The Sleeping Beauty Bride

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  Contents

  Cover

  Dedication

  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

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Acknowledgments

  ‘Saving Maggie’ Excerpt

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Guide

  Cover

  Contents

  Start of content

  The Sleeping Beauty Bride

  Wedding Bliss, Book 2

  Glenys O’Connell

  Avon, Massachusetts

  I’d like to dedicate this book to all the people who believed I could return to writing after two difficult years—my family, friends, and FB friends who shared their own stories and offered so much encouragement. You all had more faith than I did! And, as always, to Adrian—for everything.

  Chapter One

  The fact that Noelia Russo didn’t strangle Sasha Atwell Montgomery right then and there had more to do with her own sense of propriety and restraint than with her assistant’s lack of self-preservation.

  Call it justifiable homicide, she thought. No judge in the land would convict her after hearing testimony from the clients whose self-image the young woman had very likely destroyed with a few badly chosen words “‘of fashion advice.’”

  Drawing in a deep breath and sending up a little prayer for patience, she said, “How many times do I have to repeat that ‘the customer is always right’ is good business practice? And good business practice means happy customers, customers who spend their hard-earned cash with us. That, in turn, means that we get paid for taking good care of them. Think of it as a circle with a smile at one side and a paycheck on the other.”

  Looking truculent, Sasha mumbled, “But Noelia, I was doing her a favor not letting her buy that outfit. I have a great sense of style—people often comment about that.” She paused to cast a critical eye over Noelia’s comfortable pants-and-sweater ensemble. Seeing the other woman’s dark look, she hurried on. “I mean, that mother-of-the-bride dress she wanted, in that awful pinky-gray-beige color, would have made her look like a plucked turkey.”

  Noelia rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Really, Sasha, maybe you were right. But you didn’t have to tell her in those exact words.” Keeping her voice quiet and projecting as much calm as her waning patience would allow, she added, “That little repartee led to a very promising client leaving the store. That will cause ripples, and other potential clients from the Bingham wedding will now choose to buy their outfits somewhere else, rather than deal with your lack of tact.” And that would cause a nasty gap in the bottom line of Wedding Bliss. Noelia didn’t own the shop—Kelly Andrews did—but as Kelly’s assistant and friend, Noelia took the success of Wedding Bliss seriously. She felt she owed it to Kelly to do her very best work.

  Sasha managed an injured sniff. “I never wanted to be a wedding planner in the first place. Kelly and Brett bullied me into it.”

  “You’re not a wedding planner. You’re a temporary assistant until Kelly and Brett get back from their honeymoon.” A honeymoon they’d delayed because they were so caught up in work. “Is it really too much to ask, after all she has done for your family, that you should repay her by helping out in her business?” Preferably without sending the business into bankruptcy with your treatment of our clients, she added to herself. Kelly must have been crazy to imagine her spoiled, air-headed sister-in-law could possibly be an asset to the business she had worked so hard to build.

  “I didn’t think when Brett said it would be good for me to have a job and be useful, that he meant waiting on women with awful fashion sense. I mean, what’s useful about that if I can’t give them the benefit of my obvious savoir faire?” Sasha glanced in the big mirror on the store’s back wall, smoothing down the pretty hunter-green miniskirt she wore with a very fashionable floral-patterned top with lace inserts.

  Noelia bit back the mean reply that hovered on her lips. Instead, she said calmly, “Our job is to help customers find clothes that truly suit them, whether that is a bridal gown, or dresses for the bridesmaids, matron of honor, mother of the bride, or a wedding guest. Everyone loves a wedding, and everyone wants to look their best.”

  “That’s what I was doing!” Tears pooled in Sasha’s eyes. “My conscience wouldn’t let me allow that woman to go out in public in that dress! It was shockingly ugly, and the other guests would have laughed at her.”

  “Your conscience? The one that let you sell off your aunt’s things, including her wedding gown, while she was lying ill in the hospital? The gown that turned out to be cursed and set off all kinds of trouble around here?”

  Sasha sniffed again, despite the guilty pink that bloomed over her cheekbones. “Yes, but it did have a happy ending. Aunt Mary found the man she had loved and lost, Kelly and Brett found each other, and a restless spirit found peace at last. And all that started because I sent that wedding dress that she could never possibly want to wear again because she was jilted in it, to the auction house to sell it for a few hundred measly dollars . . . ”

  Noelia counted to ten. Slowly. “What you did with Mary Atwell’s gown was wrong, just as what you said to that last customer was wrong. You could have found a kinder way of diverting her, getting her to try on an outfit that would truly suit her, one that she would love, and then she would forget all about that ugly beige concoction. The way you handled it was tactless and cruel.”

  Sasha sniffed again and wriggled her feet in her designer shoes with the impossibly high, slender heels. “My feet hurt. I’ve been on them all day—I don’t know how you and Kelly do it.”

  Noelia recognized the cry for pity and the subject diversion, and sighed. Sasha was a spoiled young woman who’d had everything she ever wanted, had never finished college or held down a job, and had gathered two divorces without learning anything about her own behavior. It wasn’t something Noelia had the time or energy to counsel the girl on at the moment. “Why don’t you head home now, Sasha? We’re almost at closing time. Maybe you could wear some more comfortable shoes tomorrow? Remember that working in a store means you are on your feet much of the day.”

  Sasha didn’t need to be told twice. She hugged Noelia impulsively, all grievances forgotten, grabbed her expensive leather jacket and designer leather handbag, and made the silver bells above the store entrance jingle and dance madly as she all but flew through the door.

  Noelia sighed again. Was she being overly impatient with the girl? Brett was right that his sister needed to learn something about the real world and that working would be good for her. After all, Brett had shared a similarly privileged life as his sister, but what had made
the two of them so different? He had spent most of his adult life working hard for non-profit organizations in the poorest parts of the world while Sasha seemed to be the original air-headed bimbo. Who knows the ways of Mother Nature?

  With Sasha gone, Noelia just had to tidy up and turn the sign on the front door to closed. But as she went to get her coat, her cell phone rang.

  “Ellie Mae? Goodness, I didn’t expect to hear from you!” Noelia said.

  “Oh, Noelia, we’re having the most wonderful time! The cruise was heavenly, and now we’re at the hotel in Barbados . . . It’s like a second honeymoon, only better!”

  Noelia sighed. It seemed like everyone in the world was enjoying romance, except her.

  “I’m glad it’s all working out.”

  “Well, I just wanted to check that you were coping with my volunteer hours at the hospital? I know it’s a lot to ask of you—you’re the best friend in the whole world.”

  “I’m glad you think so, dear—and if I don’t leave now, I’ll be late for this evening’s stint. I’m getting introduced to working the third floor tonight.”

  Ellie Mae issued a gusty sigh. “That’s the floor for the chronically ill, long-term patients—it can be heartbreaking.”

  Noelia rolled her eyes. Just what she needed in her present mood. “I’m sure I’ll survive,” she told her friend. “Don’t worry, and enjoy your trip. Take lots of photos!”

  Noelia grabbed her coat and rushed out to her car. She hoped Ellie Mae was wrong and that volunteering on the third floor would not be so depressing. She was anxious to get home and step into her secret life, of Mimi L’Amour, the glamorous best-selling author of sexy, hot romances.

  • • •

  Despite her tiredness and aching feet after a full day at the store, Noelia was pleased to find she actually liked being a volunteer at the hospital. Not that she wanted to carry on after her friend Ellie Mae returned from her exotic cruise, but it was opening up a whole new world to her, a world in which she felt of use to people who needed and appreciated her.

  She liked and admired the nurses and doctors that she met and the other volunteers, too. In fact, she was making new friends, particularly Eva Wilkinson, the nurse she was currently doing rounds with.

  “This is one of our heartbreakers,” Eva told Noelia as she paused before opening the door. “We call her Sleeping Beauty. She’s been in a coma ever since a car accident three months ago.”

  “Oh, the poor lamb!” Noelia fought to keep the tears that pooled in her eyes from falling as she peeked in through the door of the private room. “That name suits her—she’s lovely.”

  The room they entered was so quiet it seemed almost cut off from the real world, aside from the low, diligent mutterings of the monitors attached to the body of the pale young woman who lay in the hospital bed. In the dim light that stole through the half-closed blinds, Sleeping Beauty looked fragile and pale, her deep sleep giving the impression of a dreaming fairy-tale princess.

  Maybe it was the air of loneliness that pervaded the room or seeing such a young woman trapped in a death-like coma, but something made Noelia shiver as if a cold breeze had suddenly sprung up.

  “Looks like a goose walked over your grave. That’s what my mom always said when someone shivered like that for no reason,” Eva said cheerfully.

  Noelia shivered again. The picture of the goose on her grave was depressing, and she wondered how Eva could take it so lightly. “I think there was a bit of a draft,” she said, suppressing another shiver.

  “It’s just an old English superstition, hon,” Eva said, looking chagrined at Noelia’s sudden paleness.

  “I think I’m just tired. And there’s something . . . so sad about this poor girl.” She’d almost said, “something about this room.” But that would have sounded odd.

  “Our pretty little Lydia? There’s a story to this and I’ll . . . ” Suddenly, Eva’s pager went off. “Gotta go. Can you find your way back to the nurse’s station? I’m sure they’ll find something else for you to do.” With a quick smile and a gentle touch on the shoulder, Eva was gone.

  Noelia took one last look around the room and uttered a prayer for the young woman on the bed. Then she left quickly.

  • • •

  The middle-aged woman sat beside the hospital bed, tears welling up in her eyes as she took in the beeping of the machinery and the still, silent form of the young woman who lay there.

  She came here every day to talk to her, to hold her hand, hardly knowing whether her words were heard or her touch felt. But she had to do something. How could she carry on with her own path when this child was lost in the no-woman’s-land of a coma?

  There must be something more she could do, some way to elicit some sign from the sleeping girl that she would return to those who loved her before everyone gave up on her.

  Voices sounded in the corridor, and the woman stirred from her thoughts. She knew she was hardly noticed by the staff, and if they thought of her at all, it would only be with pity for the tragedy in her life. With a last sweet kiss on that pale face, the woman slipped from the room.

  • • •

  Preoccupied by the story of the lovely young Sleeping Beauty, Noelia hurried around a corner in the corridor and ran smack dab into a visitor coming the other way. Tall, with silver streaks in his dark hair, carrying a bouquet of yellow flowers, he was the kind of guy lots of women would love to run into. He didn’t look too pleased, however, especially as he had dropped his book and files to help Noelia regain her balance.

  Embarrassed, Noelia hoped the man couldn’t see beyond the flush on her cheeks to the sizzling reaction she’d felt as he held her. Oh my goodness! To cover her reaction, she knelt to pick up the book and file folders, coming face to face with him as he, too, tried to retrieve his possessions. Thoroughly flustered now, she stuttered. “I am so sorry—I guess I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

  “Hospitals can be places that cause distraction,” he replied calmly, tucking the errant book and papers back under his arm and moving past her. She wondered what his face would be like if the serious expression was gone and he smiled . . .

  It’s all this romance and marriage that’s going around, Noelia told herself firmly. You’re a fifty-year-old widow, much too old and staid to be swept off your feet by a guy you bump into! Even if he was handsome and polite and wearing a classy gray suit that brought out the startlingly deep blue of his eyes.

  But be honest, a guy who brings in a hefty book on Welsh history to read to a hospital patient was hardly likely to be a soul mate for a woman who writes sizzling hot romances.

  • • •

  Dr. Nate Westbury, chief of psychology at Marina Grove Hospital, sat beside his daughter’s bed, the files on his lap unopened, the fat History of Wales by Peter Davies lying forgotten on the seat beside him. He regarded Lydia with sad eyes as he watched her sleeping figure.

  “Honey, I would give everything to have you back again, well and happy. And this time I wouldn’t let anyone make you miserable or hurt you.” Least of all that no-good boy who called himself her fiancé. “Daniel is out of your life for good, and you’ll find someone worth your love.”

  There was no response from Lydia—Sleeping Beauty, the hospital staff called her—but without warning a draft knocked all the files off his lap and scattered them onto the bed and on the floor. Then, to his disbelieving eyes, the same air movement lifted the heavy history tome from the seat and threw it on the floor.

  The weight of the book made him shake his head. “That must have been an optical illusion. Obviously, I didn’t put the book on the seat properly,” he muttered to himself. He gathered the papers together, being careful to put them in the right file folders and checking to make sure nothing had been filed wrongly after he’d bumped into that woman in the hallway. He wondered briefly if he’d meet her again. “Pretty unlikely,” he thought, surprising himself with the pang of disappointment he felt. Hoisting up the files and his history
book, he leaned over the bed, kissed his daughter’s cheek, and whispered in her ear, “I’ll see you again tomorrow, sweetheart. Oh, Lydia, please come back to us.”

  As he passed the nurses’ station, he growled, “You need to get someone from maintenance up here, pronto. There’s an awful draft in my daughter’s room—scattered my papers everywhere and even knocked my book off the seat.” He held up the heavy book to prove the strength of his complaint.

  “One of the volunteers commented that it was a bit cool in room 307, Dr. Westbury, so maintenance have been informed.”

  As he walked away he caught their muttered comments.

  “Knocked my book off the seat!” Nurse Kate Jones mimicked.

  “Yeah, a book that big—that would have been one hell of a draft!” Eva Wilkinson added.

  “Probably hadn’t put it down firmly, and it fell off by itself. He’s still gorgeous, though—and I hear he’s available. Wouldn’t mind shooting the breeze with him, if you get my drift!” The two giggled.

  Nate’s ears burned red as he jabbed the down button for the elevator. As the empty car sank, his thoughts unexpectedly turned to the attractive blond woman he’d bumped into earlier. He’d thought of asking at the nurses’ station to see if she was hospital staff or a visitor, but irritation—no, unease—about the chill in Lydia’s room had pushed the idea from his mind. Besides, asking about her would probably set the hospital gossip mill vibrating. Such an attractive lady, with those big green eyes and that sweetly embarrassed flush on her cheeks. And the practical way she immediately tried to help pick up his files—an act that had given him a whiff of that faint but sexy perfume she wore, a scent that reminded him of summer days.

  Chapter Two

  Early spring was always a busy time for bridal shops, and, as they also did wedding planning, Wedding Bliss was swamped with customers wanting all kinds of help and advice.