Something Borrowed

By Adriana Hunter

What do you do when the one man you were meant to be with already belongs to another?

For Dana Marshall, new wedding planner and curvy single, "always the bridesmaid, never the bride" seems to be the story of her life. But when she is assigned to assist popular wedding planner Vienna Saunders in managing a dream wedding for an important client, nothing can prepare her for the face-to-face encounter with the insanely handsome groom, Benjamin Carter.

Sparks fly, and the chemistry between them is undeniable. Except he doesn't belong to Dana. He's off limits, forbidden and if she ever expects to walk away from the job with her heart still intact she needs to play by the rules.

Except as far as true love is concerned, rules are meant to be broken.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adriana Hunter
• Release date: Dec 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311115249

Book preview

Something Borrowed

New Adult BBW Romance

Copyright © 2014, Adriana Hunter

All Rights Reserved.

Published by Tangled Press

Adriana Hunter

http://www.AdrianaHunter.com

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This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations and places are solely the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, including events, areas, locations and situations is entirely coincidental.

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Table Of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

About The Author

Chapter One

Dana, have you even heard a word that I’ve said?

I forced my attention away from the breathtaking view, framed by the small airplane window. We were flying high over a beautiful blue ocean, bluer than anything I had seen before. The only ocean I’d ever seen had been the dull gray Atlantic, far off in the distance, through the hazy skyline of New York. It certainly was never this mesmerizing. Azure…cobalt…indigo…I tried to think of all the names of the blue crayons in my niece’s box of Crayola’s when Vienna’s voice cut through my musings.

I’m sorry, Vienna. It’s just…the ocean is so beautiful. Hard to take my eyes off of it.

"I realize that you’ve never seen the Caribbean before, Dana. And I understand there are many aspects of this trip that may be overwhelming for you, coming from… you know, where you do and all. But I need you to focus, pay attention to your job. This is your job, you know. It’s not a vacation."

I swallowed the sigh that I was about to exhale. And I tried very hard not to roll my eyes. It was something I’d picked up as a kid and never outgrown. Vienna had zeroed in on that habit pretty quickly, chastising me more than once.

It’s disrespectful to roll your eyes, Dana. Please stop doing that.

So I’d learned to paste a smile on my lips instead. And bite my tongue. It was certainly a lesson in patience and in controlling my temper. I suspected that I looked quite silly and terribly fake, but the truth is, that’s exactly what it was. An illusion, a silly façade, but I was quickly learning a whole lot about make believe working with Vienna. One of my very first lessons in this business? Weddings, even ones you’d like to believe were fairy tale were actually one part reality and nine parts illusion, and as wedding planners we were charged with the challenging task of making it all look oh-so-perfect, even if it were nothing but pure chaos beneath the surface.

Don’t get me wrong. I really appreciate the opportunity to work with Vienna. She’s giving me a chance of a lifetime, actually. As one of the up-and-coming wedding planners in New York City, in a fiercely competitive business, this was her first really big high-profile wedding and she invited me along to be a part of it all. Both families involved were part of the New York stratosphere, high society, names I only read about in the discarded New York Times or Wall Street Journal I’d picked up at Dominic’s diner as I cleared tables.

It was because of Vienna that I wasn’t waiting tables at Dom’s anymore, and was now seated on this private jet, heading to a gloriously secluded private island in the Caribbean, owned by a billionaire friend of the groom’s family.

And the truth was, I was finding it really difficult to quell my excitement, but I knew that I had to remain professional. Just as this was a huge career opportunity for Vienna, it also meant a lot to me. I was a new wedding planner, an assistant really, and if I handled this right it could mean a lot of future contracts. Not to mention, I’d finally be taken seriously.

Besides, some of the chaos surrounding this event was all in my head - exaggerated chaos as was common for me. I’m an over-thinker. I analyze everything and always prepare for the worse. I really wish I could just relax and go with the flow, but c’est la vie.

Vienna was right; I was extremely overwhelmed and I hadn’t even met the bride and groom yet. Since she had brought me onto the job so last minute it wouldn’t be until we had actually landed on the island that I’d get a face-to-face with the wedding party.

I was also completely exhausted. Vienna had hired me at the very last minute. She’d gotten my resume; with what little it contained, from the friend of a friend, and interviewed me over the phone. When I’d shown up at her office, expecting a second interview, she’d offered me the job right on the spot.

I’m taking a huge chance with you, Dana. This wedding is my biggest event in years and it’s not going to be an easy one. I need help and I don’t have the time to interview countless wedding planners. You’re it. I really have no other choice.

I remembered the way she had bit down on her bottom lip as if to prevent herself from further insulting me, but I knew exactly what she was feeling. She was desperate to get herself out of the corner she had put herself in. Originally, she had wanted to handle the affair entirely on her own. Her workaholic nature, her absolute obsessive controlling do it all personality was battling the fact that she simply couldn’t do it on her own. She wouldn’t have hired me otherwise. She knew it, and I knew it.

I’d had a series of low paying jobs since college, waitressing the most recent, stringing them together to make ends meet. A hospitality degree from community college didn’t get me very far in this economy, but it was apparently enough to get me the job with Vienna. I’d had those post-college dreams of starting my own quaint bed and breakfast upstate, but they were fading fast. I love the industry, the whole idea of helping people enjoy their holidays, but I was never quite in the right place at the right time when it came to landing a job. Until now.

We have only three days before the wedding. So, here’s the plan when we land. Vienna dragged me back again to the here-and-now, her ever-present leather-bound notebook open on her lap, reading glasses perched on the end of her perfect nose.

We land in about an hour. You’ll have time to freshen up in your room and then I’ll need you to be ready to work. Here. She handed me a printed map, a bewildering array of shapes, squares and octagons, all neatly labeled with numbers. And then she dropped a wireless microphone on top of the map.

Wear this, at all times. She turned her head and I saw a matching microphone attached to her diamond earring-clad ear. I nodded, fumbling with mine, moving it into place and feeling for the on-off button.

This is quite the place. I studied the map, trying to familiarize myself among the pastel-colored shapes. Who did you say owns the island, again?

It was Vienna’s turn to sigh. "Nigel Branford. You have heard of him, haven’t you? He’s only the wealthiest British entrepreneur in the world. He owns this island and several others. A bit eccentric, but aren’t they all? This… she stabbed at the map with an immaculately manicured fingernail …is Breaker Island. Here, it’s all written down." Another paper fluttered onto my lap.

Ah, okay, got it. Or I hoped I did. I found my room and the main villa on the map, tracing a line between the two. It was a very long line. I swallowed another sigh. Best guess was at least a twenty-minute walk from point A to point B.

Sometimes Vienna’s great at reading minds. There will be a golf cart for you to use, so you’re not late or disheveled from walking. She eyed me over the top of her glasses, one eyebrow raised. It was my turn to read her mind.

One of the first things she’d gone over, after I was hired, was my wardrobe. Nothing I owned seemed appropriate in her eyes. Granted, most of it involved waitress uniforms and faded old jeans, but I did own a couple of dresses and skirts. But she’d been crystal clear – she wanted a more professional look for me. So I found my curvy frame being stuffed into an ill-fitting blazer, paired with one of my black skirts and a simple white blouse, already uncomfortable in the air-conditioned plane. Blazers were not exactly figure flattering over my curves and I dreaded the thought of wearing this polyester straightjacket in the heat and dreadful humidity on the island.

Lord have mercy.

I’m going to need you to be feet on the ground, or, in this case, wheels on the ground. You’ll find a golf cart at your room.

Yeah, okay. Sure. I have yet to own my own car, so the golf cart would be my first set of wheels. I tried to remember what I’d learned in driver’s education, but Vienna was already forging ahead.

Here’s the information on the families. We’ve gone over this, but it pays to be prepared. You can read through this on the rest of the flight. You’ll be responsible for greeting some of the guests and taking them to their villas, so you might want to pay special attention to this list. Not the bride or groom. I’ll be handling them personally.

The guest list in my hand ran three pages long. And that was, as far as I could tell, just the immediate family.

My family is small and our whole extended family barely fills the first few rows of any church. This had my mind reeling.

I’ll expect you to be familiar with the family names, from the attached descriptions and pictures. Study it all. Obviously there’s the bride and groom, her immediate side only has her mother…which is a rather sad story. But the groom has both parents attending, and one set of grandparents coming along as well. Pay special attention to the names of the men…

I had flipped open the folder with the pictures and Vienna’s voice completely disappeared. There was a photo of the bride and groom - their engagement photo, by the looks of it.

The bride, Claire Latham, rested her head on the groom’s broad shoulder. She was tall, almost taller than he was in the photo, willowy and blonde, her smile just a touch less dazzling than the diamond engagement ring she was trying very hard to showcase. Her left hand rested stiffly on her groom’s chest, the ring tilted toward the camera.

I drew in a sharp breath, eyes drawn to the groom. Nathanial Benjamin Carter. The third. Oh, he went by Ben according to the notes. Better, definitely not quite so stodgy sounding. The name certainly didn’t suit the face that I was looking at, but Ben did.

He was incredibly good looking, his smile a bit more reserved than hers, his arm around the bride’s shoulder. He matched Claire in the good looks department, his short sandy hair a few shades darker than her sun-bleached waves. They made a good-looking couple in a very…very upper class, tennis-whites-on-weekend in the country club kind of way. I imagined there was a riding stable and beautiful horses around on those weekends as well, at a country house that was further away from New York City than I’d ever been in my entire life.

He was looking directly at the camera,