Dating Dr. Dreamy: A Small Town Second Chance Romance (Bliss River Book 1) Read online

  Dating Dr. Dreamy

  Lili Valente

  Contents

  DATING DR. DREAMY

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  Also by Lili Valente

  DATING DR. DREAMY

  A Bliss River Novel

  By Lili Valente

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright Dating Dr. Dreamy © 2020 Lili Valente

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. This erotic romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This e-book is licensed for your personal use only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy hot, sexy, emotional romantic comedies featuring alpha males. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. Cover design by Lori Jackson. Photo credit Wander Aguiar.

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  Chapter 1

  Lark

  The night before my best friend Lisa’s wedding—and my seventh turn as a bridesmaid—I have all of my weirdest anxiety dreams.

  Every. Single. One.

  Babysitting my sister Aria’s baby and I lose the eight-month-old in her stuffed animal collection?

  Check.

  Crawling through a miniature Dutch pancake house with doors too small for me to squeeze through while “It’s a Small World” plays on endless repeat?

  Check.

  Getting knocked over the head, blacking out, and waking up in the middle of the early church service my Nana hasn’t missed in thirty-five years, wearing nothing but a fine layer of caramel corn stuck to my body like a bad cat suit and a bubblegum bow in my hair?

  Check and check.

  (I have that one twice, because apparently one “naked and covered in candy in front of old people” dream wasn’t enough for my subconscious.)

  As a result of all the panicked dreaming, I wake up exhausted.

  Exhausted, on the biggest day of my best friend’s life, not to mention the biggest catering job of my career. Ever After Catering has been growing steadily since I started the business three years ago, but I’ve never handled an event like Lisa’s reception.

  There will be a twenty-foot appetizer buffet, a sit down steak or salmon dinner for three hundred people, and a dessert spread featuring a five tier wedding cake, three different kinds of groom’s cake—Lisa’s soon-to-be husband and his two brothers all have very strong, but very opposing, views on cake—cupcakes with sprinkles for the kids, chocolate pie for Lisa’s Gran, an edible ice sculpture, and a white chocolate fountain.

  And, of all that, the ice sculpture is the only thing my two sisters and I aren’t making ourselves.

  Even knowing the cakes are mostly done and waiting at the venue, the salmon is marinating in my industrial fridge, and the salad is sitting in giant containers, just waiting to be tossed with homemade honey-lemon dressing, my hands are still shaking as I shove a change of clothes and my lucky apron into a duffle bag and snag my bridesmaid’s dress from the closet.

  I’m always a little nervous before a big job, but today is worse than usual. Today has to be perfect, not only for Lisa, but for all the guests attending the reception.

  At least six of Lisa’s successful friends from college are planning weddings in the next year. Booking even three more big budget receptions will take my business to the next level, allowing me to compete with more established catering companies based in Atlanta and proving there’s nothing small town about my operation.

  Except, of course, that I’m based in a small town.

  But not just any small town! Bliss River, Georgia, is as cute as they come, a never-met-a-stranger-we-wouldn’t-pour-a-glass-of-sweet-tea place where the pursuit of wedded bliss is practically a town-wide pastime. If I can get the city folk out here to visit, I’d bet my favorite vintage mixer they’ll be lining up to hold their weddings in our adorable old barns, historic churches, and generally cute-as-a-button downtown.

  Expanding my business could lead directly to expanding the prosperity of the place I’ve called home my entire life. It’s just another reason I have to pull this reception off without a hitch.

  There is no room for error, and certainly no time for a nap.

  Three cups of coffee sustain me through the epic beauty salon appointment, and crying like a baby as I watch my best friend since preschool get married keeps me conscious through the receiving line and the wedding party pictures. But by the time I arrive at the venue—a lovely old home on the historic register about five miles outside of Bliss River—I’m pinching myself to stay awake.

  Thankfully, as soon as I walk through the door to the new, super-sized kitchen the owners added onto the home when they decided to rent it out for events, the job-in-progress adrenaline kicks in.

  “How are the potatoes? Are they cooked through and ready for the warmers?” I ask as I bustle into the room, tying my lucky apron on over my bridesmaid’s dress.

  I was too nervous to take the time to change before heading over from the church. I’m just going to have to cook in floor-length red taffeta and a strapless bra I’m pretty sure is trying to murder my boobs.

  “Are they done?” I ask again, squinting at the stove. “We’re going to need the oven for the last minute apps in less than ten minutes.”

  “Hello to you, too,” Aria, my older sister, grumbles from the far corner of the kitchen, where she’s bent over the wedding cake with a tube of frosting, adding a few last minute iced tulips around the edges.

  At five-seven and barely one hundred and twenty pounds, Aria is the slimmest of we three March sisters, unreasonably scrawny for a pastry chef, and, lately, about as sweet as a packet of damp Sweet’N Low. Ever since she separated from her husband and moved back to Bliss River five months ago, she’s misplaced her sense of humor.

  I’ve learned to put up with Aria’s new and unimproved personality transplant, but I admit I miss the big sister who used to organize elaborate pranks for us to play on our parents during family vacations and stay up all night giving makeovers and telling silly storie
s about the guys she dated.

  “Lark, you’re here!” Melody, my younger sis, bounds across the room with a squeal, clapping her hands. “How was the wedding? Was it amazing and romantic and all around fantastic? Was Lisa beautiful? Did Matt cry? Did you cry?”

  “It was perfect. Of course, a little, and of course,” I say, laughing as Melody pulls me in for a giddy hug.

  Melody loves weddings almost as much as she loves to cook and only slightly less than she loves to eat. Her commitment to all things culinary means that she graduated from culinary school only one year behind me, even though I’m two and a half years older.

  My little sis and I share a love of preparing food, the same long, sandy blond hair and brown eyes, and nearly identical rounded figures that give testimony to the fact that we hit the cheese board more often than the gym. When we were younger, people mistook us for twins, until Melody hit a growth spurt and left me behind.

  Now, at five-foot-two, standing between my taller sisters, I’m a short, squatty novel—probably a cozy mystery, with a punny, food-themed title, like Murder and Marinade—wedged between two mismatched bookends.

  No one knows where Aria’s red hair and green eyes came from. There are rumors of a ginger great-grandmother on our father’s side, but they remain unsubstantiated. If Aria didn’t have our dad’s nose and super long fingers—or if all three of the Bliss River postmen weren’t actually postwomen—I’m sure the jokes from Dad’s poker buddies would have been never ending.

  “I hated to miss it,” Melody says with a sigh as she releases me. “Did you tell Lisa I was thinking of her? And wishing her the best day ever?”

  “I did, and she said thank you for holding down the fort here so I could be her maid of honor.”

  “Of course!” Melody waves a hand in the air. “You had to be her maid of honor. It would have been a sacrilege if she’d picked anyone else.”

  “Though it might have been nice to give someone else a turn,” Aria says, ducking between us as she heads for the sink. “You know what they say about the March girls and weddings…”

  I wrinkle my nose. I know exactly what “they”—the town gossips, the women in our mother’s book club, Nana’s friends at the DAR, and all the been-married-forevers who have nothing better to do than predict who is, or isn’t, going to get married next—say about the March girls.

  Too many times a bridesmaid, never a bride.

  Between the three of us, we’ve been part of a wedding party no less than twenty-seven times. Melody holds the record, with ten bridesmaid appearances and three turns as maid of honor, all before her twenty-third birthday. At this rate, she’ll have a dozen plastic bins full of hideous old dresses in our parents’ garage before she’s twenty-five. Aria and I aren’t far behind her, tied with seven stints each down the aisle in scratchy taffeta.

  “Well, I think it’s nice that so many people want us in their weddings,” Melody says. “It means we have a lot of good friends.”

  “Besides, you already proved them wrong, anyway,” I say to Aria’s back. “One March girl has been married, even if it didn’t stick. There’s still hope Melody and I will have weddings of our own someday. And you’ll get a second chance with someone truly fabulous.”

  Romantic, happy-ever-after-dreams do come true, I think, a little wistfully. I see it all the time, and there’s going to come a day when I won’t be on the outside looking in at the romance while clearing the appetizer spread and wondering if we’re going to need more mustard.

  It just might take a little longer than I was expecting…

  After breaking up with Thomas last year things have been pretty quiet in the romance department. Not that Thomas was particularly romantic. He inherited his dad’s pool supply company and spent his days peddling chlorine and water filters, but as a former high school football star, his true passions were following Bliss River High’s football season, obsessing about his Fantasy Football Roster, and yelling at the television with his buddies down at the sports bar. We had a good time when we got together to grill catfish or see a movie, but there were never any real fireworks.

  The earth didn’t move.

  The butterflies didn’t take wing.

  My knees didn’t go soft and spongy every time we touched.

  Not like with He Who Shall Not Be Allowed Back in My Thoughts.

  Him. Mason Freaking Stewart, the only guy who’s ever made me boil like chicken stock left in the crockpot a little too long.

  There’s never been anyone like Mason. And not just with the physical stuff, either. He’s the only man I’ve ever really loved. Maybe the only one I’ll ever love. So perfect that no other man can compare.

  Or, at least, he was perfect for me. We just fit and clicked and complimented each other so well, like dark chocolate cake and raspberry sauce followed by a sip of perfectly balanced port.

  Until we didn’t, of course.

  Until he left, taking a chunk of my innocent, trusting heart with him.

  It’s a thought that plagues me in the night, when I’m lying awake in the dark, wondering when my days of sleeping solo will finally be over. What if I’ll never be able to fall for another man the way I fell for Mason Stewart?

  No matter how much I adore weddings, and secretly long to be walking down that aisle as a bride, it’s hard to imagine trusting someone like that again.

  “I suppose crazier things have happened, but getting hitched again sure as hell isn’t on my agenda,” Aria mumbles, pulling me from my thoughts. “Shouldn’t you two be cooking something? I hear cars starting to pull up.”

  Her words have the desired effect. Soon, Melody and I are scrambling to get the black-forest-ham-stuffed puff pastries and other last minute appetizers into the oven and fetching the trays we prepared last night from the refrigerator. Next, we round up the servers from behind the building where they’ve gone to play a few quick hands of poker—they have a gambling-for-leftovers problem—and set them to work carrying everything out to the buffet.

  Aria finishes prepping the white chocolate fountain and begins filling round serving trays with glasses of champagne and red, white, and pink wine (because pink is the bride’s favorite color), while Melody works on the sides and I fire up the grill for the steak and salmon.

  Three hours later, I’m covered in a fine sheen of sweat and smell like a campfire, but the appetizers and sit-down dinner were a rousing success. The guests are well fed, well liquored, and enjoying the heck out of themselves.

  All that’s left is to bring out the desserts and finish strong.

  I start for the groom’s cakes, but Melody stops me with a hand on my arm.

  “Go on. Go dance with the others,” she says, tugging at the bow on my apron. “Aria and I can handle it from here on out.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask, running a hand over my heat-frizzed hair. “I can stay, I—”

  “Go. You deserve to have some fun after how hard you’ve worked this week,” Aria says with a rare smile. “And I don’t want any of you klutzes dropping my cakes. I’ll bring them out myself as soon as Manny and George get the fountain set up.”

  “All right. Thanks, guys. I appreciate you.” Deciding to ignore the grease stain on my skirt—it will be too dark on the dance floor to see it, anyway—I head for the kitchen door, ready to boogie with my best girlfriend until I succumb to exhaustion. Lisa and I have been dreaming about dancing at her wedding together since we were in middle school and the closest we’d gotten to dating was fighting over whether we’d marry a vampire or a werewolf, if we were the heroine of our favorite teen romance.

  I was, and am, Team Werewolf, of course. The undead have their place, I guess, but I don’t want one in my bed. My toes get cold enough as it is.

  I hurry across the ballroom where Manny and George—my two oldest employees, the ones who helped me start Ever After Catering three years ago—are setting up the dessert buffet, and out into the warm Georgia night.

  Outside, paper lanterns hang lace
d 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.