Title: Picture
Perfect Wedding
Series: Magnolia
Brides, #3
Author: Lynnette
Austin
Pub Date: November
1, 2016
ISBN:
9781492618034
One
mistake can change everything…forever
Beck
Elliot and Tansy Calhoun were inseparable—until Tansy left Misty Bottoms,
Georgia, promising to come back after she finished school. Beck stayed behind
to save the family business, dreaming of the day when Tansy would return.
Instead, his trust and his heart were broken when she inexplicably married
another man and bore his child.
Five
years later, Tansy comes home, a sadder and wiser woman. Despite his anger,
Beck finds it hard to avoid her and her adorable little daughter—especially
with all the busybodies of Misty Bottoms going out of their way to throw him
and Tansy together, hoping a lingering spark will reignite their enduring
flame…
LYNNETTE AUSTIN gave up
the classroom to write full time. An author of eight novels, she has been a
finalist in RWA’s Golden Heart Contest, PASIC’s Book of Your Heart Contest, and
Georgia Romance Writers’ Maggie Contest. She and her husband divide their time
between Southwest Florida’s beaches and Blairsville, GA.
Buy Links:
GUEST POST
Love—the Second Time Around!
I love second-chance romances—both to read and to write! Our
couple’s first chance has generally happened before the book begins, and, then,
they meet again—with all the ensuing angst. This is no slow-build relationship
but rather a raging inferno from the get-go with the chemistry and connection
full-blown on page one.
The once-lovers often face-off as enemies; the conflict is
built in. Something caused their relationship to implode the first time around.
When they meet again, that problem remains unresolved. If they couldn’t solve
it before, how can they hope to now?
On top of that, neither the hero nor the heroine has
remained in a vacuum during their “away” time. They’ve both had lives for these
two or five or ten years. Both have changed, and those old emotions,
resentments, and frustrations have had a chance to fester.
Picture Perfect Wedding, the third book in my Magnolia
Brides series, is a second-chance-at-love story. When Tansy Calhoun left
for college, she promised to return to Beck Elliot, who stayed behind in Misty
Bottoms, Georgia, to save the family business. She reneged on that promise and
married someone else, had his baby.
Five years later, divorced and broke, she and her daughter
return to Tansy’s small hometown to create wedding cakes for Magnolia Brides.
The question isn’t whether or not she and Beck will fall in love but rather
will either take a chance on risking his heart again.
One mistake can change
everything…forever.
If you love this trope as much as I do, I’m sure you have
favorites! Here is one of mine:
Again the Magic by Lisa Kleypas.
Kleypas, with her incredible skill, paints the reader into the scenes.
The detail and the emotion in this book keep the pages turning. In 1832
England, class meant everything—except to Lady Aline Marsden and stable boy
John McKenna. When their forbidden love is outed, Aline disavows her love for
him to save McKenna.
Twelve years later, now a wealthy man, McKenna is back and
looking for revenge rather than a second chance at love. Sometimes, though,
when we’re lucky, we don’t actually get what we think we want.
What’s your favorite second-chance romance? Why?
EXCERPT
In a perfect world or, heck, even in a
movie, music would play softly in the background. The SUV’s windows would be
down, her auburn hair blowing softly in the breeze. Her hero would wait at the
road’s end, arms open and welcoming.
They’d kiss…
Tansy Calhoun Forbes’s cell rang, and, startled, she
glanced in the rearview mirror. Gracie, her four-year-old daughter, slept
soundly, a welcome respite from today’s endless are-we-there-yets.
“Hello?” she practically whispered.
“You unpacked yet?” Jenni Beth Beaumont, her best friend
forever, sounded stressed.
“Still a few miles from town, but almost there.”
“Good. Great. Listen, I know this has been a stressful
day, heck, a stressful year, and you’re tired…”
Tansy smiled. She could practically see her friend
squirming. “What do you need, Jenni Beth?”
“Oh, Tanz, I have two weddings and a sixteenth birthday
party coming up this week. Magnolia Brides is booked solid for the next nine
months—my dream come true—but I’m dying here! I need cakes. Phenomenal cakes.
Your cakes!”
“I don’t have—”
“Kitty said you can use the bakery’s kitchen.”
Tansy sighed and ran her fingers through already-mussed
hair.
“I know, I know.” Jenni Beth’s tension vibrated over the
airwaves. “I’m putting you on the spot. Big-time. I’m a horrible person. An
even worse friend.”
“No, you’re not.” Determined, Tansy sat up a little
straighter. “This is exactly what I’ve insisted I want. Part of the reason I’m
on my way home. Color me stupid, but I’m in.”
As the city-limits sign loomed, she hung up and removed
her dark glasses. Misty Bottoms, Georgia. The Low Country. Even slowing to a
crawl didn’t stop the inevitable.
Home, sweet home.
Right back at the starting gate.
Waiting for her? No music, no hero, and no kiss.
And no one but herself to blame.
Tansy pushed her sunglasses back in place and glared at
the brilliant sunshine that bathed the beyond-gorgeous autumn day. The humidity
had dropped, and a few white clouds drifted high in the bluebird sky. Shouldn’t it
be raining, the sky dark with ominous thunderheads?
Divorced for fifty-three days, five hours, and—she checked
the dashboard clock—six minutes, and here she was, hell-bent on creating the
cake for a bride’s special day.
She’d had her own shot at the dream and lost—because the
wrong groom stood beside her at the altar.
Walking out of her supersized house that morning had been
confusing. She’d expected a huge weight to lift, and it had. Still, that was
the house she’d brought Gracie home to after she’d been born. Where her first
four birthdays had been celebrated. Christmases and Thanksgivings.
And so much unhappiness and deceit.
A building off to Tansy’s right caught her attention and
caused a hitch in her heart. Elliot Construction and Lumberyard.
Beck Elliot, the groom behind door number one, the door
she hadn’t chosen.
Oh boy. Was she making another mistake? Should she have
started over somewhere else?
Ding, ding, ding. The
low-fuel indicator chimed, and the little red light blinked on. Shoot!
Tommy’s Texaco loomed.
Relieved, she flipped on her turn signal, veered into the
lot, and pulled up to the gas pump.
And there it sat.
A big red truck with Elliot Construction on the side.
The door to the gas station opened, and Beck Elliot,
looking hotter than any man had a right in dusty jeans, a faded T-shirt, and
old work boots, stepped outside.
He tore the wrapper off a candy bar and took a bite.
Then his intense, midnight-blue eyes met hers. The chill
had her rubbing her arms even though the temperature read seventy-five in the
shade.
As she got out, her gaze collided with Beck’s again.
His eyes radiated resentment and betrayed hopes.
Hers? She figured they held remorse, hurt, and
impossible-to-deny desire.
Beck nearly choked on the bite of chocolate.
What the hell?
He tossed the bar into the trash barrel outside the door.
Months ago, he’d heard rumblings that Tansy’d enrolled her
daughter in the local preschool, but since no one had said anything else about
it, he’d figured she’d changed her mind. That fancy SUV of hers was loaded to
the roof, though, way more than she’d need for a quick visit.
His chest constricted, and he swore under his breath. Why
would she return to Misty Bottoms? She looked like one of those emaciated
French models in the magazines his mom read. A good strong wind off the coast
would blow her from here to Atlanta.
The strong, carefree Tansy he’d known had disappeared.
She’d become… He didn’t know. Ethereal came to mind.
Not his business—and she’d be the first to tell him that.
“Hey, Beck,” Tommy said. “Got your truck filled for ya.”
“Thanks. I left the money on the counter. Later, pal.”
Without another word, without another glance toward the
woman he’d once expected to marry, Beck hopped in his truck, turned the key,
and pulled out of the gas station, reminding himself that Tansy Calhoun—no,
make that Tansy Forbes—was history. Ancient history.
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