That's Amore (Weddings by Bella Book #4)

Janice Thompson

Description

Bella's back--in a big way!Bella Neeley is a busy woman these days. Not only is she juggling two young kids, her hunky husband, and her always-entertaining family--she has another baby on the way. To top it off, she and D.J. are busy opening a second Club Wed location, this time a historic building in beautiful Splendora, Texas. When D.J. suggests they start off the new Club Wed facility with a bang--by getting married again--Bella isn't sure if she can handle planning another wedding. Still, who could say no to such a sweet man? But nothing's simple in relationships or building restoration! When Splendora's mayor shows up to contest Bella's facility, she's faced with the prospect that her long-awaited expansion of Club Wed may be destined to fail before it even gets off the ground. Determined to find out why the mayor seems to have a vendetta against her and D.J., Bella will have to enlist the help of the fabulous Splendora sisters.Whew! What's a girl got to do to get a break around here?Janice Thompson pulls out all the stops to bring you one more fun and frenzied romp with Bella. Pull up a chair and get ready for a Texas-sized dose of laughter.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 04 novembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781441223098
• Langue: English

Extrait

© 2014 by Janice Thompson
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www . revellbooks .com
Ebook edition created 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-2309-8
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
The author is represented by MacGregor Literary Agency.
To Ashlynn and Brianna, “Thing One” and “Thing Two.” Nina loves you.
And to my (real) Splendora friends, Robin, Tricia, and Anna. Bella is building a wedding facility in your little town! (I got it straight from the horse’s mouth.)
I don’t like country music, but I don’t mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means “put down.”
Bob Newhart
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
1. Forever and Ever, Amen
2. Waltz across Texas
3. The Keeper of the Stars
4. Can the Circle Be Unbroken
5. Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys
6. Green, Green Grass of Home
7. Always on My Mind
8. The Snakes Crawl at Night
9. Here You Come Again
10. Golden Ring
11. Kiss an Angel Good Morning
12. I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry
13. For the Good Times
14. I Will Always Love You
15. Please Help Me, I’m Falling
16. It Was Almost Like a Song
17. Heart, Don’t Do This to Me
18. Walking the Floor over You
19. You Had Me from Hello
20. The Dance
21. It’s Only Make Believe
22. I Cross My Heart
23. Silver Threads and Golden Needles
24. Who Needs Pictures
25. I Can’t Stop Loving You
26. From This Moment On
27. I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart
Acknowledgments
Excerpt for First Book in Brides with Style Series
About the Author
Books by Janice Thompson
Back Ads
Back Cover
1 Forever and Ever, Amen
I think what makes our marriage work amid all the glare is that my husband is my best friend. He inspires everything in my life and enables me to do the best that I can. I want to hang out with him more than anyone.
Faith Hill
Every little girl dreams of walking the aisle to marry her very own Prince Charming. My dream came true several years ago when a tall, handsome Texan—complete with mesmerizing twang and scuffed-up cowboy boots—ambled his way into my heart.
Meeting D.J. Neeley was—and is—the best thing that ever happened to me. Merging my all-things-Italian world with his east Texas cowboy-esque persona provided lots of challenges on the road to the altar, for sure, but lots of laughs too. Honestly? I wouldn’t change a thing. A vast array of country tunes might be playing on the radio in my honey’s truck, but “That’s Amore” rang out in my heart every time he pulled me into his arms. Bada-bing, bada-boom!
Our wedding day was the happiest of my life. The whole thing whirled by in a blip of a moment—truly, the ceremony felt about three minutes long—but I loved every nanosecond of our special day. Talk about life changing! Two worlds collided with a crash and a bang so loud that folks heard the noise all the way across the great state of Texas. Chaotic perfection!
D.J.’s east Texas lifestyle underwent some twists and turns as he settled into our new home on Galveston Island, but my easygoing fella didn’t appear to mind a bit. No, he seemed perfectly content to have married into my large, wacky, over-the-top Italian family, and happier still when our son and daughter made their appearance. By the time we announced pregnancy number three, our lives were marching forward with grace and ease—D.J. was busy with his construction company on the island, and I was coordinating weddings at Club Wed. Typical “get back to the business of living” stuff for a young couple, and we’d handled it all as well as could be expected. Maybe better.
So imagine my surprise when—all these years after our wedding day—my sweetie proposed . . . again. From out of the blue, no less. Proposal number two took place on a random Tuesday in between loads of laundry and squabbling kids. It would have to happen on a day when I hadn’t brushed my hair or put on makeup. D.J. came home from work for lunch, took one look at our messy house, and declared, “We should get married all over again, Bella.”
Um, okay. Had my fella completely lost his mind? I coordinated weddings. I didn’t perform in them. But from the cockeyed grin on his face, he wasn’t taking no for an answer.
I stared into his baby blues, completely thrown off by the idea. Surely he was just speaking theoretically. Likely he meant, “If we had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing!” He couldn’t possibly mean we should repeat the whole ceremony and reception part.
“What do you mean you want to get married again?” I reached for a dirty skillet and ran water over it before giving it a good scrubbing.
“I just think the timing is perfect,” D.J. said. “Now that we’ve got the new wedding facility opening in Splendora, I think we should christen it by being the first to walk the aisle. Perfect, right?”
Ah. Now it all made sense. We were opening a wedding facility in the town of Splendora this coming winter. We’d been working on the plans for weeks and had involved D.J.’s construction business in the process. He’d answered a hundred questions for me. Perhaps doing so had inspired him.
Still, I couldn’t stop my busy life long enough to plan another wedding ceremony for the two of us. Not now, anyway, and especially not in a town as far away as Splendora. Surely I could make him understand that without hurting his feelings.
I continued to scrub the skillet as I talked. “D.J., you said yourself it’ll take months to get the new place up to speed. It’s an old building. It needs lots of work. And have you forgotten that I’m pregnant?” I rinsed off the pan, set it in the sink, and turned to face him.
“Um, no.” He put his hand on my tummy and grinned. “That would be hard to forget, frankly.” A chuckle followed. “It’s just that I’ve heard you say at least a dozen times that the first wedding in the new place has to be a doozy, one folks’ll never forget. Jordan Singer is coming to write an article for Texas Bride about the grand opening, right?”
“Right. But what does that have to do with—”
“I’m just saying, we can give our guests and Jordan’s readers a ceremony they won’t soon forget,” D.J. said. “It’s not every day that an expectant bride makes the cover of a national magazine.”
Oy vey. First he wanted me to plan a wedding, now he wanted my expectant self to appear on a magazine cover in a bridal gown? Looked like D.J. had spent too much time in the Texas sun. It had messed up his sense of logic.
“Technically, it’s a Texas-based magazine, not national, and I’m not altogether sure that’s how I want to garner my claim to fame.” I dried my hands on a dish towel and then rubbed my tummy, surprised at how quickly the little baby bulge seemed to be growing. Less than three months into this pregnancy and our little monkey seemed to be sprinting toward the goal, size-wise. Weird.
“You were a beautiful bride last time and will be even prettier this time around.”
Humph. I brushed my messy hair out of my face and sighed. Standing here in faded capris and a T-shirt that read Mama Mia , I didn’t feel like a beauty queen.
“How long will it take to get the new facility in shape, though?” I asked. “I mean, that old building is really worn down. It needs a complete facelift. You really think we can get things up and running before I’m nine months pregnant?” I gave him an “I don’t think so” look, but he responded with a hopeful smile.
“Well, shore, Bella.” That Texas twang of his was followed by a pout. “Are you sayin’ you don’t trust my construction skills?” Mock pain filled his eyes. “I see how it is.”
“It’s not that. I just have a full plate already.” How could I say this without hurting his feelings? After all, the man wanted me to marry him—again. Diving into a list of all of my prior obligations seemed pretty unromantic. So I didn’t. I didn’t tell him about the backlog of paperwork awaiting me at Club Wed, our Galveston wedding facility. I didn’t tell him about the overload of activities I’d planned with the kids. I didn’t mention that Aunt Rosa and Uncle Laz had asked me to appear on an upcoming episode of their Food Network television show, The Italian Kitchen . I didn’t tell him that I had agreed to serve as research coordinator on Brock Benson’s new Galveston-based sitcom, which would begin filming in a couple of months. And I didn’t tell him about the woes of balancing a pregnancy with an existing family and job.
Whew! Just thinking about all of that made me tired.
“We can manage it, Bella.”
D.J. gave me that puppy dog look, the one that always melted my heart, and I found myself nodding. I swallowed hard and thought it through. Maybe we could pull this off. And maybe, just maybe, it’d be the perfect way to christen the new facility, as he’d suggested. We would be the first bride and groom to share their big day at the Splendora Town and Country wedding facility, the first to walk the aisle in the new chapel, and the first to say “I do” with our friends from Splendora looking on. The more I thought about it, the more intriguing the idea sounded.
“So, a full-out, walk-down-the-aisle wedding?” I moved to the breakfast table and took a seat, then reached for my cup of coffee. “With a big reception?”
“Yep.” D.J. sat in the chair beside me and grabbed his can of soda. “And a themed one too.” He took a swig and set the can back down, then reached for the turkey sandwich on the plate in fro