Chapter One
Alexis Mosley stood toe to toe with innkeeper Logan Carmichael, not at all intimidated by his dark scowl. “I don’t think my client is asking that much of you, really,” she said coolly. “Can you provide the services she wants or not?”
“Your client,” he retorted with a deep line carved between his straight, dark eyebrows, “needs to get a grip on reality. This is Southwest Virginia, not Montego Bay. If she wants a Jamaican beach wedding, she should hold it there. Or at the least make the five-hour drive to Virginia Beach and get married where there’s an actual ocean.”
Alexis sighed gustily. “As I’ve already explained to you, she needs to have the wedding here because she has elderly family members in very poor health who can’t travel easily but want to see her married. She’s dreamed of a Montego Bay wedding because that’s where her fiancé proposed two years ago. That isn’t possible for them this year, so she wants to move up her wedding date to July and re-create the feel here.”
On this Monday morning in early March, Alexis was consulting with Logan and his two sisters, Kinley and Bonnie, co-owners of Bride Mountain Inn, to determine whether her client’s very specific and somewhat unconventional requests were within reason. According to Logan, they were not.
With a sardonic expression on his sternly attractive face, he made a slow turn, motioning with one hand to draw her attention to the tidy garden in which they stood, the Queen Anne–style bed-and-breakfast behind them, the white gazebo at the end of a pebbled path. A tall, three-tiered fountain reigned in the center of the still-winter-dormant garden, providing the rhythmic splash of falling water for a soothing sound track. Against the horizon, the majestic Blue Ridge Mountains rose proudly against the pale blue sky. He had a point about the setting looking very little like a Jamaican beach.
Kinley, predictably enough, jumped into the discussion to state differently. “Of course we can make your client happy! It won’t be the first tropical-themed wedding we’ve held here. We’ll just have to figure out a way to set up to her personal specifications. I’m sure among all of us, we can come up with something.”
While Logan’s reaction to over-the-top bridal desires was often negative, inveterate saleswoman Kinley’s was just the opposite. To book an event at the inn, she seemed willing to promise just about anything—and yet, surprisingly, she always came through, proving she agreed only to what she knew they could accomplish.
In almost a year of working with the Carmichael siblings through her event-planning business, Alexis had never registered a complaint after an event at Bride Mountain Inn. She recommended the inn frequently as a venue for the weddings and other special occasions she coordinated. And nearly every time, she ended up wrangling with Logan at some point over the outdoor setups, more than once being told her requests were impossible even though they both knew that somehow he would make it work.
“Have your client consult with you on a very detailed list of her ideas, then we’ll all get together and discuss them,” Kinley instructed. “Make sure she knows all her decisions have to be made in time for us to make arrangements, and she can’t have last-minute changes with a theme this specific. We’ll do our best to make her happy.”
Alexis understood Kinley’s need to have everything spelled out in advance to avoid complications later. She operated her own business on exactly the same philosophy. “I’ll explain it to her, of course.”
“I’ll research some Jamaican recipes in case she wants us to provide special breakfasts or snacks for her guests,” Bonnie contributed, looking intrigued by the challenge. “I’m sure there are many more original ideas than jerk chicken.”
The siblings didn’t look particularly alike. Kinley had a slender, fit body, brown hair streaked with honey highlights and grayish-blue eyes. Bonnie was petite, with golden-blond curls and big blue eyes. Older brother Logan was hard-carved, medium tall and muscular, with dark hair and hazel eyes. Alexis wouldn’t call him handsome, exactly, but definitely the type of man any red-blooded woman would notice. She’d definitely noticed the first time she’d met him.
Logan blew out a resigned breath that hung just visible in the crisp morning air. The fleece-lined gray jacket he wore with a T-shirt, jeans and boots was his only concession to the chilly temperature. He would ditch the jacket when the days warmed, but the rest of his outfit remained the same year-round, at least from Alexis’s observation.
“Just give me and the crew time to work whatever miracle you think I can pull off. You find the stuff she wants, I’ll set it up. But you’re not hauling in sand,” he added with a warning scowl. He shot a dark look at Kinley before continuing, “Last time someone had the clever idea of setting up sandboxes for the kids at a tropical theme party, I had a hell of a time cleaning up afterward.”
“No sand,” Alexis promised.
He held her gaze for a moment, then nodded, turned and walked away with a mumble about needing to get back to work. His gait was marked by a very slight limp on the left side, which was more intriguing than detracting. As he disappeared around the side of the inn, Alexis made herself stop looking after him and spoke to his sisters. “I’ll try to keep the bride realistic with her expectations.”
“I know you will,” Kinley said with a smile. “Don’t mind Logan, he’s just grouchy today. He and his crew are working long hours to get the grounds ready for spring plantings.”
Alexis couldn’t help laughing. “He’s grouchy today?”
Kinley smiled a bit sheepishly, while Bonnie grinned in acknowledgment that their brother wasn’t the jolliest soul even on the best of days. Logan wasn’t a jerk, Alexis mused. He was just bluntly candid and impatient with most social niceties. And yet during the past year she had seen him interacting kindly with children and senior citizens, politely if somewhat distantly with stressed-out brides and nervous grooms, and relaxed and easy with his small, hardworking, fiercely loyal grounds crew. She wouldn’t say he was all bark and no bite, exactly—he wasn’t quite that innocuous—but she’d worked with worse.
As different as the Carmichael siblings were, they meshed amazingly well. They worked together every day at the inn they’d inherited from a great-uncle and had restored and reopened for business. Bonnie and Logan even lived full-time on the grounds; Bonnie in a two-bedroom, half-basement apartment; Logan in a cozy caretaker’s cottage downhill from the wedding gazebo. Alexis figured she would have long since strangled her younger brother, Sean, if they tried to go into business together.
Kinley and Bonnie had both married during the past winter, since Alexis had first started working with them. Yet bringing new members into the fold had not seemed to affect the family dynamics, at least when it came to the interactions she had witnessed. She enjoyed watching the sisters and brother work together, putting their individual strengths into results that were always impressive.
She was quite sure it would be interesting, as usual, to work with them on this newest project. She even looked forward to more spirited skirmishes with Logan, which always added a nice bit of spice to her workdays.
* * *
Darkness had fallen that evening when Alexis brewed a cup of hot tea in her cozy kitchen, only a few miles from Bride Mountain Inn. The days were getting a little longer as spring drew nearer. Already her work hours were increasingly busy with preparations for May and June, the craziest time of year in the wedding business. She wasn’t complaining about the workload. Having acquired Blue Ridge Celebrations just over a year ago, she was pleased to have seen a marked increase in bookings during the past months. She’d invested wisely in advertising, and had worked hard to make sure word-of-mouth endorsements from her clients were nothing but positive.
For some reason, she found herself thinking back over the past as she carried her tea into the living room with her affectionate gray cat, Fiona, padding along beside her. Though she’d trained for a career in music and theater, she had worked in her mom’s Roanoke, Virginia, florist shop during her school years and later in shops in Maryland and New York, so she’d been quite familiar with weddings and other fancy events. She had always displayed a talent for event planning, enjoying that part of her jobs with florists. She’d spent quite a bit of time developing that skill during what had been supposed to be only supplemental work.
A few months after her twenty-seventh birthday she’d acknowledged that she lacked the all-consuming passion required to become a major star on stage. She’d loved performing, and she’d worked very hard at perfecting her skills, but the lack of control over her own future had become more and more difficult to accept. After being passed over for an important role she’d come so close to obtaining—and coming to the abrupt realization that she wasn’t devastated by the rejection—she had found the courage to change her life course and go into business for herself.
It hadn’t been easy to turn her back on the goal she’d had for so long. She’d walked away from her friends, her tiny but adorable city apartment and a tumultuous relationship that had left her ego bruised and her heart barricaded. It had been a terrifying, but ultimately liberating, move.
Drawn back to her home state, she had purchased this established enterprise almost an hour’s drive from her mother’s still-thriving florist shop. Her natural talent for organization and creative thinking had come in handy in her new career, and she’d had considerable help from the previous owner and from a couple of employees who’d stayed with the company after the transfer.
There had been a few glitches initially, a few minor missteps, but all in all Alexis was satisfied she’d made the right decision, despite her enthusiastic stage mother’s disappointment and concern. Now twenty-nine, she was independent and self-sufficient; she had established functional and strictly enforced boundaries with her family; she had a nice rented house she was considering buying, and several good friends. She even enjoyed a nondemanding, drama-free but physically exciting connection with a fascinating man who was no more interested than she was in the challenges of long-term romantic commitments. What more could a modern-day woman want?
As if to accompany that thought, a brisk tap on the front door got her attention just as she set her steaming cup of tea on the low table in front of the couch. Along with the knock came a scrabbling sound on the front porch that she recognized easily enough.
“Sounds as though we both have company,” she said to her cat, who stared at the door with eagerly perked ears. “They’re a little early. Think they were impatient to see us?”