New Year's Wedding Read online

  Fairy tales do come true.

  She seemed to have it all: a fabulous career as a supermodel, a dad who dotes on her and a home in Paris. And now Cassie’s rediscovered the Manning half brother and sister she barely remembered since she was split up from them as a toddler. But none of that excuses her bad behavior on a photo shoot that hit all the tabloids and sent her running from the media. With the help of family friend Grady Nelson, she’s able to lie low in his secluded cabin so she can be part of the New Year’s wedding of her long-lost sister. Cassie’s just beginning to believe she might really have it all—including the heart of this independent bachelor—when she accidentally sets fire to Grady’s house... Then all bets are off.

  “Hold the elevator!”

  “Grady...” Cassie stumbled.

  “Come on!” he encouraged her, running. “If we get there first, I can tell the waiter Ben’s paying. He has a tab here.”

  The man held the door from closing as Grady ran in, drawing Cassie in with him. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders as she struggled to catch her breath. The man let the door go and the elevator began to rise.

  Grady was completely unprepared for what happened next. Cassie’s hands caught his in a biting grip, her fingernails drawing blood as she let out a high-pitched, ear-splitting scream. She began to shake him and point to the door.

  “Cassie—”

  “No!”

  The other man’s eyes widened as they reached the third floor and the doors parted.

  Cassie gasped and ran out into a hallway that spilled into the restaurant, only feet from the hostess’s podium. She stopped and drew in air, her arms wrapped around herself, her cheeks red.

  She looked mortified and somehow isolated. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, then added grimly, “Remember that issue from my childhood I mentioned that I still deal with?”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s claustrophobia.”

  “Yeah,” he said. An inch of skin was scraped off his left hand. “I guessed that.”

  Dear Reader,

  I was a pudgy little kid, and all these years later, nothing much has changed. I’ve tried every diet out there with various levels of temporary success. Having a sedentary job doesn’t help, nor does the propensity to sit and read a book when everyone else is playing tennis.

  The real boon of that sedentary job, though, is that I can create and spend time with a heroine who has a perfect body. I know a great body doesn’t make a better person, but I’ve always wanted one anyway. I make no apologies.

  When Cassidy Chapman formed in my mind, the third child in my Manning Family Reunion series, she was beautiful and looked perfect, but I didn’t know what she did for a living. Then I thought about the perfect job for a woman with a perfect body and I let out all the stops. She’s a supermodel with a great life, but she has a past she knows little about since she and her siblings were separated as children.

  As New Year’s Wedding opens, the paparazzi are on her trail after an embarrassing episode on a photo shoot, and she’s running to escape them with Grady Nelson—Ben’s police department partner from To Love and Protect.

  In Beggar’s Bay she finds family, answers to questions that have plagued her for a long time and love. But Grady has his own issues, so finding solutions that will allow them to build a life together isn’t easy. But is it ever?

  While it’s true that her model’s body didn’t simplify her life, she looked wonderful while she struggled. I loved that.

  Thank you for buying my book!

  New Year’s Wedding

  Muriel Jensen

  Muriel Jensen lives with her husband, Ron, in a simple old Victorian looking down on the Columbia River in Astoria, Oregon. They share the space with a wild West Highland white terrier mix and two eccentric tabbies. They have three children, nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Their neighborhood is charmed, populated with the kindest people who are also the best cooks. Life is so good.

  Books by Muriel Jensen

  Harlequin Heartwarming

  Always Florence

  Manning Family Reunion

  In My Dreams

  To Love and Protect

  New Year’s Wedding

  Harlequin Superromance

  All Summer Long

  “Home, Hearth and Hayley”

  Man with a Mission

  Man with a Message

  Man with a Miracle

  Man in a Million

  The Man She Married

  The Man under the Mistletoe

  Harlequin American Romance

  Daddy to Be Determined

  Jackpot Baby

  That Summer in Maine

  His Baby

  His Wife

  His Family

  His Wedding

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Join Harlequin My Rewards today and earn a FREE ebook!

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  To the Seattle Mariners and the Seattle Seahawks to whom my husband is devoted. Their games gave me uninterrupted time to write. They’re also quite a gorgeous group, so my “heroes” folder is full of their photos.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  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

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  EXCERPT FROM A DAD FOR CHARLIE BY ANNA J. STEWART

  PROLOGUE

  THE COLD, CRISP night had begun so well. Despite the last-minute schedule change just days before Christmas, the crew had rallied for the flight from Paris to Ireland. They would make this photo shoot work. The only hitch had been Maggie, the makeup artist, who had already left on her Christmas holiday. But a replacement had been found and everyone approached the Heart and Soul perfume shoot with the enthusiasm required for success.

  The palatial country home where they were being allowed to set up lights and cameras had a pillared portico outlined with Christmas lights and a tall, decorated oak by the front steps.

  Cassie Chapman was cold. Her filmy red, off-the-shoulder gown was intended to contribute to the glamour of the scene, but someone stood just yards away with a warm coat to wrap around her during breaks.

  She was excited and edgy. Work always revved her body and her brain, but that wasn’t all. That morning, she’d learned that the brother and sister she hadn’t seen since she was two years old had found her and invited her to join them in Texas for the holidays. Though feeling like a lit firecracker inside, she tried to focus on the work at hand, knowing the entire crew was as anxious to finish the night’s work as she was.

  The shoot began to go bad when the woman who had replaced Maggie kept running in between shots to reset the combs that held Cassie’s thick hair back. Her movements were quick and understandably nervou
s. She was very young and it was the first time she’d worked with this crew. She jabbed blush on Cassie’s cheekbones with a finger that felt like an auger, and fussed with eyelashes she’d applied earlier and that now drooped slightly on the outside edge.

  Cassie had stood quietly while the woman tried to fix it, apparently not achieving the look she wanted. The stars and the lights began to spin a little, her breath coming as though having to fight its way out. Oh, no. Those symptoms usually preceded an event. She told herself firmly, “Not. Now.”

  But rough, anxious hands were all over her face, pushing and smoothing, reattaching a comb and scraping her scalp.

  Cassie remained still. She had a reputation as a consummate professional whether she was in water, on a camel or in a tree. Discomfort meant nothing as long as they got just the right shot.

  Panic began, anyway. It was mild at first because she tried to work the behavior strategy. Breathe deeply, think about wide, open spaces and put yourself there.

  Her favorite place was Paloma Beach on the Riviera. She struggled to remember the feel of the warm breeze on her face and the sun on her limbs, to hear the surf and the laughter of other bathers.

  She was anxious, though, about meeting her siblings. She could miss her flight, and travel was crazy at this time of year. And the strategy required focus and not distraction to work well.

  She finally said politely, “Please stop. I need a minute to...”

  But the woman went on as though Cassie hadn’t spoken, determined to fix the troublesome eyelashes.

  Mild panic quickly became the serious stuff of nightmares. After twenty-five years and several therapists, she still didn’t know if she’d been born this way or if something she couldn’t recall had caused it. Once the panic took her over, its origin didn’t matter. Dealing with it was all she could do.

  Now she couldn’t breathe, felt the darkness coming as though someone lowered a heavy, prickly blanket over her, saw the lights go crazy as the spin quickened and she began to gasp for air. The need to jump out of her skin and run was overwhelming.

  It acted like a memory that wouldn’t quite form. She had a sense of something holding her tightly in place, squeezing the breath out of her. In contradiction to the imprisoning hold, she felt something silky against her face. It was always the same. Loud, angry voices, cries of pain and anguish, then a harsh, ugly noise and a moment’s silence. She struggled to put a time and place to what was less a memory than an imprint on her brain without words or pictures. As always, nothing came.

  When the makeup artist smoothed the eyelashes again and accidentally stuck her finger in Cassie’s eye, Cassie came back to the moment suddenly, screaming. She grabbed the startled woman’s wrist and held it away from her.

  “Stop!” Cassie shouted at her. “I asked you to stop!” She was horrified to hear herself. She never shouted. “Are you deaf?” she demanded.

  The cruel question was spoken in exasperation rather than anger but she noted that the woman’s eyes were on her lips. When they rose to meet her gaze, they looked mortified, stricken.

  Several members of the crew closed in to try to help, but that was the last thing Cassie’s claustrophobia needed. Though she felt as though a breath was trapped in her lungs, she managed to free a high-pitched scream. She dropped the woman’s wrist, pushed away the coat someone tried to wrap around her, picked up the skirts of her dress and ran away. The scream seemed to fill the night and follow her.

  CHAPTER ONE

  CASSIDY CHAPMAN HELD Grady Nelson’s hand in a death grip as they raced across the tarmac toward her father’s private jet. Footsteps pounded after them.

  “Cassie!” a rough male voice shouted from behind them. The rest of what he said was drowned out by the sound of the growling jet, ready for takeoff. The smell of diesel and grass filled the warm, southeast Texas air, making the Christmas carols coming from the terminal some distance away seem out of place.

  “Almost there!” Grady encouraged her as they continued to run.

  “Thank goodness,” Cassie gasped. “I feel like my feet are wearing through the soles of my shoes.”

  “If you weren’t such a celebrity, you wouldn’t have to keep dodging the press.”

  They ground to a stop at the steps leading into her father’s plane. The copilot waiting for them directed a passing security guard to stop the pursuing photographer.

  “Drew,” she said as she ran past the copilot and up the steps, her small tote bag weighing a ton after that run. “Thanks for being so prompt. But I thought Dad was sending the helicopter.”

  “It’s our job to be prompt, Miss Chapman,” he called after her. “Like the Boy Scouts, only we fly. And I was closer than the ’copter.”

  The small Gulfstream G450 was luxurious yet comfortingly familiar with its white-and-gold tapestry-covered armchairs around a low table. Several Picasso prints decorated the bulkhead. She’d accompanied her father on business on this plane many times. Flying with him had been part of her therapy. There’d been a point when she’d thought she’d licked all those old problems, but recent events had shaken that belief.

  Grady stopped just inside and looked around in apparent astonishment. She hustled him forward so Drew could pull up the steps and close the door. She stowed her bag and took Grady’s from him.

  “Ah...” he said, frowning as his eyes went from the Tiffany lamp on the table to the art prints. “I guess we won’t have to worry about legroom.”

  “Nice, isn’t it? It’s really hard to fly commercial airlines when you’ve gotten used to this.” She pointed him to the two traditional passenger seats facing forward and put his bag in an overhead bin. “We have to sit here for takeoff,” she said, taking the aisle seat. “Do you mind sitting by the window?” She nudged Grady toward the window seat as she asked the question.

  “Happy to.” He sat and buckled his belt, peering out the window, and then looked around, his expression still one of disbelief. She didn’t blame him. He was probably wondering how a trip to spend Christmas with his friend in Texas had turned into a mad chase with her to the central Oregon coastal town where he lived and worked and was a friend of her family’s.

  “Are you beginning to regret helping me escape?” she asked, buckling her own belt, the small Chloe suede cross-body bag she still wore across her chest.

  “No.” He turned to smile at her. “But I do admit to feeling a long way out of my element. I seldom have reason to fly, much less in a private plane. My life is so much...smaller than this. And I like that.”

  Was that a message? she wondered. I rescued you this time, but don’t get used to it. This isn’t going to be one of those cop-rescues-model-in-distress stories with a romance-movie ending.

  If so, that was fine with her. She had too much to repair in her life, and that required her complete attention. Like the panic she always felt when flying. And the fact that she may have just killed her career with a major meltdown in the middle of a shoot in Ireland. Both were related to an issue she couldn’t explain, except to wonder if it was left over from her nebulous childhood. She’d done a good job of keeping that to herself, so, to the world at large, she just looked like a white-knuckle flier and to the crew in Ireland, a spoiled brat.

  Added to that, she’d been reunited with her siblings after most of a lifetime spent apart, only to have to escape their Texas reunion when the paparazzi appeared.

  She’d dreamed of getting her brother and sister back for most of her life. She barely remembered Jack; just an impression of gentleness and a comforting voice.

  But she and Corie had corresponded for a while when she was twelve. Then Corie had run away and they’d had little contact since. Until they’d met in Texas.

  As though that wasn’t enough to keep a woman up at night, at age twenty-five, she suddenly had this undefined longing nothing seemed to sat
isfy. It wasn’t related to men because her life was filled with them, and though she enjoyed their friendships, she felt no desire to spend the rest of her life with one. She did not need one more complication. She needed...something.

  She patted Grady’s hand where it rested on his knee, just to be able to touch something strong and solid. “Well, don’t worry about it. I’ll be out of your hair as soon as we get to Beggar’s Bay. Your car’s at the Salem airport, right?”

  “No. I drove my mother and my aunts to Reno before I flew to Texas. I flew from there to meet Ben and Corie, expecting to fly back to Reno. And then you came along.”

  “Oh. Then I’ll rent a car. But how are you getting the Jeep back?”

  “Ben will drive me down to pick it up. It’s not that long a drive from Beggar’s Bay.”

  “Good.”

  Drew’s voice came over the speaker. “Ready? We’re off to the great Northwest, where we’ll be greeted by—big surprise—wind and rain! Temperature is 42 degrees.”

  Cassie braced herself for takeoff. Wind and rain. She could deal with them, of course, but she was a hardcore Riviera rat at heart, not for its elegance and famous visitors, but because she loved blue skies and sunshine dancing on the azure Mediterranean. She closed her eyes, unconsciously tightening her grip on Grady’s hand. The weather was the least of her concerns right now.

  * * *

  GRADY TURNED AS her fingernails dug into his knuckles, saw that her porcelain profile was set as though she was in pain, and concluded that she didn’t like to fly. Seemed odd, since she must have to do it often. But fear was tough to conquer. He turned his hand to hold hers.

  He had to tell himself again that this was really happening to him; he wasn’t dreaming. And while it was true that he didn’t regret a moment of the last few hours, he was seriously out of his comfort zone. As long as she looked desperate and lost, he was carried on the tide of rescue. The cop that lived inside him, that most days defined his very being, would move heaven and earth to get her to safety. Not that the pursuing paparazzi had threatened her with physical harm, but escaping them seemed very important to her, so he would do his utmost to help her.