The Wedding at Moonglow Bay, page 1
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Cheryl Nason. Thank you for all the lovely luncheon discussions. The world is a brighter place because you’re in it. Thank you for being my friend.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Part One: The Wedding Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part Two: The Homecoming Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Part Three: The Split Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
About the Author
Praise for Lori Wilde’s Moonglow Bay Novels
Also by Lori Wilde
Copyright
About the Publisher
Part One
The Wedding
Chapter 1
When I saw you, I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew.
—Arrigo Boito
The first time Samantha Riley married into the Ginelli family, her fanciful in-laws called it the “Lightning Strike.”
In reverential tones, Nick’s parents, Marcella and Tino, told romantic tales of legendary ancestors who’d been hit by metaphorical love-lightning. Generations of Ginellis had fallen madly in love at first sight and ended up in solid, long-lasting marriages, and they had the genealogical records to prove it.
There wasn’t a single story of the Lightning Strike gone awry. Legend had it, once you got walloped by the one-two punch of predestined love, in Ginelli-land you were mated for a happily-ever-after life.
She’d fallen in love with the entire Ginelli clan as surely as she’d fallen in love with their youngest son. The Ginellis represented everything she’d longed for as an orphaned child—a loving tight-knit family who always had her back. They might be a little meddlesome at times, but it all came from a place of genuine love and respect.
Samantha met Nick on the first day of her high school junior year.
Her foster family, the Dellaneys, had just moved from Houston a month earlier, as her foster father, Heath, had taken a position working with the Moonglow Cove Chamber of Commerce. After years in a high-pressure corporate human resources job, he was ready for the slower pace of a small beachside tourist town.
Piper, Samantha’s foster sister and best friend in the entire world, declared the town b-o-r-i-n-g, and she was pouting as they walked into Moonglow Cove High School together, unsure of where the registrar’s office was or how to find their classrooms.
“Hey, look. What a cute mascot,” Samantha said to cheer up her pal, and pointed at a chubby-cheeked chipmunk painted on the wall. Chipmunk Charlie had his head thrown back in raucous laughter, his white teeth flashing and big tail thumping.
“Seriously? A ground squirrel? That is so lame.”
“But look at his beautiful grin.” Samantha widened her own smile in effigy.
“Chipmunk Charlie would be an amuse-bouche for Ivan.” Piper studied her fingernails with their chipped chartreuse polish.
In Houston, their mascot had been a tiger nicknamed Ivan the Terrible. Cheesy? Oh yeah, but Piper was right. Fierce Ivan would make short work of cheerful Charlie.
“A school the size of Moonglow Cove wouldn’t scrimmage our old high school.”
“Gawd, don’t be so literal.” Piper rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. Their class song has to be that silly Chipmunks song.” In a voice that sounded like she’d been inhaling helium, Piper sang a few bars of the Christmas tune by Alvin and the Chipmunks.
Samantha interlaced her fingers and brought her hands to her heart. “Please try to like this place . . . for me?”
“Okay, sure.” Laughing, Piper slipped her arm through Samantha’s and pulled her into a skip, and they bounced jauntily down the hallway. People turned to stare as they skipped past. Boldly, Piper stuck out her tongue as Samantha’s face heated up.
“We’re really doing this on the first day?” Samantha asked, feeling self-conscious.
“Yeah, baby. Flying our freak flag. Let ’em put that in their Zig-Zags and smoke it.”
They rounded the corner, and a thick stream of students came pouring in through the side door, forcing them to halt abruptly.
Piper blinked. “Okay, Miss Spreadsheet, where do we go from here?”
“Come on.” Samantha led the way to the registrar’s office. “Where’s your normal sunshiny self?”
“Back in Houston. Dad ruined my life dragging us to Podunk, USA.”
“How can you say that? We’re living at the beach! I feel like I’ve died and flown to heaven.”
“You’re so easily amused. Now I feel all guilty and shit.”
Someone jostled Samantha’s elbow, and she fumbled with her phone, almost dropping it.
“We’re gonna get trampled. We gotta move.” Piper took hold of Samantha’s arm and dragged her back into the foot traffic.
Samantha pulled the school handbook from her purse to read it, as if more knowledge could save her.
“It says here that . . .” Samantha glanced up to show Piper the handbook and watched horrified as her friend approached a folding ladder erected below the Moonglow Cove High School sign. A maintenance guy stood on the top rung tightening down the “M” with a power drill.
Terror shot adrenaline through Samantha’s veins. “Piper, no! It’s bad luck!”
“What?” Her bold friend stopped directly underneath the ladder and turned to look at Samantha. Piper extended her arms wide, touching both sides of the ladder. “It’s an old wives’ tale.”
Samantha took a giant step forward, grabbed Piper by the wrist, and yanked her from underneath the ladder just as the maintenance person bobbled the power drill and it fell right where Piper had been standing two seconds earlier.
Thunk.
“Holy cow.” Piper peeked at the drill that would have conked her on the head. “You saved my life.”
They stared into each other’s eyes as the maintenance guy jumped from the ladder to retrieve his drill, apologizing profusely.
“Yipes. I won’t mock your crazy superstitions again,” Piper said.
“I’m just glad you’re okay.” Samantha wiped sweat from her forehead, then linked her arm through Piper’s again and skirted her around the ladder.
“This school is out to kill me. I told you I didn’t like it here and—” Piper stopped dead in her tracks, and Samantha was two steps ahead before she realized Piper had stayed rooted.
“What is it?”
“Changed my mind. I love this place.”
Samantha pushed her glasses up on her nose and squinted at her friend. “Huh?”
Piper nodded toward the water fountain. “Pinch me. I must be dreaming.”
Samantha followed her foster sister’s gaze and—bam!—it was like something from the romance novels she read in secret so Piper wouldn’t tease her.
There, in the illuminating glow from the overhead skylight, stood a handsome, dark-haired student in a letterman jacket. He was tall, around six feet, broad of shoulders and narrow of waist. His teeth were straight and white. Dude could have modeled for a toothpaste commercial. In his left cheek, a dimple deepened with his expanding grin. He wore tight jeans, Converse sneakers, and a fitted black T-shirt. His skin was beach-bum tan, the color of cinnamon-soaked peaches. His nose crooked slightly, as if it had been broken, as if he wasn’t afraid of a fight. His good looks had a Mediterranean vibe. What was his ancestry? Italian? Greek? Spanish?
Samantha studied him, intrigued. Italian, she decided before she ever found out his last name.
Her heart did a crazy bump and grind, stalling her breath in her lungs. Her hormones blistered a trail from her cheeks, down her neck, and around her spine to lodge squarely in her stomach before spreading electric shock waves straight to her pelvis. She met his dark brown mischievous eyes and welcoming grin.
And Samantha was a goner.
Mine, she thought greedily.
This one was heaven-sent just for her. This was what she’d waited for her entire life. Her nerve endings tingled, and her brain locked up as saliva filled her mouth. She hopped right onto the high-speed train to Sexy Danger Town and didn’t look back.
Piper poked her in the rib cage, and she didn’t even notice. With his stare latched tightly on to hers, the Italian Stallion sauntered toward Samantha.
“Oh my gawd, oh my gawd, oh my gawd.” Panting, Piper fanned herself. “He’s coming over.”
Samantha stood frozen to the spot, unable to move or speak. Finally, she understood what people meant when they said someone was caught like a deer in the headlights. Her—doe. Him—eighteen-wheeler.
Everything evaporated except this guy.
She couldn’t have run if there’d been a zombie apocalypse. Illogical words exploded in her brain.
Fate. Destiny. Kismet.
Her foster sist
He never broke eye contact with Samantha, just peered right over Piper’s head. “That was really intuitive of you. Pulling your friend to safety just before the janitor dropped his drill.”
“You saw that?”
“You’ve got keen survival instincts.”
“It’s more that my foster sister is superstitious as all get-out than anything else,” Piper said. “Me? I don’t have a superstitious bone in my body. I’ll walk under ladders all day long if it leads to you.”
Nick slanted a look at Piper, then quickly dismissed her as he turned back to Samantha. “Hi, I’m Nick Ginelli.”
“Sa-Sa-Sa . . .”
“Sa-Sa-Sa?” he teased. “Unusual name.”
“I . . . um . . . Samantha. My name is Samantha Riley.”
“You’re new here.”
“I am.”
Lightly, he nudged Piper to one side with his elbow and came closer.
Piper frowned and sank her hands on her hips. “Hey, hey. I’m not the invisible woman.”
“Excuse me.” Nick didn’t even glance at her foster sister.
“Huh, maybe I am invisible?” Piper patted herself.
Nick’s focused attention sent a sweet shiver through Samantha’s solar plexus. Intoxicating stuff for a girl who’d spent a lifetime rolling from one foster home to the next.
When Samantha was three, her parents were killed by a tornado as the ceiling in their bedroom collapsed on them while they’d slept. By some miracle, tucked in her trundle bed, she’d been spared. Samantha remembered nothing from that time, but there’d been news clips about it, and dozens of people had wanted to adopt her when they discovered she’d had no immediate family to take her in.
A childless couple who already had foster experience, Frank and Joy Pursell, won the honor of caring for her. She’d lived with them until she was six, and they were in the process of adopting her, when Frank left Joy for his best friend, Oscar. The betrayal sent Joy into a mental health crisis, and she relinquished Samantha back to the foster care system.
By then, Samantha was no longer a cute cuddly toddler. Because of the instability in her life, Samantha developed some challenging behaviors that caused her to act out, and this discouraged other foster families from taking the step of adoption.
It wasn’t until she ended up with the Dellaneys three years ago that she’d finally felt safe enough to let down her guard and trust them to have her back.
And yet somewhere deep inside of her lurked the vulnerable little girl who’d lost everything and everyone she’d ever cared about. It didn’t take much to raise her hopes and fire up happily-ever-after fantasies of a traditional home and family.
Samantha’s heart pumped hard, thrilled that Nick had come over to her instead of Piper.
Boys swarmed her friend like honeybees to flowers. Pretty, perky, and profane, Piper possessed qualities boys seemed to enjoy. Guys were rarely interested in bespectacled, overly organized bookworms. Unless they were begging her to write their term papers.
Nick extended his hand.
Nervous, Samantha pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose and caught a whiff of his fragrance.
His touch was electric, and she lost her breath completely.
“You heard it, too, didn’t you.” Statement, not a question.
“Wh-what?”
He didn’t let go of her hand, kept his gaze locked on to hers. “That unmistakable click.”
Oh yeah, she had heard the snap inside her brain like the missing piece of life’s puzzle clicking into place, and her mind filled with romantic what-if scenarios revolving around her future and this boy.
But she wouldn’t admit that to him. Far too scary.
“You felt it.” He paused, continuing to hold her hand and staring deeply into her eyes.
“Mm . . . um . . .”
“Like cobalt-blue lightning jumping from the sky and shooting straight through your heart.”
“Y-yes.” She blinked, both impressed and confused by his insight. “How did you know?”
“I felt the same thing. When you know, you know.”
Know what? she wanted to ask, but her tongue wasn’t working.
“When the lightning strikes, the lightning strikes, and there’s nothing you can do but climb aboard the ride.”
Mixing metaphors, but okay. Sign me up!
The crowd in the hallway thinned out. Soon it was just her, Piper, and Nick left standing. And the maintenance guy folding up his ladder.
Piper elbowed Samantha. “C’mon. We’re gonna be late.”
Lateness. It was a terrifying thought for a good-girl people-pleaser, but Piper’s warning didn’t even make a dent in her brain, gone all mushy from Nick’s warm touch.
“Go on without me.”
“Oh, hells to the no, cupcake. No woman left behind. We’re a team. You’re here. I’m here. All for one and one for all.”
On the whole, Samantha appreciated Piper’s loyalty and friendship, but not today. Today, she ached to tell Piper to buzz off. Which wasn’t like her. What had this guy done to her in under five minutes?
“Goodbye now, Mr. Ginelli, we gotta go.” Piper tugged on Samantha’s sweater.
A lone student came running down the corridor, shouldering a heavy backpack, wide-eyed and panic-stricken, chanting, “I’m late, I’m late,” as if he was the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.
Samantha couldn’t resist mentally adding, For a very important date.
Except she wasn’t late. Her very important date was standing right in front of her, looking at her like she was a magical unicorn.
Nick’s hand was still hot on hers, his eyes aglow like twin flames burning just for her. “We’re fated, Samantha Riley. You and me. I know it. You know it. And the Lightning Strike knows it.”
From anyone else, at any other time in her life, this might have sounded super corny, and maybe even a little creepy. But at sixteen, eager for adventure and yearning for her first boyfriend, it was the coolest thing she’d ever heard.
In her head, Kylie Minogue was singing “Love at First Sight,” and just like that, Samantha was lovestruck.
And from that moment forward, there was no one else for her but Nick Ginelli until the day he died.
Chapter 2
I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.
—John Green
Now that Samantha was set to marry into the Ginelli family a second time, she felt doubly blessed. Despite all she’d been through, providence had smiled on her again, and she was madly in love for the second time around.
Although, this romance was the complete opposite of her first.
After losing Nick, she was no longer starry-eyed about marriage, but the slow burn she’d first felt for Luca Ginelli since he’d moved back home last year had grown stronger each passing day. What started as a flicker was now a raging blaze, and she couldn’t wait to marry the second love of her life.
Nick might have been her Lightning Strike, but Luca was her soul mate. Nick had been an adventure, whereas Luca was a destination. With Nick, she’d been swept away, helpless as flotsam on the ocean’s tide. With Luca, she had her eyes wide open. Nick had been an imperative, Luca a choice.
A joyful choice she was thrilled to make. In Luca’s arms she’d found the thing she’d searched for her entire life.
The steady heartbeat of her true home.
She didn’t worry that Luca would ever leave her, and for the young girl inside of her who’d lost so much, that trust was irresistible. Her life was full. What more could she ask for? She had the world on a string, and nothing could possibly go wrong.
On this balmy Friday evening in late May, that grateful attitude led Samantha, latched on to her fiancé’s arm, into Mario’s Bistro on Moonglow Boulevard.
She’d entered this building almost daily for the past fourteen years, ever since she and Piper started waiting tables at the restaurant after school and on weekends. The eatery had been passed down through three generations of Ginellis, and it was the go-to spot for authentic Italian cuisine in quaint Moonglow Cove.
After high school, Samantha had started community college and gotten her associate degree in mathematics before she and Nick married. Piper had entered the Coast Guard Academy with Nick. Piper and Nick had even ended up as partners in their installation. Losing Nick had been almost as big a blow to her foster sister as it had been to Samantha.
