Second Chance Hawaiian Honeymoon, page 1
Blossom and Bliss Weddings
Will these renowned wedding planners find their own happy-ever-afters?
Blossom and Bliss DuPont are twin sisters who run Vancouver’s most successful wedding planning business. But their own love lives are a different matter. Until an impulsive escape to beautiful, sun-drenched Hawaii changes their futures...
Read Blossom’s story in
Second Chance Hawaiian Honeymoon
And look out for Bliss’s story coming soon!
Dear Reader,
I first visited the Hawaiian Islands when I was sixteen years old. I have been under the spell of that warm, exotic land ever since.
In the past few years, I have had the opportunity (and the privilege) of escaping the coldest months of Canadian winter and spending that time on the Big Island of Hawaii.
I do not think, in just one lifetime, it is possible to capture the essence of this mystical, sacred island, but I hope to have at least given you a tantalizing taste of its beauty and magic. I hope, too, I have captured at least some of the warmth and welcome—the spirit of aloha—that lives in the people of Hawaii.
I cannot think of a more remarkable background for the hero and heroine of this story, Joe and Blossom, to explore their enchantment for each other, and to rediscover the depths and healing power of love.
Hawaii will also be the setting for the second book in this duo, where Blossom’s twin sister, Bliss, finally meets her match!
Mahalo for sharing this journey with me.
A hui hou!
Cara
Second Chance Hawaiian Honeymoon
Cara Colter
www.millsandboon.com.au
Cara Colter shares her home in beautiful British Columbia, Canada, with her husband of more than thirty years, an ancient, crabby cat and several horses. She has three grown children and two grandsons.
Mahalo to my Hawaiian ohana, the Woodwards and the Carters.
Praise for Cara Colter
“Ms. Colter’s writing style is one you will want to continue to read. Her descriptions place you there.... This story does have a HEA but leaves you wanting more.”
—Harlequin Junkie on His Convenient Royal Bride
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
EXCERPT FROM FAKE ENGAGEMENT WITH THE BILLIONAIRE BY ALLY BLAKE
CHAPTER ONE
BLOSSOM DUPONT made her way through the late spring crowds in the historic Gastown area of Vancouver. It was just one of those perfect days: the sun out; the leaves on the trees unfurling, fresh and green; something vibrant in the air.
Spring did this, didn’t it? Made the whole world light up with a kind of hopeful energy.
She was not unaware of eyes on her, as she walked to her destination. She could feel a shimmer, deep in her belly. She wondered if it was that same aura of expectation that was in the warm spring day.
But somehow she doubted that it was anticipation and happiness shimmering in her.
It was that darned anxiety that she was trying so hard not to acknowledge.
Life’s too good. The other shoe is going to drop.
Of course, that disturbing encounter with Joe’s father hadn’t helped.
Stop it, she ordered herself. Just stop it.
In a little over two weeks, she was going to be married! She was well aware being loved had given her this newfound sense of coming into herself, so much so that most days she could ignore that little voice saying Don’t get your hopes up.
Blossom didn’t consider herself beautiful—though oddly she considered her identical twin sister, Bliss, exactly that.
And maybe Bliss, living up to her name, was beautiful because she had always radiated exactly the kind of energy Blossom was brand-new to.
Well, that and Bliss was way better with makeup, and hair, and clothes. Blossom liked as little fuss as possible. Before she’d begun dating Joseph Blackwell, makeup was a time-consuming nuisance. She rarely curled her long, dark brown hair or put it up. She’d had an absolute aversion to dressing up ever since her senior high school prom.
But as soon as Joe had asked her out, Bliss had placed herself in charge of the management of all things Blossom. Really? She should have appreciated having a private consultant making her look her best every day. The man was a billionaire! As Bliss had pointed out, you didn’t go on a date with a man like that in wrinkled khakis and with a sunburned nose.
Blossom did appreciate her sister’s efforts. Of course she did!
How convenient was it to have your identical twin sister’s rather extensive wardrobe open to you? How wonderful was it to have your fashion-savvy sibling putting together outfits for you?
Right now, Blossom was wearing a short, black, flirty pleated skirt that swished around her thighs, slender boots with a skinny heel that added two inches to her height, and a filmy, pink pastel blouse, the lacy red camisole underneath just peeking through.
Bliss had pronounced, with satisfaction, that the outfit was sexy as hell and then she’d gone to work to make the rest of Blossom match. So, her abundance of hair was held loosely up in a clip, giving her a casual I-don’t-care-what-my-hair-looks-like look that was devilishly hard to achieve. The dark suede brown of her eyes had been accentuated with artfully placed smudges of shadow. Her cheekbones looked high and her cheeks looked hollow. Bliss had declared Blossom’s faintly glossed lips kissable.
“Who needs to have kissable lips to go out for lunch?” Blossom had asked.
“Lunch with Joe Blackwell,” Bliss had reminded her.
Unfortunately, that reminder, and the faintly incredulous note in her sister’s tone, brought out the very voice Blossom was trying to silence.
The voice that was asking her if Joe had fallen for her or for Bliss’s creation. Because she’d been down this road before, hadn’t she? Pretending to be something she was not. With catastrophic results.
Bliss’s creation was attracting quite a bit of attention. It was a bit of a marvel, because, with one notable exception in her past, Blossom had never really been the woman who garnered male attention, and yet she could feel eyes following her with interest. A construction worker, uncaring of political correctness, bless his heart, wolf-whistled his appreciation.
She stopped in front of Essence, the new it restaurant in Vancouver. The restaurant did not take reservations, and hopefuls were lined up to the corner and beyond.
But those hopefuls weren’t engaged to Joseph Blackwell. When he’d suggested lunch here, Blossom had said she didn’t have time to wait in the line. Truth be told, she barely had time for lunch.
She had a wedding to get ready for.
A wedding in the final countdown. Sixteen days.
Of course, that was her job. She always had a wedding to get ready for. She and Bliss had started their wedding planning company, Blossoms and Bliss, three years ago. They liked to joke that their weird names, bestowed on them by their wildly eccentric artist mother, had finally paid off.
The company had taken all their money, all their heart, and every ounce of their courage. Several times they had thought it was over, that they were going to go under, that the dream was dead.
But then they had been hired by Vancouver real estate phenom, Harold Lee, to do his daughter’s wedding. The Cinderella-themed, over-the-top wedding had moved their company into the awareness of people in entirely different circles. They were now fielding requests from dream clientele.
And, of course, it was because of the Lee wedding that Blossom had been introduced to Joe Blackwell, the groom’s best friend and best man.
Nobody could have been more surprised than her when, at the end of the evening, he had asked for her—not Bliss, who was usually the one who was swarmed with the attention of any available male who had attended the wedding—if she would like to dance.
Normally, she would have said no. Normally, she would have considered it unprofessional.
And yet that night, the last dance of the night had been to the song “Hunger.” The waltz, with its haunting melody, was about passion. Longing. And, finally, fulfillment.
And when Joe Blackwell had held out his hand to her, she had taken it, unable to resist. Since that first electrical touch, Blossom had known exactly what hunger, on every level, meant.
Now, all these months later, she was still unable to resist him, still hungry for his touch, his gaze, his slow, sexy smile.
After a whirlwind romance, she was about to marry a man who had actually laughed when she mentioned the line-up at Essence. He and the owner were old college buddies. There wouldn’t be any line for them.
Of course there wouldn’t, because Joe lived in that world.
And now, she thought with a tiny shiver, so did she.
But again, that shiver was nebu
Again, she remembered that stunning encounter with his father, James. The Blackwells were a well-known and well-heeled Vancouver family, what people often called old money. That evening, not even a week ago, Blossom and Joe had been invited for dinner at the Blackwell senior’s estate in the tony British Properties in West Vancouver.
Joe’s parents, James and Celia, had always seemed to like her.
And yet James had been standing outside of the bathroom door when she had come out, as if he’d been waiting for her.
I know what you’re up to.
She had been stunned, but when she had pressed James for clarity, he had given her a dark look, gone in the bathroom and shut the door in her face.
Blossom shook it off as she stepped past the first people in line, ignoring their annoyed looks as she went out of the brightness of the day into the restaurant.
The woman at the front hostess station was one of those intimidating types. She was regal, all in black, with a string of tasteful pearls at her neck. She looked more like a member of an exclusive country club than a hostess at a restaurant, even a posh one.
She raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow at Blossom, asking, without saying a single word, who did she think she was? Hadn’t she seen the line-up outside?
At least Blossom was finally able to identify the shiver within her. Nope. Not happiness. That voice.
“Not good enough.”
“Imposter.”
“Hopelessly out of her depth.”
Joe’s father’s words had brought each of those insecurities she’d thought long buried rushing to the surface.
Without warning, she was once again the girl at the senior high school prom, the one who had the date with the star of the high school football team, whose mother had been so excited to find a Jacob Minstrel original gown at the secondhand store.
For once, Blossom had been the fairy-tale princess.
Until it had all fallen apart. She shivered. She did not want to think of that now. But because she had allowed it to creep into her thoughts, she had a sudden fear that maybe Joe—who had never stood her up or let her down—wasn’t here, that this, too, was going to all fall apart.
She could almost hear her mother, always quick with the New Age advice—and also, ironically, the source of that fear that you could always count on things to go sideways—saying, Fear is like saying a prayer for what you don’t want.
She took a deep breath and shook off the feelings. Instead of trying to tug the skirt down to cover an extra inch of her thigh, Blossom raised her eyebrow back at the hostess. “I’m Blossom DuPont.”
There was that subtle sneer at her name—as if it was a stripper name—just the faintest lifting of a red-painted lip.
“I’m meeting Joseph Blackwell.” She could not resist adding, “My fiancé.”
The sneer disappeared as if the woman had tried to swallow her lips. Before her expression smoothed over completely, Blossom caught a flicker of envy, that look that said, Why you?
A question she had asked herself a hundred—no, a thousand—times over the last action-packed months of romance.
“I’ll show you—”
“It’s okay, thanks, I see him,” Blossom said, moving past the woman. She paused before she went into the main area of the restaurant. She understood that woman’s envy completely.
When she saw Joe, she always had this sensation.
Pinch me. I must be dreaming.
Today, it was even more intense, a sensation of wanting, accompanied by a delicious flutter in her heart. In sixteen days, this sophisticated, handsome billionaire was going to be her husband.
Blossom admired Joe even more because he had not been satisfied to rest on his family’s laurels. He had cut his own swathe to fortune with hard work and savvy, creating one of the most well-known software design companies in the world.
He wore his success with the confident ease of a man who had never expected anything less of his life than the lofty place he had arrived at. Whereas Blossom had to work at looking a certain way, elegance and good taste came to Joe as naturally as breathing.
Today, he had on jeans and a deep gray suit jacket, a crisp white linen shirt, undone at the throat. Even without a hint of a label showing anywhere, the cut and quality of that clothing screamed the expense and classiness of the very best men’s designers in the world. He could leave lunch and be on for the cover of Trends, the men’s lifestyle magazine that always had a hot, hot model on the cover.
Joe had all those cover-ready qualities: absolutely masculine, stunningly gorgeous, radiating masculine self-assurance.
The subtle restaurant light was playing with his perfectly cut light brown hair, spinning strands of gold into it. The soft glow showed his features to advantage, the beautiful nose, sculpted cheekbones, the faintest cleft to that strong chin, all of it with just a hint of whisker shadowing.
He had been studying the menu, but as if he sensed himself being watched, he suddenly glanced up. A smile touched his full, sensual lips, and revealed straight, even, beautifully white teeth. Blossom felt that familiar melting sensation.
Her fiancé. In sixteen days, she would be Mrs. Blackwell.
She savored the impact of those eyes that were taking her in with grave male appreciation. Joe’s eyes were a shade of green deeper than the most valuable jade, and like valuable jade, seemed to spark from within.
She was pretty sure that was what she had loved about him first, how the light in his eyes deepened whenever he looked at her. Suddenly, Blossom was nothing but grateful for the outfit Bliss had selected.
Joe rose from the table as she arrived, took her shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks.
“You look gorgeous,” he said, his voice so deep, so familiar, so sensual. His eyes lingered on those kissable lips.
And then he gave in and kissed them, the kiss lingering.
Blossom turned to liquid, hot and melting. He broke the kiss, but reluctantly, and she slid into the chair he held out for her, boneless.
“Sorry,” he said. “I can’t resist you.”
There was just a tiny smudge of her gloss on his lips that she wanted to remove. Those green eyes sparked with something so hot, she considered suggesting they skip lunch.
Which, of course, would be trashy, a word that had haunted Blossom for nearly five years.
“Thank you,” she managed to stammer. “You’re looking pretty irresistible yourself. The hostess has the hots for you.”
The hostess, me, any female breathing within a hundred yards or so...
He glanced over at the hostess station, lifted a shoulder, dismissing the compliment, looking back at her as if she was the only woman in his world worthy of note.
Something in Blossom sighed. He was so perfect.
“So, how’s your day been?” he asked. His hand closed over hers and squeezed, and she squeezed back, marveling at the small intimacies that love imbued with the light of the spectacular.
“Busy!”
“You said today was busy, so I’ve been studying the menu trying to decide what you might like. I guessed the pear and brie croissant. What do you think?”
In what world was one of Vancouver’s richest men trying to decipher what she might like for lunch? Her world.
But there was that cloud again. Pressing at her world of sunshine and blue sky, telling her, Watch out. There’s a storm brewing.
“That sounds perfect,” she said, hoping her tone was bright and chipper and not faintly uneasy. “Just like you.”
He smiled at her, but, always hyperalert, Blossom thought she noticed something in his smile. Was he tired? So was she. Exhausted. But it would all be worth it soon.
“Can you believe we’re in the final stretch? Sixteen days,” she said to Joe, brightly. Again, she could feel something forced in her deliberately cheery tone.
He lifted his water glass to her. “I can’t wait,” he said.
