READER LOVE: What are you reading?

I had planned on this week's Reader Love feature being about what I'm reading, but I don't normally read much while I'm in the middle of writing toward a deadline. At the moment, I'm working on the final book in the Baker series.

It's been so cool getting back into Emma and Jackson's heads! They're kind of like those friends who live across the country. You love them, you miss them, but when they come for a visit and you all just click again, you realize HOW MUCH you've missed them.

So since I haven't quite finished the two books I was reading before I floated to the edge of the falls (which is how I see my last month or so of writing a book when there's a deadline involved), I thought you might like to just have a little sneak peek into Always the Baker, FINALLY the Bride.

So check it out!


Excerpt from Always the Baker, FINALLY the Bride by Sandra D. Bricker
Abingdon Press - Spring 2013


PROLOGUE

“A champagne flute of vanilla bean gelato topped tableside with a shot of espresso.”

“Seriously?”

“Chocolate chip bread pudding drizzled with warm caramel.”

“Oh. My.”

“Tiramisu lady fingers in coffee liqueur and cocoa.”

Emma balled up the lapel of her jacket in her fist and whimpered. “Jackson. My heart.”

Jackson leaned toward the waiter and clicked his tongue. “I’m thinking we should just move on to the sugar-free menu. She’s diabetic.”

“Oh. All right.”

The gentleman pointed at the other side of the dessert cart as Jackson interrupted. “But I’ll have that bread pudding,” he whispered.

“Yes, sir. And for the lady, our sugar-free menu includes a warm berry tart with frozen vanilla yogurt.”

“Oooh!”

“A red velvet cupcake with cream cheese icing sweetened with agave.”

“You can stop right there,” Jackson told him. “You had her at red velvet.”

“Not so fast,” she countered, and Jackson’s heart began to thump. “Go on. What else?”

“Pumpkin spice cake with creamy buttermilk icing.”

“Oh, that sounds lovely.”

Perspiration puddled over his top lip, and Jackson wiped it away with his napkin. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Red velvet is your favorite.”

“Yes, but I can make my own sugar-free red velvet. The pumpkin sounds—”

Jackson’s attention darted to the waiter and they shared a lingering exchange before the waiter offered, “The red velvet is our specialty. It comes highly recommended.”

“Really?” she reconsidered. And by the time she nodded, Jackson’s heart had begun to pound at double-time. “Okay. I’ll try the cupcake.”

“Very good.”

“Coffee for me, and a pot of tea for my date, please,” Jackson said, leaning back against the leather booth with a sigh.

“Are you all right?”

“Hmm? What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Emma replied. “You seem a little tense tonight.”

“Oh. No. I don’t know. I guess—”

Fortunately, the waiter reappeared so that he didn’t have to concoct some lame excuse. He stopped breathing as the waiter set the beautiful red velvet cupcake down in front of Emma. A shiny pink cupcake tin held the confection, and a ring of intricate white chocolate made to look like a crocheted doily surrounded it. The carefully-chosen diamond ring shimmered on top of it, catching the light from the chandelier overhead and reflecting the glint of recognition in Emma’s brown eyes.
She looked up at him, and those spectacular eyes of hers crested into turbulent waves of gold-flecked recognition. Her perfect lips parted, but not a single syllable passed over them. She blinked several times before glancing back at the cupcake, and Jackson knew this was his moment. He slipped from the booth and hit one knee beside her.

“What…What are you…Jackson?”

He took her hand and grinned at her.

“Are you serious?”

“I’ve never been more serious in my life. You’ve changed me, Emma. You are the center of everything for me. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to get here, but I can’t even think of living without you. Will you marry me?”

And with that, she turned her head away from him and began to sniffle.

“Are you crying?” he asked on a laugh. “Emma, this is not a night for tears.”

“I can’t help it,” she chuckled, and he watched her struggle to pull herself together. “You’ve really surprised me here.”

“In a good way, I hope,” he said, and he plucked the ring from the icing and gave it a quick lick.

“Frankly, I thought the best part of this night was going to be the cupcake.”

“Emma. Will you give me an answer, please?” he asked, wiping the ring clean with the corner of a napkin. “Before my legs go numb?”

“Oh. Sorry.”

He waited. “Is that a yes?”

A mischievous glint betrayed her amusement. “Can I let you know after I eat the cupcake?”

Jackson laughed. “I’d kind of like to hear it now, if you don’t mind.”

“If you insist,” she told him, and she tilted her head slightly and smiled. If he’d been standing, he thought his knees might have gone weak under the weight of that sweet little smile.

“You’re killing me here,” he said with raspy emotion. “But I adore you.”

“You do?”

“Oh, now you’re just messing with me.”

“You really do adore me?”

Jackson sighed, glancing at the floor.

Emma touched his jaw with one finger and nudged his face upward. “Yes, Jackson. I’ll marry you.”


CHAPTER 1

"Dude. When you said your family had a summer cottage near Savannah, I pictured something kind of different. More galley kitchen and bunk beds than Great Gatsby and mint juleps.”

Emma smiled and yanked the camouflage duffle out of the back of Sherilyn’s Explorer, heaving it into Fee’s arms.

“The Great Gatsby was New York, wasn’t it?” Sherilyn asked as she pulled her two floral overnight bags from the back. Leaning on the rear bumper, she wrapped both arms around her large pregnant belly and sighed as she gazed at the house. “It’s been such a long time, Emma Rae. Are you glad to be back?”

Emma hummed her reply, slinging a burgundy tote over one shoulder and a brown leather bag over the other. She made her way across the sandy driveway and up the white-railed steps to the wraparound porch, and she pressed her grandmother’s birthdate into the security pad. Once the beep of acceptance squawked its approval, Emma pushed open the massive double doors and turned around to grin at Sherilyn.

They sang it together. “Wipe yaw fee-eet.”

How many times had they heard those same three words out of Avery over years of spring and summer holiday visits! They scampered into a quick, animated run-in-place atop the large straw welcome mat while Fee stood behind them, eyeing them curiously over the bridge of square black sunglasses.

Emma dropped her bags at the foot of the staircase and hurried toward the vistas calling to her from fifty yards beyond the wall of windows. She unlatched the French doors at the top, and again at the knobs, before shoving them fully open with dramatic flair, expectant and eager. The salty sea breeze caressed her face just as she’d imagined, and the distant purr of the rolling ocean waves brought the perfect music to accompany the chatting gulls.

Emma approached the porch railing and leaned against it, mesmerized by the foam-capped dance on the white sand shore. Aunt Sophie had always called it “Atlantic Therapy,” a term which had popped immediately to mind when Sherilyn had suggested they go away somewhere relaxing where Emma could pull her thoughts together and make some solid wedding plans after months of avoidance.

Well. Not avoidance, really. More like…inertia. A numb sort of wedding paralysis that seemed to set in whenever key decisions needed to be made.

She wiggled the fingers of her left hand, allowing sunbeams to bounce off her beautiful engagement ring. She wondered for the hundredth time how Jackson had known that she’d always wanted a princess-cut diamond. She would have been pleased with a little square solitaire, of course, but the frame of smaller round diamonds that surrounded the stone and worked their way down to the platinum band caused the ring to catch that much more light. It was an exquisite ring. Perfect in every way.

“Sher, I never asked you before,” she said as Sherilyn stepped up beside her. “Did you tell Jackson I wanted a princess diamond?”

“No, of course not. I was as surprised as you.”

“Mm.”

“Why?”

“No reason. I’ve always just wondered, and I keep forgetting to ask him how he knew.”

“Hey,” she said after a moment’s thought. “What do you say we unpack. Then we can head into town and get some groceries.”

“No need,” Emma said, breaking her gaze from the ring and fixing it on the sweeping blue horizon. “I faxed a list to Elmer and Louise. They took care of everything.”

“Elmer and Louise!” Sherilyn exclaimed. “They still take care of this place? Are they still alive?”

“Twenty years connected to the Travis clan when they actually had a choice not to be,” Emma summarized. “Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?”

“Not really,” she replied. “I’ve stayed connected without being required by blood.” Emma glanced at Sherilyn, her turquoise blue eyes dancing with amusement as she mindlessly scratched her protruding stomach. “It’s not such a bad deal, really.”

“What’s with this new move of yours?” Emma asked her, nodding at Sherilyn’s belly.

“Oh, the scratching?”

“Uh, yeah!”

“I can’t help it. My skin itches all the time now.”

“You’ve got, what, five more weeks? If you’re not careful, you’ll wear down the skin and the baby can step right out on her own.”

“Stop,” Sherilyn groaned, smacking Emma’s arm playfully. “Wait! You said on HER own. Do you have a feeling? You think it’s a girl?”

“If you wanted to know the sex, you should have had them tell you at the doctor’s office, Sher.”

“We want to be surprised,” she sort of whined without conviction.

“You mean Andy wants to be surprised.”

Twisting her red hair around one finger, Sherilyn shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah.”

“Well, I can tell you this with total conviction. I absolutely know it’s either a girl…Or a boy!”

Sherilyn swatted her arm again, and Emma rubbed her friend’s stomach lovingly.

“Em,” Fee called from inside. “Hey, Emma!”

Emma and Sherilyn went into the house, both of them looking around. When she spotted Fee standing at the top of the stairs leaning over the banister, Emma laughed.

“Can I have the blue room with the shells on the wall?”

She nodded, and Fee hopped away before the S in “Yes.”

“Cool. This place has a lot of happy-looking rooms. But I think I can live with this one.”

“What about you?” she asked Sherilyn. “Do you have any preferences?”

“Is the green room still green?”

“It is indeed.”

Sherilyn grabbed her bags and waddled up the stairs. “I get the green room across the hall,” she called out to Fee as she reached the landing, breathless.

Emma padded across the great room and through the open doors. Leaving her sandals behind on the porch, she rushed down the three wooden stairs and took off at a full run across the sand. She unzipped the heather gray hoodie and discarded it at the halfway mark, and she left her khaki shorts on the sand about three yards from the water’s edge. She stopped and adjusted the bottom of her red bathing suit where the sand darkened from a recent overflow of surf. Knee-deep in the icy ocean, she tugged at the suit top before diving in and swimming out against the brisk green-blue current.

Just before surfacing again, she thought she heard her Aunt Sophie’s melodic laughter.

“Atlantic Therapy, Emma Rae. And the colder the better when you’re looking for answers. They’re all right out there in the Atlantic Ocean. God’s hidden them there for us to find when we really, really need them.”

*****

What? You think I'm going to give the whole first chapter away???? I hope this makes you hungry for the spring release of Always the Designer, Never the Bride, as well as the Spring 2013 release of this one! And don't forget you can read the first chapter of Designer by clicking Chapter One on the right sidebar.