Thirty-Four Going On Bride (The Spinster Series Book 3) Read online

  Thirty-Four

  Going On…

  BRIDE

  BECKY MONSON

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 Becky Monson

  All rights reserved.

  To the man I call hubby. Thanks for making me your wife. And for taking out the trash. I love you.

  Table Of Contents

  PRELUDE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  EPILOGUE

  PRELUDE

  Look, I get it. Weddings don’t always go as planned. I had no visions of grandeur that my wedding would go without a hitch. But this? This is ridiculous.

  To start, our witnesses are a couple of hippies. Both with long hair (one has dreadlocks) and tattoos up their arms. Then there’s the officiant. I’m not sure, since I have little (or no) experience with this, but I think he’s high. Like, as a kite. And the icing on the cake? Lia—yes, the same Lia that claims to be a witch—is next to me. She’s designated herself as my maid of honor.

  The only person standing here that should actually be standing here is Jared. I’m pretty certain his deer-caught-in-headlights look mirrors my own facial expression. How did we get here?

  I know how we got here. And it’s all my fault.

  CHAPTER 1

  “Pick it up, Julia! You can do this!”

  I’m in the seventh circle of hell.

  “Come on! Let’s move faster!” My sister Anna yells over the construction that we’re currently passing. As expected, we get a few whoops and whistles tossed at us from the workers. Pity flattery, I’m sure. Well, maybe not for Anna, but certainly for me. There’s absolutely nothing attractive about me right now.

  To start, I don’t know if I’ve ever sweated this hard in my life. I look like I’ve taken a shower fully clothed. I’m sticky and perspiring, and it’s not even that hot outside. It’s a typical day near the end of May in Denver, Colorado. How did I let Anna convince me to do this? Oh that’s right, there was no convincing. She forced me. “It’ll be good for you,” she had said, lying through her devil teeth.

  At this point I don’t know if my lungs will ever be the same. They actually ache with pain. And then there’s the ache in my calves, and really every other part of my body. Whoever thought of running as an extracurricular activity should be shot. A form of torture, yes. Exercise? I’d rather get a tooth pulled without Novocain.

  To call it running is a bit of an exaggeration on my part. I’d call it jogging, but even that seems wrong. What I’m doing is barely lifting a foot off the ground with a slight bounce. You couldn’t even call it speed walking. I know, because a speed walker zipped right by me earlier. I’m pretty confident a toddler could walk faster than I run. Or jog. Or whatever.

  I knew my lucky genes would catch up with me someday. Up until last year I could eat whatever I wanted; I never thought twice about it, and apparently neither did my butt. But then I went to work at a bakery and subsequently decided to purchase said bakery. I suppose since I’m constantly surrounded by food—the good kind, no kale on the premises—I’ve been eating more than I thought I had. There’s a lot of taste testing going on, of course. And I’m quite sure a lot of emotional eating as well, since owning your own business can be rather stressful at times.

  So my sister Anna, who also happens to be the devil as well as my wedding planner, convinced me to lose ten pounds before the wedding.

  Only twelve more to go.

  Clearly dieting is not my forte. In fact, I’m pretty certain since the word “die” is part of it, it’s probably not healthy for anyone. I have learned one thing, though: if you want to slow down time, if life is passing you by too rapidly, go on a diet. Time will slow down to a snail’s pace, or even slower. Every day is a lifetime of suffering.

  “Julia, I think the ants on the sidewalk are going faster than you,” Anna says as she literally runs a circle around me. Her curly dark brown hair is pulled up into a perfect ponytail, her full-face of makeup completely intact … not one drop of perspiration. Not one.

  “Yes, those little buggers are fast,” I say through breathing that can only be compared to someone with emphysema.

  “Do you need a break?”

  “Yes,” I declare, dropping onto a bench we just happen to be passing. Kismet! Thank you, gods of laziness.

  “Julia,” Anna says, jogging in place in front of me as she checks her pulse, “we’ve only been out for twenty minutes. You can’t possibly be that out of shape.”

  “You give me too much credit,” I say, leaning my head back on the bench, trying to find some air. It’s the Mile High City, after all. The air is thin—it should be against the law to suck in too much of it.

  “This is torture. Do you make Jonathon do this?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “Jonathon isn’t getting married in three months.” She tilts her head to the side and eyes me suspiciously. “You said you’ve been exercising in the evenings.”

  “I have!” I object loudly to her allegations. How dare she.

  “What exactly have you been doing then?”

  “Walking,” I say flatly.

  “And was there any heart elevation during this walk?”

  I shrug. “I’m sure there was.”

  “Julia, leisurely walking home from work is not exercise,” she rolls her eyes.

  “Not according to the latest issue of Health magazine,” I retort.

  “You read Health magazine?” she eyes me dubiously.

  “Yes. Well, I glanced at it while in the line at the grocery store. The cover clearly stated that getting outside and walking is good for the soul,” I say, jutting my chin out as I defend myself.

  “Maybe for the soul, but not for your love handles,” she says pointing to my mid-section. I instinctively run the back of my hand over my side.

  “I don’t have love handles!” I squeak out, disrupting a bird that was perched on the tree near us. I watch as it flies to the tree across the street.

  “Not yet, you don’t.” She gives me her best schoolmarm look of condescension.

  “Why does it have to be so hard?” I ask, feeling dramatic.

  “Come on,” Anna says, taking me by the arm. “We’ll walk the rest of the way.”

  “Oh, thank goodness,” I say, allowing her to actually pull most of my weight up. No need to exert unless I actually have to.

  “We’re going out again tomorrow,” she says, her tone emphatic.

  “I’d rather get a root canal.”

  “That can be arranged,” she says, the corn
er of her lip pulling up.

  We start the walk back to my condo. With my heart finally settling into a more human rate, rather than that of a hummingbird, I’m suddenly feeling this weird sort of euphoria. This was not expected. Does this always happen when you put your body in danger of continued existence? Or maybe my body is thanking me for not running anymore.

  Whatever I’m feeling, it’s not good. I mean it is good, and that’s not good. I don’t want to enjoy exercise. I want to loathe it like I always have. It’s worked fine for me in the past. Why change things up? What if I become one of those exercise addicts like Brown, or my mom? Heaven forbid.

  “Don’t think that you can go home and nap this off, by the way,” Anna says as we turn down Fifteenth Street.

  “I wasn’t planning on taking a nap,” I snap back, scrunching my face at her in annoyance. She thinks she knows me so well. Which she does. I lied—I was planning on a nap.

  “Good. Because you have just enough time to shower and get ready. We have a dress fitting at ten, a cake tasting after that, and I will make you pick out your wedding favors if it’s the last thing I do.” She points a finger at me, her best bossy-pants look on her face.

  I let out a long, exaggerated breath, my shoulders sagging. “Okay, fine.”

  Not that I have a choice. Anna’s the boss of me right now, like it or not. And thank goodness. She’s taken this whole wedding thing over and I’m so grateful. I’d have gone mad by this point. Like, certifiable. It’s not as if I was blind to it either. I was there for both Anna and Brown’s weddings not even a year ago. But when it’s your own wedding, it’s different.

  I’ve offered to elope, but my fiancé, Jared, won’t have it. I thought that was supposed to work the other way around—the man is supposed to want to elope, and the woman wants her day as a princess. Well, I’ve never aspired to be a princess; I loathe being the center of attention, and I hate wearing frilly dresses. So in all, it sounds like the worst day ever. I mean, it’ll be great—I’ll be marrying the man of my dreams, after all. That’s the part I care about the most. The rest of it is simply fluff. Bothersome fluff.

  Plus there’s a lot riding on a big day like that. I mean, what if I trip and fall? I successfully made it down the aisle twice last year as a bridesmaid in both Brown’s and Anna’s weddings. What are the odds of me making it a third time? Plus, I keep having dreams that I do, in fact, fall, and it scares me that it might be some kind of prediction of the future.

  But Jared wants a wedding, and I can’t talk him out of it. He wants the whole kit and caboodle. Not for him or me, mind you, but for his mother, Bobby. She only has two boys and she’s been dying for one of them to get married so she can enjoy all of the hoopla that goes along with it. She probably wishes her son picked a more wanna-be-princess type, like Anna was when she married Jonathon. Actually she was more like bridezilla.

  I also thought the mother of the groom was supposed to be mostly uninvolved. Not in my case. Bobby wants to be a part of everything, which is great and all—Jared adores his mom, so I know she will be a part of our lives on a regular basis—but it feels weird to have her there for so much of it. I always have to be on my best behavior, which means I can’t complain and moan about everything. Like I normally do. Someday she’ll get to see all my true colors—she’s only seen a select few—but not until I’m legally bound to her son and she’s stuck with me.

  Bobby is very traditional. She wants roses, and I prefer hydrangeas or lilies—something a little different. She likes the big poufy princess dresses, and I prefer simple and classic. I want a small wedding; she’s invited half of Denver. I can’t even think about that part or I get physically sick.

  She’s been pretty good at putting in her two cents and then going with whatever I’m wanting, but one thing she won’t budge on is the location of the ceremony. It has to be at a church, and not just any church, the same church her and Jared’s late father got married in. She’s “dreamed of the day” that one of her boys would get married there. It’s a beautiful church … the carpet is a little outdated, but who am I to be picky? Plus the sentiment is sweet.

  I wasn’t planning on having the wedding in a church, truth be told. I’m not against it, it’s just so inconvenient. Everyone has to go to the wedding at the church, then get in their cars and drive to the reception. It’d be simpler to have the wedding and reception at the same location, and I want it all to be easy. Simple and easy. But between Anna and Bobby, it’s been like pulling teeth to keep it that way. Anna has seemed to chill out with all of her over-the-top wedding ideas. She’s finally seeing the light, I think.

  “What do you think about releasing doves when you leave the church?” Anna asks, breaking up the silence we’d been walking in.

  Apparently, I was wrong. She’s not lessening her over-the-top wedding ideas. At all. She was probably purposefully giving a tiny respite before she shifted back into full gear. Dang it.

  “Are you serious?” I ask, searching her face for any sign of teasing.

  Nope. She’s serious.

  “It’d be beautiful, Julia,” she says, her condescending look back.

  “No way. No doves,” I say.

  She huffs. “Okay, then what about butterflies?”

  “No butterflies,” I say, not believing she’s truly asking me this. Doesn't she know me at all?

  “Can’t we just do the normal bird seed or bubbles?” I don’t want anything alive jumping out at me as I leave. Plus, what if they died? That would be a terrible omen.

  “Fine,” she says.

  Oh no. The dreaded “fine.” It may sound like she’s agreed (although grumpily), but I know the underlying tone in that “fine.” She’s essentially saying, “fine, if you want the worst wedding ever, then fine.”

  I don’t want the worst wedding ever. I want a nice, simple wedding with my friends and family. Not a big ridiculous fanfare with a princess dress and half of Denver watching.

  If I survive this wedding, it’ll be a miracle.

  CHAPTER 2

  Seriously, if one more person calls me dude, I’m going to lose it.

  “Your cupcakes are the best, dude,” the punk with the tangled mop of hair says for the millionth time (only a slight exaggeration) as I hand him his change. His friend sniggers, probably at the reference to my cupcakes.

  How original.

  I fake smile at them both, and then watch as they stumble out of the bakery. Good riddance.

  Business at the bakery these days, while great, has also been trying. Mainly on my patience. It’s been nine months since my venture on Cupcake Battles where I took home the winning prize (ten grand, which, not surprisingly, is all spent). National television got me amazing exposure, and word has spread like wildfire. In fact, I’m going to be recognized at the Denver Local Business Gala next month, for which I’ve been asked to provide a gazillion cupcakes. Okay, a thousand. But trust me, when you have to make that many cupcakes it feels like an endless amount.

  It’s been great. Don’t get me wrong. But lately I’ve noticed a gaggle of oddballs who like to frequent the place around closing time.

  I was clueless at first, but then my employee Patti informed me that these eccentrics are of the pot-smoking variety. Apparently the legalization of marijuana in Colorado equals a bunch of people who have the munchies, and my cupcakes are the craving of the month. Or rather the last ten months, since the show aired.

  I’m grateful for the business, I truly am. And I’m not judging anyone. It’s just that at the end of the day when my feet are killing me, I’d like to go home. Couldn’t they smoke earlier in the day, say, right around the lunch rush? That would be so much better for me. I think I’ll start a campaign, or a petition … or something. If only I weren’t so tired.

  I look down at my watch and am surprised that we’re nearly an hour past closing time. I swear I’ll eradicate that pot-smoking law myself. Maybe I’ll add “running for office” on my to-do list. Which is getting longer by t
he minute.

  “Lia,” I say as I walk over to a table by the front window, “I’m closing up now.” I give her a closed mouth smile that I hope nicely conveys my message to “get out.”

  “Yes, sorry,” she says in her sickly sweet voice from behind a magazine with a burning skull on the front cover. Odd, but not really, coming from Lia. Today she’s wearing a rainbow striped shirt with a non-matching floor-length floral skirt, and a peculiar grouping of beads wrapped around her short, dark red hair. She’s what one would call weird, but eclectic is a kinder way to say it.

  Lia is one of my regulars. She comes to the bakery every day. She’s also a witch, whose card reading almost ruined my relationship with Jared. Okay, it was me that almost ruined it, but her cards definitely played a part. Needless to say, I don’t do readings with her anymore, but my patrons do. They love it, actually. Once a month I let her set up a table and do readings in the bakery. I made her promise that she can only tell them the good things the cards say, and not the bad things. No doom and gloom. I want only happiness and joy oozing from my bakery, thank you very much.

  “You look tired,” she says, gawking at my face.

  “Yes, thank you. I’m quite tired,” I say as I rub my forehead with my hand, feeling the exhaustion move through me. I was up late watching my adorable nephew Liam for my brother Lennon and his wife Jenny. They desperately needed a night out, and Jenny is still not ready to hire an actual babysitter. I seem to be the only person she wants to leave Liam with, but I’m always up for it. I love that kid so much. I can’t believe he’s a year already.

  I’m also finding it hard to sleep because I keep having that reoccurring nightmare where I trip as I walk down the aisle of my own wedding. Of course, in last night’s version I was also completely naked. These dreams are so realistic I practically have to talk myself down from a panic attack when I finally wake myself up.

  I’m living on Dr. Pepper and a prayer these days. Sometimes I throw one of those five-hour energy shots in, for good measure.