Married by June

Married by June Read Free

Book: Married by June Read Free
Author: Ellen Hartman
Tags: Romance
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because she’d grown up with Chelsea Burke. She knew how much the idea of a wedding meant to the women who sought her out. The ones who were so desperate for the perfect day that they’d leave the planning to a stranger. She’d worked hard to make sure her brides had the wedding they’d dreamed of and she’d been successful. Until her mom died and she suddenly lost her ability to connect with anyone’s wedding dreams.
    She slid her lipstick into a small pocket in her leather bag and then checked that she had the binder for her next appointment, a cake tasting at Alice’s bakery, where she would restrict herself to the tiniest bites possible. She may have lost her last client, butshe had one more wedding to plan. She was marrying Cooper Murphy, younger brother of Senator Bailey Murphy. If her fairy-tale wedding to one of the most-desirable bachelors in Washington, D.C., couldn’t put her business back on the map, she’d eat her own bouquet (blush-pink peonies, white heather and pale green hydrangea).
     
    S T . H ELEN’S CHURCH WASN’T open on weekdays. Vandalism and a skeleton staff in the parish office combined to limit the public hours. Cooper had explained to Father Chirwa that he wanted to sit in the church to write his wedding vows, and the priest had made an exception for him. If he’d been born in an earlier generation, maybe back in County Cavan before the first Murphy emigrated, they’d have said he had the gift of the gab. His brother was fond of telling people Cooper could talk Greenpeace into advocating for more whaling. Not that he would, but the potential was there.
    He’d been alone in the church for two hours now. He was supposed to meet Jorie to choose their wedding cake in a little more than forty-five minutes. So far, he’d read the Stations of the Cross, lit a candle for his grandmother, said a prayer that the Nationals would find a starting pitcher and, if it wasn’t too much, a center fielder who could both catch and hit. Then he’d decided that he shouldn’t be prayingabout baseball so he’d lit another candle and prayed for peace and enlightenment and fortitude, because he’d always liked that word.
    The pages of his notebook stayed stubbornly blank. He uncapped his favorite fountain pen and put a heading on the page. Wedding Vows. He jotted some words underneath—love, Jorie, wife, eternal and a curse word that he immediately crossed out and then apologized to God and the saints for. He took another turn around the perimeter of the church, the leather soles of his shoes making a lonely echo. When he got to the candle rack again he stopped, and this time he prayed for wisdom.
    Writing the vows was his only job for the wedding and he couldn’t even do that. He slid into a pew and laid his notebook and pen down next to him. He looked at the altar; imagined himself up there, waiting for Jorie to walk down the aisle toward him. Of course, their wedding wasn’t here in his home parish, but in the National Cathedral. The Wish Team, which had fulfilled Jorie’s mom’s wish by funding her daughter’s dream wedding, had pulled strings to get the venue. Jorie was over the moon about decorating the cathedral. The exact setting didn’t matter to Cooper. Soon enough, he’d be in a church, waiting for Jorie and minutes away from vowing to…something.
    He leaned forward, resting his head in his hands.
    The thing about marrying a wedding planner was that nothing was left to chance. Jorie had plans for every moment of the ceremony and the reception. She consulted him before making a decision be cause she was the kind of woman who thought men should be included in that stuff, but the wedding was really hers. Writing the vows was the only thing she’d moved permanently off her to-do list and onto his.
    She said it was because he was the better writer. He’d been writing political speeches and ghostwriting op-ed pieces and thousands of other communications for close to ten years, so yeah,

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