The Marilyn"s.
Sorry Charlie.
Katie Graykowski.
From International Bestselling Author Katie Graykowski comes a love story about fate, fame, and football.
Coco Robbins has spent the last fifteen years falling out of love with Seth Charming. What started out as a schoolgirl crush, grew into a full-fledged fantasy. Too bad, he had no idea she even existed. Now as an orthopedic surgeon who"s spent the last four years working with Doctors Without Borders, she ran halfway around the world to get away from Seth only to find herself right back where she started.
Seth Charming is the quarterback of the Super Bowl winning Texas Lone Stars. He has the world at his feet, several women at his side, and all the fame and fortune he could ever want. Only something"s missing. He wants a family. Unfortunately, he has yet to meet the right woman.
When Coco Robbins strolls back into Seth"s life, he knows immediately that she"s the one he"s been waiting for ... only now he has to convince her that she"s in love with him.
Fans of Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Rachel Gibson won"t want to miss this story full of laughter, love, and football.
For the real Charlie-best friend, partner in crime, keeper of secrets-.
I"m so glad I ran over you with my bicycle.
Prologue.
Eighteen months ago.
Charlie Guidry needed chocolate... lots of it. A hot-fudge sundae would work... or maybe a pounder bag of Peanut M&M"s? Heck, at this point she"d even take those c.r.a.ppy chocolate pumpkins that every kid in America let rot at the bottom of their Halloween candy stash. This was an emergency. Her life had hit 9-1-1 crisis mode.
She glanced at the wedding dress hanging on the back of the dressing-room door. Vera w.a.n.g herself had supervised the gown"s design and construction.
It was perfect.
It was beautiful.
It was a life sentence.
As a child, when Charlie had imagined getting married, it had been a small affair outside, maybe on a beach, with only a handful of people looking on. Not the four hundred people crammed into New Orleans"s grand dame, St. Louis Cathedral, waiting on the other side of that door for her to stroll down the aisle.
A soft knock sounded at the door.
"Let us in. It"s just Lucky and me." It was her best friends, Betts Monroe and Lucky Strickland.
The trio had met their freshman year in high school when they had all dressed as Marilyn Monroe for the Halloween dance. They"d been the Marilyns ever since. Lucky and Betts had even gotten married in their white Marilyn dresses.
Charlie had fought hard to wear her Marilyn whites too, but Jerome Breaux-Charlie"s husband to be-had thought that would be too tacky for his future wife. He should know tacky. He wore his thinning red hair piled high in a pompadour, and his trademark white suit made him look like Foghorn Leghorn.
Charlie unlocked the door and opened it for them.
Betts and Lucky, both wearing b.u.t.tercup-yellow bridesmaid dresses, stepped into the room. Lucky closed and locked the door after them.
"Are you feeling okay?" She watched Charlie very carefully. "You look a little green around the gills." She sat down next to Charlie on the couch. "Please tell me you have the stomach flu or consumption or hoof-and-mouth disease so we can call this whole thing off."
Betts sat on Charlie"s other side. "You don"t need to do a thing. Just give us the word and we"ll take care of everything."
"But he"s Daddy"s largest campaign contributor. Daddy"s term as governor is up in two years. He needs Jerome." Charlie could hear the whine in her voice, but she was powerless to stop it. People could say a lot about her, but she wasn"t a whiner. Or at least, she hadn"t been before now.
"Then he can marry Jerome." Betts crossed her arms and looked down her nose at Charlie. "He"d definitely get the gay vote."
"I have to marry him. It"s the only thing my father has ever asked of me." For the first time in Charlie"s life, her father was happy with something she"d done. She craved his love even more than she craved chocolate.
"I call bulls.h.i.t on that one." Mama Cherie, Betts"s well-meaning but bat-s.h.i.t-crazy mother, popped her head through the open window at the back of the room. She hoisted a leg-complete with silver, six-inch hooker heel-over the windowsill, followed by a b.u.t.tercup-yellow-clad body and then another leg. She landed squarely on her feet.
"I don"t remember Charlie asking you to be a bridesmaid." Betts sighed like the full weight of having a crazy mother had settled on her shoulders.
"It was an oversight, I"m sure." Mama straightened her dress. "I had this one made just in time."
While the bridesmaid dresses that Charlie and Nina-Jerome"s handpicked wedding planner and Hitler"s evil twin sister-had picked out were the same color as Mama"s, that was where the similarity stopped. Mama"s dress was skintight, cut almost down to her navel, and ended about two inches below her b.u.t.t. It showcased her lack of foundation garments. Unfortunately, her nipples were a bit farther south than they should be.
Betts opened her mouth and then shut it again. Charlie knew how she felt. Mama inspired loss of speech in many.
Lucky patted Charlie"s leg. "Think of it like this, if you marry Jerome we"ll be forced to hire someone to kill him-"
"I know a guy who"ll do it for a carton of smokes and two jars of my homemade Ponchatoula-strawberry preserves." Mama held up her hand and waved it around like the teacher"s pet she clearly hadn"t been.
"Good, recruitment is done." Betts clearly wanted to say more, but really, what else could she say?
"So after we get caught-because come on, how good could a guy who only wants cigarettes and preserves be?-Betts, Mama, and I will get the death penalty." Lucky looked Charlie straight in the eye. "Do you really want to be responsible for your best friends getting the needle?"
"She has a point." Mama pulled up a chair next to Charlie and plopped down in it. "I can rock prison-jumpsuit orange, but think of Betts and Lucky." Her face screwed up. "With Betts"s red hair and Lucky"s skin tone, that orange is going to wash them out almost as badly as these dresses."
Charlie grabbed onto that logic like a lifeline. "What if the hired gun doesn"t complete the job but y"all get caught anyway? I"ll still be married, but I"ll have lost my best friends."
"Exactly." Betts stood and opened the huge bag she"d left on the table when she"d gotten there that morning. She pulled out a bag of Oreos and brought it over.
Lucky ripped the bag open and offered Oreos to Charlie. "For medicinal purposes only."
Charlie grabbed a handful and shoved them into her mouth. Chocolate cookie and vanilla cream swirled around her mouth, and the chocolate-loving endorphins in her brain released all sorts of happy chemicals into her bloodstream. Intellectually, she knew that chocolate didn"t take her problems away and that it only created new ones, but d.a.m.n, it sure tasted good going down.
"So, am I going to walk down that aisle and make an announcement?" Betts arched an eyebrow, waiting for the answer.
Charlie chewed very slowly. It was procrastination by mastication. In her heart, she knew what needed to be done. She swallowed the mouthful and the lump in her throat. "Yes. I can"t do this."
"Okay, girls, Action Plan Delta is a go." Mama Cherie pulled a smartphone out of her cleavage and touched the screen. "Action Plan Delta is a go. Repeat, Action Plan Delta is a go."
Lucky leaned past Charlie and staged-whispered close to Betts"s ear, "What the h.e.l.l is she talking about?"
Betts shrugged. "No idea. I"m not responsible for her."
"The car is around back." It was Will Brodie, Lucky"s husband, at the window. "I pulled up as close to the dressing-room window as possible. "Gabe"s distracting the press. Now"s the time."
Betts and Lucky pulled Charlie up and started shoving her out the window. "But... what about my father?"
"You leave Thaddeus T. Guidry to me." Mama leaned over and readjusted her b.o.o.bs. "I"ve got this."
Betts blanched. "Sorry, I just threw up a little in my mouth."
Charlie was halfway out the window. "How long have y"all been planning this?"
"Since the day you allowed a pompous idiot to put a ring on your finger." Lucky grabbed Charlie"s arms and lowered her down and then eased out the window after her.
"Who"s going to call things off?" Charlie was running on sugar and adrenaline.
Lucky turned to help Betts climb through the window. "Mama said she"s got it covered. We"re all going to my house in Long Bay on Providenciales. The press won"t be able to find us there. If they do, Betts"s head of security, b.u.mp, has several plans to make them suffer. Plus, Turks and Caicos isn"t press friendly. We are going on a much-needed girls-only vacation. The husbands are kid watching."
Charlie had never loved these women more.
"I want to go on record as saying that this dress is horrible." Betts picked up a handful of fluffy yellow skirt and waggled it at Charlie. "Friends don"t let friends wear ugly bridesmaid"s dresses."
"Sorry, that was all Nina. I fought hard for something that would have complemented both of you, but Jerome likes yellow." Her lips formed a snarl. What in the holy h.e.l.l had she been thinking?
Lucky one-arm-hugged Charlie. "Friends don"t let friends marry pompous idiots."
"We need to put that one on a T-shirt." Betts opened the pa.s.senger door of Will"s Maserati for Charlie. Charlie slid in and Betts followed her. Lucky took the front pa.s.senger seat.
Twenty minutes later, they pulled up to New Orleans"s Lakefront Airport. No doubt reporters and photographers would be combing Louis Armstrong for her. Betts and Lucky had thought of everything.
"Turks and Caicos... I can use some fun in the sun right about now." Charlie put a hand to her nervous stomach. It felt like sumo wrestlers were battling to the death inside her gut. Or it might have been the Oreos, the chocolate milk, and the pint of Chocolate Chocolate Chip ice cream she"d wolfed down on the way over. If the convenience store clerk who"d sold Charlie the snacks had thought it was odd that she was wearing gray slacks, a red blouse, and a white wedding veil, he hadn"t let it show. Then again, he manned a store right off of Interstate 90 so he probably saw all sorts of things.
She turned her back to Betts. "Can you help me get the veil off?"
Betts yanked and tugged. "What did they attach this with... superglue? Lucky, help."
Lucky reached over the seat. "Why is your hair so tall? You look like Marie Antoinette."
"It"s not that big." Charlie felt like a bobblehead on the dash of a car whose suspension was shot.
"Honey, I"m a country music star, I know big hair. This," Betts patted Charlie"s hair, "would scare even Dolly Parton."
"Jerome likes tall hair." How could she have ever thought she could marry a man like him?
"I would say let him have the tall hair, but he already does have some pretty big hair." Betts tugged and tugged. "Finally."
The veil dropped to the seat.
"Here." Lucky nudged Charlie"s shoulder. "Take these for your collection."
Charlie turned around and stared at the double fistful of bobby pins. "What do you mean? I don"t collect those."
"Yes, but you always have some on hand. In all of those little pockets sown into all of your little business suits." Lucky dropped the bobby pins into Charlie"s cupped hands.
Charlie dropped them onto the seat and felt around for a pocket to put them in, only she wasn"t wearing a suit, just a blouse. Maybe she needed to change more than just her fiance. "I"m turning over a new leaf. No more little pockets."
"Yeah, I"ll believe that when I see it." Lucky rolled her eyes. "You live for your little pockets."
"Well that just sucks to h.e.l.l and back." Betts"s face screwed up. "Where else am I going to get a needle and thread when I need one? No one else I know always has one of those little sewing kits on hand just waiting for me to pop a b.u.t.ton."
"Or those itty-bitty lint rollers or those tiny bottles of hairspray." Lucky propped her chin on the headrest. "You never know. I might leave Brodie here for Jerome. I like a man with tall hair."
Will tossed his head like a model in a shampoo commercial. "Just give me a chance. I bet I can out high-hair Jerome."
Lucky ran her fingers through her husband"s hair. "I love a man who likes to please."
"I love a woman who likes pleasure as much as you do." Brodie kissed her square on the mouth. "When you get back, I"m going to inspect your tan lines up close and personal."
"I"m counting on it." Lucky slid her hand up Brodie"s chest, grabbed his collar, and pulled him in to her.
"Hey, keep it PG-13. We"re in the backseat." Betts slapped Lucky"s headrest. "Come on, Charlie, we need to get going before they start removing each other"s clothes."
"I"m coming. Don"t get your panties in a wad." Lucky kissed her husband one last time and then opened her door.
Charlie pulled her smartphone out of her back pocket and called, "Group pic."
On what should have been the worst day of her life, being with her soul sisters made it better... maybe even made it okay. "I"m lucky to have you two in my life."
"Yes you are, and don"t you forget it." Betts squished in close for the group pic.
Lucky did the same on the other side of Charlie. "You couldn"t get rid of us if you tried."
Chapter 1.