“You just have to promise me one thing,” Jake said.
Running the pad of her index finger over his tempting bottom lip, her wrist rubbed against the sexy stubble on his cheeks. Her body reacted with a warming shiver. He opened his mouth and gently caught her finger between his teeth. Nipped at it and sucked on it for a moment. It felt like she’d been waiting her entire life for this moment. Despite his words, he certainly didn’t seem to be in a hurry to get away. Yeah, he wasn’t going anywhere. Not right now, at least. “Anything,” Anna said. She wasn’t going to let him tell her he wasn’t good enough for her. She knew what she wanted, and he’d just slipped his arms around her again. “No regrets,” he said. “No regrets,” she answered. “But tell me something. How do you know that you’re not good for me—that we’re not good together—if we’ve never… tried it out?” ***
Celebrations, Inc:
Let’s get this party started! How to Marry a Doctor Nancy Robards Thompson
National bestselling author NANCY ROBARDS THOMPSON holds a degree in journalism. She worked as a newspaper reporter until she realized reporting “just the facts” bored her silly. Much more content to report to her muse, Nancy loves writing women’s fiction and romance full-time. Critics have deemed her work “funny, smart and observant.” She resides in Florida with her husband and daughter. You can reach her at nancyrobardsthompson.com and facebook.com/nancyrobardsthompsonbooks.
This book is dedicated to everyone who believes in happily ever after.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Anna Adams parked her yellow VW Beetle in Jake Lennox’s driveway, grabbed her MP3 player and took a moment to make sure it was loaded and ready to go.
She was about to hold an intervention and music—just the right song—was the key component of this quirky job.
Today, she was going to save Jake, her lifelong best friend, from himself. Or at least from drowning in the quicksand of his own sorrow.
This morning, Celebration Memorial Hospital had been abuzz with rumors that Jake’s girlfriend, Dorenda, had dumped him. Anna might’ve been a little miffed that she’d had to hear about his breakup through the nursing staff grapevine, but the sister of one of Dorenda’s friends was an LPN who worked the seven-to-three shift at the hospital and she’d come in positively brimming over with the gossip.
Jake had been scarce today. He hadn’t been around for lunch. Another doctor had done rounds today. When she’d tried to phone Jake after work, the call had gone to voice mail.
The radio silence was what made Anna worry. She hadn’t realized that he’d been so hung up on Miss Texas. That’s what everyone called Dorenda, even though no one was sure if she’d actually held the title or if she’d gotten the nickname simply because she was tall and beautiful and looked like she should’ve worn a crown to her day job. Poor schlubs like Anna did well to make it to their shifts at the hospital wearing mascara and lipstick.
Anna wasn’t sure what the real story was. When Jake had a girlfriend, he tended to disappear into the tunnel of love. Or at least he never seemed to bring his girlfriends around her. And Dr. Jake Lennox usually had a girlfriend.
Anna didn’t celebrate Jake’s breakups, but she had to admit she did relish the intervals between his relationships, because, for as long as she’d known him, that was when she’d gotten her friend back. Sure, they usually saw each other daily at the hospital. It was not as if he completely disappeared. But in those times between relationships, he always gravitated to her.
She would take the spaces in between any day. Because those spaces ran deeper than the superficial stretches of time he spent with the Miss Texases of the world.
Anna rapped their special knock—knock, knock-knock, knock, knock—on Jake’s front door, then let herself in.
He never locked the door, but then again, they never waited to be invited into each other’s homes. “Jake? Are you here?”
Really, she wasn’t surprised when he didn’t answer. In fact, she had a pretty good idea of where he was. So, she closed the door and let herself in the backyard gate and followed the mulch path down to the lake, the crowning jewel of his property.
Yep, if he was back here brooding, it clearly called for an intervention or, as they’d come to call it over the years, the Sadness Intervention Dance.
It was their private ritual. Whenever one of them was blue about something, the other performed the dumbest dance he or she could come up with for the sole reason of making the other person smile. The dance was always different, but the song was always the same: “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin.
Jake had invented it way back in elementary school. Gosh, it was so long ago—back when the song had just hit the airwaves—she couldn’t even remember what she’d been upset about that had compelled him to make a fool of himself to jolt her out of it. But it stuck and stayed with them over the years and now, even though they were both in their thirties, it was still their ritual. The SID was as much a part of them as all those New Year’s Eves their families had rung in together or all those Fourths of July at the lake they’d shared. Back in the day, the mere gesture was always enough to push the recipient out of his or her funk. Or, on the rare occasion that it didn’t, the SID was the kickoff of the