“There was a lot of debate about it.” Dylan fingered the cuff links on his French cuffs. “They’re family. That’s the only way I can explain it.”
“Good enough.” Ryan clapped him on the back in support of the decision.
There was a tap on the door, and Marissa, the wedding planner, stepped inside, “Oh, my.” She put her hand to her chest as she looked the three men up and down and sighed. “I’ve been doing this job for twenty years, but you’re the best looking wedding trio I’ve ever seen. You ready?”
“Let’s go.” Dylan headed for the door, but hesitated and stopped to shake hands with his best friends. “Thanks for being here today. Which one of you jokers wants to handle the ring?”
“Better be Wyatt,” Ryan said. “He’s used to keeping tracking of one.”
Wyatt grunted and dropped Gracie’s ring into his pocket. “Huh, you’ve got all those Super Bowl rings. Where are they?”
He shrugged. “They’re in storage somewhere.”
Dylan picked up his step, eager to take his place, and greet his bride.
Gracie slipped into her sparkly shoes and accepted her bouquet. She shouldn’t be nervous, but butterflies were keeping her stomach aflutter. So much had happened in such a short time, she could hardly catch her breath.
And she was marrying Dylan Bradford. She would have never seen that coming.
They’d had a whirlwind four months and still had many details to work out. Most of the issues were little things though. Like money, family, and careers.
They were building a house on the Bradford property that had brought Dylan to Maine. Together, they were repairing an old building to open as a children’s clinic in East Langden where Gracie would see patients. Dylan was rehabbing the Old Maine Furniture Factory to run as a co-op for the town vendors and craftsmen. And for Gracie’s sake, he and Clay maintained a cautious friendship.
And the pre-nup! He wouldn’t let her sign one, even though she knew someone with wealth like his should have insisted.
“Are you afraid I’ll someday leave you and take all your money?” he asked her when she brought up the subject. When she laughed and said no, he said, “And I’m not afraid you’ll do that either. You won’t even take the things I want to give you.”
But he wanted to give her so much! He wanted to pay off her school loans. Buy her a new car. Remodel the carriage house at the B&B. Take her shopping. Take her travelling. Buy her stuff on a level she couldn’t even grasp.
But his heart was in the right place, and her negotiating skills were strong. She knew they’d work out a compromise eventually.
For now, she had a wedding to get to and a honeymoon to enjoy. She’d chosen Clay and Tanya to stand up with her as bridesmaid and bridesman. Clay had been her best friend for so long, she wouldn’t have excluded him on the most important day of her life. Gran had already taken MacDuff in his basket and gone down to be seated. The wedding planner had gone to get the groom in place. Clay waited to escort her down the stairs and deliver her to her grandfather. She had asked David to walk her down the aisle, but his health was still uncertain and he didn’t enjoy being the center of attention. She hugged Clay and Tanya tightly. “I wish you both all the happiness in the world,” she told them.
“You, too,” Tanya said, dabbing at tears.
“I didn’t think this would work out for you,” Clay said, tugging on his ear. “I’ve never seen you happier. But if he hurts you, I’ll break his face, again.”
“No more of that!” Gracie patted his cheek. “You’re friends now.”
“Yeah, right,” he grumbled, but he smiled when he said it, so Gracie hoped the idea would grow on him.
The garden looked like a wonderland. She’d been taking peeks at the preparations from her window. And the ever-efficient Marissa had been reporting on the completion of each task. No major mishaps yet.
As her something old, Gracie wrapped the chain with her dad’s dog tag and her mom’s charm around the stem of her bouquet, to have something of them with her on this special day. Her something blue was the sapphire necklace Dylan’s gave her the night before. After a final tug on her veil, she gave Tanya and Clay one last hug and set off to meet her groom.
As she came around the corner of the carriage house with Granddad, MacDuff jumped out of his basket and trotted over to accompany Gracie down the aisle.
Dylan waited for her on the steps of the gazebo, heart-thumpingly gorgeous. Naturally, a circle of sunlight beamed down on him highlighting the gold in his hair, defining the planes of his face, and brightening the excitement in his eyes. He laughed at MacDuff, but his smile softened as Gracie approached. He stepped forward and met her halfway down the aisle, leaning in to give her a kiss.
Granddad cleared his throat. “It’s not time for that yet.”
“Sorry,” Dylan said, cradling her hand in his. “She looked so beautiful, I couldn’t wait for the rest of my life to begin.”
Thank you!
Thank you for reading Daring Dylan, the second book in the Billionaire Brotherhood Series!
Daring Dylan holds a special place in my heart, because a long time ago, under a different title, it won RWA’s Golden Heart award for best Single Title Contemporary manuscript. If that hadn’t happened when it did, I might have quit writing. I might not have, but winning the award provided me with the validation I needed to keep going. So thank you, RWA, for providing me with the necessary encouragement.
The third book of the series, Remaking Ryan, will be released in January 2016 and is available for pre-order now.
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Books by Jacie Floyd
The Good Riders Series
MEET YOUR MATE
CURSED BY LOVE
MEANT FOR ME
Boxed Set: SUMMER KISSES
Ten Full-length Novels by Golden Heart Authors, including Meet Your Mate
The Billionaire Brotherhood
WINNING WYATT
DARING DYLAN
REMAKING RYAN, January 2016 Release
The Billionaire Brotherhood
On one of the worst days of their lives and the history of the country, three boys with nothing in common except their privileged upbringings form a bond of friendship that lasts through years of personal struggles and triumphs. Wyatt is the intellectual, Dylan is the daredevil, and Ryan is the easy-going athlete.
Remaking Ryan Excerpt
The Billionaire Brotherhood
Book 3
Chapter One
Pre-order it now!
All men are bottom-feeders in the sea of life. Jenna McCall reminded herself that the testosterone-driven, smugly good-looking ones usually resided even lower.
Or such had been her experience.
Stepping from the hall into Ryan Eastham’s room and dropping her purse on the bedside table, she didn’t expect the unconscious hulk sprawled across a hospital bed to be any different.
None of them were. Her cheating husband hadn’t been, nor had any of her cheating ex-boyfriends before that.