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Second Chance with the Best Man
by Katrina Cudmore
CHAPTER ONE
THE BEAST PRESSED his snout against Hannah McGinley’s car window, the glass instantly fogging up. ‘Good doggy, off you go, now,’ Hannah called out, trying to sound in control but also cheerful—the last thing she wanted to do was anger this beast any further. Her arrival on the driveway of Château Bonneval had already caused him to run alongside her car like an entry at the Grand National, his incessant barking almost causing her to drive into one of the hornbeam trees lining the long avenue.
As a farmer’s daughter from Shropshire, she’d been told time and time again she’d no cause to be so scared, but no amount of cajoling from her family had ever rid her of her terror of even the smallest of dogs, never mind the donkey-sized version staring at her right now as though he couldn’t wait to sink his teeth into her.
Looking in the direction of the front door of the château, Hannah willed someone to come out and rescue her. Surely they had heard the beast’s hound-from-hell baying?
Not for the first time, Hannah wondered at her decision to agree to travel to France to act as the celebrant at her best friend Lara’s wedding blessing. An easy, joyful decision in most circumstances, but not when you had dated and fallen in love with the best man and brother to the groom, Laurent Bonneval, only for him to end it all. And the worst part of it all was that the wedding was taking place in his home—Château Bonneval. Why couldn’t it at least be at a neutral venue? Her only hope was that they would be surrounded by others all weekend and she would manage to project the air of calm professionalism she’d been rehearsing ever since Lara and François had travelled to London from Manchester, where they lived, just to ask her to be their wedding celebrant.
Though moved beyond words that they trusted her to perform their wedding blessing, especially given the fact that she was so new to being a celebrant—this would only be her fourth wedding—she’d asked if they were really, really sure it was she they wanted to be the one to perform the ceremony. Lara and François had exchanged a tentative glance before Lara had leant across the table of Hannah’s local Richmond coffee shop, and touched her arm. ‘You’ve been my best friend since we were seven.’ Pausing, Lara had given her a half-smile, one that had asked Hannah to understand, to trust her. ‘It would make our day even more magical to have you bless our marriage.’
Tears had blinded Hannah for a moment as she’d remembered how Lara had waded in on her first day at Meadlead Primary School and told Ellie Marshall and her gang to mind their own business when they had interrogated Hannah during the break with endless questions as to who she was, why she was joining the school in the middle of term, why she was so skinny. Frozen inside, confused by everything in her life, Hannah had been taken aback at just how grateful she was to Lara when she’d led her away from her interrogators. For weeks after, she’d remained silent. And while that had garnered her endless suspicious glances and whispered words behind cupped hands from the rest of class, Lara had cheerfully chatted away, her quirky humour and buoyant outlook on life thawing Hannah’s numb heart.