Ready to Run (I Do, I Don't 1)

“You can stay with me, Ma,” Tawny said, tugging her mother away from Jordan. “The two of them need newlywed time. Also, have I mentioned how skinny you look in that dress?”

Jane slid a hand over the beaded bodice of her gown. “Remember that when I ask you to help me get out of these Spanx.”

“And yuck,” Tawny said. “So can we please do this wedding thing so we can get to the cake?”

Jordan’s stomach fluttered. “Is he out there?”

“My son adores you. We all do,” Jane said, wrapping an arm around her waist. “He’ll be there.”

Before Jordan could reply, her bevy of bridesmaids was ushering her forward, patting at the white knee-length sheath dress to make sure it didn’t ride up, before positioning her at the back entrance of the main room.

“You ready to be sisters?” Tawny whispered, squeezing Jordan’s hand before stepping behind her to get in line.

Jordan didn’t have a chance to answer, because the crowd parted as the music swelled with a Faith Hill ballad….

And there he was.

Jordan exhaled when she saw her husband-to-be, saw him do the same, his face relaxing when he spotted her, as though he’d been looking for her too, worried that she’d chicken out.

Fat chance.

Jordan was vaguely aware of the people of Lucky Hollow standing to the sides, half of them crying, the other half grinning, but her smile was all for Luke.

And his for her.

Simon stepped forward and extended his arm to walk her down the aisle. Hailey poked her in the back with her bouquet, in a silent Go get him, girl!

Jordan took a step forward, then another.

Not just toward the man she loved.

But toward the rest of her life.

For Sue Grimshaw and Gina Wachtel, for not batting an eye when this story idea came to me at three A.M. and I begged them to upend my entire publishing schedule so that I could tell it ASAP

Acknowledgments

Hello, lovely readers!

Thanks so much for taking the time out of your busy lives to read Ready to Run! I hope you had as much fun reading the start of my I Do, I Don’t series as I did writing it! As some of you probably noticed in the epilogue, I gave you a little teaser of what lies ahead in Book Two: You’ll get to see the show Jilted in action, complete with a Hollywood heartthrob who finds himself the star of the show after losing a bet, and the reluctant contestant who participates in the show only to save her struggling business and is definitely not prepared for Gage Barrett. Keep reading to get an exclusive excerpt of Runaway Groom!

This series has been so much fun to write, probably because this story idea has captivated my imagination from the very beginning. It happened like this: My editor and I had been toying around with the idea of a series about runaway grooms/runaway brides, but we didn’t have quite the right hook to make it fresh.

Then one night, as I was lying awake at three A.M., my imagination bouncing with potential story ideas as is often the case with us authors, it hit me:

Runaway Groom meets The Bachelor—a reality TV show about men who aren’t just single but dedicated playboys, to the extent that they’d rather leave a woman at the altar than tie the knot.

I don’t know where the idea came from exactly. Some ideas are just like that, wonderful and mysterious. I stared at the ceiling, thinking it through. The idea became so big that I had to go fetch my iPhone so that I could capture everything. Then the idea got even bigger, and I did something I almost never do:

Went to my laptop and tried to capture the ideas as quickly as they were coming.

Shortly after, I emailed the entire mess of babbling to my editor, along with a Please?

By the end of the next day, I had approval. And that’s that! I got started on Ready to Run almost immediately and never looked back.

So with that story in mind, I really have to kick off my thank-yous with that very editor, Sue Grimshaw, and my publisher, Gina Wachtel, who saw my enthusiasm for this project and supported me from the very beginning.

A thank-you also to my agent, whom I blindsided after all this (not the way things are supposed to go) by saying, “By the way, I’m writing this!” Props to her for making all the detail stuff work in a flurry, even after I went rogue on her!