Dating Dr. Dreamy - Lili Valente Page 0,3
out into the warm Georgia night.
Outside, paper lanterns hang laced between the trees, casting the large, dining tables with their centerpieces of gardenia blossoms in an orange glow. Dinner was cleared a while ago, but several of the older folks still sit in their chairs, nursing coffee and chatting, smiling as they watch the younger generations jump up and down on the dance floor beneath the trees.
If I had planned an outdoor wedding in May, I’m sure it would have rained, forced everyone to cram into the too-small-for-three-hundred-guests historic home, and the celebration would have been ruined. But Lisa has had better luck.
Perfect luck, in fact.
The weather was perfect, the ceremony was perfect, the food was perfect—if I do say so myself—and everyone looks like they’re having an amazing time.
Another blissful wedding in Bliss River almost in the books.
It’s always a good feeling, but tonight is super special.
Dodging two flower girls playing a rough game of tag with what’s left of their bouquets, I head for the dance floor. I can see Lisa and Matt in the center, surrounded by friends and family, and can’t wait to join them. All the exhaustion and stress of the day seep away as Celebrate Good Times cranks through the DJ’s speakers and the people I love let out a whoop of appreciation.
It is possibly the cheesiest of all wedding reception songs, but I love it. Sometimes a girl just wants to celebrate good times, and I’m not too cool to admit that.
Suddenly, I’m ready to dance all night.
If Fate hadn’t had other plans, I have no doubt I would have thrown myself into the fray and gotten my groove thing on for hours.
But Fate does step in, in the form of six feet, two inches of old flame.
At first I can’t believe it’s really him—he hasn’t been back to Bliss River in years—but there’s no mistaking that strong jawline or the shaggy brown hair that falls over his forehead just so. No mistaking those wide shoulders or that narrow waist or how utterly delicious this jerk looks in a suit.
It’s Mason Stewart, all right.
Mason Stewart, brooding at the edge of the dance floor holding a lightly sweating beer loosely between two fingers like he never left town in the first place, when in reality Mason has avoided Bliss River like the plague for four long years. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of Mason around these parts, not since the night he asked me to marry him and then ran off to New York City the very next morning.
He was offered a residency in Atlanta, only an hour away, and he’d promised to take it. To take it, and to take me with him when he left Bliss River. We’d planned on getting an apartment together in the city. I was going to get a job cooking at an amazing restaurant downtown, Mason was going to save the world, one patient at a time, and after three years of dating, we were finally going to live together.
Finally live together, and do all those other simmery, sexy things we’d never done because I was waiting for marriage, and Mason was deathly afraid of saying “I do.”
By the time Mason turned sixteen, his mother had been married eight times. Shortly after his sixteenth birthday, she left town with husband number nine and Mason went to live with his Uncle Parker, a man who made it clear he wasn’t thrilled to be saddled with his sister’s kid. Mason blamed his mom—and the ridiculous, outdated, backward institution of marriage—for the roughest years of his childhood.
To be fair, I knew how he felt about marriage long before he popped the question. I should have been suspicious the moment he dropped down on one knee.
Instead, I’d wept with happiness, slipped the ring on my finger, and stayed up half the night calling everyone I knew, breathlessly sharing the happy news.
But instead of coming by my parents’ house for Saturday brunch the next morning to celebrate our engagement, Mason had bailed on Bliss River and our happily ever after, leaving me to explain that all my giddy “I’m getting married” phone calls had been a mistake.
A mistake…
Like leaving the kitchen.
Like heading for the dance floor.
Like getting close enough to see Mason’s blue eyes flash when he spots me across the lawn, frozen like a deer in the headlights.
Chapter 2
Mason
There she is.
Standing right in front of me, close enough to see the flush in her cheeks and the shock in her