip to Manhattan convinced her that she had to live there someday. At twenty-one, she moved alone to New York City and worked as an office temp, freelance copywriter, advertising account coordinator and book editor before selling her first novel, which went on to win a Romance Writers of America RITA^® Award. She has since received numerous positive reviews and achieved bestseller status, most notably for the psychological suspense novels she writes under her own name. Her Red Dress Ink title Slightly Single was one of Waldenbooks’ Best Books of 2002. Very happily married with two children, Wendy writes full-time and lives in a cozy old house in suburban New York, proving that childhood dreams really can come true.

      Slightly Engaged

      Wendy Markham

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      In loving memory of my beautiful mom,

       Francella Corsi April 17, 1942–May 11, 2005 You alone read and loved everything I ever wrote…. And you said you liked the “funny ones” best of all. Here’s one more, written with laughter through tears, especially for you.

      Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers, and sisters, aunts and cousins, but only one mother in the whole wide world.

      —Kate Douglas Wiggin

      Contents

      Part I: Labor Day Weekend

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Part II: Sweetest Day, Beggar’s night

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Part III: Thanksgiving

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Part IV: Christmas

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Part V: Anguilla

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Part VI: Valentine’s Day

      Chapter 18

      Part VII: October

      Epilogue

Part I

      Chapter 1

      I love weddings!

      Doesn’t everyone?

      Um, apparently not.

      “Cripes, Tracey, I can’t believe this is how we’re spending the last Saturday of the summer.”

      That’s my live-in boyfriend, Jack, grumbling as he gazes bleakly through the windshield of our rented subcompact car at the holiday-traffic-clogged Jersey Turnpike. The midday sun is glaring overhead and heat radiates in waves off the asphalt, along with toxic black exhaust fumes.

      Thank God for air-conditioning. I adjust the full-blast passenger’s-side vent to blow in the vicinity of my navel, lest it muss my fancy upswept do.

      It took me almost an hour and a half a can of Aussie Freeze Spray to get my straight, bra-clasp-length brown hair looking this supermodelish. It’ll probably wilt the second I get out of the car, but at least Jack got to appreciate it. He was momentarily complimentary about my hair and my slinky red cocktail dress before he went back to grousing about the wedding.

      It shouldn’t bug me that he didn’t mention anything about how I was wearing a similar red dress the night we met.

      It shouldn’t, but it does.

      I can’t help it. For the first year or so that we were together, he made a point of noticing details like that. I guess he’s gotten less romantic the last few months. Or maybe I’ve gotten overly sensitive. I shouldn’t go around weighing every comment he makes—or noticing the ones he doesn’t make anymore.

      I shouldn’t, but lately, I do.

      It’s not that I think we’ve fallen out of love. If anything, we’ve become closer, our lives interwoven. His friends are my friends; his mother and his favorite sister, Rachel, sometimes call just to talk to me. My friends are his friends; my mother and sister—well, forget about them. The point is, we’re still a solid couple. We laugh all the time; we know each other’s most intimate secrets; the sex is frequent and good, if I do say so myself.

      So what’s the problem?

      I want more, dammit. I deserve more. I’m finally over the pesky feelings of unworthiness and insecurity that festered in the wake of my arrogant ex-boyfriend, Will, who callously blew me off two summers ago.

      It’s not as though I’ve come right out and asked Jack what his intentions are—maybe because I’m afraid of the answer. But lately, I’ve found myself wondering pretty frequently—all right, constantly—whether Jack is ever going to take the initiative to make our relationship permanent.

      Since he hasn’t, I tend to secretly look for evidence that he’s got the opposite plan