Happy Ever After: Number 4 in series (Bride Quartet)

Product Description
Will Parker and Mal ever get their Happy Ever After…?Childhood friends Mackensie, Parker, Laurel and Emmeline have formed a very successful wedding planning business together but, despite helping thousands of happy couples to organise the biggest day of their lives, all four women have struggled to find love.But now, with her three best friends happily settled in relationships, only workaholic Parker remains single. Her business is her life and she devotes all her energies to it. But someone is about to divert her focus…
From Publishers Weekly
Bridal expert Parker “Legs” Brown meets her perfect match in Roberts’s delicious ode to weddings and happy endings, the charming conclusion of the Bride Quartet (after Savor the Moment) about four childhood friends who as adults form a Connecticut wedding planning company. In the palatial Brown estate, a multitude of marriages have been celebrated while each wedding planner in turn has found her heart’s desire. Cupid’s target for Parker is her brother Del’s friend Malcolm Kavanaugh, a former stuntman turned mechanic. Harley-riding Mal is a rough-and-tumble hunk who captures Parker’s heart with twinkling eyes and steamy moves that melt her cool reserve. Romance veteran Roberts fills the pages with frothy fun, culminating in–of course–plenty of bridal fabulousness. (Nov.) (c)
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PROLOGUE
Grief came in waves, hard and choppy, buffeting and breaking the heart. Other days the waves were slow and swamping, threatening to drown the soul.
Peoplegood, caring peopleclaimed time would heal. Parker hoped they were right, but as she stood on her bedroom terrace in the late-summer sun, months after the sudden, shocking deaths of her parents, those capricious waves continued to roll.
She had so much, she reminded herself. Her brotherand she didn’t know if she’d have survived this grieving time without Delhad been a rock to cling to in that wide, wide ocean of shock and sorrow. Her friends Mac, Emma, Laurel, a part of her life, a part of her, since childhood. They’d been the glue mending and holding all the shattered pieces of her world. She had the constant, unshakable support of their longtime housekeeper, Mrs. Grady, her island of comfort.
She had her home. The beauty and elegance of the Brown Estate seemed deeper, sharper to her somehow, knowing she wouldn’t see her parents strolling through the gardens. She’d never again run downstairs and find her mother laughing in the kitchen with Mrs. G, or hear her father wheeling a deal in his home office.
Instead of learning to ride those waves, she’d felt herself being swept deeper and deeper down into the dark.
Time, she’d determined, needed to be used and pushed and moved.
She thoughthopedshe’d found a way, not only to use that time, but to celebrate what her parents had given her, to unite those gifts with family and friendships.
To be productive, she mused as the first spicy scents of coming autumn stirred the air. The Browns worked. They built and they produced and they never, never sat back to laze on accomplishments.
Her parents would have expected her to do no less than those who’d come before her.
Her friends might think she’d lost her mind, but she’d researched, calculated, and outlined a solid business plan, a sturdy model. And with Del’s help, a fair and reasonable legal contract.
Time to swim, she told herself.
She simply wouldn’t sink.
She walked back into the bedroom, picked up the four thick packets she’d set on her dresser. One for each of them for the meetingthough she hadn’t told her friends they were coming to a meeting.
She paused, took a moment to tie back her glossy brown hair in a tail, then simply stared into her own eyes, willing a spark to light in the deep blue.
She could make this work. No, no, they could make this work.
She just had to convince them first.
Downstairs,