Next Bride In Line

By Patricia Holden

Following the demise of her marriage, Maureen Dolan is working to put her life back together and move on from dependence on family for a number of forms of support. She is keeping her Irish dancing school going, and learning to live on her own again. Linus Drummond is dealing with his father's departure from the family, his mother's slow moving terminal disease, his sister marrying one of his best friends who just happens to be Maureen's oldest brother, and a mess in the family business that Linus is suddenly running.

In the meantime, the two have been avoiding each other for what they considered to be a very good reason: the danger his job presents.

While all of this is going on in their lives, three weddings happen within Linus and Maureen's circle. During the receptions, they let their bodies do the talking while they ballroom dance and come to the realization that they had been walking around each other for most of their lives, and were now ready to become the latest couple in the family and friends circle that tended not to branch out.

Maureen is the next bride in line, and the families in the Turn My Head series make sure she and Linus cannot escape that reality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patricia Holden
• Release date: Nov 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463735664

Patricia Holden

A resident of Flyover Country in the Unites States, Patricia Holden, the pen name of a good Catholic girl from the Midwest, is committed to Christianity and traditional social roles, as well as high arts and culture. Watching politics, observing human behavior and writing are some of her long-time interests. The author known as Patricia Holden is a classically trained soprano and proud citizen of Cardinal Nation, although, during hockey season, Bleeds Blue. She lives with family and a cute and charming tyrant...make that a toy dog. She also crochets.Please, visit this writer's Facebook author page @PatriciaHoldenAuthor for reader fellowship and frequent conversations about upcoming books including voting on cover art, and snippets of upcoming offerings.

Book preview

Next Bride In Line

by Patricia Holden

Published by Susan Sampson at SmashWords

Copyright © 2018 Susan Sampson

Cover Photo from Good Free Photos

Other Titles (and the Brides) from Patricia Holden on Smashwords

and affiliated online retailers:

Turn My Head – Mae Jones

Break Through – Darcy Platt

Third Time’s the Charm – Sarah Jane Rappaport

Conflict of Interest – Margot Dolan

Romeo Night – Beth Hartke

Last Man Standing – Rosemary Fallon

Talk Dirty To Me – Josie Miller

Secrets of the Bayou – Laura Gayos

High Maintenance – Tara McKenzie

No Turning Back – Marianne Drummond

The Stork Club – Alicia Drummond

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Chapter 1

Come on, I need someone who knows what they’re doing on a dance floor.

Maureen Dolan looked down at the manly hand that was thrust in front of her, and blinked. She knew the voice that accompanied that particular hand. It belonged to her brothers’ friend Linus Drummond. Her brothers’ deep, still, and stoic friend who usually held up a wall when the entire group was together. He didn’t dance. At least Maureen didn’t think he danced. She had never seen him do so. That being the case, the question of the hour was why he needed someone who knew what she was doing on a dance floor.

Mo lifted her gaze to his, into those beautiful gray eyes that she rarely ever saw directed at her, and blinked.

Mo, he grabbed her hand, and not with his customary patience, either, the band is finally playing a decent dance number, and all your cousin Ryan’s friends are doing out there on the floor is wiggling to the rhythm. To be honest, Maureen had observed the exact same thing in the last half hour, and it was driving her nuts. You actually know how to dance, Linus told her hauling her to her feet, and pulling her directly onto the dance floor where the bridal party of her cousin Ryan Fallon and his bride Josie Miller’s wedding and a number of their guests were indeed just wriggling to the rhythm of the music the band was blaring. Linus swung her into his arms, his right hand holding her left in the air, and his left arm around her waist at exactly the right spot to direct her for quite a number of different ballroom dance steps.

Sure enough, without treading on her feet, Linus Drummond directed her around the dance floor in a modified swing dance sequence that stunned Maureen.

What do you know, she thought to herself. Mr. ‘I am a really cool as a cucumber secret agent’ knew how to dance.

Aunt Maureen, Maureen looked down into the eyes of one of her five year old nieces, and smiled.

Yes, Jessica, she returned. The little girl had just finished the first lesson of the fall session in Maureen’s Irish Dance School. The little girl’s father, Maureen’s oldest brother, Sean, was due to pick up her, and two of her cousins any moment now.

Have you seen my daddy? asked the darling girl with the beautiful brown hair and eyes.

Maureen smiled at her. No, sweetheart, I haven’t. I’m sure he’ll be here soon. Or she would end up dropping off her nieces at their respective homes before heading to her own parents’ house for dinner. Why don’t you and Kate and Bethany go change your shoes, and I’ll find out where your dad is.

The little girl sighed. He’s probably delivering puppies, again.

Maureen stifled a laugh at Jessica’s grown up tone. Mo’s brother Sean was a veterinarian who treated champion level purebred dogs, and was known to be on call day and night just waiting for litters to drop. Jessica being jealous of the canines was interesting, truth be told. This was the first Mo had heard the little girl mention it. He could be, Maureen told her, but let me see if I can find him. She turned her niece by her shoulders, and gently pushed her in the direction of the benches where her other two nieces were busily changing their shoes from the hard Irish dancing shoes they wore for class this evening, and into something a lot more comfortable and suitable for the street.

She sighed at the thought of starting to teach another round of little Dolans the fine art of traditional Irish dance. At least they were here with her, and not just sitting in the den at her mother’s house watching re-runs of Sofia the First and The Mickey Mouse Club House, not that there was really anything wrong with that. At some point, all of the Dolan grandkids ended up in her studio for lessons in Maureen’s passion: Irish dancing. Some of the kids had better aptitude for it than others, but the family was determined that all of them would learn at least some of the traditions of their heritage even if that’s all that ever happened in regards to actual performance: learning them.

Maureen, on the other hand, hadn’t just learned traditional Irish Dance years ago; she had perfected it, earning herself a champion title in Ireland one year. Anymore, the award itself was just something that sat on a shelf in her office here at the studio, but deep down...deep down it was one of Maureen’s only achievements no one could ever take away from her.

Unlike some other things in her life.

She glanced over her shoulder at the three precious poppets who were with her this evening and sighed. Better call Sean and find out where he is, she thought to herself. Between them, they’d get the girls home, but, really, going out to Sean’s new house was a bit of a drive for her in rush hour traffic. She would rather him be able to pick them up.

Maureen was just reaching for her phone when it started to vibrate. She picked it up. The text message from her oldest brother was that he was five minutes out, and would she mind taking Kate and Bethany to their parents’ house with her. He wrote that those two girls’ parents, their brother Pat and his wife Mary, were at the emergency room with one of their younger kids who fell on a concrete sidewalk about a half hour ago, and split open his chin.

Of course, Maureen thought. It was a rite of passage for the small children in this family, falling and splitting open a chin. All of the kids other than the two new babies in the clan had done it at least once. She sighed, and texted a single word response back to her brother. Of course she could take Kate and Beth to their parents’ house. That’s where she was headed...and where she suspected four more of her nieces and nephews were since their parents were at the emergency room with one of their siblings.

Mo sat down on the piano bench in her studio to take off her hard shoes, and put on her studio slippers. Sean was just going to have to sit with the girls while she changed her clothes for the drive home.

She stood to walk to the front of the building when the back door of the studio opened. She looked over her shoulder to see her offending brother walk through it. Maureen and her brother Sean were the first and third of the six siblings known to their family and friends as the cookie cutter kids, as all of them were Black Irish if there ever was such a thing with black curls, mossy green eyes, and complexions that tended to rival lobster red when they spent too much time in the sun. Hey, Sean, lock that door while you’re back there. She said to him. I need to change.

Daddy! came from Jessica who ran to him, and was immediately swept into his arms. Kate and Beth joined in with Uncle Sean! running to be greeted by their beloved uncle.

Maureen did her darndest to not feel the twinge of pain twist in her chest.

But she did feel it. And it hurt. Badly.

Mo loved her nieces and nephews with all her heart, but still, they weren’t hers, and never would be. Not in the way they belonged to their parents. And a parent was something that she was not.

With a bit of an effort for a woman of her years and experience with children, Maureen buried the old resentment that her ex-husband, one Dexter McCubbins, really had no interest in continuing his line. It was one of the things that eventually prompted her to leave him, and file for divorce. Well, that and his penchant for selling off her property and what she brought to the marriage so as to acquire new and far more fanciful...stuff than what they already had. She didn’t see the need for fancy cars and vacation properties. He did, though, and in the divorce decree he got most of what he had collected using the profits from the assets of hers that he sold.

In the end, Maureen got something better with the dissolution of her marriage, though. Freedom. And that gift was augmented by her grandfather Dolan in a way that Dexter McCubbins could never touch.

Maureen smiled to herself as she made her way to her office, and closed the door. Dax did not know at the time he sold the building that housed her studio that her grandfather bought it from him, and was going to leave it to her in his will with final transfer of ownership when the divorce was final. That was quite the surprise for Maureen the morning the will was read. But Mo was glad it happened that way. Her ex was a leech who grabbed onto her for her family’s money. That was something she didn’t catch about him before they married, and was a good part of the reason why she now swore off men like the plague they were.

Well, other than her father and brothers...and her sister Margot’s brothers-in-law...and her cousin Ryan...and, well, yes, she had to admit, her brothers’ friend Linus Drummond. He was a seriously nice guy, even if he was quiet, and ran an international security firm. He was rich, too. Richer than anyone in her family, that was for sure. He was also amazingly hot in his own way, sort of like a sleeping volcano. Once Maureen had a hand on his bicep, she knew he had a honed and tightly controlled body full of strength, too.

And, for the thousandth time since her cousin Ryan’s wedding, she made herself forget he was one hell of a dancer.

Too bad he really wasn’t on the market.

About three hours later, Maureen closed the screened in porch door behind her parents’ house, and walked across the outdoor enclosure headed for the back door that led into the kitchen. For once in recent memory, the Dolan house was solemn and soundless. The only people there were her, and her parents. As she stepped into the blue of her mother’s domain, the kitchen, which was slated to be demolished in the next week, Maureen tried to find the silence comforting. The quiet in this house was, after all, something she was not used to.

It came as no surprise to her when the word that came to mind in the stillness was deafening. She was, for once, almost literally alone. Her parents’ presence really didn’t count…at least until one of them started talking.

Maureen, her mother looked at her from where she stood at the sink in the middle of the kitchen island. Did your brother and the girls get off okay?

Mo felt herself nod. Yes. Pat wanted to get them into bed since it’s a school night.

Her mother, Marcia Dwyer Dolan, the quintessential political wife, shook her silver bobbed head. At this point, as late as it is, they’ll be cranky all day tomorrow.

Yeah, well, they could have had one of us go over to their house, and put them to bed rather than bring them here, and risk missing their normal bedtime.

Maureen, her mother shot her a look, they were panicked when Colin came off the sidewalk bloody. No, the injury wasn’t serious, but still, they’re his parents. When your child is hurt, you panic. It’s part of the parental job description.

And that was something Maureen wasn’t, she thought bitterly.

Some day you will understand, her mother told her.

I don’t know about that, Mom.

You won’t know until you try, her mother shot back. It was an argument they seemed to be having with increasing frequency. I know you got burned big time with Dax, but there are others in the sea. You just need to venture out, and go fishing.

Maureen went to the cup at a time coffee maker, and went through the motions of making herself a cup of decaf. She didn’t really want one, but she couldn’t face her mother at the moment when she was being pushed into a move she wasn’t ready to make.

Mom, it’s not that easy. Frustration put a touch of whine in her voice.

Yes, it is, Marcia Dolan countered. I saw you in Linus Drummond’s arms at Ryan’s wedding.

Maureen restrained an eye roll. Mom, that was a one time thing. He just wanted to dance a bit.

Be that as it may, you still enjoyed being the center of a man’s attention. It was written all over your face. Why not see if you can find one who is more prone to actually settling down. You’re not getting any younger.

As if Maureen really needed that particular reminder.

After she drove herself home that evening...well, to the bungalow flip house that her brother Mickey owned next door to his current house, the house she was borrowing while she learned to be on her own again...Maureen took a long bubble bath and tried to forget her mother’s words. Not the part about fishing in a sea without any real lures, or not getting any younger, but when she said it showed that Mo had enjoyed being with Linus. Well, that she had enjoyed dancing with him, anyway. The truth was, the night of Ryan and Josie’s wedding, when it came down to it, she and Linus didn’t really talk much. But they did dance. And Maureen did enjoy being in his arms. And, as far as she knew, he was just not available.

What would she do if he was available, she asked herself. Throw her body into his arms, and demand he dance with her? Somehow, Mo didn’t think that she would get positive results with that approach. She also didn’t think that calling him up and asking him out was such a hot idea like a lot of the newfangled dating sites and other not so helpful advice books recommended. No, Linus was full of testosterone whether he appeared to act on it or not. And, around women, he generally didn’t. He usually tried to blend in with the wallpaper when in mixed company. But that didn’t mean he was not a manly sort of man.

And those sorts of guys liked to lead, and not just on a dance floor.

Mo moved a little under the bubbles and sighed. Linus Drummond certainly did know how to lead a lady on the dance floor, she thought to herself. In fact, he was a better ballroom dancer than some of the partners