the fragrant mist off the sea.
She felt she had never been so happy, so full of hope, so excited about life and all its wonderful possibilities.
She looked up at the bronze numbers over the businesses, and felt herself holding her breath. 201, 203, 205…
Then, she saw the bakery. Her bakery.
Chapter One
Two months later…
“Just a minute,” Brittany called, when the knock came on her apartment door, again. She looked in the full-length mirror in her bedroom, oblivious to the unmade bed, the scattered clothing, the open makeup pots.
“I look awful,” she wailed. “Awful.”
The knock came again, firm, unrelenting. She ignored it.
It was hopeless. The bridesmaid’s dress was peach chiffon. Sleeveless, it fit her like a dream, swirled around her trim figure, showed off the slender length of her legs, the swell of her bosom, the curve of sun-kissed shoulders. The dress was perfect.
And her makeup was perfect, too. Her high cheekbones accentuated, the blue-gold of her eyes shown off, her lips looking dewy and wet, her skin golden peach.
Her long hair, expertly highlighted so that it glittered with threads of gold and wheat and honey, was piled up on top of her head, just the odd wild tendril allowed to escape.
She looked absolutely stunning, in every way, and it was spoiled, totally ruined by one disastrous detail. Paint.
Pink paint.
A thick stripe of it ran through the gold strands of her hair, and speckles of the same shade were scattered over her bare arms from wrists to shoulders. Nothing would convince it to go. And she knew, because she had tried everything from paint thinner to nail polish remover.
It was the result of repainting the interior of her bakery, without question the most grueling labor she had ever done. She had chosen an absolutely posh shade of pink. Okay, after four whole days of doing nothing but working with it, it was not nearly as appealing as she found it at first, but that was perfectly understandable.
And she really didn’t care for it as a fashion accessory, but she reminded herself firmly, no sacrifice was too great to make for her bakery, and for her successful entrance into the Miracle Harbor business community. She had been given a brand-new chance. A brand-new life, really, and what was a little pink paint in the face of that?
Bang, bang, bang.
If whoever that was didn’t quit knocking on the door, she was going to scream. Except maybe successful business people weren’t allowed to scream.
She’d settle for leveling them with a look, whoever was at her door, impertinently ignoring her request for just a little more time. No doubt it was the escort, rounded up for her by her sister, Abby. With the bakery reopening next week, Brit simply never had enough time anymore for anything.
So, how had Abby found time between her seamstress job, and raising a baby, and getting married to find a date for her sister for the wedding?
Given Abby’s schedule, Brit thought it would be unreasonable on her part to expect much for an escort. How humiliating, at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, being subjected to her first blind date. How dreadful that for her first Miracle Harbor social outing her companion for the evening might be less than stellar. Old. Ugly. What if he was wrinkled?
On the other hand, this was Miracle Harbor.
Look what had happened to Abby.
What if the very same thing happened to her? What if, within a week of arriving here, Brit met him. The one. Her very own Prince Charming to escort her to the ball, and through life ever after.
With one last resigned glance in the mirror, and one more sigh about the paint, she whirled and moved determinedly in the direction of her front door. She tried not to notice how humble the furnishings of her apartment were, tried not to see them through the eyes of her escort. Her place was an apartment above the bakery and it had come furnished. On her best days she could see that as a blessing, on her worst she hated to think about the rump that had left that worn dent on the fading sofa.
“Oh,” she muttered to herself, “he’ll probably be too decrepit and wrinkled to even notice anything beyond me.” And my pink paint, she added wryly to herself.
He banged again. The click of her high heels might have conveyed just a touch of her impatience, but she pasted a cool smile on her face before she flung open her front door.
“I said just a min—” her voice stopped in her throat. “You.”
Was he going to show up every single time she contemplated wedded bliss? Did that mean something?
It meant the pink paint, and the furniture mattered.
She stepped out onto the narrow wooden landing with the delightful view of Main Street’s back alley, and pulled the door mostly closed behind her.
He looked down at her, and for a moment she was so mesmerized by his eyes that she was frozen. They were a shade of blue that reminded her of a sleepy ocean on a hot day.
“I’m Mitch Hamilton,” he said, in that voice, a voice that could make a perfectly proper girl like her think very naughty thoughts of exactly what being married meant.
It meant his lips and his hands claiming her, holding her, owning her. It meant that deep voice in her ear growling incredible endearments. It meant waking up to his face every single morning, the sharp hollows of his cheeks shadowed with whiskers.
“Mitch Hamilton,” he said again, faintly bemused.
She drew herself up short, stunned at where her thoughts had gone, stunned by the force of the attraction, stunned to see nothing reciprocated in those ocean eyes.
Miracle Harbor or not, she decided, she was not making a fool of herself over any man.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said formally, diamond-edged ice in her voice.
Still, despite the small victory over her voice, she could not look away. It wasn’t just that he was compellingly handsome, or that he, of course, looked unnervingly perfect, in a navy blue suit with a fine pinstripe. Custom tailored, she guessed, to encompass the immense broadness of those shoulders. He had on a crisp white silk shirt, that made his skin look bronze and sun-warmed, a dark tie, the knot perfect and square. His legs were long, the slacks just hinted at the ridged cut of a very muscular thigh.
He looked every inch the successful man. Still, for all that sophistication, for all the obvious expense of the suit, she still saw it there. A glint in those amazing eyes that hinted at a part of him untamed. Perhaps even untamable?
Inwardly, she wondered how Abby could do this to her. She suddenly found herself wishing for what had moments ago seemed like it would be her worst nightmare. Someone old and wrinkled and ugly.
A man she could handle with one arm tied behind her back, and several gallons of paint splashed over herself.
But this
