Three Down the Aisle

When Mike didn’t immediately shake his head, Melanie went on. “Brenda’s an attractive woman and she seems nice enough. Why aren’t you interested?”

“My life’s complicated enough. I’m not looking for a relationship.”

Melanie could relate to that. “And I imagine it’s a whole lot easier to give a rosebush what it needs than it is to deal with a woman.”

His lips quirked slightly. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Even though she could relate all too well to where he was coming from, some traitorous little voice deep inside her couldn’t help murmuring, “Lucky rosebush.”

Mike regarded her oddly. “What was that?”

Oh, Lord, had she really said that out loud?

Dear Reader,

All of us have someplace in our lives that we remember fondly. Sometimes it’s only nostalgia that colors a perfectly ordinary place and lifts it into a special place in our hearts. Sometimes it’s a place that truly was magical during our childhoods. For me that was always the family cottage by the Potomac River.

Now that I’m living part of the year back in my very special place, it got me thinking about what would happen to four sisters as each of them faced a turning point in their lives. What if they had spent their summers in a cottage that held a special place in their hearts? Would they retreat there to heal? And would that serene place once more open their hearts to the possibility of love? And so, I began to write about the Rose Cottage Sisters, four wonderful, strong women in search of peace.

In
Three Down the Aisle
, you’ll meet Melanie D’Angelo who, frankly, is not all that overjoyed about being banished to the shores of the Chesapeake Bay when a romance blows up in her face. She wants nothing more than to hide out until the shame and embarrassment of her broken love affair die down.

But Rose Cottage is in need of some serious attention when she arrives and sexy landscape designer Stefan Mikelewski has a few ideas about where she ought to begin. For a man of few words, Mike has a lot to say about the sorry state of her grandmother’s garden. His loving attention to the roses and his nurturing devotion to his troubled six-year-old provide a healing balm for Melanie, as well. And, before she knows it, love is blooming right alongside those beautiful heirloom roses.

I hope you enjoy Melanie and Mike’s story and that you’ll share just a little of the magic of Rose Cottage.

All best,

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

T
he tears on her cheeks were still damp and her temper was still hot, when someone—no, not just someone, the family calvary—pounded on the door of Melanie’s Boston apartment. Before she could drag herself off the sofa, the door burst open and all three of her sisters swooped into her tiny studio looking a bit like outraged avenging angels.

If Melanie hadn’t been so completely and totally miserable and humiliated, she might have managed to smile at their ready-for-anything attitude. Had her sisters gotten here before she’d kicked Jeremy the weasel to the curb, he’d probably be quaking in his two-hundred-dollar designer loafers.

The D’Angelo sisters were something else. Singly, they had their own distinctive personalities and achievements, but united they were a force to be reckoned with. And nothing united them like a common enemy—in this
case the man who’d lied to Melanie for more than six months.

Maggie and Jo settled on either side of her, patting her hands and murmuring inept but well-meant platitudes about how things would improve, how she was better off without the lying, cheating scoundrel and on and on until Melanie wanted to scream.

Ashley, she noticed, was saying nothing, but her agitated pacing and the flags of color on her cheeks suggested that an explosion was in the offing. Ashley took her duties as the oldest and most successful of the D’Angelo sisters seriously. She also had their father’s volatile temper. Melanie eyed her warily.

“Ash, maybe you should sit down,” she suggested quietly. “You’re giving us all whiplash trying to follow you.”

Her big sister responded with a frown. “I don’t think so. I’m trying to decide whether to haul this Jeremy’s sorry butt into court or just hunt him down and pound him to a pulp.”

The rest of the sisters exchanged a look. With Ashley, neither option was entirely out of the question. She had a law degree, a powerful sense of justice, a protective streak and a right hook that deserved respect.

“What good would any of that do, Ash?” Jo the peacemaker inquired cautiously. “Getting your name splashed in the papers along with the whole tawdry reason for your behavior would only prolong Melanie’s pain and humiliate her in front of the entire world. Then everyone would know that the creep pulled the wool over her eyes for months. Do you actually want Dad to find out about this? You’ll be in court defending him on a murder charge.”

Ashley sighed. “True.”

They all fell silent, considering Jo’s warning. Their father was a lusty, boisterous Italian who’d put the fear of God into more of their dates than any of them cared to recall. And those were the
nice
guys. Jeremy the weasel wouldn’t stand a chance against their father’s outrage.

Ashley peered intently at Melanie. “Are you sure you don’t want me to do something? There are lots of ways to get even that don’t involve bloodshed.”

“Nothing,” Melanie assured her hurriedly. “It’s bad enough that you all know that Jeremy managed to hide a wife and two kids from me, that I believed him every single time he evaded my questions about why we couldn’t see each other on the weekends, why we spent so little time in public. He made it all sound perfectly reasonable.”

“What made him get around to telling you tonight? A guilty conscience?” Maggie asked.

“Hardly,” Melanie admitted. “I ran smack into him while they were all out buying new sneakers for the kids. Even then, he tried to drag me out of sight and tell me some lie about how he was just being dutiful, that it didn’t mean a thing, that the marriage was on its last legs. Blah, blah, blah. Idiot that I am, I probably would have listened, too, if his wife hadn’t seen us and given him a look that would have frozen anyone else on the spot. Something tells me that this isn’t the first time Jeremy’s been caught straying by his wife. Her radar was on full alert. How he managed to get away from her to come over here to try one more time to explain is beyond me.”

“You didn’t listen to a word he had to say, did you?” Ashley demanded.

“Of course not. By then you all were on your way. I
wanted him long gone when you got here.” She sighed. “How stupid was I? I should have done the math on this months ago.”

Jo grinned as she nudged Melanie in the ribs. “You always were lousy at math.”

“Not funny, baby sister,” Melanie retorted. “What am I going to do now? I certainly can’t continue working at Rockingham Industries. If this isn’t proof that you should never get involved with someone at the same company—even a company as huge as Rockingham—I don’t know what is. My stomach twists into a knot just at the thought of seeing him again. And to think that only a day ago, I did everything I could to bump into him in the hallways.”

“You need to get away, take some time off,” Maggie said, her expression thoughtful. “And I know the perfect place.”

“I need to get another job,” Melanie corrected. “I know I wasn’t exactly on the fast track at Rockingham, but that receptionist’s job did pay the rent.”

“You don’t need to look right away,” Ashley insisted. “If you’re short on cash, I can lend you whatever you need.”

“Says the high-powered criminal defense attorney who’s rolling in dough and has no time to spend it,” Jo said. “The rest of us will chip in, too.”

“Agreed,” Maggie said at once.

Ashley nodded. “There, that’s taken care of. And I think I see exactly where Maggie was going a minute ago. You should go to Grandma’s cottage, Melanie. We always thought it was magical there. I can’t imagine a more perfect place to get your head on straight.”

“We were kids,” Melanie pointed out. “It was summer vacation.
Of course
we thought it was magical. No
tice that none of us has been back since we grew up. Not even Mom goes down anymore, now that Grandma’s dead. The place is probably a wreck.”

“All the more reason to go,” Ashley said, obviously warming to Maggie’s idea. “Fixing up the cottage will be just what you need. It’s probably worth a fortune. If no one’s ever going to use it, maybe we can talk Mom into selling.”

“She’ll never do it,” Maggie said. “You know how sentimental she is about that place.”

Ashley waved off the comment. “Beside the point.”

“What is the point?” Jo asked. “I’m losing track.”

“Fixing the house up will keep Melanie’s mind occupied all day, and by night she’ll be so exhausted, she’ll fall right to sleep,” Ashley explained. “The rest of us can take turns going down weekends to keep her company.”

“Am I such an embarrassment that you can’t wait to get rid of me?” Melanie asked plaintively.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to go away someplace where she’d be all alone with only her thoughts for company. Grandma’s place, Rose Cottage, was on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay at the tip of Virginia’s Northern Neck. With the recent growth of the region, she doubted it was as isolated and tranquil as it had once been, but by Boston standards it was still rural. She doubted there was a movie theater or a mall for miles, much less a Starbucks.

“This isn’t a banishment,” Ashley insisted.

“But why should I give Jeremy the satisfaction of running away?” Melanie argued. “He’s the scumbag.”

“She has a point,” Jo said.

Ashley scowled at both of them. “So, what are you suggesting? You’ll face him down every morning when
he walks in the front door at Rockingham? That sounds like fun.”

Actually it sounded like hell, Melanie was forced to admit.

“Come on, Melanie. You know I’m right,” Ashley persisted. “This is a chance to heal. You’ll have time to decide what you want to do next. It’s about time you put that college degree of yours to use. You were wasting your talent at Rockingham on the off chance that someday there would be an opening in the marketing department. This could be the best thing that ever happened to you, if it finally gets you to find the right job, instead of something safe but boring.”

At the moment, with her heart aching and her pride wounded, Melanie couldn’t quite see tonight’s turn of events as any sort of blessing, but Ashley usually knew best. “If you say so,” she said bleakly.

“Would you rather sit in this apartment and mope?” Ashley demanded.

“No,” Melanie said firmly. She’d never moped in her life, and she didn’t intend to start now, not over the likes of Jeremy Thompson of the Providence and Nantucket Thompsons. How had she let herself be fooled by that impeccable breeding? Charm and a pedigree didn’t mean a man had character.

“Good. That’s settled, then,” Ashley said. “We’ll help you pack. You can leave first thing in the morning. It’s a long drive, and you’ll want to get there while it’s still daylight.”

“I haven’t even turned in my resignation at work,” Melanie protested. Not that she had any great desire to show her face around there as long as there was any chance at all she could bump into Jeremy.

“Fax it in,” Ashley said curtly. “If anyone questions
it, tell them to take it up with Jeremy. Let him explain. Maybe they’ll fire his sorry butt. Or, have them call me, and I’ll explain a few facts about sexual harassment.”

“It wasn’t—” Melanie began, only to have her big sister cut her off.

“It was close enough,” Ashley said. “He dangled the prospect of a better job in front of you, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” Melanie admitted. Even so, despite the appeal of a little vengeance, she still wasn’t entirely convinced. They’d all been brought up with a strong sense of duty and responsibility. Responsible people gave two weeks’ notice before walking out on a job, even a job they hated, even a job that clearly had never had any future. Surely her sisters had learned that lesson, too.

“But—” she began.

“No buts,” Ashley said firmly.

Melanie sighed. “Okay, then. How am I supposed to get the key from Mom without telling her the whole ugly story?” she asked, grabbing at straws to keep from facing the inevitability of this trip. Their mother, to all outward appearances, might be a gentle southern belle, but she had the same kind of iron will their father had. She was every bit as capable as Max D’Angelo of making Jeremy’s life hell. She’d been inspired by
Gone with the Wind
, so much so that three of her four daughters had been named after characters and the author. Only Jo had escaped that fate. They teased Jo all the time that it was only because their mother has secretly thought of herself as Scarlett.

“Don’t worry about Mom.” Ashley dug into her huge purse and pulled out an old-fashioned key attached to a piece of rose-colored satin ribbon. “I keep a spare in my purse,” she said, looking vaguely embarrassed.

Melanie, Jo and Maggie stared at her. “Why?”

“It’s like a talisman,” she said defensively. “Whenever things get really, really crazy and frantic at work, I take it out and remind myself that there
is
life after court. There are days when
I
would go to Rose Cottage if I could.”

“But you haven’t been there in years,” Melanie said, bemused by this rare display of sentiment and frivolity in her hard-as-nails big sister.

Ashley winked. “Obviously just knowing it’s there works like a charm.”

Melanie sighed. If only the cottage would hold a few of those magical healing properties for her, she’d be eternally grateful. Right now, with the image of those kids and his wife’s icy disdain in her head and Jeremy’s stinging admission still ringing in her ears, she had her doubts.