The Marriage Agenda: The Marriage Conspiracy / The Billionaire's Baby Plan. Allison Leigh

to Dekker, Joleen thought. Dekker—who’d better show up soon or they were going ahead without him—had warned her to stay away from Robert Atwood and his wife.

      “Unless you’re after a little of the Atwood money,” he’d said. “Sam is entitled to some of that.”

      “It is not the money, Dekker. Honestly. We’re gettin’ by all right.”

      “Okay. Then forget the Atwoods. They have too much money and too much power and, given the kind of son they raised, I’d say they’re way too likely to abuse both.”

      She had punched him playfully on the arm. “You are so cynical it scares me sometimes.”

      “You ought to be scared of the Atwoods, of the trouble they’ll probably cause you if you tell them about Sam. I mean it. Take my advice and stay away from them.”

      But she hadn’t taken her friend’s advice. Robert Atwood sold real estate on a grand scale. He dealt in shopping centers and medical complexes and skyscrapers with a thousand and one offices in them. She had called him at Atwood and Son Property Development.

      At first, Bobby’s father had refused to see her or to believe that his precious son could have fathered a child he didn’t even know about. In the end, though, the hope that there might be something of Bobby left on the earth must have been too powerful to deny. He had called Joleen and asked if he and his wife might meet Sam. And as soon as they set eyes on her baby boy, they knew who his father had to be.

      “Joly, hon…”

      Joleen looked into her aunt’s flushed face and smiled. “Hmm?”

      “I just have to say this. I have got a powerful feeling that we will be watching you take your walk down the aisle very soon now.” Aunt LeeAnne beamed up at her.

      Joleen kept her smile. But it did get old sometimes.

      Here’s to you, Joly. We all know it’s bound to be your turn next.…

      I just know you are going to meet someone so special.…

      I see a man in your future, hon. The right man this time.…

      Those she loved would not stop telling her that true love and happily-ever-after were coming her way.

      Joleen fully understood why they did it. None of them could quite believe that she, the levelheaded one, the both-feet-firmly-on-the-ground one, had gone and fallen for a rich boy’s honeyed lies.

      They felt sorry for her. They wanted the best for her.

      And to them the best meant a good man to stand at her side, a husband to help her raise her child.

      “I don’t think so, Aunt LeeAnne.”

      “Well, you just think what you want. I am right about this and you will see that I am.”

      Oh, please, Joleen thought. As if she even had time for love and romance at this point in her life. She had a toddler to raise and a business to run—not to mention a recently delinquent thirteen-year-old sister and a stunningly beautiful fifty-year-old widowed mother who somehow managed to fall in and out of love on what seemed like a weekly basis. DeDe might be off her hands after today, but Niki and her mother still counted on Joleen to be there whenever they needed her.

      And really, Joleen didn’t mind being the one they counted on. She was happy. She honestly was. With her precious little son and her beloved if somewhat troublesome mama and sisters, with the beauty salon she and her mother operated together and with lots of loving family and good friends—including Dekker, who in the past few years had become her closest friend.

      Dekker, who was now so late she doubted he would make it at all.

      Nope. It would not be Joleen’s turn next. Not for a decade or so, at least. Maybe more than a decade. Maybe never. In any case, not “next.”

      But she didn’t tell her aunt LeeAnne that. Instead, she hooked her arm around her aunt’s round shoulders and gave a loving squeeze. “Whatever you say.”

      * * *

      By three-thirty, Joleen decided they had waited long enough. She left the drooping guests behind beneath the pecan trees, entered the house and climbed the stairs to her mother’s big bedroom on the second floor, which today was serving as the bride’s dressing room.

      DeDe, who looked absolutely breathtaking in floor-length white satin, came at her the minute Joleen appeared in the doorway. “Where is he? Is he here yet?”

      Joleen shook her head.

      “Oh, no.” DeDe stopped in midstride and caught her full lower lip between her small white teeth. “How’s Wayne holdin’ up?”

      Wayne Thornton was DeDe’s groom. “Wayne is great. He’s down in the kitchen right now, hanging out with Bud and Burly.”

      “He’s not mad?”

      “Wayne? Are you kidding?” Wayne Thornton was a veterinarian. He was also about the calmest, most easygoing person Joleen had ever had the pleasure to meet. “I promise you, Wayne is fine. Waiting patiently, swapping jokes with Bud and Burly.”

      “I want to see him.”

      “Well, all right, I’ll just—”

      “Wait. Stop right there.”

      Joleen did as her sister commanded.

      “What do you think you’re doing?” DeDe accused. “You know I can’t see him. It would be bad luck.”

      Joleen lifted a shoulder in the tiniest of shrugs. Of course, she knew that. But if she’d been the one to say it, her sister would have insisted that Joleen run downstairs that instant and come right back up with Wayne. Like Niki, DeDe had had some troubled times in the past. She’d settled down a lot in the last couple of years, but she hadn’t gotten rid of her stubborn streak, of a certain contrariness to her nature. Joleen never locked horns with her if she could avoid it. Locking horns with DeDe almost never paid off.

      DeDe sighed. “I’m goin’ nuts.” She whirled in a rustle of satin, flounced to their mother’s big four-poster bed, turned and plunked herself down on the edge of it. “Where is Dekker?”

      Joleen approached and sat beside her sister. She took DeDe’s hand. “Honey…”

      DeDe yanked her hand away. “Don’t say it. He promised he would be here and we are gonna wait for him.”

      “Honey, we have waited. For over an hour. You have to think of your guests. They are dyin’ out there.”

      “Well, I can’t help it. It wouldn’t be right to start without Dekker. You know that it wouldn’t.”

      Joleen had no quick comeback for that.

      The problem was, in her heart, Joleen agreed with DeDe. It wouldn’t be right to start without Dekker.

      Dekker Smith might not be blood to them, but he truly was family. His mama, Lorraine, had been their mama’s best friend. Lorraine was gone now, and Dekker hadn’t lived next door since he graduated high school, but he looked out for them all, especially in the past ten years, since Joleen’s father had died.

      Dekker spent his holidays with them. He had been the one who taught both Joleen and DeDe how to drive. He could always be counted upon to show up with his toolbox when something needed fixing—not to mention to stand up for any female named Tilly any time things got rough. Two years ago, when DeDe had her little run-in with the law, Dekker had gone with Joleen to the police station to bail her out and he’d made sure she got the best lawyer around. Same thing with Niki, when she’d been in trouble last year. Dekker was right there, to help out.

      He was family in the deepest way, and of course DeDe wanted him there to see her married.

      But they couldn’t wait all day to start the wedding march. “DeDe, I think we are just going to have to go ahead.”

      “But