TILLY: Wedding At Lynx Lodge: Wedding At Lynx Lodge, #1

By Anne Louise

There's Instalove magic in the air as five best friends arrive at a destination wedding in the mountains.

 

TILLY - I drove two thousand miles to get to Lynx Lodge for my best friend's wedding, and I still can't outrun a streak of bad luck and rejection. Not to mention a broken heart. Ryan better think again. I don't care if he's swoony, blond, rugged, and talks to my dog.

 

RYAN - My team just finished a shift fighting a nearby forest fire, and we're sharing Lynx Lodge with a wedding party. But I draw the line at sharing my room. I swore off women a couple of years ago. Even so, the sight of Tilly in that sundress is tantalizing.

 

The sparks fly when Tilly and Ryan are thrown together in a hilarious mixup, but can the heat melt their stubborn hearts?

 

No cliffhangers, just the HEA you love, in a clean and wholesome RomCom story. This sweet summer novella series will bring a smile to your face and warm your heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anne Shillolo
• Release date: May 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201255763

Book preview

ONE

Tilly

You can make it! Just another minute or two. It’ll be right around the corner, I muttered to myself.

Who was I kidding?

I had literally never been anywhere so dark. Or so hot. It was the middle of the night.

OK. Maybe it was shortly after 11.

My dog, Bruce, looked up at me skeptically, and I didn’t blame him.

I was a city girl, and Bruce and I had just driven across the country in a record-breaking heat wave so I could be the maid of honor in my best friend’s wedding.

That’s if I didn’t crash my car on this narrow mountain road, faint from heat exhaustion, or get burned alive in the forest fires that raged nearby.

So much for the peace and fresh air of the mountains. The higher I climbed, the hotter it seemed to get.

If I rolled the windows all the way down, mosquitoes attacked me in squadrons. There were also large flying things zipping in and out of the yellow headlight beams. Beetles? Moths? I had no desire to see them any closer. So, I kept the windows open a crack and turned the air conditioning up again.

It was a complete delusion. The A/C hadn’t worked since somewhere in the prairies.

I loved my friend Lisa, and wanted to help make her special day spectacular. I had envisioned a wonderful road trip on the way to her destination wedding in the Canadian Rockies. I dreamed of the romance of the open road. I knew I’d feel independent, free as a bird, and strong.

I’d tried my best, but the reality was a big disaster. As I’d driven west across four provinces, each day had brought a new catastrophe.

My life had turned into a country song, and I didn’t even like country music. Now, I was facing no job, and no house. And worst of all? I’d been dumped by my boyfriend.

As I drove, I tried to block everything out. I was almost there. I hoped.

I complained some more about the heat. My small car complained at the steep incline. And Bruce, a Yorkie-poodle cross with a patchwork brown and black coat, complained from his perch beside me. It sounded like he was in agreement about both the weather and the road.

I’d had the chance to stay the night in the nearest town, Emerald Lake, but I thought I’d been so close to my destination. On the map, Lynx Lodge had looked about five minutes away. You’d think my navigation skills would be better after a week on the road. The rustic getaway was still nowhere to be seen.

TWO

Ryan

Never had a comfy bed and clean sheets felt so good.

My fire crew had just come off two days and two nights straight, fighting the wildfires on Mount Francis. Even though Lynx Lodge was booked up with wedding guests, they’d still made room for us.

It had been rough. We were trained as smokejumpers, so sometimes we parachuted into the scene, right at the edge of the blaze. Other times, we could get at the fire with trucks or heavy equipment. Either way, the physical demands, the teamwork, and the danger were what I thrived on.

I’d turned to the job to get me through more than one personal crisis over the years. And a cheating fiancée had been good for at least the last two fire seasons.

I had thought I was the luckiest man alive. I had a job that I liked and was good at. I was engaged to the love of my life. I’d bought my property and was almost finished designing the house we’d live in. The future looked bright.

But a quick trip home, that I thought would be a romantic surprise, had turned my world upside down. She was the manager of a local restaurant and I’d loved her since we were kids and she’d worn braces and used Jello to dye streaks in her blonde hair. She had finally agreed to go out with me in our senior year. We’d been a couple ever since, with a wedding on the horizon.

I’d driven into town from the airport, bought flowers, and gone straight to the restaurant. And seen her and the bartender together. Nothing graphic, but a single glance had told the tale. She hadn’t even bothered to deny it.

You’re the one who’s away all the time. Can you honestly say you’ve never strayed?

I’d looked back in shock and disbelief. Yes. Of course!

She dissolved in tears and apologized, but I was white hot with fury. Her question seemed to say this hadn’t been the first time she’d turned to other guys in my absence. Shortly after, she moved away, and I’d thrown myself into work. My anger morphed into sadness, regret and a compulsive need to be active. I hadn’t laughed in a long time.

Most of the other firefighters were doing the job to make bank, not to ease a broken heart. At least, as far as I knew. They scrimped and saved and, stuck out in the wilderness, there wasn’t much to spend their money on. They went home at the end of the season with enough to finance their dreams for another year.

OK, from what I’d heard, these ranged from a new truck to a winter of skiing, but still…

When our shift needed a break from the Mount Francis fire, I was the only one to take the manager of nearby Lynx Lodge up on the offer of a room. The others had tents and sleeping bags in a quiet meadow, space provided by the lodge free of charge.

But that couldn’t compare to my peaceful hideaway in the Lodge. I had a hot shower, rinsing off the grime of the last couple of