The Wedding Date Disaster (Harbor City 4)

Aunt Louise’s cheeks turned red. “You have no idea how painful this is for me.”

Then she laid down a single E beneath the M.

“A whole two points.” PawPaw let out a low whistle. “That’s really going to win us the game.”

“And this is why you two aren’t allowed to partner up during family game night,” Adalyn said as she stood at the end of the table messing with her phone. “Great-Grandma always said you have been bickering like this since you were kids.”

“We know how to work together when it matters,” PawPaw grumbled.

His knee still going a million miles an hour, Will laid down an O and a U going down from the end of the word “marry.”

For someone who loved Scrabble more than orgasms, it was a really disappointing point total. Judging by the way his jaw was clenched tight, he was none too happy about it.

“Don’t worry,” Hadley said, injecting an extra dose of chipper into her tone. “I’ve had those kind of tile choices before, too. We’ll catch up.”

Surveying her tiles, she was trying to work out how to use the W so it would land on a multiple-point square when Will snagged her tiles.

“I got this.”

What the hell? Slack-jawed, she stared at him as he laid down the tiles, usurping her turn as if she wasn’t sitting there.

“That’s not legal,” she said, looking to PawPaw and Aunt Louise for backup. “You can’t just play my tiles for me.” She glanced down at the board and realized that he hadn’t even connected his four-letter word to the others already played. “And you can’t have a disconnected word.” Turning back to Will, she sucked in a breath. There was a sheen of sweat on his brow and his jiggling knee was going fast enough to launch them into hyper speed. Something was definitely wrong. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

He nodded toward the board. “Read it.”

She glanced down at the sorry excuse for a Scrabble board. The whole thing—even if the last word counted—couldn’t add up to more than twenty points.

“Marry. Me. You,” she said, going in the order that they were played. “Your word doesn’t count.”

“It really does,” he said, sounding more like his usual cocky self.

“That goes against the rules and—” Her brain finally caught up with what was going on, and she lost the ability to talk as her heart double-timed it in her chest.

Will stood up, pulled a ring box out of his pocket, and then got down on one knee. “Hadley Donavan…” He opened the box, revealing an antique ring made up of square-cut diamonds surrounded by rubies that screamed out “old money” the same way his scuffed-up Justin boots said “ranch ready.” “Will you marry me?”

It took all of her effort to put together a three-letter word from the jumble of ecstatic emotions making her feel like she’d swallowed every bubble in a champagne bottle. “Yes.”

Everyone cheered loud enough that it set off an answering howl from Lightning out there somewhere in the dusk. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Adalyn no longer trying to disguise the fact that she was recording the whole proposal on her phone. Hadley’s attention, though, was focused on the man who’d driven her crazy before stealing her heart.

“Thank God you said yes.” He slipped the ring on her finger and gave her a sly wink. “Otherwise the rest of this game was going to be extremely awkward.”

“We’re finishing the game?” The question slipped out before she remembered all of this was being recorded and, knowing her siblings, it would be played at the wedding reception.

One side of Will’s mouth lifted in a grin that did stupid things to Hadley’s knees. “I’m sure your family will understand if we don’t.”

“We concede, PawPaw and Louise,” she hollered, not even bothering to look back at the picnic table because there was no looking away from the man she loved.

“Because we already won.” He picked her up in his arms. “At least I know I did.”

“Believe me,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck. “We both did.”

He dipped his head down and kissed her, a quick brush of his lips that promised a forever of mores and carried her off to their cabin so that forever could start immediately.

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Acknowledgments

First of all, I have to thank the readers who’ve generously decided to spend their precious free time with me. Thank you! None of this would be possible without you. Also, I couldn’t have ever gotten this book from idea to completion without the help of the good people at Entangled. The fact that they haven’t poisoned my coffee by now always amazes me. Thank you, Liz, Jessica, Bree, Elizabeth, Curtis, Stacy, and everyone else who went above and beyond. Y’all are the absolute best. As always, a huge thank-you to my family (those in Nebraska and on the East Coast) for putting up with me when I’m on deadline and hangry. I promise next time, I’ll remember to eat lunch.